Africa 8: It's me! It's me! It's me!

It seems we are quite popular in Liberia. Wherever we go we are followed by hoards of children all clamouring to hold our hands. When there aren’t enough hands between us we find ourselves with a child on each finger. They run along in the dust, most of them barefoot, following our every move.

It's mango season and the children are covered in it. Sticky hands sticky faces and snotty noses don’t normally do it for me, but there’s something about the kids here that makes it easy for me to hold their hands, even though I can feel bits of juicy fruit oozing though my fingers.

It strikes me as odd; their country has been destroyed, they own very little but they are so joyful. They all tap and tap and tap at my shoulder, desperate to show me the toys they have fashioned out of old tin cans and jar lids, so eager for me to see where they live. Kneeling in the dirt while a four year old shows you how good he is at making a pile of stones balance in a rusty old tuna can, is incredibly humbling.

They adore having their picture taken. When the camera comes out all that can be heard is a chorus of ‘me photo me photo me photo’ and then ‘me photo just me’ It's near on impossible to take one photograph of one child standing alone, photography is a community project, everyone wants to be in on it. The nice portrait picture you have in mind soon turns into a scrum. Kids climbing all over each other to get to the lense, hitting each other over the head with mangoes, each of them trying to out do the catalogue poses of their peers, all of them laughing uncontrollably.

When they see the image of themselves on the camera there is almost a riot. Again, they fall about in hysterics when they catch a glimpse of their faces smiling back at them, and it just doesn’t stop being funny. I reckon you could keep showing them the same photo for a whole day and they wouldn’t stop saying ‘it’s me it’s me it’s me’ through tears of laughter.