One last quick update before I go up-country.

Now seems like a good time to go over my site situation.

I live in the URR (Upper River Region). This region is the farthest away from the capital and gets the most extreme weather. My place is a circle house with a grass roof and a big backyard area. The family I am living with is small by Gambian standards (grandma, host dad, 2 host moms, 4 kids, and 3 adopted kids) with my host dad driving a van and my host moms gardening. My village is big (about 55 compounds) and is about an hours bike ride from Basse (the other city in Gambia). I'm going to be working on an education program in village and possibly work on a English as Second Language program. So far though, I am mostly working on language and trying to get my barrings.

IST is done. It was quiet a blast, informative, and I think it really gave people motivation and guidance for work at site. To celebrate the end of IST we went out to Senegambia for some relaxation. (not that getting a full day at the Sheraton wasn't relaxing enough).

Here are some high/low lights from the night.

High: Discount drinks. I know the PC gets a bad rap for our affections towards drinking but we go on long stints at site without any indulgence so when we have a day off, working power, and good friends we make sure to enjoy ourselves.

Low: glass getting knocked out of my hand, shattering, and getting a bunch of little cuts on my foot.

High: a Susan Boyle esk woman at karaokee who really made the night wonderful. Her cheesy songs allowed me to shout supportive comments like "you tell that man!" in a southern gospel church style.

Low: Weird young Euro guys who tried to take a picture of me when I was dancing with one of them. Not ok young man, not ok.

High: Singing Bohemian Rhaspody and Fever. The first was done by me and 4 excited friends. The latter was my attempt at being classy.

Low: A drunk man yelling at us because we wouldn't give him our numbers. He was a lively, and hated the Peace Corps, or at least thought that giving us a mouth full would somehow fix the situation.

So now we are being freed into the infinitey of the rest of our service. I have a lot of good ideas about what to do, the hard part is just starting them. I guess the rough part is getting through the first year but even that doesn't seem to be too long. I have 3 months here, 2 weeks back home, and then 5 months until my first year is up. But first, gotta get back into the heat and try to start my school education program.

Cooking with the ladies.

I am going to ignore most of the events that lead up until now i.e training and 3 month challenge, but randomly interject them into this blog. For now, lets get into today!

We are several days into IST (In Service Training). So far so good. I really think the staff is putting together interesting and useful information. Today we learned about creative ways of teaching. A drama group came in and performed, with one man being really good at fake crying, and luckily no AID's Babies came into topic. That seems to be a reoccuring theme "she stopped going to school, got a boyfriend, got pregnant and suddenly had a AID's baby and died". There was a lot of yelling but the acting wasn't bad by any means.

Our group got bused over to an NGO in the Southern part of the country which seems to be doing great work. They have all sorts of programs going on. One thing they are working on is education through puppet shows. They performed one for us that was funny and somewhat adult. Look out Avenue Q, we got to hear lines like "I will slaughter you!" and "Who has been enjoying you!?", the skit was about cheating and the characters forgave eachother really quickly. It's always funny to hear lines quickly and somewhat monotonely delivered. It was really funny though.

After the skit we got to see a play with some ladies in drag (not all but the 2 who were in drag were really funny), and a traditional skit with a signing group. After that some ladies sang and did hair. It ended up being very sureal as 1 man played the keyboards frantically (and without any idea of chords) while women did hair in a speedy presentation and children slowly started to surround us. It was one of the many sureal moments we have had.

One thing we saw that was awesome (and will have pictures later) was a cooking apron with a sketch of the female reproductive system. I had to buy it. I might be able to use it later but just for the fact that it was so random and would be hard to ever find again I had to get it.

That's all for now. We are doing a taco night. I will update on training and funny stories later, but that is what is going on now.

This was a picture from inside the airport in Brussels. A nice painting to welcome us to Europe.

This is as we were getting in the Newark Airport. We had quite the line.
This is a view from the plane on our way to Brussels.

This is my blog on my service here in Gambia while I'm in the Peace Corps. I'm 6 months in but better late than never.


This blog does not represent the U.S. Government or United States Peace Corps. Anything said is of the opinion of the writter and not that of the U.S. Gov or USPC.