Fading Memories (Daily Life 2015, by Stéphanie Borcard Nicolas Métraux) - Swiss Press Award
24 heures, Swissinfo
Stéphanie Borcard Nicolas Métraux
A few kilometers from Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, lies the village of Faham. This is where Martin Woodtli, a Swiss native of Münsingen (BE), founded a center for people with Alzheimer's and senile dementia ten years ago: Baan Kamlangchay. The disease remains little known, mysterious, and difficult, especially for those close to it. “Fading Memories” is an intimate and introspective series. Following the thread of our questions, it examines the different aspects of this degeneration experienced in a country so far from Switzerland. “Wer bin ich?”... “Immer dieselbe Frage…”. Siegfried no longer expects an answer. For years, this 78-year-old German has been maintaining a hypothetical dialogue with his wife Irene. More than fifty years of living together are fading, dissipating, until they disappear completely. Irene is here on trial. For a few more days. Siegfried still doesn't feel ready to leave her in Thailand. The couple will return to Potsdam, where Siegfried will continue to care for his wife alone. Some residents have been there for several years, others have just arrived, or at least, that's what they think. Geri seems tormented, anxious, expressing herself only through continuous, unintelligible speech. Beda, meanwhile, is locked in silence: sitting in his armchair, he stares at a point in the distance. From time to time, he lets out a stuttering sound. Beda is only 58 years old. There is also Ruth, Margrit, Suzie, Bernard... The illness seems to develop in different forms in each of them. Is it a confinement within their physical envelope? Are they aware of their condition? Do they know where they are, who they are? What if this were happening to us? This strange disorder frightens us because it affects the very foundations of our being: our mind, our discernment, our identity. The illness feeds on everything, swallowing up the memories of a lifetime. Everything becomes transparent: a forgetting of self, an existential dissolution.
Interview with Stéphanie Borcard Nicolas Métraux
