photos by chris duffy and his nikon d40
LUTTE!
victory dance
walkin' the goats
ceebujen, pre-torn-apart
and oh atayah, how clutch was tea after every meal?
Super nonsense memories are floating through my head and im obsessively compulsively going through all my photos and journals. i'm not even going to imagine this is going to make sense to you.
Even when we were playing in English, he wiped the floor with us, even when sympathetic french men joined Team Ian, Team Janelle. Is this a word? No, but this is! What’s that? You know, when you have two doors that open together. You mean French doors? Oh, you probably don’t call them French doors.
Watching Hostel II with my 10 and 12 year old host sisters. That’s a nightmare for reals.
Adam talking to dudes on muscle beach. “I do about 70 pushups twice a day.” “Oh, I do 500. You ever do ‘em like this?” and dude buries his hands in the sand.
creating a collection of phone chargers that no longer work. the cab driver who ate half of ian's ice cream bar. the cab driver of the moving horsedrawn cart who jumped out of to chase some animals. the guy who stole my phone at that party but sent me the credit on it.
French saved by the bell every night at eight. There is nothing more emotional than an early morning and a suitcase. I used to notice things like taxis having shattered windshields, but now it’s even weirder if they don’t.
And the wind tugged at their shirts and scattered dust in their eyes and hair. Mauritania had cast a shadow over Dakar. You could look straight at the sun like it was just a gray circle someone had painted.
Women fill the holes in the road with sand in exchange for the coins people throw out their windows onto the street.
There are some things you can’t take pictures of. The sky was bright full of stars until it met the black mountains. Sand fills the sept-place and children sing into our vehicle. I saw a boy peeling back the thing that seals the bus doors so people could hear him at the cross street. Driver can’t seem to keep his door closed. He scolded me for letting the mango skins stain my towel. The little kids are getting big and crawling out of their pens. Bureaucratic nightmare. They almost never have to potty train anyone. Full moon again? It feels like we get a million of those in Dakar.
Black matchsticks of men in the harbor wrestling white clouds of goats. Scrub scrub, back and forth motion of white suds, swirling around in the sewage.
Cab prices are lower because we know just how to get a driver to like you. Well in the end he hates you but he’s not charging you as much. He might even be trying to kill you. Maybe he’s hurtling down the Corniche talking into the window of the driver in the next lane and our cars are weaving in and out, of the lanes. Maybe in your horsedrawn carriage, he hands your friend the reins and jumps out of the driver’s seat while you’re still in motion. Squat toilets camels and Bedouins.
Everyones taking something completely different from this semester. For example. JG now has an intense appreciation for our standard of living in the United States. He thinks it’s sad Josephine’s never even seen an escalator. refuses to raise his children anywhere else.
Meanwhile I’m in deep admiration of the people who grow up there and have such a broader ability to enjoy life because of what they didn’t have. An empty plastic bottle is a precious toy. A battery is a luxury. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know, and I didn’t know that I didn’t even fully understand my parents before I came here.
and now im in paris. im putting off real life for another day. i think tomorrow im going to the library and to get a haircut. wish me luck. love you all.
No comments:
Post a Comment