A Nice Evening

Life has been so hectic lately. i have been busy working on writing a Master Training Manual that will be used by trainers to train unskilled teachers in Early Childhood Development. The committee I am on have been really great. We have only had six weeks to work on the manual and only one of them has had training in ECD. I am the only one with any hands-on experience. The drawback of that is that they rely pretty heavily on me for advice and assistance with the ECD content. The best bit is that I am so busy working on that stuff that it gets me out of the boring bits of doing the manual. It still is a heafty workload because when I edit the sections there is a lot of re-writing to do (many of the references have been from the late seventies and early eighties so are no longer very relevant, especially in the Gambia).

The workload is starting to ease off now that the document is taking shape. Having said that on Thursday afternoon I was given a one hundred and forty six page document to review and edit by Saturday morning (and I got it done! I couldn't believe it).

Anyway the reason I am writing this up is because on Friday night I got home very stressed, knowing I had a lot of work to do that night. Then at my gate I saw Awa cooking fish and remembered I had promised her a night of chocolate and movies because it was our last night together. Awa has finished her exams now and will go back to live in her village next week (I will be away doing teaching practice observations next week). So I had to get cracking, do my washing (for my trip - and that means handwashing), buy the chocolate and get some electricity credit (we call it cash power here - you buy electricity like a phone card here).

Then on my doorstep were Ebi and Yankaba, who very nicely went to get my cash power for me (there is a system here where you get young boys to go and do errands for you and that way they can earn pocket money for doing the job).

After doing the shopping, I went to start on the washing and there was no water (it commonly happens). So I thought I'd sit down and start my work.

Then I had a knock at my door and a young girl had decided to visit. I walk past her everyday and say hi and she just decided to come and strike up a friendship - which was really nice. So I chatted to her for a while and Mohammed turned up at the door. He had his backpack on for study and since I'd been so busy working we hadn't studied for a while I decided I couldn't put him off.

So Mohammed, Isatou (the girl) and I sat down for Mohammed to read a book that I had written in Mandinka (their local language - I can write it but I can't really read it). He got stuck into the book when Ebi and Yankaba came back and sat down to listen to Mohamed read the story too. It was very cute listening to three fourteen to fifteen year olds listening to a nine year old read and encouraging him.

Study time ended at around 8pm and I thought I'd get started on the work, but then Awa showed up for the movie. So we sat down and watched 'Over the Hedge' and Jagan, another neighbour, dropped by and watched the movie too. We had to watch it on my laptop with headphones because on Friday nights Joker, the nearby nightclub, blasts out music all night and you can't hear anything in my living room.

The movie ended at 10.30 so I didn't get my work finished until 1am but I wasn't stressed. It was just really nice to have such a nice night. It is one of the nice things about Gambian culture - is that people rather than work come first (althought according to the guys on my working committee that means you just have to stay up all night!)