Storyteller

Last night we met Jerome and Summer. Recently they had sat with Michael on the Hubud’s terrace while we were at work, and in the evening I found the post on Facebook that they wanted to stay with us for a few weeks looking for stories — ”Who’s got something to tell?“

On Friday I saw them again on the terrace, and we got to talk. They are telling stories, mainly in areas more or less related to new technologies and how they affect people and society. They do not work scientifically, but within the framework of photo series, by joining people’s lifes and studying them over a longer period of time. They showed me their publications, Stern, Figaro, Die Zeit in which they describe almost unbelievable stories over many spreads — a Japanese who marries a virtual pop star, young Chinese women who, as modern geishas, turn the heads of Chinese men, big time, with soft-or-semi-erotic livestreams, young urban folks who, dressed up, do selfies in farmhouses and on flowering fields, thus allowing poor Chinese farmers to make a little money on the side by charging it using QR-codes with We-chat.

They both are looking for new stories about people who are remote workers in the hub. Their modus operandi is to be physically present in the hub and wait for a story to arise. They were then also quite interested in mine and wanted to hear more about it over the next few weeks — which I had nothing against, because it actually seems interesting to me, too, to talk about the Trees project, for instance, or perhaps also the fact that we are working on a precious project for the court of the Emir of Kuwait (from the terrace of the Hub); so we agreed.

Last night we four had dinner. Sarah and I listened spellbound to the storyteller’s own story, and already after a few details we both had the feeling that exactly here is a crazy story that has to be told one day. Jerome and Summer have been working together for a few years, he takes the pictures and writes the stories, she assists, scouts, organizes and accompanies him on the way, whether it’s in a tent in the middle of nowhere in Tibet, or in the colourful nightlife of Chinese megacities.

Jerome

But Jerome’s story begins a few years earlier: Born on La Réunion as a triplet, he started his life in Paris as a web analyst for large corporations, earned a lot of money and had a good life — but something was working within him. Early on, he stumbled upon the story of a woman in Darjeeling, India, who was — day in, day out — carrying the luggage of travelers at a local train station, in order to give an education to her 5 children. He wanted to get to know her; since he had Indian roots, he took the detour via Calcutta, which deeply shocked him. Later, when he arrived at the mother’s house in Darjeeling, he could only break down in tears — but what he had experienced also showed him the way that he wanted to trace human destinies, to become their chronist.

Back in Paris, he was getting rid of all his stuff and set off on a very unusual journey. The plan: to travel penniless to the Himalayas (a yearning destination he had had since childhood); the French railway company gave him a ticket to Milan, because he wanted to donate his savings to an NGO in almost every country he entered, instead of spending it on the road. He travelled through Brindisi, Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Iran, by train, by hitchhiking, including bicycling through Iran. Tajikistan did not let him enter, so he flew to Kyrgyzstan, and since he did not get a Chinese visa there, he had to enter the country from a different route through Kazakhstan and Mongolia. From there he went on to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia then to Bangkok, where he lived on a couch for 3 months. Continuing his journey to Burma, India, Bhutan, Nepal, the time lapse hardly does justice to this unusual journey. On the way he had started to take pictures (that was only 4 years ago) and to show his pictures on the internet. The Canon corporation became aware of his special perspective and organized a first exhibition of his pictures in Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s gallery, where Jerome met his future mentor Eric Valli, renowned travel photographer, who advised him to go find stories.

Camping somewhere nowhere

We experienced a rare kind of journalism, almost like from an old story; he reminded us of Tiziano Terzani, whose biography we found here in our Balinese home and which Sarah is currently reading. They need up to 6 months to find a story and become part of it so they can tell it. And only then it turns out if there is someone somewhere in the media world who wants to publish it. And whether it can be licenced to another magazine. Travel and life are expensive, even if the two are still camping or hitchhiking, wherever they go. The fact that after such a short period of time, the two of them have taken up 10-11-page reports in Stern, Figaro and entire pages in Die Zeit suggests, however, that there is still a market for these in-depths-stories.

Summer

It was really great listening to those two. Summer also talked about how she had studied economics in Taiwan and used every free time for travelling and how she had crossed paths with this unusual Frenchman somewhere in the worlds in a youth hostel. How she had to explain her unorthodox cooperation to her family and how she didn’t choose the life of a typical young Taiwanese woman, but set out every few months for long journeys with Jerome to new adventures with an open ending — about to catch a new story.

Jerome wants to write his synopsis for the new report today, we agreed to meet again next week — then he wants to listen to our story.