What a wild week....

My apologies for the delay in posting.  It's been a bit crazy, but the week has resulted in some amazing opportunities (are you hooked yet?).

So we finished our time up at the Njawara Agricultural Training Centre (NATC) on the North Bank.  As i wrote previously, the facility is well run, well managed, staffed by highly qualified individuals and dedicated to fulfiling it's mission of reversing rural-urban migration by providing rural farmers the tools and skills necessary to move from subsistence farming to full productive farming.
Unfortunately, neither Megan nor I are keenly interested in agriculture, but did still manage to have an enjoyable time there, learn a few lessons, and meet some wonderful people.
While we were there we also became quite adept at surviving without electricity, cell phone service, occasional running water, or internet.  I have never in my life been as hot as I was there.  If you don't believe it can be that bad, I broke into a full body sweat while I was writing in my journal!  Now holding and manouvering a pen is a strenuous activity.

The trip back from Njawara was pretty much as close to "Trains, Planes and Automobiles" I've ever been.
We had to wake up at 5 AM to catch a bush taxi at 6 am.  The bush taxi was complete with a live goat tied to the top of the vehicle.  We arrived at the ferry terminal just in time to get to wait nearly 2 hrs for a ferry to arrive, and managed to wrangle a truly great seat in the open air top of the boat just as the sky opened up and poured down on us a massive storm.  I was actually dripping wet.  It took us another nearly 2.5 hrs to make the crossing, disembarke teh boat, negotiate a cab to Serrekunda, and find my way to clean, dry clothes and a shower.
Needless to say, that by 11 AM,I was pretty well ready for a drink.

Monday mornning we met with a new contact we made, Paul at Concern Universal.  Concern universal is a British NGO that works to alleviate poverty, promote equality, improve health and sanitation and deliver safe drinking water throughout Africa.
We met with paul to hear about a problem he has with a rope pump (google it for more information).  Most rope pumps being used cannot be used past 25 m because the column of water is too heavy and the losses of water too great to make it useful.
He posed to us the problem and wants us to work ot extend the pump to 40 m deep.  Its a completely appropriate and necessary project that both Megan and I are inspired to work on.
We have decided to cut short our time in Sanyang by 2 weeks so we have an opportunity to work with Concern.   So we will work in sanyang this week and next, then return to Serrekunda around the 19th of July and remain there until we come home.

Needless to say I'm incredibly excited about the prospect of working on this project and we have already come up with 5-6 interesting modiifications we are excited to invesitgate further.

We've been in Sanyang for 2 days now adn are getting settled back in our Host families home.  It's nice to have the kids around and we are generally enjoying our time and work here.

I'll post some more probably when we've moved back to Serrekunda (unless you're really lucky :)

That's all for me now.  I hope all is well at home.

Love,
JP