Jeffrey Gettleman photos — Jeffrey Gettleman Gettleman Love Africa

Several of these young men are no longer with us. In the Ogaden Desert, Ethiopia, 2007

Courtenay and I have been together essentially since we were kids. Ithaca, New York, 1991

Beginning of the first Africa adventure, 1990

Playing war in Kenya with Dan Eldon (center) and Roko Belic during our "Year On"

Commander Peacock and his wife, The Victim, in a Nairobi photo studio. 2011

On the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, 1992. The man next to me was the guy I handed a little incentive to, so we could keep climbing

One of my favorite pictures of Courtenay. 1996

On safari in Samburu, Kenya

My Oxford dorm

I missed the shot. In Kenya’s spectacularly beautiful Rift Valley

30,000 feet above Sudan. Flying to Darfur

First newspaper job, Brooksville, Florida. (Note the Save the Children necktie)

Sahafi Hotel, Dan’s last address

Best way to get through a checkpoint? Dress up. In northern Afghanistan, 2002

Another early date

Stranded on a remote airstrip in Baidoa, Somalia

Notice the cookies lovingly glued to the side, like portholes

During a rare trip to Europe and an even rarer visit to an art gallery

Deep wounds, self-inflicted every year by the pious. Karbala, Iraq

Baby Asa

Apollo and Asa, made in Africa

On a bus in Djibouti, about to witness Africa’s smallest war

Bahram, the Taliban prisoner boy, in captivity. Northern Afghanistan, 2002

Many women in central Africa favor this hairstyle. Dungu, Congo

Courtenay was never a big fan of the uniform but occasionally humored me. On a pirate patrol in the Arabian Sea, 2008. We thought the sailor motif was appropriate.

We’d often get crowds during interviews. In an Afar village, Djibouti.

We'd try and keep a straight face. Usually. Nairobi, 2007

Thrilled to be alive after driving 26 hours from Kismayo to Mogadishu, Somalia

With the Rashaida nomads, in Eritrea

Shoes off for interviewing one of Sudan’s most dangerous, intelligent and whimsical intellectuals, Hassan Al-Turabi. Khartoum, Sudan

The Da Vinci Brothers. The big guy in white is my old friend Benny, an actor. He was the first of us to leave the stage, tugged down by ALS at age 37

Getting the lay of the land in Murphy, North Carolina, 2002

Apollo and a Samburu friend in northern Kenya

Mogadishu’s ruined cathedral was one of the last places Dan photographed

Roko, Tahir Square, Cairo, during the "Year On" in 1992. Notice the stray pair of feet.

Asa making friends in Mozambique

This guy, Titan, is just a baby. On a South African rhino ranch

One of my favorite haunts. Black Diamond night club. Nairobi

Drinks menu in Malawi

Courtenay wearing her Jackie O. hat, sailing the Indian Ocean. Lamu Island, Kenya

Khalid Hussein, a translator in the Times’s Baghdad bureau, saved my life several times. He was shot and killed not long after this interview. Baghdad, 2004