Living Behind the Camera

There is a meal from 1998 I have no photograph of. A woman named Margaret who taught at Sengera Primary School invited our family to her home one afternoon. She had made *obokima*, the Gusii maize porridge, and beef stew, and there was a lightness in that room I have carried for twenty-six years. The children were loud. Someone knocked over a cup. It didn't matter. I remember the precise sound of laughter in that kitchen.

No photograph. Every detail intact.

I have photographs from hundreds of professional events. Conferences in Houston, Chicago, Nairobi, Dubai. Good photographs. I cannot tell you what was said in most of those rooms.

The body keeps what mattered. The camera keeps what was framed. These are not the same archive.

You have been behind the frame for a long time. The frame is not your enemy, but it is not the same thing as the room. Put the phone down for one gathering this week. Not to prove anything. Just to find out what you remember when the remembering is entirely your own.

— Job