A bientôt Sénégal...

Insh'allah I'll be back again.


Jere jeff wayyy!

Ile Gorée

This island a short boat ride from Dakar was once a Portuguese settlement, then a holding port for slaves mostly destined towards the Americas, then a French military fort. It is now beautiful town, with one remaining slave owners home, which stands as a museum and a reminder of the island's somber history.

There are many artists who live here - to take advantage of the tourism, and also of the car-less serentity of the island compared to the hustle and chaos that is Dakar.

This man was has an amazing presence, he makes art from found objects, and has"Allah hu'akbar" tattooed across his forehead. He is a baifal, one dedicated to making the pilgrimage to Touba, a holy site for African Muslims.

"Millions and millions of men, women, and children, today say no to misery and to shame, because men treated yesterday as slaves by the powerful ones had marked in their hearts that they were men. And many died during three centuries so that no person will forget this."


"In Africa, an elder who dies is a library which burns."

"In remembering your passage, we reconstruct your dignity"

"There is Gorée...where my heart bleeds"

This is my good friend Suprise Bruce, he came to Senegal (walked here!) from Liberia as a refugee, and is now a student at Suffolk University in Dakar. His family was originally from Togo, and were "repatriated" to Liberia, so the history of this island is deeply tied to his own.






Its not all serious, the beach on the island is a party scene with loud music and hordes of swimmers.

In and around Tambacounda

Les Villages

We visited 6 villages in the Tambacounda region : Kouthiakoto, Kalibirom, Salibirom, Paniates Diem Weli, Sinthiou Diokhe, Djida, to introduce gum producers to Manobi's system. Our partner organization USAID provided transport, and translators.

The people out here speak Pullar or Babmara - but they still appreciated my 15 odd words of Wolof. The digital camera was also a big hit.

In each village we arrived to talk to the gum producers - men and women who harvest karaya gum from trees in their area. As we talked to these people the whole village began to gather, to listen, to look at us, to see the PDAs. Kids would jump back a few feet if I looked straight at them, but warmed up pretty quickly once I showed them their own photo.
We took photos of each producer individually for our web database, and also got the chance to take some group photos at the end.

The way to Tambacounda

Getting to Tambacounda for our field mission with Manobi deserves a post in and of itself. This 12 hour ride (which should only have taken 8) was undertaken in a car with no headrests (fun when you swerve to avoid potholes and oncoming traffic), and an exhaust which trailed on the road behind the car. Eventually the driver stopped to fix this problem.
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I found the most reassuring thing of this journey to be the blatant hole in the windshield where a previous passenger had smashed his head - this was tastefully disguised using a 'no smoking' sign...have a look for yourself, just click on the picture

Kids on the beach

Toubab Dialaw

This quiet fishing town is 2 hours south of Dakar. We had the perfect accidental luck of finding an amazing place to stay : Espace Sobo Bade, a hotel and dance school hand built by an eccentric frenchman. More like a commune than a hotel.