Bye Bye

So, having spent a year in Basse and having completed my year here I have turned down the option to renew for another year in order to go home and sort my affairs out before I leave again.
I have just spent 2 weeks on the coast in Kombo finalizing things with VSO and sunning myself, obviously, and about to leave. Mixed emotions? Of course! I ended up leaving Basse a day before I was due to leave so my exit was conducted in complete Gambian chaos accompanied by a LONG trip back, collecting and dropping off firewood, meeting various members of staffs’ families, pitching up in Kombo at 10.30 p.m., shattered.
I managed to say many goodbyes and leave a few mementoes but not as many as I was intending, so it kind of felt like a crazy leaving but maybe that is for the best. Sometimes it is better to leave the people you have spent so much time with, shared so many experiences with, on a high note, not blubbering in their faces.
Has it been a fantastic year? YES! Would I do it again? OF COURSE! What have I achieved? Good question, so hard to measure. I know I have grown so much as a person and I also know that many people are very sorry to see me go so maybe that is the best measure on the human side which is what counts at the end of the day. VSO want me back in another role so have revolunteered and will leave once all is sorted in UK.
I have also made some friends for life, one in particular who lived with me on the same compound and with whom I shared all the ups and downs of compound/village life and without whom this experience would not have been so much fun as it has been. His enthusiasm for Africa, love of life and caring, loving nature will never be forgotten. He is a friend for life and I know we will cross paths again. Of course, many others too who will be in my heart forever….
To those of you who have read my blog, I hope you have enjoyed it – I have enjoyed writing it and it is a great testament to the time I have spent here in a wonderful country with fantastic, friendly, welcoming people who so often overcome so many odds to survive and yet will give you the last mouthful from their foodbowl if you are hungry. Humbled, I am, and I toast the so-called smiling coast of West Africa and thank the Gambia for their hospitality. INSHALLAH, I will return soon!

Nearly a Year in the Gambia

Blog update from Basse July 2011

Well, many rains are now coming and the landscape is rapidly changing from brown to green and will soon look as it did when I arrived. Animals are so thin and many are dying out in the bush and are gratefully eating the new vegetation. People are hungry too and food a coveted luxury, even such a basic commodity as rice which people just can’t afford to buy.
We’ve had a welcome distraction in the form of a visit by the vice-president to Basse, all the schoolchildren lined the street and welcomed the convoy of entourage that accompanied her. When she came to the office we had speeches, music, drums and more speeches and photos taken with her (always with serious faces as you can see!). Two of us VSOs organized a teachers’ awards ceremony and at the last minute I was told I was Master of Ceremonies (dubious privilege given the usual chaos of Gambian ceremonies!). Well, governor and entourage arrived 2 hours late so the scout’s band were marching up and down outside whilst loud music was pounding from the hall as we waited. Finally, we got going and TV cameras were rolling, I spent 10 minutes introducing esteemed so and so, honourable so and so etc only to find everyone repeated the same welcome before every speech!!! What was the point in me remembering them all?! Our esteemed guests were in and out, mobiles were going, the order of the programme kept being changed, it was chaos. I fought to keep a straight face! And to cap it all, when the event was aired on TV they didn’t even show a shot of me!

Vice president’s arrival

Serious faces with the VP!

The teachers’awards ceremony

I organized a focus group meeting with members of the local Mothers’ Club last week on my compound to find out their perceptions of their lives here in the Gambia which was really interesting. They were remarkably candid and honest. They said that out of 50 members of the group, only 3 are literate; all said that they experienced domestic violence but that it is an accepted part of their culture; all had been circumcised although due to NGO intervention this is becoming a less common practice. It was very productive and they all got up to dance to show their appreciation at being listened to afterwards which was lovely.

Me and my ladies celebrating a successful meeting

Turns out a local lady is naming her new baby girl after me. I went to visit the little cutie with a donation and she was having her head shaved (tradition) and kohl put round her eyes (see piccy). Next week is the naming ceremony and I will be expected to make a contribution but it’s rather nice to know there is a little girl in the Gambia named after me!

My namesake…

…and all her compound brothers and sisters

I have seen some interesting shoe doctors at work since arriving here but recently was impressed by the use of ends of a battery to fix a flip flop, amazing the ingenuity here! Something I have noticed is the lack of mirrors in Basse, you see people shaving with a tiny shard of broken glass – I have not seen a proper mirror anywhere here!
The intrepid remaining VSO volunteers from Basse decided to make a ‘tourist’ trip to a nature reserve about two/three hours away where we would take a boat trip round Baboon Island to see said animals and maybe a few hippos. So, we eagerly set off, pleased at the price we had haggled with the taxi driver only to get stopped at the only honest checkpoint in the Gambia where we discover the driver’s licence has expired! So, an hour later, offers of bribes declined, we went to the police station in the next town where, after more haggling with police for hours, the guy’s car is impounded! We then haggle with 10 other drivers, find someone to take us but we are kept hanging around for so long we have missed the boat trip by far so nothing to do for it but head back to Basse. So, tired, hot and dispirited we decided to treat ourselves to an ice-cream at the new ice factory – only to find, lo and behold, no power so no ice-cream! Oh well, we decided, it was an expensive day to go nowhere…the Gambia eh?

Thee staff at our education office

A happy moment with one of the new volunteers…

…and a pensive one

May/June in Basse

Update from Basse May 2011
Well, the relentless dry heat has been replaced by relentless more humid heat because, wait for it, we have had a few smatterings of rain and then even a short downpour this month. Everyone here was predicting the rains would come early this year due to various signs such as lizards turning into their bright colours earlier than usual – I thought that was because it was their mating season but hey, I’m not a local!

Life plods at its usual Gambian pace, donkeys braying (apparently it’s a form of communication with each other as they are sociable creatures but wish they would not be sociable all night!) On trek the other day we came across hundreds of monkeys running around in the bush in little family groups, truly amazing. Mangoes are everywhere, falling off trees or stacked up in the market and everywhere you look, someone is eating a mango. The driver on trek had so many that day that he was ill the next day so I have nicknamed him ‘mango man’ sung to the tune of ‘macho, macho man’ if you can remember the song! And guess what, if you end up buying them rather than picking them off trees, a large one costs roughly 5pence compared to £1 in the UK! Electricity is such an issue on our compound (their cashpower i.e.pay as you go) is always running out so when my gas bottle ran out and I discovered you couldn’t replace it in Basse (wish I’d known!) I gave up and switched fridge off. So I eat either with my compound, buy fresh stuff on the day and eat it, persuade the local bar or internet cafe to cook or share meals with the other volunteers. Or, just eat mangoes!! Still can’t get used to being called ‘ma’ or ‘mum’ or ‘boss lady, makes me feel a bit old! Saw ladies making pots the other day, it was a communal effort, pots put into a big hole in the ground and covered with sticks, leaves and greenery and smoked, form of an oven I suppose. Then they all collectively uncovered them and stacked them up ready to take back to their respective compounds. No photos though, you have to be very sensitive about taking pictures of locals as whilst some love it others are quite superstitious so better to be respectful really. We are all used to self diagnosis now – any sign of any illness, pills are shared after checking their content and purpose on the internet and failing that a quick trip to local pharmacy, description of ailment and diagnosis produces varying medications that we hope will cure! Anything but a trip to Basse Health Centre!
I was up in Kombo for Easter loving the cool weather and the beaches and got involved with organizing a fundraising event called Wide Open Walls, a community project involving local people and artists and spent 2 days running around delivering invitations and co-hosting the event with other organizers at the Sheraton on the beach– it was really interesting and some of the paintings were amazing! My camera had packed up at the time (or so I thought it’s fine now, maybe batteries were flat??!!) so no piccies unfortunately. We also attended a farewell event for the British High Commissioner where, in true volunteer style, not only were we were the last to leave (and that only because the bar had run dry!) but every platter of food that came out never got as far as the other guests as the volunteers (many of whom have not seen ‘luxury food’ for a while got in there first! I had a bad back at the time from trekking in the pick-up and all the running around, in and out of cars for the charity event made it so much worse I took myself to the VSO doctor who ridiculously asked me to climb onto a really high couch only to get stuck when my back froze! It was hilarious! A good dose of random medication got it sorted, though not before suffering the long journey over bumps back to Basse – agony!

A few more ‘Gambianisms’ for those who like them. Everyone is referred to as ‘my sister’ ‘my brother’ which I quite like so long as it is not a preamble to being chatted up. Off and on are verbs so when asked to switch off a light you are asked to ‘off it’ and then ‘on it’ and if you ask how work is you will often get ‘I’m on it’ often then followed by ‘slowly slowly’ (in Mandinka or Fula) the slowly being very apt here in the Gambia! We’ve also been asked ‘how’s the up and down?’ obviously meaning the ups and downs of life and given that everyone’s response to the usual greeting is that they, their families, work and life is all FINE one of the volunteers the other day was asked ‘how’s the fine?’ – answer being ‘fine!’. And a sign on a van van transporting herbal remedies I saw the other day said in big letters ‘our products cure all illness except death’ – hum, comforting! Everyone is ‘hey sister’ ‘hey brother’ but when people are introduced as ‘my sister’ or brother it is always necessary to clarify if it is just the phrase or ‘if it’s same mother and father’ – took me a few foot in it situations to realize!

The next time I write here will probably be from a wet, humid and rapidly growing green Basse…

Spot the wild monkeys

The road outside the office with children coming out of school

Sunset by the river in Basse

A sign by the road urging girls to finish their schooling and not getting pregnant too early - but looks like the bloke is slipping some money into her pocket! Hum!

Handmade monopoly game we play all with Gambian place names - good eh?

Lamin on my compound fast asleep!

The owner of our little bar, see the sweat on us?

Rubbish disposal is always a problem here, this is an eyesore down by the river

8 Months later……

BLOG UPDATE FOR APRIL 2011

Well, time seems to be flying, cannot believe it’s April already, the middle of this month marks my eighth here in the Gambia!

Work has been busy, doing a workshop for the men who go around monitoring their clusters of schools, running Maths competitions to select finalists for a national competition, reports, school visits – the list goes on and on!! I have seen some amazing school gardens that the local communities and the children cultivate with school staff – they have been encouraged to create them due to the fact that the World Food Programme is reducing supplies to the schools so that they can feed the children and/or sell produce in the market to raise school funds. Given the lack of money to fix hand pumps to get the water for the gardens or to build proper fencing to prevent animals from eating the crops, many of the gardens are prolific. If a particular school has been identified by an international donor as meriting their support, money is not such an issue but for many schools, they really do run on a shoestring and so many of them are so far out in the bush too so it is difficult to access tools/implements so many are hand crafted. I was chatting to a teacher from one of the far away schools and he says he regularly makes the long trip, by local bus and on foot, to Basse to top up his food supplies because the supply in the villages is so limited in variety that vitamin/mineral levels are not sufficient. In fact, it was noticeable the difference in size between the children living in the bush and those from schools nearer to Basse at the initial Maths heats – they are much smaller and skinnier. My trekking out in the bush to monitor all these schools is arduous and all the bumping along the dirt tracks has played havoc with my back but, on a positive note, I have mastered eating beans out of a can and peeling mangoes with my teeth whilst being thrown around and not even made a mess! Trouble has been the ferry broke down so we had to leave the vehicle on other side of the river and return at night sometimes in a little tin boat weighed down by motorbikes and return the next day the same way. And on one such expedition, a blowout on the tyre meant we spent the day traveling in the bush, middle of nowhere, with no mobile signal and no spare tyre1 Not for the fainthearted!

At a village workshop raising awareness of the importance of education

A good friend of mine in Basse at a workshop

A teachers' workshop in a school

Judging a maths competition

The winners of maths regional finals - not me for sure, the kids!

A typical school garden

Crossing the river to reach some of the schools, fine when ferry is working!

If ferry not working, the little boats will do, even motorbikes are transported on them!

Barren landscape we trek through

The villages you pass through on trek, in the middle of nowhere...

Our puncture caused a lot of interest!

Sleeping outside on my compound

A typical school well which often supplies the local community

With so little food around, my popcorn disappeared in 5 minutes!

There was a very funny incident in my village a few weeks ago that even now makes me laugh. There was a big commotion on a nearby compound and when I asked my place what was going on they said some girls were having ‘feets’ (fits!). I went round to see if I could help with my out of date but probably still relevant first aid skills and it appeared the 2 girls were having epileptic fits. Everyone was shouting and gesticulating, honestly, it was being treated like a party so I dispersed the crowds, put the girls into recovery position and gently calmed them until they fell asleep. Well, I offered to take them to the hospital the next day to the Cuban doctors (there are loads of volunteer Cuban doctors here) and the girls duly turned up, not just the previous 2, but 2 more who ‘suffered’ similar fits and not just them but half the compound in their Sunday best all trotted along behind me. Laugh?? I was splitting my sides all the way there! So, we get taken to front of the queue, presented to the doctors who interviewed all 4 girls and proceeded to tell me in Spanish that no way was it epilepsy, just a fit of hysteria brought on by spiritual superstition and adolescent mood swings that has a knock-on effect and induces mass ‘panic’- well, hum, and what were they prescribed? Tranquillizers. Not heard from them since, probably sleeping them off!!

It is so hot even at night that I have finally resorted to using a fan (when there’s power!) and the compound kids to sleeping under a mosquito net in the garden (don’t fancy a bush rat running over me in the night!). It seems that the electricity supplier NAWEC thinks that in the hottest months we need less power (logic in that?!) so instead of power being on regularly in the day, off 4 till 6 then on till 3a.m. it is randomly off for long periods of time so it’s hard to keep water cold/fan on etc – just when we need the power the most! And to add insult to injury, the water supply has become very erratic and have resorted to bucket baths, hey ho, we’re all in the same boat and don’t notice our body odours anymore!

A right crisis in our local Nigerian bar has occurred.The man running it ran off with the money so for a few days I was helping the owner’s nephew run it until the owner could get here! Me, run a bar? Met some interesting characters including a local taxi driver who comes in everyday to knock back his gin and set off again (won’t be using him!) .

It was national cleaning day the other day and thank goodness people have burned some of the rubbish piles that have been rapidly growing – we could do with a few more of those though, there’s still rubbish everywhere. The introduction of plastic bags here was a bad idea, they are everywhere!

Seen a few funny things lately. A sign on a glass window in the ban that said “be aware, glasses” and a man doing with all the bending and kneeling whilst saying his prayers. In the schools, when I have seen the minutes of meetings between the school and the village community funny sayings have been spotted such as “…they should not put any stone aside”… (bit mixed up methinks) or “…requesting punitive measures for persistent absence in a bid to ring bells for corrections…” and a quote in a local newspaper read “a blind man needs no guide in his bedroom”- a lot could be read into that one!

So, off to kombo for 2 weeks and maybe a quick flit to Dakar but we shall see. Until the next blog (power notwithstanding!)…………

Hot, hot Basse!!

Update March 2011

Well, the temperature is climbing steadily as are sweating levels and by late morning every day there is nothing more appealing than a dip in a pool or the sea – which we do not have here in Basse although there is the river though not so sure about taking my chances there!! Not given in to using the fan at home yet as power is such a luxury here, but might have to give in soon. I have had to make do with a couple of trips up to the Kombo to take a dip in the sea!

unspoilt beach in Gunjur on one of my trips up

Fresh produce in the market is abundant and mango season is about to arrive so plenty of fresh food to ear. My usual 11a.m. breakfast of boiled eggs with mayo in bread is kind of wearing a bit thin and the carb overload when we are fed during workshops is phenomenal – bread, greasy chips, omelette and dollops of mayo for breakfast are no good for the waistline!! Neither are the huge cauldrons of ‘benachin’, ‘yassa’ and ‘domada’ (google for recipes if you are a foodie!) that are served for lunch at these events – Weightwatchers here I come!! Tea is great, I love the ‘attaya’ which is pure green tea brewed over charcoal in a little teapot for ages with loads of sugar added (Gambians LOVE sweet), ordinary black tea or if you drink it the Gambian way, add a tonne of condensed milk and sugar – yummy!

Basse market where I shop

eating a benachin foodbowl

Independence Day Celebrations we organized were a hoot! I travelled to the village venue with the police who marched round the scrubland that was to be the ‘parade ground’ singing marching songs to themselves. Their chief yelled out ‘baboons!!’ out of the window at any donkey cart, goat, pedestrian or battered vehicle who dared get in the way en route which I found highly amusing! This was followed by another visit by me and office staff to liaise with the chairpersons of the meat, chair and table committees(??!!) on the setting up of the venue and the meat committee were surrounded by the heads and carcasses of the 15 cows they had slaughtered in honour of the event, lovely sight and even better smell! The actual day was great, loads of parades and dignitaries’ speeches (the person introducing all the dignitaries got all the names and
titles wrong!) – the Governor arriving 3 hours late whilst children and soldiers stood in blazing sun! Feeding time was like a Unicef distribution of food in a famine and we had to lock ourselves into the room where the food was to avoid being mobbed! All good fun!

the scouts and us at the parade

VSOs at the parade

our region's athletics team that came 4th in national competition, marching past

Day to day life continues with workshops for headteachers, school visits, report writing and usual work stuff and we now have 2 more volunteers which is great. We found a load of books when we arrived which two of the volunteers organized a school competition for and it was amazing to see the pleasure and just how grateful the schools were when they won these books – which are a commodity we so take for granted in the West. Even standard textbooks are lacking in schools here. I have finally realized that there are actually goats AND sheep in the Gambia, I thought all the sheep were goats (duh!). The compound is as busy and noisy as ever – Gambians don’t chat quietly and when they want to get hold of someone they stand at the gate and yell the person’s name and the name gets yelled all around the compounds until the person is located – saves using landlines! As for the morning wake up calls, I don’t know which starts first but you wake at 5ish to a cacophony of call to prayers, donkey braying and cockerels (no need for an alarm!).

Presenting a school and winner with certificate and books

I seem to have had a spate of people asking me for money and clothes both on the compound and when walking down the road which is so hard because you know that once you give to one there will be so many more requests, especially as everyone knows who I am and where I live, I would be inundated! Yet I have seen seemingly poor themselves Gambians giving money to those begging which seems so generous when the average take-home salary here is so low. Teachers earn even less than us VSOs are given and we all find this fact hard to swallow when the paymaster comes to the region (with his armed guards) to pay all the Education staff and salaries are listed for all to see and cash counted out in front of people queueing so everyone knows what everyone is earning.

bumped into him on way to work - didn't seem bothered about the piccy being taken!

A classic comment recently from a Headteacher when I queried the amount of work female teachers have to do (they bring their newborns to work, teach all day then cook for the male teachers in the evenings where they all live as most are posted away from their family homes) he shook his head sadly and commented that “yes, they do much work, the best solution is to try to recruit more female teachers”. Gambian male logic for you!

Amazing Gambian tree that resembles an elephant's foot!

Following on from my previous blog’s excerpt on Gambian expression, overheard recently during an argument between a group of males and one female where they were all having a go at her for something she threw her hands in the air saying “don’t eat me, don’t eat me, I was only giving an opinion” – how sweet is that?

making our sugary tree for an event

The overall concensus amongst us volunteers is that should we fall very ill, we will get a message to you all out there in the hope that someone owns a helicopter to airlift us out. Why? The last ferry I took across to Banjul had an ambulance strategically placed at the front ready for a quick getaway, as we docked the lights and siren started up but the hundreds of foot passengers were so keen to get off the throng surged forward blocking its exit then two vehicles collided into each other jamming it in! No chance for whoever was in there!

and finally, where it all happens, in my shower room! i wash dishes, clothes, get drinking water, u name it!...

More to come next month, all being well and power being on……..

february 2011

Well, as temperatures rapidly increase, dust levels in Basse have become phenomenal and traveling in the sept plas back from Kombo the last couple of times has required the covering of nose and mouth in order not to choke on the red dust. On a positive note, the tarmac road on the south bank is rapidly moving towards Basse. This will make traveling to Kombo so much easier as it will be direct whereas, going by North Bank means a ferry crossing at Janjanbureh, tarmac all the way, but another crossing at Barra in Banjul so we are all excited about this new road. Managed to get some photos of Basse town (below) which is small and chaotic but picturesque as you can see.

Our local Nigerian bar

our local breakfast shop

Have re-done Immigration papers which expired in December, better to be legal eh? This meant a trip to the police station in Kombo where I sat in a little room with 7 ‘officials’, smiling manically as I was quizzed about my family/friends back in the UK whilst one cut the photos, another filled a form, another typed on an archaic typewriter etc. you get the picture, 7 people to produce one little card!!!! Hey ho, it got done!

Still getting accustomed to the Gambian way of life and its many quirks. Such as cashing a cheque at the bank which can take AGES where you get pushed out of queues and people hang over your shoulder watching your transaction. Such as not realizing one has to stand still when the flag is being lowered outside the Governor’s residence or you get shouted at – yes, it had to be me! The fact that going to get you get chatted up by the soldiers at the checkpoint outside the office every day and whilst they are holding a gun and inviting you to their compound to share attaya (locally drunk green tea which is a little ceremony in itself) you just agree but never turn up! And the fact that our breakfast ‘tapalapas’ (baguette equivalent) from local shop comes wrapped in used paper from school exams so we can monitor our schools’ exam results! Very funny!

And Gambian English, well, it’s a language of its own. When you go for a haircut at a barbers’ you visit a ‘Barbing Saloon’ – it has been changed into a verb (I am being barbed!) and it can be a saloon (not a salon) though this is probably a more accurate description! A ‘fresh cold’ means a common cold as opposed to the usual self-diagnosis of malaria every time a sniffle develops! Another classic is ‘Quickly I am coming’ translated as ‘I’ll be there in a minute’ which invariably means anything from 10 mins to 4 hours! And should anything befall you such as stubbing your toe, dropping a cup a Gambian will always say ‘oh sorry’ as if it is their fault and you spend ages trying to reassure them that it really was not their fault! Love ‘em!!

I met the new intake of VSO volunteers last weekend in Kombo two of whom arrive in Basse in a week and a half and we are all looking forward to some new faces around.

I spent two days sea fishing last time I was up and discovered I can actually catch fish (see evidence below!) though think I am a bit of a ‘lazy fisherman’ as the baiting, casting and landing off the fish was not done by me and I took rather a shine to sunbathing, swimming and generally relaxing but at least I caught a few to be sold at a local restaurant.

me catching an angel fish

A butterfish caught by moi!

Independence Day celebrations are coming up and we are having a day of parades, pomp and ceremony in a village nearby. I was most surprised when the police turned up in their jeep and I was summoned (couldn’t remember committing any crime!) only to find I was whisked off to the bush to examine the suggested parade site in a village. It was sweltering, no shade, and I had to watch whilst the police paced it all out whilst singing their marching song whilst all the locals looked on in fascination!!

This weekend, 12th/13th Feb marked the end of the Boys’ Initiation in the bush and celebrations were in full force. This did mean, however, that the scary ‘Kankoran’ running around with their knives made the most of their last few days and two of us had to take refuge with hordes of Gambian women in someone’s compound when we accidentally stumbled upon some of them. But the drums, music, dancing and happy nature of the occasion more than compensated for the ‘Kankoran’ and dancing with these boys (who were so overdressed in their ceremonial outfits and oversized shoes they were just thoroughly bemused!) and their families was a wonderful experience.

One little lad out of the bush

Group piccy of some of the boys

me and one of the mums I know

Band starting up

Should have had classes before i left!

There's always one!! it's me, it's me, take my piccy....

Enjoy the photos and next update will no doubt contain an account of the very hastily arranged Independence Day parade which I am sure will be hilariously shambolic!

Latest basse update!

Latest News from Basse!

Well, since the hectic and enjoyable celebrations of the festive season we have all settled back down to work in hot, dusty Basse. Although the evenings for the last 2 months have been lovely and cool, it is hotting up warning us that the really hot, dry and dusty season is approaching. Quite funny though, whilst us westerners have still been walking around in summer gear, the Gambians are wrapped up as if for an English winter!!

Being very much ceremony time, (might have mentioned this on my last blog) hoardes of little boys have been shepherded into the bush to be circumcised where they remain for approximately a month going through the rite of passage to manhood. This has been accompanied by daily nighttime, incessant drumming and groups of ‘Kankoran’ (men who run around at night wielding knives with one in a strange grass outfit made of grass) who terrorize the compounds and force everyone inside. All part of the celebrations! No pictures unfortunately although did try when one was right outside my window but was too terrified by the yelling and the knife to actually click!! It’s also inconvenient as I am on a self-imposed curfew in order to ensure I don’t come face to face with them on a dark night!!

Several old volunteers have appeared out of the blue, one to check on the banana plantation he helped create and the others (a Canadian couple) apparently stayed for 17 years here and founded a restaurant/craft shop, ‘Traditions’ on the river which used to be famous with tourists but which subsequently moved inland and on the whole disbanded due to flooding. It was lovely to meet people who knew Basse so long ago, before electricity even (not that there is much now!)

A lovely Gambian bird at the office.

My brief incursion into attempted football coaching has been brought to a rapid yet welcome halt due to the demise of the football I bought the kids. However, was dragged off to tennis/basketball with the lads off the compound at the Medical Research Council by the river but in this heat, it is a tad too much!! Especially when we hitched a ride back on the back of a truck and my rucksack got stuck as I was clambering in and the driver took off with me the ‘toubab’ hanging off the back for dear life – very much to the boys’ hilarity! Giving up this sport malarkey, dangerous for your health!! However, as bonding family days out do not feature in the lives of the children in the Basse compounds, the boys had a great time. Apparently, it’s fishing next!!! I’ll probably end up head first in the river!!
Resting with a coke after our tennis trials!

Really making the effort to get to the market every week and cook healthily, not much variation but at least it’s balanced depending on what’s in. There is a Gambian dish I hate called ‘plassas’ (google for exact recipe) – sauce cooked with any leaves which can be found at the end of a vegetable it appears, groundnut and often pounded rotten fish with a litre of palm oil thrown in (slight exaggeration!) which is so revolting my stomach revolts as soon as I smell it so home cooking is preferable. Incidentally, we have discovered that palm wine is a laxative after our 2nd foray into the bush to sample it – might bottle it and market it for those with ‘bunged up’ tummies in the UK!!!

Life in the compound goes on as usual with streams of visitors and radio stations competing for dominance, varying supplies of water/electricity and copious amounts of ‘Attaya’ which is great as long as you don’t mind the huge amount of sugr used. There was a rather upsetting occasion when a lady who had been staying there (who was a source of rows and arguments anyway) overstepped the mark with a stick and various people attempting to prevent the fallout got caught up in it until the Mum stepped in and a very nasty fight ensued which resulted in said woman’s expulsion from the compound. Not nice to witness, but this is how some issues are resolved here it appears – a good flogging and off you go!!

My newly braided hair (playted as they say here!) on the compound

Posing with the newly braided hair - look like I'm on a cruise!

On that note, I was asked to deliver a speech on behalf of VSO at a senior school Headteachers workshop Saturday just gone. And what’s the issue there you may ask. Title was ‘How can discipline in our schools contribute towards national development and global peace’. Blimey, people do advanced degrees in this stuff I thought, what can little me contribute that is of value? I braved it though and brought up the contentious issue of corporal punishment in schools here, but actually, the speech was well received and sparked some interesting debate but hope nothing like that lands in my lap again!

Me doing my speech!

Well, all the news for now until next month!

In the bush palm wine hunting!

Guy climbing the tree to get the palm wine.

and finally, get to sample the wine and attempt to eat bush cucumbers