Market with special Goudour women
The village of Tourou, perched high in the mountains and near the Nigerian border, can only be reached by a dirt road, through a varied landscape with sarés, millet fields, baobab trees and stunning vistas. The village is the setting of an extraordinary market every Thursday. Not the goods but the market merchants are the big attraction. Goudour women, an ethnic group that lives on both sides of the border, do business there with half gourds on their heads, which they wear as a kind of helmet. The halves are painted with the most diverse motifs, showing whether they are single, already married, engaged or married. Widows also have their own gourd, recognizable by a sewn-up crack. Because of the proximity of the border, which is not officially marked anywhere and is not guarded, the market attracts many Nigerians. They can pay in their own currency and are even spoken in their own language.