Arabiatou who lives in our compound

Cathy, Mariella, Kate and Sukey having a cleavage competition

kate and I before we got too drunk!

Me and Moses Okello, Ugandan disability volunteer

Kate, me, Rico, Marielle, Georgia and Cathy

So health and safety and traveling in the Gambia. Two words that don’t really fit in the same sentence. As one volunteer who travelled in a gelle gelle without any breaks will tell you. Its how many men, women, children and chickens can we cram into a vehicle to make as much fare as possible. Its undeniably stressful at the time but it does give you some good stories to tell and you experience some random acts of kindness that balance out the baser displays of the human character you inevitably encounter. I think that you have to approach the experience of traveling here with a que sera attitude. You will usually get where you wanted to go but maybe just not the way you expected.
So this week with that in mind we made our first trip to the Kombos, armed with a long shopping list and an equally long list of fun things to do we headed back to civilization.
Our chosen method of transport was the big green bus, yes its large and yes its green, lime green to be exact. Except it’s a bit of a mystery, the big, green bus. Sometimes it appears sometimes it doesn’t. I’m not sure how a thing that big and that green can get lost but there you go.
Gladly it was there when we arrived at the gelle park at six thirty in the morning. It was almost full then though and we only just managed to get a seat. Then began the mammoth seat shuffle as all the locals rearrange themselves to accommodate others, children squashed in whereever they can fit. Then more people get on and stand and sit in the aisles for the entire three hour bumpy journey. However it was a bit of luck to get the green bus to drop us right outside La Parisienne where we slumped into the sofas and relished our cake and coffee.
While we were in Kombos going from one place to another we had a slightly more frantic travel experience, getting on a gelle gelle, the apparantee guy agreed 5 dalasi. Then came the whole, nice ladies where are you from, can I have your number spiel. He even tried one which Kate and I thought was slightly odd, You have nice noses! What's that all about. Kate and I discussing it later agreed that our noses weren't really our best feature! Anyway then when we weren't too welcoming of his advances he tried to charge us more money and stop us getting out of the gelle and then proceeded to chase us down the street demanding his extra money. So we just legged it, which proved rather difficult with ten tonne of luggage on our backs, refusing to pay him. We laughed about it later. But it was far from funny at the time.

However then there was the return journey. This time we didn't manage to pick up the green bus. Instead we ended up in the gelle park where we were fair game for the gelle merchants. We did end up on one bound for Soma after Kate haggling for the price of our bags. I tend to leave it to her as she knows its not one of my strengths. It has to be one of the most uncomfortable journeys of my life. I can't quite describe the sitting position I was forced into. My knees jammed under the seat and my feet jammed in a contorted position behind. I had all this stuff on my lap, a rolled up map of the world, (random I know), a sandwich and two bags of water. (they sell it in bags here). The stuff all kept slipping off my lap because my knees were sloping. The yound guy next to me recognising my plight reached over and took all the stuff off my lap and put it on his on top of his bag and he held it all the way to Soma. Those kinds of experiences restore your faith in human nature.

So we ended up safely back in Soma, covered in a thick film of orange dust, dirty smears on our faces where the dust had mingled with the sweat. We lugged our bags up our very long road and were very glad to be home and even more glad that we had brought back with us a bottle of 70 dalasi ginn!


Happy Birthday your majesty

So I decided to bury my republican sensibilities and graciously accept the invitation to celebrate her majesty’s birthday. Yes there was a free bar! We all got dolled up at the pink palace of heavenly pleasure (we renamed Mariella's house!) most of us wearing Rachel's Gambian tailored dresses and were highly excited at the thought of free drink and food. We spent most of the night exclaiming - its real baileys! its real ginn! and the night sort of went on like that really. We finally left the party at twelve thirty. Everyone else had gone home and we had just about drunk the bar dry. There was definitely no baileys left anyway. Fun was had by all and there are plenty of pictures to prove it.

purely pictures

Across the river Gambia!

no bake strawberry chocolate cheesecake ( God bless America!)

Peace corps party ( The night of the rum cake) from right to left - Tanya, Kate, Lisa, Sarah and Jacob

Please note (Me cooking!)

Something interesting has happened at work this week. Despite most of it being Kate and I playing Solitaire on the laptop. We met the cluster monitors who told us a bit about the jobs they do when visiting schools. They have a pretty big remit, a lot of it seems to be collecting data about numbers on roll, number of girls and boys, teacher attendance etc. Also they are responsible for monitoring teaching and learning in the schools. Doing lesson observations, looking at planning and schemes of work, curriculum coverage, supporting heads with record keeping. They have a lot to do but they don’t actually have a class to teach themselves. Am not sure how this works in practice but I daresay we’ll find out. They had a big drive to get girls into education in the Gambia so the girls don’t have to pay school fees but the boys do. So our job is really identifying training needs and delivering training to the teacher trainers who can deliver it to the teachers. But I think in practice a lot of volunteers end up working directly with schools and teachers, doing demonstration lessons and then team teaching and observations to monitor improvement. The cluster monitors seemed to want our help with writing funding proposals as well, not really sure about how to do that, although I daresay we can find out.

The other interesting thing that happened was finding out about the small project funds. One of the cluster monitors wanted us to acquire funding from VSO to renovate a teachers quarters in one of the schools, which is apparently dire, falling down so much that they all have to sleep in one room. This sounds like a very worthwhile project to me so Kate and I are going to go for a site visit so that we can support the proposal and then it will be our job to monitor the project and see that it is all happening.
We have also just been for a site visit to another project that wants funding. This is an NGO that does adult education in Literacy and Maths for people in the community and does tye dyeing and soap making classes that will generate income for the women in the community. They also want to plant a garden there and grow things to sell at market. So we are going back to have a look at the classes next week. I’m quite keen to learn to do tye dye myself! These two things I think will be great to get involved in and will help us to get to know some people in the community.
Kate and I talked to our caretakers wife Faye yesterday about planting some things when the rainy season comes. At the moment the soil is so dry but when the rainy season comes apparently its easy to grow things. During this time they tether all the goats up so they don’t wander from compound to compound and eat everything. It will give us something to do at least! Her sons are going to help us dig the garden. Mr Jawneh is going to get us both a bamboo bed on the way back from his trip to Basse so we will then have space for visitors to stay! You will be highly welcome as they say here. I’m not really selling it with the scorpions and mice though!

Another bit of good news – the mangoes are out and they are very nice as well, sweet and juicy and very cheap! Another fruit other than bananas – hooray!

We invented yet another tasty treat – digestive biscuits with chocolate spread which they do in big tubs here, sprinkled with the roasted peanuts that the ladies sell in the market for 1 dalasi a bag. It’s the nearest thing to a snickers we are going to get. Also we tried to do those banana things you do on the barbecue, we sliced open a banana put chocolate spread and peanuts inside and then wrapped it in tin foil to see whether it would roast in the sun. But we couldn't leave it long enough before eating it so the tin foil was a bit unnecessary.

Our fun with the goats continues. As the baby patch boldy made its way into Kate's house to explore yesterday while its mother Gregory stood at the door bleating. It was quite amusing. These goats give us hours of entertainment.

One thing I forgot to put on the post when we were doing the workshop in Basse which rather tickled us, was a nursery rhyme that was put up on the wall in one of the schools. A very well known nursery rhyme but here it was given am unusual twist.

One, two buckle my shoe
Three, four, knock at the door
Five, six, pick up sticks
Seven, eight, lay them straight
Nine, ten, big fat cock hmmm!


maybe we need to do a workshop on rhyming words!
While cleaning out their library in Janjanbureh Pete and Liz found a peace corps translation of some Mandinka nursery rhymes. This was one of them:-

"Two little dickie birds. Tom, Dick and Harry
The two little birds flew over.
My hand is at the anus of one
The others anus is at my hand." Again I say hmmmmm!!!

Easter weekend

For the Easter break Kate and I felt that we needed to break away from the excitement of Soma for a few days! So we set placed it to Janjanbureh otherwise known as Georgetown or Macarthy island to go and see our fellow Kanifing housemates Pete, Liz and Phil. To get onto the island you get off at Lamin Koto and take the ferry across. The journey was uneventful apart from as we got off the ferry we were accosted by teenagers wanting us to give them money for their football team etc. There are quite a few lodges in Janjanbureh because being on the river it does get its fair share of tourists who come up on boat trips from Banjul. Pete and Liz had organized some accommodation for us in the forestry commission which was cheap and a peaceful spot right on the river so we were pleased with that. We took to Janjanbureh straight away. It has a very relaxed feel to it and there are a few little bars. Our favourite came to be Bendulas as the guys working there were very friendly and Kate managed to use her negotiating skills to acquire a discount on Julbrew! It was great to see Pete and Liz again and talk over our various work situations and everything that had been happening since we saw them last. Pete and Liz really spoiled us feeding us fried bean sandwiches, banana and chocolate pancakes, eggy bread, ommelette sandwiches, spicy coucous. It was brilliant! Kate and I were in our element having spent our whole time in Soma so far continually talking about food.
Pete and Liz live in a lovely little compound. They are now known in the community as Bakary and Hawa Darbo. There is some big Gambian joke about Darbo meaning man who eats too much rice. So every time Pete tells people his surname they chuckle and pat their stomachs. Also Bakary means goat so Pete is now thrilled to be the goat who eats too much rice. Next door to them lives the Jim’ll fix it of Janjanbureh, Muli. He seems to be involved in everything in the community, sits on various committees, supports the women’s garden project and is trying to find new ways to encourage tourism to Janjanbureh. The women do the majority of the gardening and selling at market in the Gambian communities.
We took a walk down to the site where they are building a new five star lodge but apparently the owners got conned out of some money and now are struggling to get the funds to finish it. It was a lovely location, a quiet spot on the river. The accommodation was partially built but looked like it was going to be quite plush. The swimming pool was working and they had partially built the restaurant which is going to have a rooftop terrace, looking over the river. There were some tents already constructed which had lovely bathrooms, sofa, table all done out in what looked like ikea furniture. So if it does finally get finished it will be a little haven. Admittedly not a lot to do other than swim and read and birdwatch. There are quite a few lodges already there which are ok but a bit run down.
On Saturday we were joined by several VSOs on their way back from a trip into the national park in Senegal. They had hired a truck and driver to take them there. Denise, Paul and their two children Abi and Bradley, Marielle and her sister, who was over from the Netherlands and Kanti who had joined them for the trip. So we all had dinner that night in the lodge and then breakfast in the morning. Apparently their trip was good but didn’t go quite as smoothly as they hoped. It took much longer to get there than they anticipated and they ended up missing the national park’s curfew so had to find somewhere else to stay. They had seen hippos and crocodiles and lots of birds so the children were happy but they all looked a bit exhausted.

On the Sunday we took a long and hot walk to Janjanbureh camp which is over the other side of the river. We had a drink there and there were monkeys all over the place jumping and playing on the bar and on all the tables. There is a chimpanzee rehabiliation place nearby but you can't really visit it. We paid a man in the boat to take us straight back across the river because we couldn't face another walk in the sun. We had dinner at Pete and Liz's again that night and played cards.

On the Monday morning we said goodbye and were on our way back to Soma. This time we share the ride with a chicken and no one else which was great. It was quite funny, we didn't realise that the chicken was there in the boot. Until it popped it's head up and squawked and frightened the life out of us.

Not much has been happening since. Work has been very uneventful, in fact everyone else seems to have gone awol and its just us there trying to find ways to fill our time. Hopefully things will get better next week when the schools are back. Kate and I have been keeping ourselves busy by naming all of the goats in our compound and a bit of excitement this evening as I found a baby scorpion under my luggage. I was a bit concerned that if there was a baby there was likely to be a mother aswell lurking somewhere! Apparently when walking out in the rainy season you have to take a torch to avoid stepping on the scorpions! I think I might be wearing my walking boots. I also think I have a mouse in my house! Oh joy! We did find out today that our rent is only eight pounds a month and our water bill was less than 50p for the month!

It is keeping us sane watching season one and two of the west wing. We are going to have finished them all soon though. Don't know what we will do then!