Apologies to Dakar, our first failed Elska city

Some Elska issues are really easy to make, and that's usually about the city being featured, specifically how easy it is to find willing participants there. So far the hardest issues to make in this respect were Elska Yokohama and Elska Seoul, where people were a bit on the shy/discreet side. However, nowhere did we find it impossible to find enough subjects, until recently, where we sadly had our first failed Elska city.

We were supposed to go to Dakar, Senegal, about a month ago. It was to be our second issue made in Africa. It all started after an Elska reader wrote to us with a passionate request to feature Dakar, and supplied the names of some local queer activists to help. Excited by the idea of returning to Africa, I quickly and impulsively booked flights. I then waited until around a month before the trip and then started contacting locals, which is where I ran into a big snag and realised that I'd made a huge mistake. I had booked the trip during Ramadan.

I feel I should apologise for this. The Elska Dakar project failed because of my own ignorance. I was brought up Catholic and I naïvely looked at Ramadan as something akin to Lent. I knew about the fasting, the culminating feast of Eid, and the pilgrimages, but that was it. A month before the trip, when I got in contact with some local men to schedule photoshoots, I found out how much I had trivialised Islam's most sacred time of year.

To my surprise for a sub-Saharan African country where homosexuality is still illegal, many men were keen to meet, do a photoshoot, and give us a story. But they would not do it during Ramadan. One of the men explained that Ramadan was about dedicating all your time to Allah. It wasn't that a photoshoot was ungodly per se, but rather it was something frivolous. Interestingly there was also some consideration about the sexual nature of a shoot. One said that he couldn't do the shoot because sex is not allowed during the fast. I replied, as if it was a joke, reminding him that sex wasn't part of the package, but my idea of sex was perhaps too narrow. He explained, "I'm afraid I might get an erection during the shoot, and that would nullify the fast."

I was left with the conclusion that the project could only work if I did all my shoots at night after the fast (which would prevent me from showing the city properly) or if I chose to feature non-Muslims or non-religious people only (which would be not accurately representing Dakar). So I chose to abandon the project altogether. I lost the flights (I book non-refundable tickets of course since they're the cheapest) and spent the week just dossing around London (I will admit that the break was well-needed). I hope to try Dakar again one day, especially if there are more of you out there who'd like to see it. But I'll get my dates right next time, and try to be more respectful of other people's customs.

Liam Campbell is editor and chief photographer of Elska Magazine, a project about meeting gay dudes all over the world and getting to know them through sharing their bodies and voices. The most recent issue was shot in Dhaka, Bangladesh, another predominantly Muslim country, but crucially not during Ramadan.