So, a few months ago, another Vermonter Peace Corps Volunteer I know who’s currently serving in Jordan and I decided to see if we could put together some kind of publication in one of the major papers in Vermont, with the intention to inform people back home about people in these countries, and in particular, to compare and contrast Islam in Jordan (an Arab country) and The Gambia (a non-Arab country). A major purpose of this endeavor is to get the point across to Americans that the vast majority of Muslims in the world are good, peaceful people without a violent bone in their bodies - something that might need to be reinforced when one is bombarded daily with stories about “Islamic extremists” engaged in acts of terrorism. One must remember that extremists are just that: extreme. Not common. Not the norm in any sense of the word.

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So, last week was a break between the second and third terms for all of us teaching here in The Gambia, and I decided - late Saturday night, as it were - to go traveling upcountry to Basse for a week, leaving early Monday morning.
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