This began as a bit of a joke. People we knew in Niamey flocked to take “New Year's pictures." So why not us? We had just arrived from Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo) after hitchhiking through Central African Republic, Chad, Cameroon, and Nigeria. Buck and I posed to look as otherworldly as possible and I think we pulled it off. The black and white tiles in the photographer’s studio help the effect. Buck is wearing a hat popular in northern Cameroon.