I've decided (again) to have a blog for people to read while I'm here in The Gambia. I'm really going to try to update this thing this time. I would like to keep it up to date as well as add stories from my first year here from time to time.
It's the 'summer' here--at least the kids are out of school and so am I. Since I'm an education volunteer I pretty much live by the school calendar. I've kept busy this summer though making board games like checkers for the kids in my compound and making teaching and learning aids for math to tutor two of my host sisters (grades 6 and 7). I'm not too sure what I'll be doing this school year but I'll figure it out soon enough. I have a lot of things planned but will only write about the things that work out.
A little news here: I was evacuated from my village to Kombo yesterday. Rebel activity in the area to the south of where I live in Senegal (the Cassumance) had been on the increase. I really think my village is pretty safe but other volunteers who were also evacuated could feel their houses shaking from the mortar fire. I could only hear it from the distance like thunder.
I helped a health volunteer weigh babies the other day. I think we weighed something like 140 babies in 4 hours. There was weighing them and then comparing their weight to a height chart to see if they were healthy. Most of them were but it was sad to see the ones who weren't. We worked with a Gambian health worker who allowed babies to be weighed even if the mothers didn't have the health card. It at least allowed the mothers to know if their babies were healthy and it got the babies a dose of vitamin A. It was truly a Gambian (or African) experience. The mothers or sometimes the older sisters came with all these babies and placed the health cards on a table. Rather than cuing there was just a mass of women and children. We tried to be systematic about the process starting with the cards that were turned in first but still some mothers were very pushy. It was a good experience to see what some volunteers in the other sectors (health is one, agro-forestry is the other) do.
Life here is always an adventure. My ride to this health volunteer's village was I suppose not anything I wouldn't expect. He lives off the main road but in a large-ish village that has a gele (a public transport van) that lives there. It leaves early in the morning about 6 am to go to the Barra ferry crossing two hours away for those going to Banjul or Kombo and then waits to fill there (an hour or two or so) and returns to the village. I was visiting another volunteer who lives between his village and Barra so I was really hoping there would be room for me when it passed. There wasn't legally. So while the other Gambians sat like sardines in the hot overcrowded gele, I stood between two rows balanced on a crossbar and the back of one of the seats. Other Gambians (men) were standing outside the gele on the ladder to the top rack or the back step. Luckily I only had to stand (not totally erect) for about 20 minutes when about half the people dropped in a village before our stop. Whew! I was so glad to get a ride! My other option would have been to drop somewhere on the main road, walk a few kilometers to a nearby village where another volunteer lives, borrow her bike and bike the 5 or 6 km the rest of the way. I think sometimes that experiences like this are the reason I came here. This would certainly not happen in the US.
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