Godfrey's an amazing man. I've known him for four years now. He has a very tough story. He was left at the hospital by his mother at birth because in his culture, to have a disability like this means you're a bringer of bad luck, a curse on the family. Luckily for him, his grandmother brought him up. He got a job as a cobbler, which is the only kind of job you can do over there. It pays very little though. He managed to find a wife. She gave him two kids. She ran off with another man. He then was doing his cobbling one day and a man stopped on the side of the road and said to him, "Can I take your photo?" He said, "Yeah, sure." He says, "Can you go like this?" So he did that. Two days later, he was on the front page of the national newspaper with the title saying, "I'm the ugliest man in the world. We're having a competition if you can beat me, there's prize money." So he was furious for about half a day, and then someone said to him, "Why don't you go in the competition and win it?" So he did. He went in the competition, he won it. Then he become Cebubi, which means in his language, the ugliest of them all. Then he embraced this role of Cebubi and he reinvented himself as a performer in, I guess in the West, you'd call it a freak show. It's people with disabilities, it's dwarves. But you have to understand the tough living conditions there. And to be part of this, he actually gets to supercharge what he would normally get paid in a week as a cobbler, he can make 40 times that in one night. And Godfrey has 11 kids, it's very important for him. He's done very well with it too. He owns his own house. He has a small bit of land to do some farming. He's just an amazing man.
For this photo, for the project I was doing, I realized I hadn't taken a beautiful photo of his wife. She's a traditional African lady. She's looking after the family. She's very humble, very modest. And so I asked her to show me her best dress. From there, we chose the colors of the backdrop. My fixers and my driver, Conrad, they helped set everything up. We went and hired a suit for Godfrey. Kate came out, Godfrey came out. We got some photos individually. Then the neighbor, Jit, brought out this hulking turkey. And it looks big there, but you've got no idea how big this thing is in real life. It's huge. And everyone was petrified of it. Me too, I kind of ran away from it a bit. And then I just wanted someone to get their photo taken with the turkey. No one would do it. And I sensed my opportunity and I sidled up to Godfrey and I got my fixer to translate. I said, "Tell Godfrey that can he believe no one will get their photo taken with this turkey because it's too ugly." And she told him and he looked at me. I looked at him, he knew exactly what I was on about. And he said, "Will you bring me the turkey?" And then to much to everyone's amusement (there were probably about 20 or 30 people around here when I was taking this photo) it was hard, hard work, but we got the shot.
He was so excited to get some recognition, and the family is so proud of him. And this is a good one too because when I was there last time I was interviewing him on camera and I made sure I asked every one of the kids "Are you proud of your dad?" And he was crying after he heard a few of them talk about that, because culturally they don't really do that kind of thing. Not that some of us do that here either. I know a lot of guys that don't give their dad a bit of a hug and a bit of encouragement. He's a very special man. He deserves every recognition that he gets. I've always been a huge fan of the underdog. That's always the kind of person that's interested me. And for me, he's the world's greatest underdog. Life's thrown shit at him at every turn and he's done nothing but make the most out of it. It's amazing.
