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Callie

Callie is known locally as 'black jesus' - he is kind, a deep thinker, ridiculously easy company.

 

Six days a week, his long gangly legs and endless ropey arms make their way around the island by bicycle, (often balancing a variety of fruits and coconuts on his handlebars to sell), easily traversing 20km-30km a day.

 

On this day, he told me that he had recently had a stroke and that he had some paralysis down his right side. The doctor told Callie that it was a good thing that he took one of his epic bicycle rides shortly after the stroke had hit, because doing so had minimised the lasting affect of the heart-event on his limbs.

 

Before the portraits, I showed Callie the images I had taken of his sister Anna - he got emotional: there she is...there she is'...

 

Callie, and ordinary men and women like him, make you feel part of something that matters. That a world of decency, respect, hard work, honesty and self-sufficiency, can and does still exist.

 

Whenever I speak to Callie or see one of his enormous hands lift from a handlebar to waive as I pass him, his give-everything smile beaming, I realise that 'god is one of us' and that our blessings are too many to count.

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Uploaded on December 17, 2022
Taken on December 16, 2022