Photo Frenzy

I recently had the pleasure of hosting Lora and Evgeni, two Couch Surfers from Bulgaria who are working on hitch-hiking their way around the world. They stayed in my village for two nights and while they were here Lora took some absolutely amazing photos of my world. Seeing these really makes me wish I had decided to bring a nicer camera with me...her fancy pants camera with all of its lenses and buttons really puts my little Fuji to shame. They also make me wish I had taken a photography class in college just so I could capture my experiences as brilliantly as Lora can. Hopefully she won't mind that I borrowed a few of these to share with you. To see some more amazing pictures (of my village and other places they have been) and read more about their epic journey around the world you can check out their blog Here (or the slightly less frequently updated english version Here).

The outskirts of Kaolack, known to volunteers as the city of trash.
All garbage is dumped on side of the road and is periodically burned, filling the air with a suffocating acrid smoke. As bad as it looks, this is also a sign of city-dwellers relative wealth. Most of these things would never be thrown away in my village...clothes, containers, old tires...all are used and reused until they just simply cease to exist. I have been known to occasionally salvage a treasure or two from this pile when biking by.

A great shot of a typical day in my compound:
My sisters braiding hair and shelling peanuts, my dad lounging on his cot, kids hanging out, someone nursing a baby and people just sitting around relaxing

One of the boys returning from the forest with a pile of wood. The bark will be stripped to be used as rope and the sticks will be burned in cooking fires. 

My little sister Oumi...its tough to get a shot of her smiling, she usually clams up in front of the camera 

Sine and her baby Omar...possibly the most unhappy child I've ever met. He cries 23 hours a day.

A little girl in desperate need of a bath 

Fatou and I pulling water from the well. Every evening I pull four of those big buckets you see in the foreground and carry them home on my head for drinking, cooking and watering the garden. Women with families carry many more.

My little brother Modou, age 4 

A typical ladies table on market day. 

Bags of peanut butter, packets of spices, bouillon cubes, some ragged looking vegetables, dried fish, and a big knife to divide up the vegetables and fish into even smaller parts to be sold. Can you imagine trying to buy 1/8 of a cabbage in America?

My dad Mamadou Diouf and his newest grandson. This baby has the most comical bulging eyeballs, its like he's staring at everything with such intensity it makes his eyes pop.

Ida, a little girl in Keur Socce who always charms me into giving her a bit of whatever treat I happen to be eating.

 A clothes seller at our weekly market. He just lays on his wares while the megaphone in front of him screeches the prices over and over again. Most of the clothes are cast-offs that didn't make it past quality control in Chinese factories and weren't fit for our dollar store shelves. Some of the "English" phrases on these clothes are downright hilarious. 

My favorite little brother Aladji eating a big slice of watermelon on my doorstep. 

Two of my friend Bassirou's daughters, Rokhya and Koumba.
Koumba cried every time she saw me for my first two months in village. She's no longer afraid of me but was still wary of the white person with the camera.