Dancing Baobab

I was on a visa run to Gambia so that I could stay longer in Senegal, when I pulled over for a rest and some much-needed water. Some women were selling foodstuff from a small stall outside their village and a few boys and young men were hanging around.

"Bonjour il y a un petite peu de l'eau ici ?"

I asked

Moments later some cool water arrived fresh from the well.

They asked me about my journey and I let them know about my interest:

"Je cherche pour les jeux traditionnel"

And as luck would have it there was an event taking place here in Sandicoly in 10 days time.

"Vous êtes les bienvenus à notre cérémonie de Njom. Vous pouvez rester ici avec notre famille."

I was astounded, an invitation to preside over the njom ceremony and a place to live in the village, such an advantageous and gracious invitation is impossible to refuse, or rather it is to be pounced upon without hesitation. So I did:

"Donc je reviendrai dan 10 jours sans faute."

There is something so satisfying about being so certain in such an uncertain environment.

I returned with my camera, tape, batteries and microphones. After a customary visit with the chef du village, I was assigned to the Fall family and Tamseer Fall would be my appointed guide to the village. We would become close friends through this encounter.

Tamseer introduced me to the entire village, all the families, everyone's occupations and of course his own family. His father was a very important man there since he provided all the spiritual guidance as a marabou and as imam.

Sandicoly is a village without running water or electricity and observing the installation of equipment for the event, I noticed that there wasn't a great provision for lighting within the palisade where the wrestling ceremony would take place. Together with Tamseer we went to the nearest major town, Kaolak, which is quite a repugnant place, but served its purpose for purchasing a floodlight and cable.

On the first day of the ceremony I was able to shoot all village preparations, from building the palisade, fetching water and preparing food.

I had 2 great interviews with Ibrahima Fall, Tamseer's father and an ex-champion of njom, Maame Ebu Thior aka "The Doctor".

Throughout the time I was there, children would often come to show me their mbalax dancing skills, especially since they had seen me attempting the same.

For the event itself all went very well capturing the drummers, singers, rituals and dancing. Then just as I was getting the best of the wrestling itself, my floodlight blew. We guessed that the small petrol generator was responsible.

So that was the end of the shooting for that event, but I vowed to return from Dakar once more and arrange to shoot with some wrestlers in nearby Sokone, where they had more stable power from the grid.

Elhadj Baba Fall, Elhadj Cisse Diouf and Mbaye Ramou Saar were young wrestlers from Sandicoly who agreed to take part in this shoot in Sokone.

The shoot went well, and this time my new flood light didn't blow up. With it being late at night there were few options to get the wrestlers home. Since a taxi from Sokone was a bit expensive I proposed to transport each wrestler on the back of my bike. So one by one a took them the 8km back to Sandicoly.

On one of the trips to Sokone alone, I ran over what I thought was a branch stretching across the entire width of the road, but turned out to be a python. I reported this to the next wrestler to hop on the bike, but as he heard me utter the words

"un gros serpant"

he gripped my waist tighter in fear of encountering the snake.

I chuckled to myself, these guys whose thighs were wider than my torso, were more afraid of snakes than I was. Perhaps they had more experience of the danger and knew it was not to be taken likely.

As we came to the point in the road where I'd seen the python, it had obviously moved on, since there was no sign of it. Obviously the weight of my 220kg bike plus 75kg of me wasn't enough to squash a python. Perhaps I should have been a little more worried like my passengers were.