table selling

Dakar, Senegal
Every city in the world has its street sellers, West Africa is not an exception, but all seems more colorful and exotic than in europe. Home made tables from bits and pieces of found timber or metal are assembled and put together to be used as stands. Food is sold from them or drinks, vegetables and in Nouakchott meat is sold some places having tables almost side by side.
Above is Saramba selling sandwishes and white coffee, a very popular drink even on hot days.
Zeina sells vegetables in the Boulevard de la Republique, don't forget the number, 22, she told me as there are a lot more sellers in this big street. Behind her is a "talibe", a small boy that begs in the streets so he can contribute to his Coranic teacher needs, mainly they beg for food and they're supposed to be taught the Koran.


Praia, island of Santiago, Cape Verde
These two ladies and gent are selling biscuits, soft drinks and water close by to the hospital at Praia, capital of the Island of Santiago in the archipel of Cape Verde.


Nouakchott, Mauritania
And here we're back in Nouakchott, tables are lower so women can still sit on the floor and if it's quiet just lay down and have a nap, this small table has half a dozen of small tomatoes, a few carrots and potatoes and two plastique containers with sweets. In the markets sometimes you even see tables with less items to sell.

On the contrary tables runned by men might be higher. On the left they're selling dates in the middle there's a bucket full of lettuce, those are always sold by woman and the man standing is buying some meat. Meat tables are usually at this level and always runned by men.

dancing in the refugee camps

Those sketches where done at the saharawi Refugees camps at Tindouf, Algeria, these people share with the Mauritanians the same arabe dialect, a love for poetry and a rich oral tradition. They wear the same clothes and share many other common things but their history evolved differently during the periods when they were colonised by two different countries, Western Sahara by Spain, Mauritania by France and the story goes on...


Mooresses wear a five meter long piece of cloth that they wrap around themselves with the help of two small knots in the fabric that allow the head to slip in and an arm and then is wrapped around their head and shoulders.


During the weddings and when they get together women dance using the fabric to cover or uncover themselves. Their hands and fingers move like butterflies on flight and for me it all looks very sensual.


The young man here is singing at a wedding, woman take turns to dance and contrary to Mauritania where its usual to men to get up and dance here in the camps I never saw that.

In a girls get together a new way of dancing where hip and belly movements were incorporated I could tell of the influence of Algerian and a other arabic countries styles that they watch on satellite t.v. music programs.

You can find more about life in the camps on my blog http://sahara.uniterre.com

paintings

I'm having an exhibition on monday, 26th january here in Nouakchott in a small gallery owned by two friends. There I'll be showing 10 lanscapes, acrylics on paper mounted on board. More than real views they're my impressions.

Those one's are 40 x 20 x 4 cm but I'm presenting other sizes, sometimes I'll use photographs I've taken to help me with details other times I just let go not caring for the real. I love to see different people recognising different places.

We suffer frequently from sandstorms and that comes through in my paintings.

The first and this last are viewsfrom the national park of the Banc d'Arguin by the seaside, where the desert meets the Atlantique. http://isabelfiadeiro.uniterre.com

portraits

This is Matalibe also known as Picasso. I met him while he was doing his sand paintings in front of the French Cultural Center in Nouakchott. He had plenty of empty milk cartons that he used to mix his pigments with sand and white glue and he was painting away and hanging them on the trees around him. I cannot remember where he was from (Mauritania is the country that bridges the arabo-berber countries in the north with the black ethnies countries in the south so a melting pot )but he went around travalling and selling his sand paintings.


Mariam Ba from Bogué avillage in the south of Mauritania. She is a Peul, an ethnie that can ba found in Niger, Mali, Senegal and Guinée. Here she's taking a rest before she serves lunch at the Auberge Sahara.

And here at work cooking for the tourists and staff of the auberge.

Abou he's a music tape seller and Cher a car washer, they work not far from the church in an open area that used to have great shade but whose trees where brutally cut 6 months ago but thanks to the african weather they're sprouting again but no shade for the workers.

Another Peul woman, selling earthware close to the market 5ème. There are 4 or 5 languages spoken in Mauritania, Hassania, dialectical arabe, Hal Pulaar, Wolof, Soninké and Bambara as well as French that sometimes is the only one that links everybody.

At the marché 5ème we also find the bead sellers, this one comes from Niger, a Touareg and has been selling here for many years.

Still in the same market also known as the african market, two young girls, from Bogué doing each other's head while waiting for clients in the hairdressers shop.

I'll eat here sometimes when I'm staying long in the market, best time to draw is a very hot day after lunch, otherwise people trying to peep your drawings will block the small narrow alleys of the market! This restaurant runned by Dinta Ba, another Peul but from Senegal,and she did ask me for the drawing so I did a copy and gave it to her. The whole restaurant is just a room so we just sat not far from where Dinta has her big pots on the floor of course, there's a plastic kind of carpet.

Last one a portrait of a maure lying down, the maures are a mix of Berberes and Arabes (that first invaded this area on the XI century AD), their language is the Hassania, a dialectical arabe and you have white maures and black maures, the black ones beeing ancient slaves or tributaires that adopted, the religion, language and uses of the formers. Complex society and ways.

what's sketchcrawl ?

I didn't think about explaining what's a "sketchcrawl", Someone called Enrico Casarosa started it in S.Francisco. He started going out for a whole day sketching, anything and everything, breakfast leftovers, cats, the neighbours house, to streets, museums, whatever. Then he started doing it with some fellow artists and then the thought came to make it worldwide. So once every 3/4 months in a specific days people organise themselves in the forums of sketchcrawl and they get together to draw in one day.

And Mauritania started it this Saturday just five of us but we hope to be more next time.

This is me sketching my friends.

Sidi Yahya on the left and Bechir.

Mouna.

Mehdi, 11 years old.

And the four of them hard at work, all of us Mauritanian style, that means sitting down with the chairs Sidi provided from his "children's art school".

sketchcrawl in Mauritania

I started the morning with this sketch and maybe because I wasn't wearing my glasses I drew the cats tails so long. I never noticed til Hermann told me and then I could see it, those two are Sahelien cats with long necks and ears that remind me of the egypcian godess cats.

After breakfast I drew my neighbours "barraque", Moula'id a big woman of uncertain age lives here with her family and occasional visitors. I come often for a tea or just to chat.

Then around the corner there 's a place under a big tree where you'll always find taxis but the drivers (owners?) are from Guine-Conakry, so the place is called "Guinean taxis" place.

This is BMD street and there is tarmac in the middle but no paved streets, they're extremely rare in Nouakchott , so is tarmac but the new president that took the power by force in the summer has promised 400km of tarmac to be done in NKC and the works have started. You can see the minarets from the Saudian Mosque in the background.

Went for lunch in Auberge Sahara where hermann works its a sort of camping/bread and breakfast used by travellers on their way to Senegal and Mali, another quick sketch and of to meet other crawlers.

There were four of them Bechir and Sidi Yahya, both painters. Mouna a student from Sidi Yahya and little Mehdi the son of a friend of mine.

Its the first time they go out to draw and they don't draw from observation often or at all, so they felt shy and we didn't go to far taking with us the small stools from Sidi's school. In this sketch you can see Mehdi sitting close to a pile of rubble where small goats are playing.

Two young painters joined us at 6pm, Ami and Aicha but they didn't quite understand what it was about so they didn't bring anything to draw an we hope they'll join us in the next sketchcrawl.

My last drawing with a huge moon coming up in the sky, great day and nice to be with others drawing.

Those are some of the drawings done by my friends.

Sidi Yahya

Bechir Malum
Mouna

and Mehdi, 11years old.

resting

In Mauritania sitting higher than the floor is quite a recent activity during centuries the natural way was to sit on the floor or to rest in an elbow while laying on the floor or just assume a position laying down, touching the toes of one foot is common and quite relaxing but not proper in a female.



So, contrary to where most of you live, I live in a country where, rest, relaxing and absolutly doing nothing but staring at nothingness is not seem as something negative (lazy) but actually cultivated.



People go about their chores but if they have a moment they regain the contact with earth and when they sit in chairs I'm sure they find it highly unconfortable.

A Mauritanien friend that visited Europe last summer, commented to her friends on arrival about a party she was invited to in a beautiful garden, with plenty of nice things to eat and drink but (the horror!) people stood up from 8pm until well past 1am.