February

A couple of pictures of my dogs. Bobo with rice on her nose. Somba learning to sit and doing a great job of it. She's about a year old but has had no training at all so we've got a lot of work to do with her.

And the scene of the bus stop (I wait under the tree on the left) near the home of a Bible study I have out in the bush. These little kids are always hanging around there. They're cute but don't speak any English (they don't go to school). I asked them their names but they give the first name AND surname and are so long and complicated I have to try to shorten them to one syllable but I still forget by the next week. I'll have to make little badges for them with their names on, they'd love that.

Phew, that first month went fast!! Today is Clean the Nation Day. The last Saturday of each month is set aside for cleaning so there are no shops open and no transport. It lasts from 9am till1pm so there are no ministry arrangements. We're supposed to spend the time cleaning the place up but of course we keep our area clean all month long so we get a morning off. Rubbish here is a big problem. Imagine living in a country with no wheelie bins!! Rubbish is either dropped in the street, taken by each householder to an area in the street where there's a bit of open space and burnt or just dumped, or on the main roads rubbish is collected. The collection is done by tractor pulling an open cart. The men sweep rubbish from piles onto an open sack then toss the rubbish onto the cart. You can imagine that only half of the rubbish actually lands in the cart then half of that blows out again when the tractor pulls away. It's funny to watch but also sad that the people aren't educated in basic hygiene.I've been trying to take photos of the birds that visit our garden. Sadly I didn't manage to get any of the hornbillls which were just beautiful. They've all disappeared, maybe migrated to somewhere with more water. One day alll the birds started making a huge racket so I rushed outside to see what was upsetting them. A vulture had landed in the tree that over hangs our garden. I love the vultures, there are loads of them here. I managed to get him to pose for a photo. Gorgeous isn't he?

On the subject of animals I want to tell you about Billy. His troop raided the peanuts from a village and the villagers killed his mum. Billy was found still clinging to her so he was taken to my Bible student (she is a nurse from Britain and also an animal lover). Some time later a dog attacked him and damaged his skull. There aren't any facilities to xray animals here so my friend the vet took him wrapped in a blanket like a baby to a human hospital and with help from a friend of his they managed to use the xray machine there.

As he was still suckling he was raised by a nursing cat and sometimes behaves like a cat. It's against the law to keep monkeys in captivity here so Billy has complete freedom but chooses to stay in and around the garden.

I was working with a sister who wanted to find a return visit. The streets don't have names or numbers so this can be really difficult sometimes. We walked and walked and eventually found the lady. We then had the challenge of getting back to her car and ended up wandering through the abbatoir (is that how you spell it?). You can imagine the smell was gross but there was a huge colony of vultures. I kept stopping to watch them, the sister must have thought I was crazy.

Outside are all the animals waiting for slaughter and across the road are the "butchers" shops. Terry says I should buy from them as they're probably selling the meat cheaper and fresher than anywhere else but I can't bring myself to do it. I'm used to buying meat from fridges in cling film, not from the dusty side of the road in 30 degree heat.

I actually made a breakthrough this month as I bought "fresh" fish from the market. This is also an experience. Again there are no fridges or cling film or even water, just fish on a dirty piece of lino and flies, flies and more flies. I've been buying smoked fish for the animals so I plucked up courage and bought a huge fish to fry African style. It was delicious and we all survived the experience so that's one hurdle accomplished. In the supermarkets meat comes in three . . . can I call them cuts?? . . . Cow Meat, Cow Meat with Bone and Minced Cow Meat. They are more expensive than the markets so at the moment meat is an occasional treat.

Butchers aren't the only businesses that are different to Europe. This is our local car repair garage. The car boot there is his tool box. I was in a bus (called gele gele) and we stopped off at one of these places. The guy came out and asked if the driver had a pair of pliers. They hunted around in the tool box under my seat and finally found one. I'm of the opinion that there is only one complete tool kit in the whole country and they just keep passing the tools around. We asked the local plumber to fix a leaky toilet for us. He hung around in there for a few minutes then reappeared to ask if anyone had a spanner.




The gele geles and taxis are how we get around. Normally the fare is 7 dalasis (around 14p) so they're cheap enough. The problem is we're never sure how long the journey will take. The gele gele will leave, not at a certain time, but when it's full. On a quiet day this can take ages and sitting around in the heat waiting can be tiring. One evening we were coming home from the Kingdom Hall and we got into a taxi. This should take us to the gele gele stop which takes us home. Anyway, the driver wanted to charge us for 4 people even though we were only 3. Terry told him we would only pay for 3 and why should we pay for 4?

Because there are 4 seats and no one is taking the other one.

But another person can get in, we don't mind.

Another person might disturb you.

Just drive. We're paying for 3.

We drove maybe 50 metres when the taxi stopped dead (broken down) so we had to get out and walk back to the taxi rank and get another one. This took us to the gele gele stop without a problem but 4 men had to get behind the gele gele to bump start it. It's hard work pushing in sand so they had to give up and we had to get another gele gele. Remember the Africans don't queue so we stood politely at the back and allowed everyone else on but the second gele gele was already half full so there were no seats left for us. This was the last gele gele running so we had to get a taxi but we had to pay a higher amount because it wasn't on their normal run (this is called a town trip). We got home ok eventually but it's all so unpredictable. Another evening coming from the Hall the taxi was stopped by a policeman for only having one headlight. The driver had to pay a 50 dalasi bribe so that we could continue. He complained all the way that the policeman wasn't interested in whether he had a broken headlight, only in getting some supper for himself.

There are 7 local languages here but one of the most curious is African English. For example they use the verbs "to on" and "to off". They on the light, off the fridge. I asked was it possible to on and off your clothes but they say no, you remove your clothes, not off them. I was laughing too much to get any more sense of that conversation.

Another one is that in Wollof they don't have words like son or daughter, brother or sister, only male offspring, female sibling etc. I got chatting with a man at the market and he asked was I here with my family. Yes, I told him, I live with my husband and son. He asked was he a boy son or a girl son. Errrr, he's a boy son, a girl son would be a daughter. He was surprised that our English was different to his.

It isn't all difficult though. We have a brother and sister staying in a hotel and they invited us over for a meal. We were able to use the pool which was a nice treat. Terry has turned 60 now but still looks pretty good.

January

I don't know where to start, everything is so different, the shops, the roads, the animals . . . the animals, I'll start there.

On our first night (remember we got to bed about 3.30 am) we switched on the light and discovered we had room mates. A couple of geckos!! They're totally adorable and as promised I named them Chantal and Rut. The next one I saw was to be called Mary (Espina) so here she is, she lives behind the sofa in the living room.

There are lots of different lizards here, I love the blue ones with yellow heads.















We have HUGE ants in the house. They're not pests like the European ones and they are food for the geckos so they're allowed to stay.

I've been trying to get pictures of the birds but they don't come that close so I'll keep trying and hopefully post some next time.

Food

The food is different here too, especially the vegetables. These are some of the ingredients for Domoda which contains peanut butter (the brown stuff in the little plastic bag, funny, I thought it only came in jars). Yes, that's a green tomato.


The restaurants here are wonderful and very cheap if you want to eat African food, which we do of course. The only problem is it can get a bit messy so they sometimes give water bowls to wash your hands. Ben reminded me of Donkey in Shrek 2.

This is Lily enjoying the local beer, Julbrew. It's good.





Workers

We employ a wonderful cleaner called Madeline, she does in 4 hours what would take me 2 days. She's tiny and beautiful and wears gorgeous African clothes, the type I'd wear for a REALLY special occasion. We had a horrid old mop when I came so I bought her two new ones but I actually watched her today cleaning the floor with a cloth. She stands with her legs straight and bends over double to reach the floor. I'd die of backache!! That reminds me of a van we saw. It was just a dirty old van with a sign on it claiming to be a clinic. I wanted to take a photo of the sign but I was laughing so much I thought they would realize what I was doing and I didn't want to be that rude. Anyway, their services include cures for waist pain (whatever that is), high blood (presumably they missed off the word pressure) and even stroke!! I just can't imagine ANYONE going there to be cured of a stroke.

Another wonderful sign read "GYM, build muscle and loose fat" No thanks, I've got plenty of that already.

Our landlord had painters in when we first arrived. One morning Lily and I told him we were going out but he told us he was going home too. What was the problem? Was he ill or something? No, Ghana were playing Botswana!

Our odd job man is called Alkali. We asked him to go for a tin of paint (white gloss, nothing complicated) because the painter couldn't finish without it. SIX hours later he returned with the paint saying he couldn't find it. It's hard to know what he was just being lazy and had gone home, or stupid and was looking in the wrong places or if there was genuinely a shortage.

I was offered a job in a school. I went in for a morning to see how it was and really enjoyed it. Sadly they were only offering 30 pounds a MONTH for full time work so it really wasn't worth it. I was hoping it would stretch our savings a bit but I won't make that much of a difference and I would prefer to pioneer.

Terry has been doing bits of work but he too has encountered problems. One of my favorites was when he tried to get a piston (these are normally measured in thousandths of an inch) and was offered size "Big, bigger or biggest".

Ben was asked to look at a printing machine that had been donated by the American Embassy to a newspaper. They hunted all over the country for someone who could operate it but without success. Ben took one look and told them that this was the very machine he had learned on in college. All they had to do was get hold of the chemicals needed to run it. It seems this is a big problem for them so he's still waiting to start.

Children

The children here are totally adorable. They shout out "toubab" whenever we pass. Occasionally they will ask for "minty" (sweets) but mostly they just want a wave. I feel like the queen. Sometimes when we're walking near them they want to touch us. Ben was getting on a bus one day and FIVE children stood in line to shake his hand. Sooo cute!!

This photo was taken from the bus of the children in our street collecting water from the public tap. Sometimes I wonder about the difference in our lives. They have nothing, barely even clothes, yet they go to collect water from the tap and play together until their cannister is full. They always seem happy, fooling around in sun. I think of the children in Europe who can't play out in the street anymore for fear of being kidnapped so they're locked in their houses with computers as playmates. At first I was shocked and felt sorry for these children but they're HAPPY!!



Ministry

Needless to say it's great. I have two studies that Lily passed on to me but I'm sure I'll have more soon. I'll tell you about those next time. On the door to door ministry we enter each compound and greet the people in Wollof then ask if they speak English and if the head of the family is home. They bring out chairs and we just sit in the sun and talk. They are usually Muslim so have great respect for religion and the Scriptures and it's very easy to chat with them.
I haven't started any studies of my own yet but apparently I'll soon have more then I can handle, looking forward to that.
Tiger making friends with Toye, our Nigerian vet and pioneer partner.

The Journey

We had a few scares along the way, beginning at Vigo airport when were told we couldn't fly without a visa (this isn't true!!). They refused to let us on unless we bought a ticket out of Gambia and wanted to charge over 1,200 euro. Thanks so much to Ivan and Kasia for organising that. We arrived at Barcelona (they let us fly that far) and the tickets were more or less ready. Eventually we were told that none of it had been necessary so we're in the process of claiming the money back.

Our arrival at Banjul was fun. The first thing we noticed was there is no sense or order or queing. On the transfer bus to the airport they just get on but don't think to move down the bus to let others on. There's a huge crush yet enough space (and more) for everyone. Inside we had to fill in a form bu couldn't give our address here (they didn't accept our PO Box address) so they confiscated our passports. While Terry and Ben "queued" (actually just stood at the back) I fought my way through and met Dom (our landlord who had come to meet us) and got the address. I then had to go back (fight my way back AGAINST the crush) to Immigration. The guy was really nice and gave me the passports straight away. What does it matter what our address is? Anyway. . . I went back to meet Terry and Ben. There was no sign of Terry, he'd been captured by Customs who weren't happy that he'd brought his computer hard drives into the country. While we were waiting for him I was told that they'd put Kat through the scanner and he would probably die!! Thanks guys. Terry was released eventually and we went out to meet Dom again.

He took us to the taxi helped by three or four Africans who wanted paying. We only had euro so we gave them about 6 or 7 euro in change but I think they wanted notes so they gave it us back. The taxi was loaded up and made a horrible noise and smelled of burning rubber. On the way home we had to keep stopping to reorganize the cases, poor Ben's guitar ended up on the roof and by the time we arrived home the bags were slipping off the roof. If we'd have known we'd have brought straps or something as the string somehow didn't seem quite substantial enough. On the way we were stopped by the military police who told us we were overloaded. A 25 dalasi bribe sorted it out. A different world!!.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about the cats. Terry was really worried that he would be embarrassed by their crying but Kat only miawed a couple of times and Tiger acted like he had been traveling the world all his life. He even came out of his box at Barcelona and sprawled over two seats. We were prepared with litter mats but they didn't use them so that was a relief!!