DAN
ELDON - BIOGRAPHY
Dan Eldon was born in London on September
18th, 1970, and from a very early age displayed signs of an
excellent sense of humour. When Dan was seven years old, he
and his three-year-old sister Amy moved to Nairobi, Kenya
with their parents, Kathy and Mike Eldon. His most vivid early
memory of Kenya was a confrontation with a baboon who snatched
his chocolate mousse and scratched Dan’s arm, leaving him
with a healthy respect for baboons and a craving for chocolate
mousse.
In Kenya, Dan attended a British school
where he developed a “schoolphobia” after being attacked too
many times by a vicious math teacher, armed with a sneaker.
He convinced his parents to transfer him to the International
School of Kenya, attended by students representing 46 nationalities.
There he blossomed, particularly enjoying such activities
as staying in a Maasai village, a trip to the exotic Arab
island of Lamu off the coast of Kenya, and climbing Mt. Kenya.
Dan was lucky to have many Kanyan friends,
including Lengai Croze, who took him for many adventures in
the gorge behind his home. Another friend was Lara Leakey,
grand-daughter of anthropologist Louis Leakey, who discovered
many of the most ancient human ancestral bones in the world.
Both Lengai and Lara lived next to the Nairobi Game Park,
and were used to nightly visits from rhino, leopard, giraffe
and lion.
In 1982, Dan narrowly missed being caught
up in the coup in Kenya, but he was around to experience the
aftermath of that political upheaval. Early on, he joined
his journalist mother on her assignments, and soon was taking
pictures, which were used in the local newspapers.
Dan started helping others from a young
age. When he was 14, he started a fund-raising campaign for
open-heart surgery to save the life of Atieno, a young Kenyan
girl. Together with his sister and friends, he raised $5,000
but due to neglect by the hospital Atieno died.
When Dan was 15, he helped support a
Maasai family buy buying their hand-made jewelry, later selling
it to fellow students and friends. It was during this time
that he started to create journals: fat, bulging books filled
with collages, photographs and whimsical drawings. He often
used satire and cartoons to comment on what he saw around
him, but kept the journals as very personal statements, which
he shared with only a few people.
During Dan’s high school years, he held
many charity fund-raising dances in the “Mkebe,” a large tin
shed in the backyard of the Eldon home. There, scores of students
gathered, paying an entrance fee, which went towards Dan’s
latest charity. Always looking for a way to raise funds, he
also produced colorful tee shirts of his own design, and even
launched a collection of brightly printed boxer shorts.
Dan graduated from the International
School of Kenya in 1988, winning the International Relations
and Community Service awards, as well as being voted most
outstanding student by his classmates. He addressed his class,
emphasizing in importance of crossing cultural barriers and
caring for others.
Throughout his life, Dan was fortunate
in being able to travel extensively, and had visited 46 countries
by the time of his death. In addition, he studied seven languages
in school and out of it. He returned nearly every summer to
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, home of his grandparents, Russell and
Louise Knapp. From the age of 8 to 18, Dan attended Camp Wapsi
in Central City, Iowa, where he learned about Native Americans.
In the autumn of 1988, Dan Started his
“year off” before going to college. It was, as he described,
really a “year on” and for him, felt more challenging than
going straight into college. He left his home in Kenya and
traveled to New York City, where he had been offered a job
at Mademoiselle Magazine. He was by far the youngest employee
at the time, and although he loved his position, he found
being in New York to be a cold, lonely and difficult experience.
In January, he moved to a warmer climate,
and enrolled in the Pasadena Community College in California.
Immediately, he began to plot a way to get back to Africa.
He devised a scheme whereby he would lead a group of young
people from Nairobi to Malawi. That summer, he and a friend
researched the journey, and drove Dan’s Land Rover, Deziree,
across five African countries, fending off thieves and border
guards on the way. They found staying in local jails the safest
solution to security problems, and often spent the night locked
up in cells to the amusement of prison wardens.
Armed with this information, Dan, who
had transferred to UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles),
set up a charity, which he named Student Transport Aid. He
attracted the interest of local television stations and newspapers,
and together with 15 friends, raised $25,000 for their venture.
The friends, representing six countries, met in Nairobi and
traveled thousands of miles together in three vehicles to
their destination, a refugee camp in Malawi. There, they donated
one of their vehicles to the Save the Children Fund, as well
as money for three wells, and blankets for a children’s hospital.
Dan returned to UCLA in the autumn of
1990 and began to plan another adventure, which necessitated
a move to London after Christmas. He attended Richmond College
and organized the purchase of yet another Land Rover, which
he equipped for a trip to Morocco that summer. His scheme
was to buy bracelets and belts to sell in America for Student
Transport Aid. Attacked by Moroccan thieves and delayed by
a very sick Land Rover, he spent a fitful summer in Marrakesh,
before arriving home just in time to ship $5,000 worth of
bounty to America.
Selling the jewelry and belts was not
easy, but wearing a World War II leather pilot’s helmet, Dan
patrolled the beaches of Los Angeles, as well as glitzy Rodeo
Drive, and managed to move much of his merchandise. Dan used
a mixture of bluster and charm which won friends and followers
of all races and social classes.
In 1991, Dan returned to UCLA for one
semester, all the time planning his next trip,which was to
be across the Sahara. Early in 1992, he moved to Mt. Vernon,
Iowa, to attend classes at Cornell College. He found the winter
to be very cold, but enjoyed the friendliness and peace of
that campus so different from the challenging experiences
he had had at the downtown Los Angeles campus of UCLA.
In April, Dan flew to Kenya, where he
worked as a third assistant director on a feature film, Lost
in Africa. As the most junior person on the production, he
was up at 5:00 a.m., and was the last in bed. His greatest
moment was when he was required to locate seven camels, and
slept the night with the smelly, noisy beasts tethered next
to him for fear of losing them and their keepers.
During the summer of 1992, the famine
in Somalia was raging. Dan flew from Kenya to the southern
Somali town of Baidoa, where he shot some of the first pictures
to touch the conscience of millions. The international news
agency, Reuters, spotted his work, and by Christmas, Dan was
working for the company, shooting the increasingly desperate
situation. He followed the story closely and was present at
the U.S. Marine landing, where a barrage of international
photographers and journalists were waiting for the American
soldiers as they crept, faces blackened, off their landing
craft in Mogadishu.
Throughout the spring of 1993, Dan stayed
in Mogadishu, both horrified and fascinated by the violence
and tragedy he recorded. The situation worsened, and the death
of Pakistani peace keepers turned the conflict into an international
incident. During this time, Dan’s pictures were featured in
newspapers and magazines around the world. On June 12, 1993
his photo made a double-page spread in Newsweek magazine,
as well as the covers on papers everywhere.
Dan kept his spirits up by starting
a variety of businesses in Mogadishu. His tee shirts, caps,
bags, and postcards were in hot demand, especially the cult
tee shirt which said “Viva Somalia… thank you for not looting.”
The first two hundred of those shirts were looted.
In April of 1993, Dan published his
first book, Somalia, a collection of photographs and collages
which sold rapidly to aid workers and soldiers posted to the
country considered by most to be more dangerous than Bosnia.
But Dan always felt protected in Mogadishu.
He spoke the African languages of Swahili and enough Somali
to swear at the thieves who often tried to steal his equipment.
He moved easily from the notorious Bahara Market, home of
Mogadishu’s most dangerous criminals, to dine with the heads
of aid missions, generals, and UN advisors. Initially viewed
as another enthusiastic youngster, he soon earned the title
of a true professional, along with the respect of his colleagues,
friends, and locals, who called him the “Mayor of Mogadishu”
because of his friendliness to all.
The violence and horror of the situation
was extremely hard on Dan. Although he had “had enough” by
late June of 1993, he agreed to stay on to cover the unfolding
events. On July, 12, 1993, Dan and three of his colleagues
raced across Mogadishu to cover the bombing of what was thought
to be General Aideed’s headquarters. In the ensuing confusion,
all four young men were beaten, clubbed and stoned to death
by an angry mob furious about the death of over 50 of their
friends, fathers, and brothers at the hands of U.S. and U.N.
soldiers.
The journalists who died that day were
Hos Maina, Anthony Macharia, Hansi Krauss, and Dan Eldon.
