"Further on, three ladies carrying large bowls on their heads are walking by the roadside. “Labaalé!” These three know a place where there is a market and where we can most certainly try out some chouk. After a lengthy conversation, of which I understand precisely three words, Evan gets out and opens the back of his car. The ladies put their bowls in the boot and, somewhat uneasily, get into the back seat (as Ken squeezes into the front with Evan and me). I wonder if this is the first time they’ve ever ridden in a car. Quite possibly. We turn off the main road and along another bumpy track, parking almost immediately. Evan asks the ladies whether they need a lift back to where he picked them up. “No, we can walk back from here,” they say. Helping a foreigner is almost a duty of honour in this part of the world, and these three women – in spite of all the day’s hard work – were still happy to put themselves out to help three strangers. Amazing."
( Rob Baker. Adventures in Music and Culture; Travels of an Ethnomusicologist in West Africa)
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