I’m feeling a bit talkative, so in addition to all the emails I just got through writing, I’m going to try to give a bit of a rundown on the language dynamic here in The Gambia. Mostly because it’s a Saturday afternoon, I have nothing else to do right now, and because I think perhaps it might be interesting reading for you, my dear audience.

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Okay, so one thing that’s significantly different between America and The Gambia is how one gets around: transportation in all its forms. It’s one of the primary differences I’ve noticed in a practical sense - all cultural differences aside, although I suppose how one gets from point A to point B on a regular basis is an element of culture, but I’ll let that slide for a minute. The raw act of moving more than a short walking distance here is achieved through various ways and means, and they rarely if ever involve walking to your own car, hopping in the drivers seat, and hitting the gas to the nearest expressway onramp (forgetting the fact that there are no expressways in The Gambia) as you would in America.

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Okay, I’ve got some images here, a small collection of shots over the last couple months. I’ve had to really filter down the number of pictures I’m going to put onto this site, as I’ve taken hundreds of them, but honestly most of them are either repetitive or they just plain suck. However, there are a few that rather capture the experience, the people, and the places in better ways than others, and it’s those types of images I’m going to try to include. Enjoy!

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… to start working here. I’m still living in the PC transit house out of my backpack in a room with five other volunteers, and while it’s a nice place and I can watch movies in the living room, it’s not home and I’m ready to have a place, even if it’s a real “fixer upper,” that I can call home.

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Nineteen other PC Trainees and I swore in this morning at the US Ambassador’s beachside house in Fajara. Not unexpectedly, he - the Ambassador - has a nice house. We didn’t get a chance to go inside, but the grounds are beautiful, and they stretch down almost to where the beach meets the grasses. His house is on a hill, so standing on the back yard terrace one has a panoramic view of the ocean, interrupted only by thin groupings of tall palm trees. Of course, the grounds are surrounded by a large whitewashed wall, and there are guards and whatnot which is common at places of importance. Anyhow, we arrived this morning and strolled for about an hour, taking advantage of the sun and scenery to take some nice photos. We all then sat under tents in the back yard when it came time for ceremony and listened to various speakers speak on relevant topics. Eventually, the Ambassador issued the oath for us to repeat, and suddenly we weren’t Trainees anymore; we were Volunteers.

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So, as the subject line indicates, I got a chance to see where I’m going to be living over the next couple years.  It’s a house formerly occupied by a VSO guy in Bakau.  He used to work for GTTI, but went home (as is the way it works with VSOs - Volunteer Service Organizations - around the world).  Quiet neighborhood, thinly populated.  About a five minute drive to the PC office, or probably a ten, 15 minute walk.  I have a back yard, and a front one too.  I’ve got a kitchen, with a fridge.  There’s a small store room.  A relatively furnished living room big enough to play frisbee in.  Two bedrooms, and two bathrooms too (although one of them only has a toilet, the other has a shower and a tub).  To cap it off, there’s a hot water heater for the showers… not that I think I’ll ever use it, as it doesn’t get to any point that I would consider cold enough to use artifically heated water, but the fact remains: my house has one.  And, obviously, I have electricity.

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Hey, so I’m back in Kombo now.  Got back here yesterday afternoon after a fun-filled day (bumpy) on the road.  We’re doing site visits this week, so we all get to go to our new homes in The Gambia and check out where we’re going to be working for the next two years.  I’ll be working at GTTI, the Gambian Technical Training Institute - one of the tertiary-education technical schools - teaching computer skills.  I’d love to be able to teach stuff like programming and database design, but I really need to evaluate what the school needs before I start planning anything too in-depth.  There’s a balance I need to find between doing what I want, and doing what they want, all the while trying to maximize the benefit for the people at large.  I’ll also be spending a couple days a week working in the State House in Banjul with the Population Office, working on one of their national projects.  Pretty cool stuff, for real.

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