The toubab blues

Another cooking triumph by Kanti and Pete, home made paratha and spiced vegetables. Really tasty! We seem to have become obsessed by food. I think because we are all anticipating living on tomatoes, onions and rice for months up country. So we like to wander round the supermarket gazing longingly at all the “toubab food." We have all become accustomed to having toubab (white person) shouted at us. Mostly by the kids. “ toubab give me dalasi ", "toubab how are you?" Kate has decided to cash in on the toubab phenomenen by writing a hit song called toubab blues. But Kate maintains its not ready to share with the world yet. From the snippets I have heard I think she’s right. I do envisage us sitting on our porch up country making up countless verses to toubab blues.

From what the other volunteers have told us there is a big different between life up country and life here in the Kombos. Here you can get everything you could want really. All the western type food, electrical goods, mobile phones etc. They have very good petrol stations just like ours back at home. There are quite a few bars and restaurants. Up country it you have to get mostly everything from the market and apparently during the rains nothing much really grows so vegetables are hard to come by and you only get potatoes, tomatoes, onions and a few other things. The prices are also more expensive. On the up side they say you get hastled much less up country because of the lack of tourists. I haven’t found the hastle a big problem though and people generally leave you alone if you are firm. The majority of people we come across are very friendly and welcoming.

Public transport is really cheap here. We get around the kombos either by walking or using five fives which are green and yellow taxis. Mostly anywhere around here costs five dalasi each, which is incredibly cheap. Getting a gelle gelle back from Banjul only cost us 8 dalasi each and it is quite a way. They can try it on if they think you are a tourist. Apparently tourists will pay up to 200 dalasi for a taxi ride which is a massive amount. Unqualified teachers here only earn about 500 dalasi a month.


Yesterday we had a talk by some current volunteers Courtney and Paul about the small project fund which they want us new volunteers to get involved in. The money is donated by the British High Commission for community projects, such as refurbishing libraries, classrooms or small business projects. The idea comes from a group in the community and they have to submit a proposal and apply for the funding. But us volunteers have to oversee the projects, go and do site visits, make sure that funds are being used appropriately and write reports on the project. Some of the projects that have been done already seem really good. It seems like a really good thing to get involved in since the projects come from the locals themselves they are more likely to be successful. Some of the volunteers have said it has been the most worthwhile thing they have done here, as any changes they make through their jobs they can’t really see the impact of because change is very slow and they are up against so many different factors.

Next Week our language lessons finish and we have an assessment, written and oral. Although I don't know what they will do if we fail. Next weekend is our up country trip, staying at 2 different camps. I say camps but they're more like hotels really. There should be more to tell then!

If anyone wants to message me it's probably better to make a comment on the blog because blogspot seems to be a lot quicker than yahoo for some reason. Couldn't get on yahoo at all today. xxx L