Fadiouth is an island village, and a rather unique one. It is also known as Shell Island, and the reason for this is pretty obvious; it is built on layers and layers of shells. These have accumulated over the centuries as the locals subsisted on cockle fishing in the shallows of the mangrove lagoons and simply discarded the shells, or used them as building materials.
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Nguéniène would be a fairly unremarkable Senegalese village were it not for the huge scale of its weekly market, which draws people from many miles around. As we drove towards the village with our local guide Cheikh, we could see many others on the roads, mostly in traditional horse carts, all converging on this one spot. The women were colourfully dressed as always here, as were many of the men; and the carts were piled high with produce to sell.
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I sat motionless on the deck of our beautiful bungalow at Souimanga Lodge in Senegal. The Pied Kingfisher on the nearby fence gripped his just-caught fish in his long bill. I hoped to see him flip it and swallow it; my camera was poised to capture the moment. But suddenly the fish flapped its tail and twisted out of his grasp. Fish gone, the bird flew off, and I like him was left ruing the one that got away.
