In Serrekunda - Back to School

Hey everyone,

Sorry I've not posted in a few days, despite having access for the next little while to wireless at our lodging, i've neglected my blog in the process.
I've added a few gadgets and fancy features to the blog, you probably noticed them at the side. There is a world clock, which if I've set it up correctly, should display the current time in both Toronto and Banjul, in case you're wondering how late in the day it is for me. There is also a countdown, currently to my birthday (sure i'm zealous, but I'm allowed to be every now and then. There is also a small slide show of pictures I've taken here. They're posted in a larger size on my picassa web album, which you can get to by clicking on any of the pictures.

We had a good last week in Sanyang, learning the language a bit more, trying to master my abilities at making Attaya (the green tea that is shared all over the place here, but requires a great deal of skill to make properly), and getting ourselves dirty with projects at the garden. If you look at the pictures linked on the right side of the blog, you can see me making attaya, and mixing concrete to form a new base around one of the water reservoirs. It was very arduous work, but one of the mornings Megan and I were both in a bad mood/missing home, and somehow, mixing concrete by hand in a wheelbarrow under the African noon sun lifted both our spirits. I also got to test out my driving skills.... Megan and I hired a taxi to take us to the beach one day after work. We happened to get a tourist taxi, which are generally more expenisive and somewhat nicer than the local taxi's. We were commenting how nice the taxi was, when the driver asked if we knew how to drive. I said "Sure, yea I do" at which point he put the car in netural, jumped out when it was still moving and told me to show him. So i jumped out of the back seat, into the drivers seat and off we went. When he returned to pick us up 2 hours later, he drove up, jumped out of the drivers seat and hopped into the passenger seat again. I paid 100 Dalasis to drive myself to the beach and back!

We also met with an organization called GamMol, which is an NGO out of Belgium that has a staff of local Gambians working on health, education and primarily water projects around Sanyang. The program works to dig boreholes, install handpumps and maintain the machinery for villages that are not on the municipal water supply and otherwise are relying on non-secured water sources (shallow dug holes, open wells, and open streams/rivers/trenches). We just met with the organization to determine some of the projects we can work on when we return to Sanyang again, and I'm incredibly excited about the opportunities.

We're back in Serrekunda now, and on Monday we started a course at WACD-TC; the West African Community Development Training Centre. the course is a certificate course issued by the Ministry of Education in The Gambia leading to a full diploma from the centre. We are being taught the second of four modules, ours on Human Behaviour and Development. It's an interesting opportunity to learn about the experiences and mode of problem solving used by our Gambian counterparts.

The course material is important and relevant to the Gambian classmates we have, although I feel I've been taught most of the material before. It is however interesting to see the decision making process and problem solving used by our classmates. It's a far cry from what I had expected, or how we would necessairly troubleshoot or solve a problem at home. I'm not enjoying the course material, but the interactions we are having are very beneficial for both us and the class.

I'll try to keep more posts coming, and thanks to everyone for following along and leaving comments. I smile every time I get one.