you have heard of Humans of New York (HoNY). if you haven’t, it is a photo blog of random people in New York City. its creator, Brandon Stanton, has hundreds of thousand of tweeter followers and the blog’s Facebook has 18 million likes. why? it probably has tapped into a primal need of human beings to hear stories, and then retell stories, about common people.
last year, an Eritrean started Humans of Eritrea (HoE.) it celebrates ordinary Eritreans whose stories are extraordinary because two roads converged…wait, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
we were going to tell you more, but the nerd who started the website, refused to be interviewed for this website. technically, we really didn’t ask him and he didn’t say no, but we think if we had asked, he would have said no, so in the age of Trump that is close enough.
Humans of Eritrea describes its aim thusly: “to portray the lives of Eritreans, inside and outside the country, with pictures and their own words.” If you are telling yourself, “why, that’s modest: give me more”, the website obliges by quoting an Eritrean poet:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
well, technically, Robert Frost is not really an Eritrean but again in the Age of Trump….
check out the website and its Recent 50 here. submit stories, but remember, although its aim is about portraying lives with pictures and their own words, the internet doesn’t like low-res images. the website is the only place anywhere, including the Internet, where pro-government, anti-government and agnostic Eritreans live in the bliss of thumbnails (hi-res) and little stories.
vote for your favorite story. we don’t how, and we don’t know what you will win. actually, voting for favorites is probably against the spirit of HoE so never mind. Just check out the website. and write the webmaster here and say, hey, what did i win?
http://humansoferitrea.com/contact-us/
You are welcome.
Comment
Can you read this? If so, do what every HoE and their mama does and show me those 111111111. So um, did I win or not? I hope I won because one thing about us HoEs, we are always rushing to get to some meeting we will be late to. The good thing is everyone who’s coming to that meeting is a HoE so we’ll all be late.