The greatest Polish reporter was born in 1932 in Pińsk, a small town in Polesie. He used to say he liked going to poor countries because he could feel there the atmosphere of his home town. Kapuściński’s house is now a ruin: only wild cats live there. Ryszard was seven years old when the war broke out. He remembers standing on the grass and small, silver points in front of them. Then he rememebers hunger, hiding, constant anxiety. He says that for people who lived in the war times the war will never finish. The war becomes a natural state. Perhaps this, paradoxically, made it easier for him to go to the most dangerous places in the world?

He started to work as a journalist in a newly created ‘Sztandar Młodych’. A the beginning he was just a boy who performed various tasks, later he started to write his own articles. He studied history at the university, but later returned to the newspaper. In 1955 he made wrote a text abot Nowa Huta which brought him his first prize. But for the goverment his topics were not comfortable, and he was sent abroad. In 1956 he visited Pakistan and Afganistan. he didn’t speak a word in English then! On an airport he bought Hemingway’s novel ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ – using the book and the English-Polish dictionary he managed to learn the language! Next year he went to Japan and China. Later started to work in PAP and in ‘Polityka’. He dreamt about going to Kongo in Africa, but it appeared to be impossible with a Polish passport. Finally he was sent to Nigeria, but he was very unhappy about it (nothing was happening in Nigeria, it was boring) and secretly went to Kairo instead – and from Kairo took a way across the jungle to Kongo. He became ‘Polityka’s correspondent in Africa, where he went seriously ill – with malaria and tuberculosis – and almost died. He wrote a few books about Africa. His next destination were republics of the Soviet Union and South America – Chile, Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil. Then there was Africa again, Etiopia and Iran, which gave rise to the famous two books – ‘Emperor’ (about the court in Etiopia) and ‘Szachinszach’ (about Iran). The third famous book was ‘Imperium’ – about collapsing of the Russian imperium. His travels to Africa pushed him into writing a ‘synthetic essay about Africa’ – ‘Heban’ (1998) – which again made him famous. Before writing the book, he collected 260 positions of bibliography. The book was printed in ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’ in fragments before being published as a book.

He loved taking pictures and took a lot of great photographs, but always complained that it is difficult to be a reporter and photographer at the same time. You can’t concentrate on both, so if you concentrate on what people tell you, you can’t focus at the same time on colours and shapes. But hhe was obsessed with photo technology.

In his travels he was in danger a few times: once when he was very ill in Africa and four times in danger of being shot by soldiers. Once he got away with it because the soldier who was supposed to kill him was so drunk that he couldn’t hold the gun.
Now when Kapuściński has gone to his final destination, he left a deep belief that his way of perceiving the world, it’s deep understanding, is not what many people have. It was something special and unique, something that made the reporter – an artist.

 

Improve your vocabulary!

wild – dziki
break out – wybuchać (o wojnie)
hunger – głód
hiding – ukrywanie się
constant – stały
anxiety – niepokój, lęk
paradoxically – paradoksalnie
various – różny
tuberculosis – gruźlica
perceive – postrzegać
belief – wiara