Yorom Diallo et ll'oiseaux

bought a goat

yesterday I went to a huge animal market with Cheikh Diallo and we bought a young goat. He did some sewing work for me and in payment he wanted to have a pet goat.

The place was amazing. There were so many animals and they guys were bringing them to us, carrying them by one leg and showing us the teeth and eyes and the bellies, like they were already meat. Luckily the seller that we met at the gate was a cool one and he helped us to keep the situation calm.

We told him we wanted a young female and we were not going to slaughter her soon, so we cared about the health.

We had to be super patient until the sellers calmed downed and then we could look around calmly. For us what was important was the personality, because she will be a pet. So wee needed to see the animals when they were not hanging by a leg.

My friend told them I was a goat farmer from Germany and had many goats to avoid them telling me bullshit. One guy still told us that if we took the pregnant one he guaranteed that it would have twin male babies.

The one we chose is really nice, a small black and white girl, around 5 months old
She was very courageous. Many of them were just in a stoned panic and others were going crazy, running away from us. This one is curious and only acts scared when there is a real danger. Now she is at Cheikh's place, in the yard with the mama sheep and her baby.

Goats are a lot smarter than sheep, I bet she has already started to cause a lot of trouble, like eating the side of the house or something. She eats peanut plant leaves.

There is no much tradition here of naming animals but when Cheikh's neighbour saw the goat she said it must have his family name and she wanted us to give her the name of her daughter, so now the goat is called Senabu Diallo.

Sadly, I couldn't take a camera to the animal market, it would have been chaos. The sellers are super intense and with a big camera we never could ahve negotiated a decent price. Finally the goat cost 20,000 CFA which is the normal price here. (15,000 - 30,000) but we had to be very tuff to get this price and I started to get nervous because we had to pretend that we were going to leave the goat and go home. I didn't want to leave her once we had selected her so I really had to hope the guys were going to crack and allow us to pay the price we wanted to pay. Finally all 3 of us were lucky.

i think I will try to take her to the beach today.

power, no power, power

not a lot of electricity this week, it mostly shows up late at night when I want to sleep.
I realised/decided that I will have to rather collect my impressions and the documentation of what I am doing here and upon my return Iw ill be able to post more online. There is no point to stressing about having no access to the net, there are a lot of other great things to do, like jumping on trampolines, checking out nice fabrics and visiting the village of turtles.

We are now in the second week of dance/video workshops. Some basic info about the projects can be found at frontierlab.org/flou

me talking at FSM

Jardin suspendu travel to World Social Forum

Presk rendu au forum.

Photo par Bah Moody!

Notre stand au Forum. Photo par KRN.

Mr. Diedhiou et le jardin.

the garden is about to open

presented kdenLive @ DakarLUG

Yesterday I made a small presentation about the software kdenlive at the DakarLUG (Linux User Group) meeting. It was really nice and the nerds were even interested in my non-techno presentation :)

We will use this software when the workshops with the dancers begin. If I find some video clips of photos of my presentation yesterday, I will add them here soon.

Sorry I never blog, not much power, not much time!

preparation du mur

Hier j'ai nettoyé un peu le mur devant Timtimol, en préparation pour 2 jours de travail sur notre Jardin Suspendu (vendredi + samedi). L'atelier ouvert a été annonce à plus de 800 personnes à Dakar, par notre amie KRN. Cet atelier n'est pas dans le format régulier ou on donne une présentation à tout le monde et les matériaux sont déjà prêts, c'est plutôt un grand travail collectif ou on suivra tout les étapes et les recherches ensemble. Je vais imprimer et afficher des plans suggères par le grand collectif Window Farms et emmener déjà les matériaux que je trouve ici à Timtimol et dans le cartier, mais pour ce qu'on as besoin de plus, on cherchera ensemble ce weekend.

Le mur devant Timtimol sera notre sujet. J'espère d'attirer la curiosité de passants dans la rue.

J'ai déjà commence une bouteille de fermentation (déchets végétaux), pour expérimenter avec une pompe sans électricité. Ca fait déjà de belles gazes!

à Vendredi!

Atelier Ouvert: Jardin Suspendu v.BETA @ Espace Timtimol

Atelier Ouvert: Jardin Suspendu v.BETA @ Espace Timtimol

vendredi 21 et samedi 22 Janvier, de midi à 18h

À l'occasion du projet créatif « Bad Fruits », initié par l'artiste Pascal Nampémanla en décembre 2010, une discussion autour des différentes problématiques liées à l'environnement et aux déchets plastiques s'est engagée à l'Espace Timtimol. Pascal Nampémanla (CI/SN) travaille actuellement avec les artistes Kyd Campbell (CA/DE) et Jérôme Lauer (FR/DE) afin d'imaginer et d'élaborer une nouvelle fonction pour des bouteilles plastiques récupérées.

Adhérant au concept communautaire mis en place par le projet international « Window Farms », un véritable jardin, suspendu et vivant, prendra place sur les murs de l'espace culturel Timtimol, un modèle écologique, esthétique et reproductible librement par tout le monde.

Venez participer à la construction du Jardin Suspendu, version BETA, à l'Espace Timtimol, vendredi 21 et samedi 22 Janvier, de midi à 18h. Nous le construirons ensemble à l'aide de matériaux de récupération et nous rechercherons des systèmes alternatifs de pompes. Le Jardin Suspendu restera sur place, existant en tant que laboratoire de recherche écologique.

« Window Farms »: http://www.windowfarms.org
Kyd Campbell http://www.frontierlab.org
Espace Timtimol: http://espacetimtimol.org/blog/

Association Espace Timtimol
Zone B, rue sans-soleil, n°2A
Dakar, Sénégal

Panniers Bio a Dakar cette semaine

Today the organic veggies arrived. They come from a farm collective of 18 women in a village near Dakar and they deliver a couple times a week, on order to a few locations in the city. Timtimol, the place where we stay is one of the drop off points, every Friday.

I met Francesca, a girl who is doing an internship with the farms and I think I will take off with her on Sunday and take part in an action to make ginger juice.

Fouta Ko Dow

We went to a really nice rap show at Bopp, put on by a young crew called Fouta Ko Dow. Some artists lipsynched over their own recordings, which was a bit strange, but other played live. Many of the songs were really great and the guys were totally nice and made us feel welcome. They had a HUGE sound system!

panniers bio a Dakar cette semaine

Bonjour à toutes et à tous,

vous pouvez commander un panier de légumes pour le vendredi 14 et/ou le lundi 17 janvier 2011 en visitant ce site: http://doodle.com/y7qz47ghrv5dt9us

Veuillez préciser le lieu où vous viendrez le chercher.
Lun et Ven de 9h à 13h : Club Atlantique
Lun et Ven de 14 à 17h : ENDA (54, rue Carnot)
Lun de 11 à 13h: Lycée Mermoz
Ven de 15 à 18h: TIMTIMOL.

Pour les nouveaux inscrits, transmettez SVP vos coordonnées tél et mail à karfadiallo@yahoo.fr

Bonnes et heureuse année 2011,

Karfa Diallo

conversations today

today my friends kid told me that yesterday he saw a lady get hit by a bus. he said her head was crushed and blood was pouring out fast

when we drove past the place, he showed us the big black spot on the ground, left from her blood that has dried there. it was quite intense to hear that story from a 9 year old

in front of the house, there is a daily schedule of animals in the street

around 2pm, bunnies

then some dogs pass by

then at night cats

and at different times horse wagons and you always hear the sheep who live on the rooves

we had a lovely time swimming at the beach and saw the sunset

loud car

Some guys drive around playing muslim chants from their cars. This is just in front of our house.

Ali Trio

We went with KRN tonight to a nice dinner and then to a little club for the birthday/going away evening of a woman called Miriam. The band was playing a kind of music I had never heard before. Here is a small video I shot of Ali Trio. They make a kind of scat music, mixing words from many African languages. Other people in the club were talking loudly and i have a really basic camera so it was hard to get a decent recording of the music. Sorry for the sound quality but I'm sure you'll enjoy the melody!

flies on a wall

in front of Just 4 You club

passage, 1st view

our hallway in Berlin, the grand hallway in Casablanca airport

view from the back window in Berlin, view from the back window in Dakar

selbsgemachtes suspekt

At Tegel, we left from terminal C which is a small temporary hangar, only our flight and one from Bulgarian Air was operated from there when we took off. We checked in and gave up our luggage, got a coffee and 10 minutes later I heard my name called on the PA. I went to meet 2 police officers. The woman asked me what was in my large suitcase and I tried my best to list it; a few old digital cameras, some video tapes, a harddrive, some tea, coffee, some chocolate and gifts, a couple of musical electronics toys, an mp3 player, some other electronics and lots of cables, and clothes. They said they were unsure about one item and decided they wanted to open it so we walked to a security check room. They scanned the bag again and then opened it. I started to describe the electronics, but they just said they were concerned with one small thing and pulled out a little bundle, a cable, some small electronics components, a 9V battery and my Arduino and asked me what it was. I told them it was a home-made connector attaching a computer to other electronic items and they I used it when making electronic music. They named it an adaptor and told me I should not pack all the parts together, but rather to put the cable, battery and the components separately in my luggage and maybe to put the board into my hand luggage or another suitcase to avoid future suspicions. So I took the board with me and they took my suitcase (I hope) back to the luggage truck and I went on to pass through the personal security scan. This is operated by a security company, not the police. When I got there, they again scanned my hand luggage many times and asked me to take out the small package, with the Arduino. I told them it had just been inspected, but they said they needed to sniff it again. I had to go into another little room and they used a little tissue and checked something with a machine. I'm assuming they were looking for explosive powder or something like that. The inspector again asked me what it was for and I told her the same as the first and she said that it looks very suspect. I remembered then that once my bus was delayed for 2 hours at the Bulgarian/Macedonian border because of the very same Arduino. Has anyone else had any problems in travel with their Arduino? All my harddrives, ipod and small digital cameras we not at all a problem, only this alternative technology made the security guards nervous. I wonder how I would have been treated if I was a different person, , if I had acted nervously, if I was a man, if I had a beard, if I was arabic, if I wasn't a Canadian girl who is used to and stays relaxed in(and is even amused by) strange travel situations…?