Life in the Gambia

On my first day here we were very busy in at the VSO office getting all of the new volunteers (there are seven of us) ready for life in the Gambia. We had to fill out form after form with passport photos and photocopies of our passport, so that we could become legal residents. We filled out forms for an alien identity card (Gambian Residential permit), VSO volunteer identity cards, tax file forms and we were advised on the different banks we could choose to bank with.

After filling out many forms we piled into the VSO four wheel drive and drove down some dusty streets to the Police commissioner building. It was amazing that such an official office looked exactly like the set of an Australian 70s movie. There was a tiny room with a wooden bench, two desks, a woman sitting at an electric typewriter, an official looking lady and man in brown uniforms and another younger man in jeans. They talked in Wolof so we couldn’t understand them but we got the idea that they were angry that we came so close to closing time (12.30 as it was Friday, prayer day). The atmosphere in the room was tense as the woman in the brown uniform looked very cross, until she laughed at my middle name Elizabeth and said I should be ‘queen Elizabeth’. Then she wanted to go and couldn’t find her keys so started laughing at her silliness (I am glad to see that is a universal trait!). It turns out she was just worried that our car was out the front and the mosque would get angry to see they were working – so we moved the car and it was fine.

The whole process was extremely funny as they typed up our identity cards with two fingers and had to scratch out all their mistakes with a razor(our identity cards are unique to say the least), but all with good humour. We had to try hard not to smile at the laminator that wouldn’t work, and obviously hadn’t in the past as it had no casing and no resemblance to a laminator.

With that done we headed back, finished off and went back to the motel (luckily because jet lag sent me straight to bed!).

Day two was a lot of fun. We met the existing volunteers who gave us tips on living in the Gambia. Such as how to deal with Bumpsters – young men who try to be your friend in order to get money off you – the best way is just to be nice and so far I have found that to work. The Bumpsters are everywhere they will walk beside you as you go about your business and try to strike up a conversation with you. It is really hard to get rid of them. The volunteers also talked about the logistics of where we will live and of some of the ways to fit into the culture.

We went for a trip into town – learning how to use gellis and ‘5 for 5 taxis’. Gellis are mini-van buses. The ‘5 for 5’ system is that you jump into a taxi or Gelli – both of which operate the way a bus would – and 5 Daisi will get you from one fixed point to another. It is very cheap (there is about 20 dalsi to $1). The taxi drivers are very nice and sometimes dropped us closer to where we were heading rather than at the fixed point. The trick with the transport is that you have to say 5 for 5 or the taxi driver will charge you a town fare which is expensive, the same as using a normal taxi.

We went to the markets and the volunteers showed us the places to buy things and where to access the internet. The markets were amazing – again I just got distracted by the beautiful clothes on the women. You can buy just about anything in the markets. I needed to get sunglasses and one of the volunteers, who is a bit of a joker, told me about how much to pay. Apparently he was joking but the result was that I bargained the seller right down and unknowingly got an extremely cheap pair of sunnies (70 dalasi, they should be about 100). At least I am learning.

That night we met all the other VSO volunteers, there are a lot. Many of them are girls my age with and without partners. Not many have left their boyfriends at home like me, but some of the volunteers who had just gone home had had boyfriends at home. The other volunteers are very friendly and very excited about having us here. They will be a great support network.

The most interesting chat I had at night was with our program director Nuha. I asked him about his family and he told me about his seven children and said he’d had four other children who’d died as babies. I mentioned his wife looked young for seven children but he told me she was his third wife. His first wife had three children, as did his second and his third wife had an eight month old baby (very cute). In the Muslim culture it is usual for men to have two or more wives and to support more than one family.