in the south of senegal standing up for a promised future gets you a complimentary headshot in the local paper. sugar, fertilizer and TNT make an explosive cocktail in the middle east. as for me this foam mattress is cheap and there is no honey for my tea and i’m counting these as blessings.
Taylor Davidson
12/29/2008I love the curtain billowing in the breeze, life flowing into the room, with the information flowing in and out through the phone, computer, newspaper…
Kari
12/29/2008thanks taylor, you have such a love affair with information
Taylor Davidson
01/06/2009I will choose to take that as a compliment; but an “affair” sounds so temporary, fleeting, transitory, almost self-destructive. How about a “lifelong relationship with information”, or “a passionate quest for knowledge”?
But more importantly, the rioting is sad. Is it really the only way? Have we learned anything from Gandhi?
Kari
01/06/2009God yes, it’s sad. It’s tragic.
Africans have become used to exploitation. Most people in Senegal are just surviving day to day. Just staying alive, literally. They don’t have the opportunity for education to gain the ability and influence to go through the proper political channels for change. Indeed, the government is so bribe-based there are no proper channels other than cold cash. When no one is interested in the plight of one African, or one village, or one region, what are your options? To band together and make a voice that will be hard to ignore?
I asked a Sengalese/Kenyan today over lunch his take on the topic of rioting and he told me this story. He is a pacifist by the way.
A farmer had a goat that he fed three times a day. Times were hard and he had to cut back so he started feeding his goat only twice a day. Months went by and life was still hard and not getting easier so he started to feed his goat only once a day. The goat died and the farmer exclaimed, why did he have to die just as I was getting him accustomed to not having to eat at all.
As he said, people in Africa are squeezed until they have nothing to lose. What is the solution? I wish I knew.
Taylor Davidson
01/06/2009The solution: you may not know the destination, but I think you know the path, and I think that’s what’s guiding you. Believe in yourself.
Josh Currie
12/30/2008your photos are boggling my brain. why would anyone want to live in America I ask myself – then there’s that newspaper and I kind of get it, but…
Kari
01/06/2009Josh, I don’t want to be responsible for your brain being boggled. Why don’t you plan a trip here? Where are you anyway? You’ve disappeared.
Josh Currie
01/07/2009i’d love to plan a trip there. i’d f*&ing live there if i could. how’s the job market?
bonnie
12/31/2008poor, poor kedougou… has anything calmed down now? have you gotten to chobo?
Chris Blow
12/31/2008what an arresting photo!
Kari
01/06/2009Literally.