10/30/02
ok the really big update has a happened now. This was in my opinion far more difficult than it should have been. JavaScript is fairly annoying in a great many ways. Anyhow, as you can see I've add a bunch of stuff. Including an Updates section on the main page, I'm probably also going to do a little final rearranging of both the photo pages and I'll probably start archiving the Log page. The buttons above should be working and should take you anywhere within this site you want to go. I'm going to rest now. bye.
Big Site Update Today!!!!! Cyndi and I decided to change the colour scheme a bit as you may have noticed. More importantly though we've added a new photos page. Click HERE to get to the new pics. I'll hopefully get some buttons up soon. I'm still trying to learn some of the fundamentals of JavaScript though. ok. bye.
On Monday we went over to the Franco Gambian Alliance and watched a film. They play films every Monday and Thursday and for 150 Dalasi per year membership, (that’s like 7 dollars) you can join their center for the season. It seems like a very good idea as I could at least get to see films sometimes. And they don’t seem to be too out of date either. It seems a good mix of old and new films. On Monday we saw “The Mission” with Robert DeNiro, and Jeremy Irons. Great film but very depressing. Also as Chad pointed out afterwards, it was interesting that they did everything possible to make the Jesuit Missionaries into heroes whereas the truth was probably most often quite different. It also has one of the best film scores ever, and proves why Enrico Morricone deserves his legendary status. If anyone hasn’t seen this film I would highly recommend it. Tonight were going to see a French film, I’m not sure what it is though. Anyhow, I am very happy at the prospect of being able to see films again. That’s all for now.
Well, we've had quite the interesting week, full of more than a few ups and downs. I probably would've updated earlier but Cyndi and I wanted to wait until things had settled themselves down a bit. Cyndi's grandfather died during last week. It's been a fairly trying time for the family. He always struck me as a really good person, but he was sick and in pain.
We also had a bit of an altercation with our boss last Monday and things we're pretty tense here for a while. I think our misunderstandings may have been somewhat culturally based. But thankfully things are back on track now. Our boss has gone for a ten day IT conference in Washington; and Cyndi and I are plugging along working and learning all we can.
We've been hanging out some with this other Canadian guy here Chad. He was here working for the Y last year and has now returned to do a six month stint with the African Human Rights Commission. They are holding session here in The Gambia now, which from what I understand entails hearing cases, drafting policy, and generally trying to make the world a better place. It's pretty interesting stuff.
On Friday night we went out to a good ex-Pat restaurant called Weezos. It seems to be very popular although I can't imagine that people can often afford to go there as a single cocktail was 70 dalasi. Actually that works out to about $3.50 US; which may seem fairly reasonable to you, but firstly remember that normally here you can get a full chicken dinner for like $1.50 US, and secondly remember that we aren't getting paid for our time here. Everything we spend comes out of our pocket, unless we work on workshops then we make a little. Anyhow, it was expensive, but very good. Who would have thought you'd see a Mexican restaurant in The Gambia.
On Saturday we had a very big day. We, (Cyndi, Jakob, Finley, and I) we're invited by the Accounts teacher here at the vocational school to come over to his house for lunch. It wasn't too far and Cyndi and I are getting pretty good at taking the bush taxis from here to there (well, at least we know how much they should and shouldn't cost). Anyhow, Mr M'Boge, the accounts teacher came by and went with us as there are virtually no street signs anywhere and absolutely no numbers on the houses. He lives in an area past Serekunda Market. I'm not sure I mentioned that before. Serekunda is the big area nearby us. It is known for its marketplace, very intense place. To me though honestly, I can't tell where one area ends and the next one begins. It's all just sprawling residential. And really there's only two or three roads worth even counting in the whole area. Although they do have the one and only traffic light in the Gambia nearby. Anyhow, I'm getting side-tracked We went with Mr M'Boge, I'm afraid I don't actually know his first name, and at length came to his compound. Pretty much everyone here lives in a compound. There really aren't houses to speak of anywhere; just rooms. He doesn't have any children but we know his wife as Jakob and I have recently begun teaching her on MS Word, Acess, and Excel. We sat for a while talking and then M'Boge played us a very strange movie from Nigeria. Not that he really wanted us to watch a movie, maybe he just wanted to put something on, or maybe it's just an odd cultural thing. Anyhow, at least it was better than "Esmeralda". "Esmeralda" is a Spanish, or possibly Portuguese soap opera from the 1980s that's been poorly dubbed into English; yet everyone in the country seems obsessed with. Anyhow, we didn't really watch the film, which is probably for the best as it seemed to be a combination action, political, musical, fantasy film. We ate, we ate a lot. We we're served benechin, probably the most popular local dish. Benachin literally means one bowl, in Mandinka (one of the tribal languages), and that's exactly how we ate it. A big heaping of rice with tomatoes, lots of onion, and chilis, potatoes, and chicken, or fish in the case of this Saturday. It was a huge serving all mixed together in a very large bowl. At least we ate with spoons; unlike I'm told they do out in the villages. It was quite good food and we spent the rest of the afternoon having good conversation. M'Boge, it seems was an electoral observer during the last national elections. He was one of many officials chosen to oversee that the election standards were upheld, and that the process was free and fair. They use the tried and tested coloured marble in a bucket method here. And as a local journalist recently noted the marble or checked Photograph method, as they've adopted in Brazil, might have saved the last American presidential elections from becoming the fiasco that they were.
M'Boge then showed us his wedding video. I'm not overly sure what prompted it, but it was fairly interesting. Even though his family is Muslim they practice a fairly Westernised, Christian style wedding. He explained to us how it works like that on both sides of the coin. It seems many Christians here adopt Muslim values and vice-versa. Apparently around Christmas time everyone you meet is Christian, while when you get to Ramadan everyone is a Muslim. It seems to work though, because it's all about unity. The wedding video was ok, although people were pretty bad dancers. After a long while we finally left, and made our way home.
On Saturday night we went out with Samba, one of the caretaker here at the Ys kids. He's in his 20s and seems pretty cool. He acts fairly Rasta, which isn't that uncommon here. The youth culture here seems to borrow a lot from the African-American images on movies and tv. Which admittedly is at times a little disturbing, but it does seem to have a gentler Pan-African aspect to it too. Anyhow, Samba is in a reggae group and took us out first to meet his friends, mostly part of a small music production company called "Bull Doff" (means 'don't be crazy' in Wolof). Then we went out to the Franco-Gambian Alliance center for a show. It was a weird sort of mish-mash of performances. Most of it was local rappers, who obviously have watched waaay to much American television. Not that they were bad, most did a lip-sync to one song, but they had really had this whole wanna be gangsta thing going. Also, an obvious lip sync is kinda lame anytime. But it was still fun. There was also a group performing traditional Gambian, music and dance. They were very cool, it involved lots of drumming, and a flute, with some intense dancing, and some tumbling thrown in. Although I'm convinced that they threw a couple break dancing moves in there too. Anyhow, after that they showed a long rather boring documentary about local artists. It might have been better if the production value was better, but really, the local media is pretty much what you would expect from a developing country, and we've been spoiled for a long time. We had a good time, and are planning on joining the Franco-Gambian Alliance center as they've got a video club and screen movies every Monday and Thursday.
On Sunday we went to the beach and relaxed. While we were there we came across a really nice painting by a local artist. Now that the tourists are starting to arrive here, there are people selling everything on the beach. Anyhow, I think this is the first time that the Wolof classes we've started taking have really paid off. We bargained with the guy and got this fantastic painting for a really good deal. I'll try to get a picture of it up on the photo page. Anyhow, that's about the end of what we're up to. I'm going to put a new batch of photos up really soon. And hopefully get some more shots especially of the local animals. Ok that's all. Bye.
Today we went to a day long capacity building workshop entitled "Let's Build Together". It was interesting in the way that watching one of Andy Warhol's movies is interesting. Needless to say we ditched out at lunch. Gambian's seem to love workshops. The only thing they seem to like more than workshops is the closing cermonies of workshops. People get to write speeches, and extole how much we've all grown etc… I don't mean to sound unenthused. It's really no big deal. And honestly it really is a good thing that the information is getting out there. I was quite impressed with our boss the director of the Training center Poncelet. He gave maybe the best speech of the ones we saw. He's one of those guys that can come off pretty rough sometimes, so it was nice to actually hear his motovations for being here. I mean, he's a Nigerian with a degree from Cambridge. He could be working in the private sector most anywhere in the world making very good money; instead he chooses to be here, doing what he can to help people through education. I don't think I really got that until today. We also did finally get to go up to Banjul today, and see a bit of the city. It's actually like a real city. With sidewalks and everything. Very cool. Still, most of the buildings were pretty run down. Some of it was quite impressive, notobly the giant arch that Jammeh built at the enterence of town. I think his goal was like one of those big arches in Europe, and it looks good only thing is the ground he built it on isn't as solid as he originally thought. Meaning that if everyone drove through it to enter town pretty soon there'd be a big hole in the ground there. So now only he's allowed to drive through the Archway. Still, it's pretty impressive, and easily the tallest thing here in The Gambia. Another Canadian guy has arrived here. It's pretty weird, I haven't met anyone from Canada yet except this guy Chad (he's from Salmon Arm, BC). He was here last year for a bit but is back now to do some work for the government or something. Anyways I'd better go, gotta get to the beach before it gets too hot. Later.
Well, a mighty wild week we have had... with nary an activity no less. First, I would like to comment of Geoff's previous journal. It has not been suggested that the "Gambians shot and ate" all of their wildlife. It has been suggested that the Sahara is slowly encroaching on the Gambia and that hunting of endangered species occured here as it did all over west africa (hence the reason the Ivory Coast is no longer terribly ivory-filled). It was not, as i understand it, extinction caused by overeating.
Anyway, most of the last week has been spent working. Geoff and Jakob teach a part-time class from 3-5 and Finlay and I have agreed to split our classes so that I teach second year students and he teaches first years. This is especially good because i had a hard time preparing the "computer vocabulary" lecture and am much more equipped to teach intermediate excel, etc. Although, i did frantically have to learn IF functions today just before the course. We all enjoy our students but are still sometimes surprised at the types of things they don't understand. All in all, a decent beginning of the school year and everyone seems to be learning a lot (especially us).
We haven't been terribly active because Geoff has had a bit of a flu. Whenever anyone gets a fever and flu symptoms here, everyone thinks they have malaria, so it freaked us out a little, but we have taken our pills faithfully and were pleased to discover that it is only a flu, which is still sucky enough, but getting better.
Our computer lab has been the victim of the famed BugBear Worm. The veterinary research center got it last week so i was kind of expecting we would get it too, given the size of the Gambia's IT community. Anyway, it's been a stressful couple of days for our director and there will be new security protocols from now on.
Everything seems to be headed in the right direction (Geoff feeling better, the computer worm hopefully destroyed), so we will hopefully be back to wild adventures on the weekend. Cheers...
The last couple days have been fairly trying at times. Jakob and I have begun teaching in earnest. Although it is only 3 days a week so far. We seem to be busy all the time anyways. I finally managed to finish putting up some photos. So if you haven't already go check out the Photo Pages. Cyndi has gone back to her vetrinarians for two days worth of training on Oracle in french. Of course she's never used Oracle before. Ah, well, she seems to be doing ok with it.
There's a rumor going around about these computers that are comming to the Gambia. Apparently they've been waiting on some 500 computers from the World Bank, Worldlinks (an offshoot of the WB, Unicef, Peace Corps, and a few other companies, for around two years now and finally the red tape is comming to an end. What does this mean? It means, dear friends that there is a growing possibility that Jakob, Cyndi, and I, might find ourselves out in the bush installing computers (I think with a tech) training lab managers, setting up networks, and possibly setting up solar power cells for these computer labs. I mean you need power, and if your village has none, solar power is a pretty good way to go. Pretty crazy right? Well, it might just happen in a few weeks… I guess I'd better start learning things faster. As it stands I've been only one or two steps ahead of the students. Ah, I know I really shouldn't stress. I'll stop now. I worry too much, things'll work out, they always do.
On another note, did you know that there are no big animals here in The Gambia? It's true, apparently there used to be elephants and the like but the Gambians shot and ate them all. They like to kill things here. A Peace Corps guy told me this story that a certain unnamed offical wanted his home town to become this nature preserve type of place. But because The Gambia only has a few native animals (although they do have a lot of birds), he had to import these animals. So anyways, he gets a hold of a giraffe and then lets it loose near his home town during the night. The idea being that randomly a giraffe wandered into the country, conveniently right near a newly formed nature reserve. But you know what happened? After like three days the locals shot the giraffe and ate it. They probably saw it and just freaked out. Or maybe they were just hungry, and bored. I don't really know though, this is just a story I heard, it might not be true, but it wouldn't surprise me. That's all for now. Bye.
On Saturday night there was a really really bad ferry accident off the coast of Gambia. A Senagalize ferry travelling from the southern part of Senegal to Dakar was apparently overloaded by a few hundred people and capsized in the night. As of now they've only got aproximately 65 survivors, and they've already found over 500 bodies. They expect the total count to be around 900. Mostly women and children. It's pretty greusome stuff. Click here for a story on the disaster from CNN online.
Well, a long first week of work led to a very tired Geoff and Jakob. Their students were much appreciative, however, and even made them each a shirt, complete with wild pattern and shoulder pads which are popular among African men. I was spoiled teaching only half days to French speaking veterinary researchers in a gorgeous area of town. I so liked the area that I made the boys come out to dinner there for a Saturday night celebration of our first week. The tourist season officially begins in about two weeks so the restaurants have staffed up but are still not getting any business. We ate outside at a 5-star hotel with a steel drum band (they keep the restaurant prices down so that the tourists never leave the property). A trainee waitress spilled nearly 40 oz. of beer on Geoff and myself, but the pizza and canneloni made it worth the hassle. Since there was hardly anybody there, we toured the hotel, looked at every menu at every restaurant, bar, and club in the area. Jakob is looking for a nice hotel for when his fiancée comes to visit at the end of his stay here, so we looked around the grounds, which include a huge pool, observatory, and giant chessboard with 2 ft. pieces. Out of Jakob's price range at an astounding 2400 Dalasi per night, but perhaps well within the price range of any parent who may want to come visit at around US$125.00. Perfectly lovely hotels in the area are around D500. Anyway, it was fun to look and we are getting fairly adept at rejecting the various bumsters and salesman who hussle us for money.
We also had a really nice day at the beach yesterday (see photos), complete with horseback riding, boogie boarding, and lovely cushioned lawn chairs. This sort of thing is really cheap right now because the tourists aren't here yet. Our friend, Finlay, a volunteer from Liberia, really enjoyed his first experience at galloping but both Fin and Jakob woke up with nasty bruises from not knowing exactly how to trot. Jakob also has a bright red face as a result of his unique theory on sunscreen. He says he won't stay in the sun and then he won't need sunscreen. Hmmm. Jakob's favorite phrase is, " Man, it's HOT ! "
We find that staying out late is hard, especially without spending a lot of money, but if there is something fun to do until 1 or 2 then we can avoid being in our rooms while the power is out. We often play cards on the roof of our building by candlelight. There is usually a nice breeze and when it's not cloudy, the stars are fabulous. Last night, we even tried to come up with the constellations we were seeing though we actually had no idea and Jakob is convinced he saw a UFO.
This morning we decided to try and get some photos while most everybody is off at church or home. We were fairly successful and only minimally hassled. Let us know what you think.
Well, the last few days have been pretty weird. Kinda boring in many ways. Jakob and I have been doing a lot of preparing for our workshop with the National Gambia Teachers Union. And Cyndi has been really busy trying to get her French technical terms up to speed. I think it's harder for Cyndi. She's going to be teaching Advanced Microsoft Access to some pretty intelligent people. I mean they may be rural Veterinarians, but they are all doctors who mostly studied abroad. At least the people I started with today are totally new to things. I just need to be one step ahead of them all the time. I know, I'm stressing, but I don't want to disappoint people. Cyndi on the other hand seems pretty chilled out about the whole thing. I guess I just need to relax.
Ahh, enough about work. On Saturday we went to the beach here for the first time. It was really cool, even though it was cloudy and actually started to rain an hour or two after we go there we still had a good time. Cyndi, Jakob , me, and Finley (another volunteer here from Liberia) went down together. The one thing I really noticed was that the water was so warm, like a bathtub. Also there were like no tourists yet, I guess the season doesn't get going for a while. But it was very nice. I understand why Europeans think of this like their Caribbean. Maybe not quite as blue water or white sand; but still great.
Some boys were riding horses on the beach and Finley went to ask them if we could go for a ride. We decided not to do it right then but, next Saturday they will come down with 4 horses for us to ride on the beach for a while. Very cool.
Maybe the weirdest thing was the farmer bringing his heard of cows down onto the beach. I really don't think I've ever seen 30 cows on a beach before.
After we were at the beach for a while we started walking home to the Y. As we passed the resorts we began getting harassed by the Bumsters looking for money. It was pretty annoying, but then a weird sort of thing happened. One of the gardeners here at the YMCA came up to us and said he saw us and wanted to come over and say hi. I didn't recognize him, but I think Jakob did. I'm finding it slow to learn who everyone is, and especially to remember all these African names is very challenging. Anyway it doesn't really matter, he told us that he had just gotten married and he wanted to take us to meet his new wife. I, maybe stupidly, agreed. We went on a walk through the center of Kombo village and were taken to meet the local Imam (Muslim priest). On the way we got to see the some of this closed off communities limited resources. We saw their rice paddies, mango trees, and cornfield. Jakob and I were both pretty stoked by this little tour, but Cyndi and Finley both I think knew that we were having some sort of scam played on us. We met with the Imam at the orphanage. It was a pretty run down shack near the central power station. Basically at this point I knew they were going to ask us for some money, a donation, basically at which point we couldn't refuse. The thing is though, I mean, no matter what you think of luring foreigners to the local orphanage in order to weasel a donation out of them, you have to actually look around and realize; hey, no matter how poor I am, no matter how little I have, these people have so much less. And so yeah, I gave them a donation, and I don't want to think of it as a scam. This is how they live. How they have to live. Ok, ok, enough, I've had enough moral questions about this situation for today. It is what it is. Peace out.
I know it has been a very long time since I've updated this section, but I've been quite busy and more importantly, things are very hard to get done. Even when I am working at a computer center. I'll get to that later though. First to catch you up on what we've been up to these first few days...
Well so we left Canada on Wednesday the 11th. A very long and hot flight overnight across the Atlantic. Vancouver to London to Brussels on British Airways. For some reason BA decided not to keep the plane cool at night so everyone was very hot. It was good that we each got our own video screens with a selection of whatever film we wanted to watch. Both Cyndi and I have been pushing ourselves pretty hard over the last little while and probably drinking too much, so maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise that we both got fairly sick as soon as we left. At first I thought it must just be nerves and a bad diet for the last little while; but we really were in no shape for Europe. Cyndi's folks put us up in the Holiday Inn for two nights, which was really nice 'cause we spent a few very sick nights trying o sleep/eat/whatever and finding it hard. We actually had to put off going to Paris. It was a real shame too; Cyndi's birthday was on the 14th and had to be spent in bed. But we did get to see some of Brussels. We saw that big square downtown and the peeing boy statue. Talk about a ridiculous tourist attraction! I mean come on! It's a boy; that pees!!! What gives!? Cyndi and I ate street waffles and the people at the Holiday in were extremely helpful in showing us how to find an open pharmacy on Sunday.
Our first two nights in Brussels were spent out by the old Expo grounds. Instead of building the normal big Expo Ball thingy they instead built a huge metal atom-like structure called the Atomium. It was the symbol of the 1956 Expo and stood for the birth of the Atomic Age. We also saw some of the sights around the Expo area. Namely the most touristy of the tourist abysses "Mini-Europe". That's right. Europe, in miniature...
So Anyhow, after a somewhat suckie 4 days we finally got to leave. Our last night in Europe we got pay-per-view and got to watch Harry Potter like 5 times; so it really wasn't all bad.
On Monday we made our way to the airport, feeling a little bit better, but not great by any means. We got through security in like 15 minutes; very weird to be somewhere that's not obsessed with airport security. I had thought that our SM Brussels Airlines flight to Banjul Gambia was like a quick 4 or 5 hours but it turned out to be more like 8 and a half. We had a layover in Dakar, Senegal. When we finally, finally arrived though we were so happy; and guess what? As soon as we got off the plane we both started feeling a lot better. Of course another thing hit me as I stepped off the plane. The HEAT. Like a brick wall of heat and humidity. I mean it was cloudy and like 6 o'clock at night but I'd swear it was 30 degrees Celsius with 80% humidity. Us and the maybe 30 others who'd traveled all the way to Banjul got off and went into customs. The line was pretty long but we made it through totally fine. Baggage claim was a different story though. There were all these guys trying to help you out. You know, load up your cart and such. At first I said no way, but then I realized that we hadn't been through the checked bag search yet. And these guys were all dressed alike with ID tags so I figured it would be ok. One guy helped us and escorted us over to the bag checking military guy. Unbeknownst to me they had a deal going whereby if someone helps you the officers only have to go through one of your bags instead of all of them. We then went out and I was left wondering if these guys were actually official or not. I found out later that like a lot of things here it is officially sanctioned but still cost me 5 Euros. Kinda shady anyways.
We waited outside in a deluge of 'Bumsters' harassing us until the director of the computer center at the YMCA, Poncelet, came and picked us up. We also picked up a Swedish guy named Jakob who was on the plane with us and is going to be volunteering at the YMCA too. He strikes me as a very good guy to have around. He's been volunteering with the YMCA in Sweden for a while but he has a masters degree in electrical engineering. and will be here for 6 months. I get the impression that we'll be spending a lot of time with Jakob.
Anyhow, Poncelet took us off to the YMCA in Kanifeng. He is Nigerian and has pretty much set up the whole computer center here at the Y with his fiancée, the other main administrator Cecilia. Unfortunately Cecilia is in Johannesburg setting up another Y's digital studio facilities; she won't be back till the end of October.
At this point we got a bit of information overload. Poncelet gave us a crash rundown on a multitude of subjects and it was a bit much to take in. Basically though, Cyndi, and I, (and Jakob) will be helping out in a few areas here. They run a small Cyber café here which eventually Jakob will takeover. Cyndi, being bilingual (french/enlish) will often be helping out in any situation trying to educate rural Senegalese and the like. She will also be taking over Cecilia's classes for some of the younger kids with another volunteer from the Liberian YMCA named Finley.
They run a vocational school out of the Y. Nothing too complicated: Word Processing, Database, Spreadsheets, etc. Most of the people who come here though have actually never touched a computer before so hopefully the fact that I'm really not that knowledgeable or that Cyndi and I have no real IT training won't be a big issue. Yes, yes I know it sounds easy, but really, could you teach a class on Excel? Next week? That's the situation I'm in... ok, well not to dwell. The Y also contracts out classes for companies and organizations. This is how they seem to make money for the program. This week is holidays; so next week we begin both the vocational school year (a two year program) and we're contracted out for two jobs. Cyndi and a nice woman named Sarah will be teaching database management for French speaking rural veterinarians for 2 weeks. While Jakob and I will spend our days training provincial librarians to manage their budgets and catalog their books in a database.
To me this is pretty crazy. I mean it's exciting, but it's really a head trip. Just thrown into this African culture; only dealing with the beginnings of its national technological education. It's all a bit much to take in.
Poncelet took us on a walk around a few blocks once the sun went down. Very strange. Red earth. Lots of people out walking, or selling mangos and peanuts on the side of the road. Definitely sensory overload; but we are both quite happy to be here finally.
Hot, Hot, Hot. There's not much to say but hot. Thank god our room has a fan in it. There was a small storm overnight, thankfully it didn't know the power out. Because it's still the rainy season here for a month or so there will be a lot of humidity around and frequent storms. Apparently once it become the dry season, we'll probably be driven crazy because of the oven like dryness. We'll see I guess. Cyndi, Jakob and I have all of our meals paid for so we met up and ate at the Y's cafe. The seem to serve traditional lunches, Cassava Leaf on rice, or curry dishes, and then have fish or chicken for dinner. The menu is a little small. I have a feeling we might get tired of this same food always. But then again, free is free. And Volunteering really isn't about living the high life. There's always mangos. There cheap.
We spent today meeting people and getting a basic lay of the land. We spent some time walking around trying to get money (dalasi) but found it far more complicated tan we expected. We walked in the afternoon sun for like two hours, and I felt like I was sweating a liter a minute. We are in Kanifeng or Combo as some people call it. We're around 15km from Banjul, which I think is maybe for the best. It's still a few months until the tourist season here so a lot of the people around the Y are Peace Corps. They've got their offices down the main road and have some sort of working relationship with the Y. We sat and talked with a few of the Peace Corp people who are staying here and they seem really cool. Now they get good training. They've just finished two months of intensive language training off in the bush (the provinces). Most of the locals speak Wolof, the main trading language. Because The Gambia is a gathering point for many tribes though there are many other languages here and most people speak some English. Our trip down the main street here Kairaba Ave (or Pipeline) was pretty much a bust. The two bank machines on either end of town were both down, and the bank was closed. So, no money today. We took a cab back as Jakob had a very few dalasi; of course we got ripped off. It's a little daunting here. I guess we need to just expect to fumble around until we get to know the score here. We haven't gotten off to the ocean yet. We were very near it but we didn't have time today. This is about all I can handle writing for now. More later.
On Wednesday Jakob and I spent basically the whole day doing a tutorial on Access. Dull, dull, dull. At least the computer lab is air conditioned. People are really quite friendly to us. But we went out for a walk with a Peace Corp guy named Tim to the local gym and he was getting a completely different level of respect. It's pretty drastic and impressive, when the locals see a 'tubob' (white person/tourist/slave trader) speaking Wolof they are waaay more cordial. Even just basic phrases. Meaning we think we should get ourselves a phrase book and learn some Wolof. At least enough not to get ripped off in the taxis.
The power went out for a few hours on Wednesday night so Cyndi, Jakob and I spent a few hours up on the rooftop patio here at the Y. It was very nice, at least a little bit cooler than inside.
Thursday has so far been spent working on Excel, and writing all of this nonsense out. Jakob and I really need to know what we are doing next week. We've really no time to waste. But still, staring at a computer screen for 8 hours on end can get tedious. We all plan on going out this evening to the market for supplies. I'll write more when I can. Bye for now.
Well, here we are, just about ready to leave. Things have been pretty crazy lately. Cyndi and I moved out of our place like a week ago and have been staying with friends. I thought that'd be great y'know, 'cause we'd be totally packed up and ready to go a week before our plane left; but sadly no... I obviously forgot to account for partying with friends. I mean basically you've just got to socalize 24/7. It can be kind of draining. But hey, I'm not complaining. We're really ready to go now. My parents helped us do a lot of the packing, and we're down in Seattle hanging out with Cyn's parents now. In fact we're about to drive back up to Vancouver and get ready for our flight tomorrow. Things are actually comming together remarkably well, even if we still can't get a straight answer out of anyone about some of the simple pracical issues. I guess, that's a whole part of it though. ok, I'll sign off now. We'll be in Paris for the next 4 days, chillin out as it is Cyndi's Birthday!!! Then it's off to Gambia. We'll write more when we arrive. Lates.
