Thank you for sending birthday cards and messages. You are all lovely. I had dinner with some friends on Thursday, and on Friday afternoon met with another group to swim and relax in a local hotel. As this is a Muslim country we always have Friday afternoon off – hurrah!
We have a group of twenty new VSO volunteers who have joined our three programmes of Education, Disability and Rural Livelihoods. These have been in The Gambia since the final week of August, and on Sunday they travelled upcountry to Janjanbureh for their final week of in-country training. Introducing these new volunteers (from The Philippines, The Netherlands, Zambia, UK and USA) to the culture and practicalities of living in The Gambia has given us a busy three weeks. After this week they take up their placements all over the country, and the Kombos will be much quieter without them; I am one of a minority of volunteers working in or near the capital Banjul.
There has been serious flooding in Africa. I am aware that there were floods in the UK earlier this year, but I do not know if our floods have made news over there. Major hailstorms and enduring heavy rain have inundated fourteen countries from Senegal in the West to Kenya in the East. That is an area considerably larger than Europe. Africans have suffered damage to property and crops, some have lost their lives and many have been displaced from their homes. Here is a link to a related article on the BBC News website.
Living here in The Gambia is (obviously) very different to what I have been used to in the UK. It is odd how readily it is possible to get used to the dusty streets, goats and chickens on the roads, limited electricity and water, and buying unfamiliar vegetables in the market. This is a poor country, ranked 155th out of 177 on the United Nations Human Development Index. And therefore there are a number of things that do not happen in the same way as they do at home, some of which I have never thought about before coming here. I have written about two of these in a longer article which I have called Council Tax.
