About this project

Project Website: http://humans.simonsticker.com What is the project about? In short: Simple questions. What makes you happy? What are you proud of? What are you struggling with? What influenced you the most? and so on. Simple questions, asked to people all over Africa. A portrait and a short film of every person interviewed. All recorded on a long journey with public transport from the bottom of Africa to it's very top, from Capetown, SA to Cairo, Egypt. What are the differences between the people, the countries? What are similarities? How do their dreams, wishes and influences differentiate from people in the western world? And how are they similar? At the end we hope that this project could be a small help to learn to see Africa and the world in it's bigger variety and complexity with open eyes.

The long version: It all started with thoughts about Africa. The picture of Africa is in the perception of most moving between the two extremes of Safaris, white beaches and colorful dancers and the pictures of war, poverty and misery. During the last years of working in different countries in Africa, another picture took over and shaped a life between those extremes, a life that can be considered as “normal”.
 A year ago we did a little experiment in Rwanda. We asked different people the same three questions. “What makes you happy?” “Where would you like to wake up tomorrow morning?” “What would you like to happen at the end of the day?” We edited three short films out of the results, that you can find at http://humans.simonsticker.com. We hoped that by asking these general questions you could ask all over the world, it would bring some unique insights and also maybe bring attention to the similarities in our wishes, hopes and dreams rather than focusing on the exotic or misery that normally leaves us behind with the impression of a lost continent – in short: show more of the “normal” side of life. Now, in 2011, we want to take it a huge step further with our project called “Humans”. Behind the simple title you can find the concept of ‘One Question’ developed. From June to December 2011 we will travel in a team of two from Capetown to Cairo, with local transport, talking to as many interesting people as possible. But this time we will not only ask this three questions, but do small interviews that give also a deeper impression of the lifes people live in, their dreams, personal goals, what influences them, what moments changed their lifes, what they are proud of and what they are struggling with. In addition we will also produce small ebooks about the countries we travel through to share more pictures, stories and also some travel tips. Last but not least we will also shape all the answers and portraits into a book after the trip. Over the trip of half a year you can follow the project on the website where the short films of the people we interview will be featured, watch the portraits we take of them, get impressions from the countries and the journey through our blog and read, listen and see what people will tell and show us.

But the project doesn’t stop with this trip. With a universal concept like that we hope in the long run to get more and more people giving answers to our questions, not only from Africa, but from all over the world. We hope that could create a little bit of deeper understanding for different cultures, livelihoods and dreams. Not told by an “expert”, but by ordinary people who share their thoughts through this project. In the spirit of that we will open the project at some point for the public to upload their videos with their answers. What the funds are used for: We will pay around half of the needed funds out of our own pockets or with other sponsors. The money you give will be solely used to fund the travels expenses to meet all those people and capture all those stories along our way through Africa. This includes costs for public transport (we will mainly travel that way), guesthouses/ hotels, needed visas and other normal travel expenses. Thank you for your interest!