Report
Diaobé, before dawn
Trucks from Guinea, Mali and The Gambia unload in the dark. By seven, the whole thing is a city.
At four in the morning the market is only headlights and shouting. Nothing is arranged yet. Men are throwing sacks down from a truck bed and other men are counting them out loud in two languages at once.
Three hours later the same ground is laid out in aisles, as if someone had drawn them. Nobody drew them. Everyone simply knows where their family has stood for the last thirty years.
“I come from Labé. Fourteen hours by road. I do it every week and I have never once thought of stopping.”
What surprises visitors is not the size. It is that a market this big runs on trust: almost nothing is written down, and almost everything is paid later.
Field reporter
Amadou
Films and writes from the road. Travels between Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Mali, and brings back what he finds.
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