My Ventures Away

I don’t even know where to begin to catch you up on the last trip we took. I figured a series of visual aids would be best, and the least overwhelming for the both of us. We went from Dakar to Tambacounda for a night before finishing the long stretch (about 12hrs total) to Kedougou. We stayed there and went on some sweet hikes for a couple days. 

1. We hiked up to this village where the Bedicks live and then climbed their rocks to the old “look out” where they’d keep watch for the invading Peuls.

2. At the top was this crazy, incredible view and we all sang Pocahontas Colors of the Wind and thought we were literally on Lion King’s Pride Rock. We stayed until sunset and it was gorgeous.

3. The next day we drove in the backs of trucks and jeeps for an hour on crazy roads to reach the hike to this incredible waterfall. The hike was beautifully through canopies of trees. We got to swim and jump off the little ledge practicing our cannonball techniques so as not to hit the bottom.

4. Erica, Amy and I lived with the Diallonke people in their village of Afia Baxo where we spent a lot of time sitting under trees on hard benches drinking tea and munching on roasted corn (it’s like popcorn still on the kernel, supes good). My butt was sore by hour 3 of 9. These kids and many more were our fan club and we were always followed by at least 3 who just wanted to hold our water bottles, notebooks and pens for us. SO many observations from this village stay I couldn’t sort them out well enough for you. 

5. This was my fam in the village. Our last name was Camara. The guy on the right was my older brother (note the SD hat and calendar). I felt really weird showing them pictures of glamorized San Diego as we sat on a plank of wood next to huts with no running water or electricity surrounded by kids with open wounds and ripped clothes they wore 3 days in a row. After the first look through the calendar he said “San Diego is beautiful! There is nothing in Africa.” He looked through it a lot and repeated many times to me that life in the village was hard. All I could say was I know…I know. But I really don’t.

6. The two cutest boys ever. They wore those matching outfits all 3 days which helped us locate them conveniently. They caught on to our enjoyment of their timid smiles and began the “flirting game”, the way little boys do. They waited for us to pull out the camera and encourage them to smile.

7. Day after village stay we hiked (the hardest of the 3) up a very steep hill to reach another village where the women sold us their goods and we held hands to circle around a giant baobab. A lot of us picked up a little helper along the hike who wanted to carry our water bottle and became our personal photographer. My friend’s name was Adama.

8. That giant baobab.

9. The baboons we encountered periodically along the road very early in the morning on our 14hr journey back to Dakar. Our bus driver Mamadou would alert us by saying “saay saay!” so we could get out our cameras. Saay saay means jokester or player in Wolof.

Miss you all! Check out my facebook for an extensive addition to these pictures.