NONGOVMEDIA

In 2012, tragedy struck St. Robert's Catholic Church, Adamgbe, Mbayongo, when the building collapsed during Easter celebrations. More than thirty parishioners died — most of them women and young girls.

The men had been outside, absorbed in a football match despite the rain. The women and children, seeking shelter, returned to the church just before it gave way. The graves of those lost remain in front of the rebuilt church, a reminder of how chance, gender, and tradition can shape fate.

Eight years later, in 2020, I returned for the first mass of a newly ordained priest from the community. As the celebration unfolded, a heavy rain began. My photographs captured people once again running to seek shelter, the graves of 2012 standing starkly in the foreground.

This series is less about an event than about recurrence — how spaces remember, how stories of loss stay alive, and how the weight of history lingers each time it rains.