Passengers

It's going to be a sad sad day when I have to hand over the keys to my trusty bike!

You won’t get far when riding a motorbike in The Gambia without having to take a passenger. That’s just a fact of life. For me it is at least. As I approach someone who is flagging me down my head is usually saying don’t stop don’t stop! but my heart is saying its hot, that person is going to have to wait an age to get a vehicle, they’re old, I have a space on my bike, I’m going there anyway etc. So today was one of the many occasions when I ended up with an unexpected passenger. This time it wasn't really a choice though. We had just come from our workshop in Kaiaf. I had passed the checkpoint but Ellie had been stopped by the policeman and was taking ages. So I just pulled over and was looking behind me to see where she was when an old lady, must have been about eighty came running up, plonked herself on the back and said “Toniataba” (which is a village near Soma) . She took me by surprise so I just drove, chuckling to myself. She clung on to my back pack for dear life as we went bumping over pothole after pothole. When we reached the turning for the village it was obvious that she was expecting door to door service. So into the village we rode, slipping and sliding our way through the sand. She didn’t seem fazed. When she got off the bike we exchanged names and she pointed me on my way on the back road to Soma. I just smiled to myself all the way home it was one of those priceless Gambian moments!

Some Soma Creatures

Lizard swimming pool. Not sure he really liked it though. I fished him out with a tin and his little lungs were pumping like mad!

Posing goats

(not many mountains to climb in The Gambia so they have to make use of the walls instead)

This delightful chap was on my mosquito net.

big millipede

I saw a snake in our compound this week but it didn't hang around long enough for me to photograph it and neither did I!

Return to Medina Sancha

The well ( the echo is great)

ECD children drawing pictures of their mums and dads in the sand

The school farm, the corn you can se is all owned by the school which they can sell to raise funds

Bright new shiny building!

New pit latrines

The grade 2 class

Return to Medina Sancha

It was exciting to return to my favourite school and see the shiny new buildings that were now surrounded by fields of tall corn. Newly whitewashed walls, bright shiny corrugate, recently planted trees in the yard and a proper office for Mr Boye. Only the ECD class were still housed in the old style woven classroom. It is also good news that the Fresh start foundation were coming to do a feasibility study to provide a borehole for a water supply for the school. That would mean that they can then start a school garden. Also the letter asking for funding for building a kitchen was written and that would mean the school can become part of the world feeding programme. I took some books scrounged from my niece and nephew for the beginnings of a library and also took a big mat for the younger children to sit on for story time. The community are apparently very supportive of the school so everything is coming together quite nicely for Medina Sancha.

Outdoor washing

The offending washing line

Washing dishes

This is the floor AFTER I have cleaned it!!

This is Vicky and Marcus at our local bar

“You have got to have systems!”

Before Marcus left to go back to the UK Vicky came to visit and was the second person after Ashley to experience the luxury sleeping quarters, the bamboo bed with deluxe (pop up) mosquito net. Vicky enjoyed this experience, she claimed, but I got the distinct feeling that she was somewhat disturbed by my house! I don’t know what it is but a lot of my good friends seem to be somewhere on the OCD spectrum and Vicky is I would say towards the high end of the scale. Maybe I am drawn to people who seek order in their lives. Who knows, but Vicky did take me aside and give me a bit of a pep talk. “You know Luc, you don’t have any systems. You need systems”

The washing up system (or lack of it I suppose) was the first thing that disturbed her, the outdoor washing up system was the second thing and she was ultra disturbed by the fact that my jerry cans had no lids and by the sagging washing line just by my bed that threatened to garrot me every time I got out of bed. This she fixed in an instant just by hoiking it up high so it was above my head. Amazing the most common sense things that never occur to me! She suggested that some time during the summer she come and help me sort my systems out.

So that was that, when I returned from the UK at the end of the summer I was able to go and visit Vicky in Kerewan for a few days to get a look at her systems first hand. There were buckets and kettles galore. Bucket with a lid to keep dirty dishes in away from insects, a bucket for waste water so that one can rinse and drain things into it. Two buckets for bathing water and a very nifty toilet roll holder made out of rope and a plastic zip lock bag, perfect for the rainy season. (Simple yet ingenious) Wish I had a photograph! She had to laugh when I got out of her bed and ducked to avoid the invisible washing line!

I wished I had taken my camera so that I could have taken a photograph of the systems in order to replicate them exactly. But I had to be content with a mental picture. As soon as I got back I went bucket and plastic kettle shopping at the market. So now I have at least rudimentary systems in place which no doubt need some fine tuning. But I am sure Vicky will help me with that on her next visit!

At The Compound

Unwelcome Visitors.

I was bracing myself for re entering my house after a long absence and having left in somewhat of a rush. But it was even worse than I imagined. There was a layer of mould growing on all the furniture and a jungle had taken over my pit latrine . If these things weren’t bad enough, later I made an even more gruesome discovery. A pile of cockroach infested dirty clothes! There began the performance of extricating the little critters But by the fiftieth critter Ellie and I had it down to a fine art. I picked up the item of clothing shook it, then Ellie armed with Bop sprayed the thing until it was dazed and confused then whoever was nearest violently stamped on it or frantically chased it around until it ran up a wall and then flattened it with a flip flop. It has to be violent because these things don’t die easily.

After about two hours in the 40 degree heat the cockroach massacre had ended and the back yard was littered with cockroach corpses with a fair amount of blood and guts.

Now I had a cockroach free house or so I thought! Two nights later I was woken up at 3.30 in the morning by a rustling sound coming from somewhere in my bedroom. It was so noisy I thought it must be a mouse so I tentatively got out from underneath my mosquito net to investigate. I shone my torch around the room to try and work out where the noise was coming from but couldn’t see anything. So I sat down on a jerry can defeated, thinking I wasn’t going to get any more sleep that night when a giant cockroach emerged from under the bed. I quickly put an end to him but kept listening because I couldn’t believe that a cockroach could make that much noise!

Thankfully the noise stopped so feeling happy that it wasn’t a mouse I crawled back under the mosquito net. Only to wake with a start an hour later. A siren was going off outside and I had incorporated this into my dream and woke up thinking I had to evacuate the house! The final straw was the call to prayer over loudspeaker an hour later. After that I gave up on the idea of sleep and watched another episode of the wire!

The joys of living in The Gambia!

(Last day of CCM. In our Friday dress!)

(Our noisy and nosey sheep!)

I don't really have any pictures of Saturday. But here's one of me giving Lynn a ride to CCM. (Cool helmet!)

An interesting Saturday!

I will tell you about my interesting Saturday but first an update about Medina Angaleh. Fortunately at the recent CCM meeting. That's the big education meeting held every month. The schools predicament was brought to the attention of the ministry and they have promised to build them a new staff quarters. So that's good news!

But back to my interesting Saturday. I haven't had many hairy travel stories for a while and this is mostly due to my brand new motorbike which is just too good and too reliable. Flat tyres and waiting at the side of a road in the hot sun seem to have become a thing of the past. Don't get me wrong I am grateful for that. But it doesn't make for exciting stories. However the advent of the rainy season makes things slightly more complicated.

Last Saturday I was running a workshop in Kwinella for nursery teachers and had to be there at nine. I had loads of stuff to take with me and had to put it all into a plastic shopping basket

and tie it all onto the back of my motorbike. Then I had my backpack with even more stuff in. It would have served me well if I knew anything about tieing strong knots but in this area I am a bit clueless. Anyway I tied the basket on as best I could and went on my way. At this time it was just beginning to rain. Needless to say I had no waterproofs on and the shopping basket had lots of holes in it! I was also aware that it was set settal which is national cleaning day and the regulation is that you don't travel after nine because you are supposed to be at home cleaning your compound. This was about eight so I had about an hour to get there. (Might I add I was already feeling a bit hard done by because it was a Saturday and everyone else was still in bed!)

Within ten minutes of travelling I had to make my first stop as the shopping basket was slowly edging its way off the back of the motorbike. So I stopped, tried to tie it back on and then went on my way again. When this had happened about 10 times between home and the first police checkpoint I thought I had better enlist some help. So I stopped and asked the nice policemen to tie it for me! Problem solved, so I thought! By this time I was also racing the black clouds which were descending and praying that the slight shower would stay a slight shower!

Well the nice policemen who had helped me out had actually tied the rubber straps so tight that the plastic shopping basket was breaking and it was still edging of the side of the bike. For quite a while I was riding with one hand on the motorbike handle and one hand holding the shopping basket in place. By this time I was also conscious that I had made so many stops that nine o clock was probably fast approaching. Adding to this every time I stopped to tie the basket back on my hands got more and more covered in black from the rubber straps and my clothes got more and more covered with oil from leaning on the bike.

When I was just about to reach Kwinella I had to stop at the checkpoint where I was duly reprimanded for travelling after 9.00. But as I was stopping at Kwinella, they let me go. Phew!

So you can imagine the state I arrived in to do the workshop. Adding insult to injury as I stopped to open the school gate and by this time the rain was coming down more heavily. I decided to untie the basket which promptly fell of the back of the back, Spilling the contents of the shopping basket (including my nice, newly printed ECD books) all over the wet sand. Thankfully, the children who live at the school, seeing my distress rushed to my aid. By this time I had also acquired a cut finger from somewhere so there was blood running down my hand. Abass and Alieu took all of my stuff in out of the rain. Jarra ran to get a kettle of water to clean my hands and Alieu even reminded me that I had abandoned the motorbike outside the gate.

I was a little bit flustered to say the least and was rather relieved when the headmaster told me that as yet only 4 participants had arrived. I now had time to gather myself before we started.

Another complication arose though as when I arrived the family and a few extras were about to have breakfast and being the very generous people that they are they insisted that I join. Having not much appetite recently I really wasn't that keen on having meat and rice at 9.30 in the morning but knowing how important food is I duly took my place around the food bowl and tried my best to eat a few spoonfuls. Only you can never get away with a few spoonfuls. " Eat more, eat more. Lucy what's wrong you are not eating." This is usually the way it goes at food bowl time.

Eventually I decided to start the workshop with my meagre 4 participants but we swapped things round a little and started to do some book making, contending with the deafening noise of the rain on the corrugated roof and dodging the puddles that were forming on the floor of the classroom. Very soon after the workshop started there was breakfast for the participants. Bread, onions, fried canned spam, fried potatoes and mayo. Also hot, sweet tea. All very nice but this time I had already had one breakfast. Again it was "Come on you're not eating, you must eat!" So I managed to force the second breakfast down.

All's well that ends well. By the end of the workshop we had about 12 participants, the rain had stopped and everyone participated well, sung songs played games. I had to leave as soon as the workshop ended to be back in Soma, as that evening Marcus, Ellie and I were judging the Miss 22nd July Scholarship pageant. But of course when I went to leave without having lunch there was uproar and the head teacher Alagie announced that he wasn't the least bit happy about me leaving without eating. So the food was rushed out. I sat down this time to Benechin, (fried rice and meat) I was feeling rather like Dawn French in that episode of Vicar of Dibley where she eats about 5 Christmas dinners. Especially since for the last week I had been surviving on bananas and banana milkshakes!

I motored back to Soma, hitting every puddle. So the time I got back me and the bike were a mud splatted mess. Managed to shower and change in time to get down to the venue for the scholarship pageant which all went without a hitch. Apart from the fact that because it had rained all morning the insects were out in force. So we spend a large amount of the pageant being dive bombed by insects, flapping our hands in front of our faces like maniacs. Simon Cowell never has this problem I'm sure!

So that's my interesting Saturday. Thankfully this week's Saturday workshop is within walking distance and this time I am going to make sure I don' t eat for at least a day before!