Rondade

People here have an amazing ability to balance things on their heads. It is likely because they start at a very young age, but whether it is a wallet or a bag of cement, it is often placed on one's head to transport it. There is a verb for this in Fulfulde. "Rondade" means "to carry on one's head". I just thought it was interesting and have a plethora of pictures as examples.

They often don't even need to use their hands which frees them up for other things!

This man is carrying a "one stop shop" on his head...everything from crackers to pills to matches to dates, if you need something, he likely has it! And the table on his head he can put on the ground to be used as a table for his store!

just a small bag that could easily be carried, but can just as easily be placed on one's head

These are 110lb (50kg) bags of cement, and they are being put on his HEAD to get them off the truck onto the ground!

I can barely pick up those big bags of rice (55lbs or 25kg) but they have them on their heads!!

When you need to take a stack of chairs from one place to another...pretty efficient!

The boy on the left is carrying a load of fire wood on his head...to prevent slivers, he has pulled his shirt up to cover his head and then placed the wood on top of his shirt

This man is selling a kind of cookie, the vat of cookies is placed on his head, and that frees up his hands to carry the table that he will place the cookies on when a customer comes to purchase

You get the picture, I'm sure. This form of carrying causes headaches and neck pain which can be common here as well. I'm not sure the correlation is always evident. Definitely a difference in culture. One of many that sometimes has us smiling in wonder.