Genevieve Maynard Photography

I visited Reichenau on a humid summer afternoon in November 2020, driving across the Polela river and its waterfall towards the church. Mr Ndu Zuma, the custodian and guide, seemed surprised to see me, not many visitors this year, and a group of school girls on their lunch break congregated under the pine trees, laughing amongst themselves and calling out ‘hello mama’.
 
Ndu told me the history of the mission, and I said that I wanted to take photos and asked if he felt ok to leave me in the church alone. The answer was, ‘yes, of course, take all the time you need’, and genuine interest in my explanation of the kind of images I wanted to try and take.
 
The school buildings are undergoing renovation, paid for by private fundraising, with the sister’s quarters, the former courthouse and the church itself still to go. There is some water damage to the church floors and walls and Ndu told me that they are going to bring in specialist restorers from overseas to work on the frescoes. I left an hour and a half or so later, not sure if I’d gotten what I came for, perhaps more, or whether I’d been able to capture what I saw and felt, that strange mixture of faith and colonisation, familiarity and foreignness that is so different to the feel and the place of the church in Italy.