1/4/05
TUESDAY
JANUARY 4, 2005
The alarm went off at 5:30 in the morning. The main purpose of an alarm is to wake you up. We were already awake because of the rats, so the alarm served its secondary purpose – time to get a move on. Usually there isn’t any power in Bansang, or very rarely if ever. Throughout the morning we were packing by candlelight. I first had to use my key-chain light to find the candles and then the matches. None of the girls were up and so we left without saying goodbye and walked the few blocks to the car park.
Only two cars were waiting for passengers. One of the cars was headed to Basse, only an hour ride away, which caused some confusion as to why people would want to leave so early. The other vehicle was heading west to Brikama, outside of Banjul, and would take eight hours. People were lined up to get on that van, as were we. The front seat was open and we were going to get it, but as we were handing our bags to the aparante to put on top someone else grabbed front seat. This meant that Dave would have no leg room for this trip.
The ghelli-ghelli’s are second-class vans that can usually fit around thirty people (plus screaming babies and/or squawking chickens) if full. Three benches facing the driver and front passengers, along with two back benches facing each other, is the usual layout. For each of the rows the last seat folds in our out, depending if a passenger needs to get through or not. When it is full you may wonder how the people even got in, as there is no aisle or passageway to be seen, as the folded up seat is now taken. The outsides are painted white with other decorations painted on in bright colors. The phrase ‘Alhamdulillah’ is usually painted on the front, right underneath the driver’s window. The phrase means ‘Praise be to Allah’. Although decorated in the Muslim style, with Arabic saying and praises to Allah, no ghelli-ghelli is complete without a matching set of pre-1984 Madonna stickers on the back window!
I liked what Mark Moxon had to say about Ghelli-ghelli’s:
--
Not only are the buses in this part of the world crammed to bursting point, they're also decorated with the most intriguing collection of stickers and posters. Along with the taxis, the buses have stickers plastered over the backs and sides, most of them proclaiming allegiance to a marabout brotherhood (in which case the sticker is of a guy looking suspiciously like the evil Emperor in Star Wars), or to Allah (in which case Koranic quotations are the order of the day). But a hugely popular and completely mysterious sticker is of Madonna in her 'Material Girl' period, bending her head back and blowing a kiss at the camera. She's dolled up in clothing that screams '1980s!' at you, and every time it's exactly the same sticker. It's a really common picture, and it's faintly disturbing; religion and politics I can understand, but 1980s Madonna? Goodness only knows where that fad came from!
--
After about an hour of waiting the car left around seven-thirty. The sun was up and the new day had started. The road from Bansang to Soma is very smooth by Gambian standards and the car drove on without much hassle. It was only about three hours later before we made it to Soma, the halfway point and stopped for lunch. The most popular place to eat in Soma, while at lunch break, is the one-man chop-shop on the main road. This guy had his table set out in front of a bidick, and had enough room for maybe eight people to sit around the material, spread across two tables. We watched him effortlessly make different orders of coffee and sandwiches simultaneously. Dave and I ordered two sandwiches and a coffee for myself. The coffee is made with instant powdered coffee (Nescafe), water, and a half-glass of sweetened condensed milk. The owner mixed the coffee not with the usual swirl that we do regularly in the US but with a chopping motion with a side twist to each down-turn that after being here a year I still can’t reproduce. However he did it, it produced a frothy foam.
Before we had put our bags on top I had taken out the roll of toilet paper and stuffed it in my pocket as you never know when you might need it. At lunch Dave had to use the latrine as a result I took out the toilet paper while another Gambian had to translate to the owner what we were requesting. The owner finished the drinks he was making, picked up a small bucket of water with a spout solely for washing the hands and escorted Dave to where the latrine was. A few minutes after he returned I had to go myself. The latrine was around the corner and actually in a family’s compound. I don’t know whether that compound was the owner’s of the shop or whether it was just the closest latrine and the family was used to random people using their facilities.
There was someone inside the latrine when I arrived so I passed the time away by playing with the kids, grabbing their arms and twirling them around to the delight of the parents, until it was my turn to use the latrine. When I got back to the shop there were two other white people sitting down. I recognized one of them.
“Hey Alicia!”
Alicia turned around and was surprised to see me. Her and I are the co-editors of the “The Oh-Fish-All” which is the official newsletter for the forty-some Education volunteers in country. While I live in Kombo she lives in Sare Alpha, which is not only passed Bansang, passed Basse, but she is, in fact, the farthest upcountry education volunteer. We rarely meet, and usually conduct business about the newsletter by e-mail as she’s only an hour’s drive away from Basse where there is Internet access.
“Hey Mike! What are doing in Soma?”
“Stopping for lunch. This is Dave, he’s my friend that’s visiting. We just came from Bansang this morning.”
Alicia also had one of her friends visiting Janelle. Dave shook two hands, Alicia shook one, I shook one, and Janelle shook two. Six handshakes from four people. We were heading from upcountry down to Kombo while they were heading from Kombo back to upcountry. We both met at the same spot at the same time. Although this spot is a popular designation for lunch and all cross-country trips stop in Soma for lunch it still reminded me of the popular math problem of a mountain climber:
“A man leaves his home at 2:00 p.m. Friday to begin a hike up a mountain. That night he sleeps at the top of the mountain and at 2:00 p.m. Saturday begins his journey down the mountain to his home. On both legs of the trip he occasionally stops to look at the view or to rest and pays little attention to the time. He follows the same trail on both days. Is it likely that sometime Saturday he would be at the same place on the trail at the same time of day as he was on Friday?”
The answer is 100%, certainty. This is analogous to Dave and I starting at Bansang at seven in the morning and Alicia starting at Kombo also at seven. There’s a 100% chance we’ll be at some spot at the same time. The spot here was this picnic table having lunch. Our paths crossed at the only place it was almost guaranteed to during transport on the south bank, at this small eatery.
For the next four hours we continued our journey on the dreaded south bank road. From Bansang to Soma it’s paved and goes by fast. After Soma it’s better off not to have been paved at all. The potholes add years to your vehicle and take years off of you and your back. From the car rocking back and forth, the gas fumes coming out, and the dust swirling around we both felt sick to our stomach and on a few occasions I thought I would vomit, despite the fact that I have traveled this road many times before. This is why, whenever possible I try to travel the north bank road; although dirtier, you save your stomach.
When three thirty approached we arrived in Brikama. This is Gambia’s third largest settlement, and the first proper ‘upcountry’ town you reach going inland from Banjul. Courtney said she would be in language class until four o’clock. We waited another half-hour by just walking around the market and teasing the kids who begged for money. It sounds bad, I know! It really isn’t. The kids are fine, they aren’t starving, despite some commercials you see on television. The have a family that takes care of them. It’s just a group of kids who see a white person and take a chance they’ll give them money. It only takes a few tourists giving away spare change to get the reputation going.
“Toubob, give me dalasi!”
“You give me ten and I’ll give you one.”
“OK. Give me ten dalasi.”
“No no no. YOU give ME ten dalasi and I’LL give you one.”
They figured it out, “NO!”
Having said that introduction, however, there are starving children in Africa and in The Gambia, as there are starving children everywhere in the world. I do admit that, but having lived in Africa, and in one of the poorest countries in Africa, I haven’t seen a single child die from starvation, or heard of one happening. That does not say it doesn’t happen - it’s just rare. Most children here are fed what the rest of the family eats and turn out fine. Only in the poorest families are the children malnourished or undernourished.
During the wait Dave bought some oranges. We tried teaching the kids how to juggle three oranges simultaneously. I failed, Dave succeeded briefly. I could do only two. After we played with the kids and found the telecenter we had another ten minute wait to go. A man was selling kola nuts next to the entrance and I gave him a Dalasi for Dave and I to each have one. The first time I had a kola nut was when we were heading to training village and the driver passed them out, all knowing the outcome. It’s like giving a kid a lemon before they know what it is. However, instead of being sour like a lemon, kola nuts are bitter like coffee. In fact they do contain caffeine and that is why the Gambians eat them on a regular basis – and their teeth show it!
Dave spitted out the first bite he took. I laughed as the drivers laughed at us beforehand. It goes in a circle!
At four o’clock I called Courtney on her cell phone using the telecenter. She had actually cancelled her language class and was just waiting for us to call. These are her exact directions to her compound:
“Get a taxi going to Manduar. You can either get a ghelli-ghelli for five dalasi but you might have to wait an hour or so, or you can do a town-trip. Tell them you want to go to the mosque, but you’re actually not going there. You’ll pass a water tower on your right. After that you’ll pass a water pump on your left. Past the water pump is a sign on your right. You’ll notice the sign. Get off at the sign and ask a small-boy where my compound is. I’m just a block off the road but anyone in that area will know where I live. If you’ve gone to the mosque you’ve gone too far.”
The price for the call was more expensive then I thought it should have been. I argued for a minute or so before it became clear that the owner was in the right. I had made a call from a landline to a cell-phone and therefore the units that the prices are set for go faster in one minute then a landline-to-landline call. Listed above the owner was the price of what each unit would be, but not how many units were in a minute! The chart was useless in my opinion.
In the US we are so used to giving exact addresses. I relayed the following, typical Gambian, address to Dave, “passed the water tower, the water pump, and stop at the sign.” We hired a private taxi to take us for D50. It was a ten-minute ride, interrupted for a few minutes by the driver who stopped to watch in the rear-view mirror a man tease a woman on the side of the road. He had her books and wouldn’t give them back. The woman’s reaction? She got a stick and ran after him! We drove off laughing as the man ran away.
We saw the water tower, the water pump and then saw ‘a’ sign. We figured that had to be ‘the’ sign she referred to and got off. Upon exiting we did exactly as she said and asked a small boy where “Fatou Bojang” lived. The volunteer who lived there previously, John Capuano, tried teaching his host family the song “Mr. Bojangles!” but they neither got the song nor the joke. Courtney didn’t try.
Courtney was surprised to see us so soon. She expected us maybe an hour later as she usually waits for public transportation, or as a last effort walks the forty-five minutes to her compound. She welcomed us in and introduced us to her host-family. Her compound had four main houses. Two were for the family themselves, one was for Courtney, and the other for a random West African who rented the room from the family.
She offered to cook us spaghetti for dinner if one of us went out to the bidick and bought some butter for the bread. I was tempted to have Dave give it a try, but I went instead. Outside on the main road was the nearest bidick. Before I had left I asked her what the Mandika word for ‘butter’ was. It was a good thing I did since they had no idea what I was saying in English, despite being an English speaking country, and I murdered saying the word in Mandika but they understood. The owner asked how much butter I wanted in a language I didn’t know. I also didn’t know how much was one unit. I searched quickly for some container that would work, so I could motion for him to fill it. None was found. If I said one, would that be one spoonful, one cup, one packet, etc. I had no idea. Having nothing to lose, the number that I picked was three. He did three knife-fulls of butter and wrapped them in a corner of an old newspaper.
As she was making dinner we each took a bath to clean off all the dirt we had accumulated throughout the day of traveling. Despite being in Africa a total of five full days now this was Dave’s first bucket bath. I quick gave him the instructions and the rules of the game. The main rule for taking a bucket bath is not to get the water dirty of dirt or soap. You use a cup, about a size of a liter, and just repeatedly scoop water out and pour it out over yourself. This doesn’t imply you have to use the whole liter at a time. Usually you would want to conserve water and so after a little practice you can get three baths completed with only one bucket of water. However, for someone who never took a bucket bath before, as all of us were before training, you might end up using the whole bucket full of water. Courtney had fetched more water just in case, one bucket for washing and one for drinking. In extreme cases you learn not to get your washing water dirty as that is also your drinking water.
I finished my bath first and then told Dave to go ahead and to let us know if he needed more water. The area to take the bucket bath was in the same area as the latrine. The cement gets wet from the bath, but evaporates quickly during the day. In fact, most of the times you cannot even take a bucket bath during the day lest you burn your feet, and must wear sandals. Both the outside area was fenced off, as per requirements of Peace Corps, as we must have our own private backyard; and also the latrine area was fenced off which regardless of requirements was the usual custom anyways. And so if a problem arose such as needing more water you could safely bring another bucket within arms reach without intruding.
As he was taking his shower Courtney and I jokingly debated if we should take a picture using his camera so he’ll have a picture of his first bucket bath in Africa. We didn’t. Dave came out a few minutes later laughing.
“I was taller than the fence! I could see the whole village! I was taking my bath and it was like ‘Hi guys’! They don’t make those fences tall enough!”
As we ate dinner we discussed the plans for the following day.
“Should we do Abuko first, then Banjul, then go to the Rotary Club?”
“Do we have to do everything in one day?”
“Well, we could skip something but if we’re leaving the day after we should do all that you want to do.”
“We’re not leaving the day after tomorrow. The following day. We have two days in Banjul.”
“Two? Oh. I guess I was a day off. Then there isn’t much a rush, then is there?”
“Not really.”
“Ok.”
That caused some relief and less stress. Tomorrow was Wednesday and our only obligation was the Rotary Club Meeting. The following day we could choose either Abuko Nature or Banjul, or both, to tour.
She laid an extra mat out on the floor and we slept on the floor in her living room for the night.
JANUARY 4, 2005
The alarm went off at 5:30 in the morning. The main purpose of an alarm is to wake you up. We were already awake because of the rats, so the alarm served its secondary purpose – time to get a move on. Usually there isn’t any power in Bansang, or very rarely if ever. Throughout the morning we were packing by candlelight. I first had to use my key-chain light to find the candles and then the matches. None of the girls were up and so we left without saying goodbye and walked the few blocks to the car park.
Only two cars were waiting for passengers. One of the cars was headed to Basse, only an hour ride away, which caused some confusion as to why people would want to leave so early. The other vehicle was heading west to Brikama, outside of Banjul, and would take eight hours. People were lined up to get on that van, as were we. The front seat was open and we were going to get it, but as we were handing our bags to the aparante to put on top someone else grabbed front seat. This meant that Dave would have no leg room for this trip.
The ghelli-ghelli’s are second-class vans that can usually fit around thirty people (plus screaming babies and/or squawking chickens) if full. Three benches facing the driver and front passengers, along with two back benches facing each other, is the usual layout. For each of the rows the last seat folds in our out, depending if a passenger needs to get through or not. When it is full you may wonder how the people even got in, as there is no aisle or passageway to be seen, as the folded up seat is now taken. The outsides are painted white with other decorations painted on in bright colors. The phrase ‘Alhamdulillah’ is usually painted on the front, right underneath the driver’s window. The phrase means ‘Praise be to Allah’. Although decorated in the Muslim style, with Arabic saying and praises to Allah, no ghelli-ghelli is complete without a matching set of pre-1984 Madonna stickers on the back window!
I liked what Mark Moxon had to say about Ghelli-ghelli’s:
--
Not only are the buses in this part of the world crammed to bursting point, they're also decorated with the most intriguing collection of stickers and posters. Along with the taxis, the buses have stickers plastered over the backs and sides, most of them proclaiming allegiance to a marabout brotherhood (in which case the sticker is of a guy looking suspiciously like the evil Emperor in Star Wars), or to Allah (in which case Koranic quotations are the order of the day). But a hugely popular and completely mysterious sticker is of Madonna in her 'Material Girl' period, bending her head back and blowing a kiss at the camera. She's dolled up in clothing that screams '1980s!' at you, and every time it's exactly the same sticker. It's a really common picture, and it's faintly disturbing; religion and politics I can understand, but 1980s Madonna? Goodness only knows where that fad came from!
--
After about an hour of waiting the car left around seven-thirty. The sun was up and the new day had started. The road from Bansang to Soma is very smooth by Gambian standards and the car drove on without much hassle. It was only about three hours later before we made it to Soma, the halfway point and stopped for lunch. The most popular place to eat in Soma, while at lunch break, is the one-man chop-shop on the main road. This guy had his table set out in front of a bidick, and had enough room for maybe eight people to sit around the material, spread across two tables. We watched him effortlessly make different orders of coffee and sandwiches simultaneously. Dave and I ordered two sandwiches and a coffee for myself. The coffee is made with instant powdered coffee (Nescafe), water, and a half-glass of sweetened condensed milk. The owner mixed the coffee not with the usual swirl that we do regularly in the US but with a chopping motion with a side twist to each down-turn that after being here a year I still can’t reproduce. However he did it, it produced a frothy foam.
Before we had put our bags on top I had taken out the roll of toilet paper and stuffed it in my pocket as you never know when you might need it. At lunch Dave had to use the latrine as a result I took out the toilet paper while another Gambian had to translate to the owner what we were requesting. The owner finished the drinks he was making, picked up a small bucket of water with a spout solely for washing the hands and escorted Dave to where the latrine was. A few minutes after he returned I had to go myself. The latrine was around the corner and actually in a family’s compound. I don’t know whether that compound was the owner’s of the shop or whether it was just the closest latrine and the family was used to random people using their facilities.
There was someone inside the latrine when I arrived so I passed the time away by playing with the kids, grabbing their arms and twirling them around to the delight of the parents, until it was my turn to use the latrine. When I got back to the shop there were two other white people sitting down. I recognized one of them.
“Hey Alicia!”
Alicia turned around and was surprised to see me. Her and I are the co-editors of the “The Oh-Fish-All” which is the official newsletter for the forty-some Education volunteers in country. While I live in Kombo she lives in Sare Alpha, which is not only passed Bansang, passed Basse, but she is, in fact, the farthest upcountry education volunteer. We rarely meet, and usually conduct business about the newsletter by e-mail as she’s only an hour’s drive away from Basse where there is Internet access.
“Hey Mike! What are doing in Soma?”
“Stopping for lunch. This is Dave, he’s my friend that’s visiting. We just came from Bansang this morning.”
Alicia also had one of her friends visiting Janelle. Dave shook two hands, Alicia shook one, I shook one, and Janelle shook two. Six handshakes from four people. We were heading from upcountry down to Kombo while they were heading from Kombo back to upcountry. We both met at the same spot at the same time. Although this spot is a popular designation for lunch and all cross-country trips stop in Soma for lunch it still reminded me of the popular math problem of a mountain climber:
“A man leaves his home at 2:00 p.m. Friday to begin a hike up a mountain. That night he sleeps at the top of the mountain and at 2:00 p.m. Saturday begins his journey down the mountain to his home. On both legs of the trip he occasionally stops to look at the view or to rest and pays little attention to the time. He follows the same trail on both days. Is it likely that sometime Saturday he would be at the same place on the trail at the same time of day as he was on Friday?”
The answer is 100%, certainty. This is analogous to Dave and I starting at Bansang at seven in the morning and Alicia starting at Kombo also at seven. There’s a 100% chance we’ll be at some spot at the same time. The spot here was this picnic table having lunch. Our paths crossed at the only place it was almost guaranteed to during transport on the south bank, at this small eatery.
For the next four hours we continued our journey on the dreaded south bank road. From Bansang to Soma it’s paved and goes by fast. After Soma it’s better off not to have been paved at all. The potholes add years to your vehicle and take years off of you and your back. From the car rocking back and forth, the gas fumes coming out, and the dust swirling around we both felt sick to our stomach and on a few occasions I thought I would vomit, despite the fact that I have traveled this road many times before. This is why, whenever possible I try to travel the north bank road; although dirtier, you save your stomach.
When three thirty approached we arrived in Brikama. This is Gambia’s third largest settlement, and the first proper ‘upcountry’ town you reach going inland from Banjul. Courtney said she would be in language class until four o’clock. We waited another half-hour by just walking around the market and teasing the kids who begged for money. It sounds bad, I know! It really isn’t. The kids are fine, they aren’t starving, despite some commercials you see on television. The have a family that takes care of them. It’s just a group of kids who see a white person and take a chance they’ll give them money. It only takes a few tourists giving away spare change to get the reputation going.
“Toubob, give me dalasi!”
“You give me ten and I’ll give you one.”
“OK. Give me ten dalasi.”
“No no no. YOU give ME ten dalasi and I’LL give you one.”
They figured it out, “NO!”
Having said that introduction, however, there are starving children in Africa and in The Gambia, as there are starving children everywhere in the world. I do admit that, but having lived in Africa, and in one of the poorest countries in Africa, I haven’t seen a single child die from starvation, or heard of one happening. That does not say it doesn’t happen - it’s just rare. Most children here are fed what the rest of the family eats and turn out fine. Only in the poorest families are the children malnourished or undernourished.
During the wait Dave bought some oranges. We tried teaching the kids how to juggle three oranges simultaneously. I failed, Dave succeeded briefly. I could do only two. After we played with the kids and found the telecenter we had another ten minute wait to go. A man was selling kola nuts next to the entrance and I gave him a Dalasi for Dave and I to each have one. The first time I had a kola nut was when we were heading to training village and the driver passed them out, all knowing the outcome. It’s like giving a kid a lemon before they know what it is. However, instead of being sour like a lemon, kola nuts are bitter like coffee. In fact they do contain caffeine and that is why the Gambians eat them on a regular basis – and their teeth show it!
Dave spitted out the first bite he took. I laughed as the drivers laughed at us beforehand. It goes in a circle!
At four o’clock I called Courtney on her cell phone using the telecenter. She had actually cancelled her language class and was just waiting for us to call. These are her exact directions to her compound:
“Get a taxi going to Manduar. You can either get a ghelli-ghelli for five dalasi but you might have to wait an hour or so, or you can do a town-trip. Tell them you want to go to the mosque, but you’re actually not going there. You’ll pass a water tower on your right. After that you’ll pass a water pump on your left. Past the water pump is a sign on your right. You’ll notice the sign. Get off at the sign and ask a small-boy where my compound is. I’m just a block off the road but anyone in that area will know where I live. If you’ve gone to the mosque you’ve gone too far.”
The price for the call was more expensive then I thought it should have been. I argued for a minute or so before it became clear that the owner was in the right. I had made a call from a landline to a cell-phone and therefore the units that the prices are set for go faster in one minute then a landline-to-landline call. Listed above the owner was the price of what each unit would be, but not how many units were in a minute! The chart was useless in my opinion.
In the US we are so used to giving exact addresses. I relayed the following, typical Gambian, address to Dave, “passed the water tower, the water pump, and stop at the sign.” We hired a private taxi to take us for D50. It was a ten-minute ride, interrupted for a few minutes by the driver who stopped to watch in the rear-view mirror a man tease a woman on the side of the road. He had her books and wouldn’t give them back. The woman’s reaction? She got a stick and ran after him! We drove off laughing as the man ran away.
We saw the water tower, the water pump and then saw ‘a’ sign. We figured that had to be ‘the’ sign she referred to and got off. Upon exiting we did exactly as she said and asked a small boy where “Fatou Bojang” lived. The volunteer who lived there previously, John Capuano, tried teaching his host family the song “Mr. Bojangles!” but they neither got the song nor the joke. Courtney didn’t try.
Courtney was surprised to see us so soon. She expected us maybe an hour later as she usually waits for public transportation, or as a last effort walks the forty-five minutes to her compound. She welcomed us in and introduced us to her host-family. Her compound had four main houses. Two were for the family themselves, one was for Courtney, and the other for a random West African who rented the room from the family.
She offered to cook us spaghetti for dinner if one of us went out to the bidick and bought some butter for the bread. I was tempted to have Dave give it a try, but I went instead. Outside on the main road was the nearest bidick. Before I had left I asked her what the Mandika word for ‘butter’ was. It was a good thing I did since they had no idea what I was saying in English, despite being an English speaking country, and I murdered saying the word in Mandika but they understood. The owner asked how much butter I wanted in a language I didn’t know. I also didn’t know how much was one unit. I searched quickly for some container that would work, so I could motion for him to fill it. None was found. If I said one, would that be one spoonful, one cup, one packet, etc. I had no idea. Having nothing to lose, the number that I picked was three. He did three knife-fulls of butter and wrapped them in a corner of an old newspaper.
As she was making dinner we each took a bath to clean off all the dirt we had accumulated throughout the day of traveling. Despite being in Africa a total of five full days now this was Dave’s first bucket bath. I quick gave him the instructions and the rules of the game. The main rule for taking a bucket bath is not to get the water dirty of dirt or soap. You use a cup, about a size of a liter, and just repeatedly scoop water out and pour it out over yourself. This doesn’t imply you have to use the whole liter at a time. Usually you would want to conserve water and so after a little practice you can get three baths completed with only one bucket of water. However, for someone who never took a bucket bath before, as all of us were before training, you might end up using the whole bucket full of water. Courtney had fetched more water just in case, one bucket for washing and one for drinking. In extreme cases you learn not to get your washing water dirty as that is also your drinking water.
I finished my bath first and then told Dave to go ahead and to let us know if he needed more water. The area to take the bucket bath was in the same area as the latrine. The cement gets wet from the bath, but evaporates quickly during the day. In fact, most of the times you cannot even take a bucket bath during the day lest you burn your feet, and must wear sandals. Both the outside area was fenced off, as per requirements of Peace Corps, as we must have our own private backyard; and also the latrine area was fenced off which regardless of requirements was the usual custom anyways. And so if a problem arose such as needing more water you could safely bring another bucket within arms reach without intruding.
As he was taking his shower Courtney and I jokingly debated if we should take a picture using his camera so he’ll have a picture of his first bucket bath in Africa. We didn’t. Dave came out a few minutes later laughing.
“I was taller than the fence! I could see the whole village! I was taking my bath and it was like ‘Hi guys’! They don’t make those fences tall enough!”
As we ate dinner we discussed the plans for the following day.
“Should we do Abuko first, then Banjul, then go to the Rotary Club?”
“Do we have to do everything in one day?”
“Well, we could skip something but if we’re leaving the day after we should do all that you want to do.”
“We’re not leaving the day after tomorrow. The following day. We have two days in Banjul.”
“Two? Oh. I guess I was a day off. Then there isn’t much a rush, then is there?”
“Not really.”
“Ok.”
That caused some relief and less stress. Tomorrow was Wednesday and our only obligation was the Rotary Club Meeting. The following day we could choose either Abuko Nature or Banjul, or both, to tour.
She laid an extra mat out on the floor and we slept on the floor in her living room for the night.
posted by Mike | 5:40 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home