The first week Nic was here, my friend Annalie also came to stay. Annalie, AJ, is an Australian I met in Senegal. She volunteers in a Senegalese orphanage. Her visa for living in Senegal had run out so she needed to come and stay in the Gambia for a while to get a new visa, and also for some well earned time out. We made the most of her visit to see the sights around Brikama and the Kombo area. Kombo is the closest thing Gambia has to a city. Banjul is the capital, but Kombo is a big urban sprawl with lots of tourist things and markets.
During this week I also needed to complete some school observations (and sort out my allowance issues). However the gods had decided that I wasn’t allowed to do work while Nic was here and worked against me! The first school we went to visit was in Bafaloto about 6 kilometers out of Brikama, I couldn’t get the student on the phone but had said I would visit (phones here might go flat and not be charged for a while as people don’t have power always in their homes). So we travelled out there to find she was sick and not at work. We then discovered the transport was few and far between so had to walk the 6 kilometers back in the hot sun, with no water!
The next school we went to visit, it started raining just as we were leaving so we were caught up for an hour. We finally got to the Gelli park and then had to wait an hour and a half on the Gelli for it to fill. By the time we finally got to the school the final bell was ringing and all the children were going home. Then we found out that the rain had slowed up the transport and we had to wait for two and a half hours in the rain to get a Gelli to go back to Brikama. Luckily we found a nice shack to sit with some Gambian – although ants fell on us and bit us the whole time. Both these experiences however are typical of my teaching observations – nothing is easy to do in the Gambia.
During this week I also needed to complete some school observations (and sort out my allowance issues). However the gods had decided that I wasn’t allowed to do work while Nic was here and worked against me! The first school we went to visit was in Bafaloto about 6 kilometers out of Brikama, I couldn’t get the student on the phone but had said I would visit (phones here might go flat and not be charged for a while as people don’t have power always in their homes). So we travelled out there to find she was sick and not at work. We then discovered the transport was few and far between so had to walk the 6 kilometers back in the hot sun, with no water!
The next school we went to visit, it started raining just as we were leaving so we were caught up for an hour. We finally got to the Gelli park and then had to wait an hour and a half on the Gelli for it to fill. By the time we finally got to the school the final bell was ringing and all the children were going home. Then we found out that the rain had slowed up the transport and we had to wait for two and a half hours in the rain to get a Gelli to go back to Brikama. Luckily we found a nice shack to sit with some Gambian – although ants fell on us and bit us the whole time. Both these experiences however are typical of my teaching observations – nothing is easy to do in the Gambia.
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