12/21/04
TUESDAY
DECEMBER 21, 2004
When seventy-thirty was approaching other people started to appear in the office. The first volunteer to arrive was Courtney, who wanted to get a good start on the day. Courtney and I talked about getting some breakfast at “Palais de Chocolate”, a small bakery a block away that sells croissants, waffles, and pancakes. I woke up Vickie to come along. During breakfast over pancakes I told Courtney about my friend who was visiting and she invited us to stay with her for a night or so, which I said I would try to do if time permitted.
This being the week before Christmas more volunteers were arriving from upcountry. I planned on taking the rest of the day easy and just do nothing but catch up on some lost sleep. However, when I went back to the office I ran into Sara Hoffman who just came back from village with her boyfriend, Rob, who was visiting from the UK. She invited everyone to the beach to relax, and to also have Rob meet other volunteers. An hour after the invitation was given I showed up to Laybatos. She was glad I arrived, as I was, so far, the only person to accept the general invite to relax on the beach.
Rob is going to school to be a lawyer in the UK and is in his last year of law-school. They had met while both were studying abroad a few years back in Australia. That year was one of Sara’s first years and Rob’s senior year. He had since went back to the UK to begin law school while Sara graduated college and joined the Peace Corps. Having spring break off he came to visit her just for the week. They had just arrived back from Battinjol, which they visited for just one full day. At the beach the three of us sat down on the chairs to discuss Peace Corps life and The Gambia.
I ordered a vegetable pizza and ate lunch as we talked about public transportation, and other stories. After an hour or so they got up to take a walk on the beach and go back to their hotel while I switched tables to where other volunteers were sitting. In the group was Laura Ploplys who, after two years, was going home that night. I sat with Laura, Tai, Rod, Isatou and her husband passing photos around that Laura’s boyfriend, Matt Judd, another volunteer, had sent from the US.
After just a half hour I got up to leave and said my final goodbyes to Laura and Tai. With having very little sleep I wanted to take an afternoon nap. The hostel was the closest bed so I went there. This is the new hostel that had been in progress for over a year. Diana had told us, over a year prior, that a new hostel would be opened and that we should be prepared. Within a month the alert died down, and within two months of hearing no news people stopped paying for their rooms seeing that the move should be imminent. Flash forward twelve months later and you finally have a new hostel ready to open and a backlog of over a $1,000 of payments unaccounted for.
The new hostel was located across town, nearer to the beach and farther away from the office by a few blocks and in the other direction. Compared to the old hostel it is an order of magnitude better. As you walk in you are facing what looks like a mansion. In fact, it used to be the former residence of The Gambia’s Ambassador to the United States. It is two storied with a walkout balcony surrounding the upstairs. Inside there is stairs (the old one had stairs in the outside, which didn’t work so well during the rainy season), and the living room was over triple the space of the old one. Peace Corps put an advertisement in the newspaper for a hostel manager and hired two to work full time. They had the first room in the house; despite a small apartment house in the far corner of the compound that was theirs, as they would be a live in manager. They hired Modou and Kakuta, better known as Kex. For the past few weeks they had been learning the volunteers faces and names as they arrived in town.
The price for the old hostel was D30 per night, and this one was D80 almost triple in price. However, most rooms were air-conditioned and the power and water were guaranteed to be on 24/7, whether they had to put on the generator or not. The old hostel, on the other hand, was prone to water and electricity troubles. Back in July, when all the volunteers were down for a meeting the water ran out so you had 50 volunteers unable to take showers, clean dishes, or flush the toilets for three days. It wasn’t a pretty sight. A latrine was recommended and two were actually built so another toilet-fiasco would not happen again.
The power was also terrible at the old hostel as the generator often failed. Eventually it was replaced with the loudest generator you could ever imagine. Whenever it was on you had to shut all the windows in order to hear yourself think. However, due to fuel shortages and it breaking down we were left with candles as light most of the time.
Whenever you come into the hostel, from out of town, you sign in with the managers and they assign you a room to sleep in. They try to fill in one room at a time, which can fit anywhere from four to eight people. I noticed that one of the top bunks in the largest room wasn’t taken up and so I kicked off my shoes, climbed the bed and took a two hour nap in the bunk nearest the corner of the room. Two hours later, as I stepped out of the room, the girls started asking me weird questions.
“How long have you been in that room?”
“I don’t know, maybe two hours or so.”
“You were in there for two hours! Where were you?”
“In the top bunk in the corner, taking a nap. Why?”
“Did you see anything?”
“See anything? No. I was asleep.”
The reason why the girls were questioning me was that of eight beds in the room, the seven girls had taken all but one of them. While I was sleeping they kicked out whatever guy was in the room, closed the door, and changed to go to the beach or shower. They didn’t see me since I was sleeping in the corner, and I didn’t see them since I was, again, sleeping in the corner. Even though they didn’t see me sleeping they knew I was telling the truth since they saw me at the office earlier and knew I had stayed up all night grading papers and I was half-asleep the rest of the day. I was honestly dead asleep and all worries were put to rest. That night’s dinner topic consisted of joking over the incident, and then I went home to actually go to bed again – this time for the night.
DECEMBER 21, 2004
When seventy-thirty was approaching other people started to appear in the office. The first volunteer to arrive was Courtney, who wanted to get a good start on the day. Courtney and I talked about getting some breakfast at “Palais de Chocolate”, a small bakery a block away that sells croissants, waffles, and pancakes. I woke up Vickie to come along. During breakfast over pancakes I told Courtney about my friend who was visiting and she invited us to stay with her for a night or so, which I said I would try to do if time permitted.
This being the week before Christmas more volunteers were arriving from upcountry. I planned on taking the rest of the day easy and just do nothing but catch up on some lost sleep. However, when I went back to the office I ran into Sara Hoffman who just came back from village with her boyfriend, Rob, who was visiting from the UK. She invited everyone to the beach to relax, and to also have Rob meet other volunteers. An hour after the invitation was given I showed up to Laybatos. She was glad I arrived, as I was, so far, the only person to accept the general invite to relax on the beach.
Rob is going to school to be a lawyer in the UK and is in his last year of law-school. They had met while both were studying abroad a few years back in Australia. That year was one of Sara’s first years and Rob’s senior year. He had since went back to the UK to begin law school while Sara graduated college and joined the Peace Corps. Having spring break off he came to visit her just for the week. They had just arrived back from Battinjol, which they visited for just one full day. At the beach the three of us sat down on the chairs to discuss Peace Corps life and The Gambia.
I ordered a vegetable pizza and ate lunch as we talked about public transportation, and other stories. After an hour or so they got up to take a walk on the beach and go back to their hotel while I switched tables to where other volunteers were sitting. In the group was Laura Ploplys who, after two years, was going home that night. I sat with Laura, Tai, Rod, Isatou and her husband passing photos around that Laura’s boyfriend, Matt Judd, another volunteer, had sent from the US.
After just a half hour I got up to leave and said my final goodbyes to Laura and Tai. With having very little sleep I wanted to take an afternoon nap. The hostel was the closest bed so I went there. This is the new hostel that had been in progress for over a year. Diana had told us, over a year prior, that a new hostel would be opened and that we should be prepared. Within a month the alert died down, and within two months of hearing no news people stopped paying for their rooms seeing that the move should be imminent. Flash forward twelve months later and you finally have a new hostel ready to open and a backlog of over a $1,000 of payments unaccounted for.
The new hostel was located across town, nearer to the beach and farther away from the office by a few blocks and in the other direction. Compared to the old hostel it is an order of magnitude better. As you walk in you are facing what looks like a mansion. In fact, it used to be the former residence of The Gambia’s Ambassador to the United States. It is two storied with a walkout balcony surrounding the upstairs. Inside there is stairs (the old one had stairs in the outside, which didn’t work so well during the rainy season), and the living room was over triple the space of the old one. Peace Corps put an advertisement in the newspaper for a hostel manager and hired two to work full time. They had the first room in the house; despite a small apartment house in the far corner of the compound that was theirs, as they would be a live in manager. They hired Modou and Kakuta, better known as Kex. For the past few weeks they had been learning the volunteers faces and names as they arrived in town.
The price for the old hostel was D30 per night, and this one was D80 almost triple in price. However, most rooms were air-conditioned and the power and water were guaranteed to be on 24/7, whether they had to put on the generator or not. The old hostel, on the other hand, was prone to water and electricity troubles. Back in July, when all the volunteers were down for a meeting the water ran out so you had 50 volunteers unable to take showers, clean dishes, or flush the toilets for three days. It wasn’t a pretty sight. A latrine was recommended and two were actually built so another toilet-fiasco would not happen again.
The power was also terrible at the old hostel as the generator often failed. Eventually it was replaced with the loudest generator you could ever imagine. Whenever it was on you had to shut all the windows in order to hear yourself think. However, due to fuel shortages and it breaking down we were left with candles as light most of the time.
Whenever you come into the hostel, from out of town, you sign in with the managers and they assign you a room to sleep in. They try to fill in one room at a time, which can fit anywhere from four to eight people. I noticed that one of the top bunks in the largest room wasn’t taken up and so I kicked off my shoes, climbed the bed and took a two hour nap in the bunk nearest the corner of the room. Two hours later, as I stepped out of the room, the girls started asking me weird questions.
“How long have you been in that room?”
“I don’t know, maybe two hours or so.”
“You were in there for two hours! Where were you?”
“In the top bunk in the corner, taking a nap. Why?”
“Did you see anything?”
“See anything? No. I was asleep.”
The reason why the girls were questioning me was that of eight beds in the room, the seven girls had taken all but one of them. While I was sleeping they kicked out whatever guy was in the room, closed the door, and changed to go to the beach or shower. They didn’t see me since I was sleeping in the corner, and I didn’t see them since I was, again, sleeping in the corner. Even though they didn’t see me sleeping they knew I was telling the truth since they saw me at the office earlier and knew I had stayed up all night grading papers and I was half-asleep the rest of the day. I was honestly dead asleep and all worries were put to rest. That night’s dinner topic consisted of joking over the incident, and then I went home to actually go to bed again – this time for the night.
posted by Mike | 5:21 PM
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