Guinea – Splattered Brains

Weekly Photo Challenge: Rounded

This week’s theme is my lame excuse to present a few pictures from our visit to West Africa many years ago.

The round hut below belonged to an elder in a village in Guinea. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA This is an outdoor marketplace in Guinea where the goods are protected from the sun by the round umbrellas.As we rounded a corner on the road during one of our many outings in Guinea, we came upon this village with many round buildings.The fishing boats used by the fishermen along the coast of Senegal seemed to have somewhat rounded (rather than flat) bottoms. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The Faidherbe bridge over the Senegal river in Saint-Louis connects two different parts of the city, one on the mainland and the other on an island on the Senegal river.This is a piece of art (temporary, it would seem) created out of colored sand in one of the shops on Goree Island just outside of Dakar. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA I thought the shell on this turtle that we saw at a wildlife sanctuary that we visited in Senegal was well rounded.

Memories of a Road Taken

I am not sure that this blog fits properly into the week’s photo challenge since the description of the challenge also includes the concept of experiencing something surprising on the road. I suppose that seeing things for the first time in far-away places that you are very not familiar with very often presents you with the unexpected and includes the element of surprise. So, hopefully, these pictures are not too far off the mark in addressing the theme in spite of my hesitation….

This is a nostalgic trip down memory lane with reminders of a visit that we made to West Africa many years ago. During the course of that trip we made a road trip from Dalaba, Guinea, to St. Louis , Senegal, and back, with a stop along the way in Dakar. Everything we experienced was new to us!

Even though the roads that we initially traveled on during this trip were paved, the travel experience was more suited for the adventurous because of the state of these roads and the nature of the driving. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Coming out of Labe in Guinea and on our way to Tambacounda in Senegal we found ourselves on a dirt road that stretched into the distance. In fact the dirt road runs for over a hundred miles. The fact that a main road connecting two countries was actually a dirt surface was astounding! But life is tough for the people of Guinea even today. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA We finally got on to a paved road closer to the border with Senegal. (The construction of this road was funded by the Chinese government.)The highways in Senegal were for the most part in good shape.This thunderstorm in the distance looked quite ominous.They had some good local roads. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA We encountered some older forms of traveland some strange advertising.Vehicles were overcrowded with people taking up every inch of space both inside and outside the vehicle.The extent to which the vehicles were overloaded was amazing.We encountered crowded roads in the cities and towns. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA We finally headed back to Guineaand back to the dirt roads leading to Labe.People live simple and very often happy lives in places like this in spite of the absence of modern development. They tackle problems on a day to day basis and let the future take care of itself.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Frame

I thought I would present some pictures from our trip to Africa in 2012 that fit into the theme for the week.

This was the view from the room where our daughter, then a Peace Corp Volunteer, lived for two years. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The town of Dalaba in Guinea where she served used to be administrative center for the country.This goat, looking pregnant, seems to be guarding this particular property in town.The next couple of pictures are from the mosque in Touba, Senegal.

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The following pictures are from Goree Island in Senegal. This was one of the ports of departure for slaves being sent to the Americas.

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The first two pictures in the Goree series are of rooms where slaves were housed before being shipped off. The third picture is of the Door of No Return in The House of Slaves, through which the slaves were forced on to the ships bound for the American continent. The fourth picture shows a destroyed section of the fort at Goree that used to house a cannon. Goree Island can be reached by boat from Dakar, the capital of the country.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Narrow

This week’s response to the challenge is a tale of three travels.

We saw a “Close” for the first time during our most recent trip to Edinburgh in Scotland . Basically, these are narrow passageways between buildings, or small streets that are dead-ended. A lot of the closes in Edinburgh are found on the Royal Mile. Here are pictures of a couple of closes.

Last year, my sister, older daughter, and I, hiked the Little Haystack-Lincoln-Lafayette section of the Appalachian Trail in the Franconia Ridge section the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The trail running along the mountain ridge looks narrow enough to be scary, but they are OK to traverse on a day with good weather. This hike was one for the ages, at least as far as I was concerned, and something that I realistically hope to able to revisit at least a couple of more times while the body is still able.

Finally, these pictures are from a hike in Ditinn during our trip to Guinea in 2012 to meet up with our daughter (who was a Peace Corps Volunteer in that country at that time). I think every picture in the sequence below talks to the theme of this week’s challenge, perhaps in different ways.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Oops!

I had to dig back in time to find a couple of themes that could perhaps be suitable for this challenge. It is possible that they may be missing the mark regarding the objective of the challenge.

The C&O canal has had a history of problems dealing with the forces of nature even in its heyday. The park that remains today where this canal once operated is particularly vulnerable even to this day, especially since there is little money available to the National Park Service (NPS) to maintain its 184.5 mile stretch along the Potomac river. The aqueducts have suffered damage regularly, and the ones that are still standing are there primarily due to the efforts of volunteer organizations working with the NPS to preserve some of these historic structures.

In 2010 there was a massive snowstorm that hit the Washington DC area and the east coast of the United States called Snowmageddon! Over the next few weeks the melting snow in the mountains caused massive flooding in the Potomac river and a disaster in the C&O canal park. Here are a few pictures showing some of the problems caused by the weather. I am happy to observe that the particular oops! seen below have been addressed over a period of time since that time.

In 2012 we visited West Africa and the country of the Republic of Guinea. We did a lot of traveling while we were there. It was an adventure of sorts considering the conditions of the roads and the vehicles in use. In fact the highway that we took from Guinea to Senegal was essentially a dirt track winding through the mountains. The vehicles on the road were in many cases several decades old, kept running by the ingenuity of the locals. There was really no public transportation available, which led to amazing scenes of people and material stacked in and on decrepit vehicles traveling on the bad roads. In any case, the circumstances were ideal for us to witness many oops! moments. Thankfully we were ourselves not involved in any serious incidents.