Gambia and not busted!

The next day, we were heading to the Gambia, passing through some pretty horrendous towns, some really beautiful rural

villages and some terrible roads. But we made it. 4pm on the 5th Nov, exactly on schedule. Not even one puncture. I

would like to tell you exactly how many miles we did but from Bilboa onwards, Pinky mileage was always a surprise. On

her worst day she had done 999680 km and yesterday she'd only done 17540. Denbo, our landlord's son had just

washed her so I think she felt good as new. Now she doesn't have the trailer, we haven't found a road she can't cope

with and believe me, we've tried. We live 6km away from the tarmac on a road that's deep sand in place and she great.

Life in the Gambia is so much better than we could ever have imagined. The people are fantastic, the children are so

gorgeous. We spent the first week up on the expat strip in Fajara but it was costing us the same for one night there as a

month where we are now (1000 dalasi which is about 25 euros). We are living in a 'compound' with a large extended

family. We have a little two room house with porch and long-drop out back. There's no electricity in the village but we

have the twin battery system in Pinky and the inverter so we can have all the light and power we need. We've even got

internet here because we bought a special USB stick with a SIM - its only good for emails really hence the tardiness on

the blog! We've got borehole water piped to a tap just outside the compound. I've even start a little garden. The family

we live with are Jola tribe so we're learning a bit of that. Safi, our landlady is a wonderful person, so skilled at everything

she does. She is trying to teach me to cook with the ingredients we can get at the market here in Makumbaya which is

fish, salt fish or smoked fish. She's also teaching me how to perserve food without a fridge. We went to the big market in

Brikama last week so I could find out the real cost of things, not just 'toubab' (whiteman) price.

We also bought fabric to have outfits made for Tabasci, the most important festival in the Muslim calendar here. After

morning prayer on Friday, everyone returns to there compound and slaughters a ram in remberance of when God offered

Abraham a ram to sacrifice rather than his son Ishmail/Isaac. I presume we put on our new outfits after the slaughter bit

but who knows. I think Mick is taking Yacuba, our landlord, to buy the ram on Thursday and we'll stick it in the car. You

never know we might win a ram, everytime you buy petrol or mobile phone credit you're entered into draws to win

Tabasci rams! They're really expensive - the smallest is 50 euros this year.

Teo and Mia have started school here in the local village. The headmistress lives in our compound and she is very nice.

We took them there the first day, but from then on they insisted on going on their own. It's only about 300m but I never

imagined they would feel that comfortable that quickly. The tailor has made them uniforms costing less than 5 euros for

two sets each. As to the quality of the education, well, they have absoluteley nothing. Being a nursery school (where they

stay until 7 years old), they don't even get individual slates and chalk, they just have to go up and write on the

blackboard. The alphabet is painted on the walls and that's it. Cement floor, no glass, no equipment what so ever. Whilst

our kids enjoy it, its fine at least we have choices but these local children have no choice. They say aren't they lucky to

have a school and they are.

Our work with the Beecause charity has it's ups and downs. The politics of who we should work with etc doesn't interest

us and sometimes it is hard to get beyond that. However, having the opportunity to get out there and meet interesting local

people doing worthwhile things is great. Next week we will be going up onto the north bank of the river, the real rural

backwater of the Gambia, to conduct a survey of beekeepers who participated in a training scheme part funded by our

charity earlier in the year. We want to see how they're getting on now they're approaching the first harvest. We've also

been looking at a charity called WYCE, (www.wonderyearsce.co.uk) supporting a village in the south of this region. We

went because we heard they had a good apiary but we found a fantastic example of what people can do when they

concentrate their efforts.