Baby, Baby

1 & 2. Seedy with his wife and baby Fanding.



3. Myself & Fatoumata after a baby holding tutorial - 4. Adama, Fatoumata & Lucy.

5. Lucy with Fatoumata and mother - 6. Grandmother Cham with granddaughter.

This will be my final blog entry before heading home next week for a short break - six very enjoyable months in The Gambia. The low points have mainly been down to transport (or lack of) although I now have a more Gambian view on it and just chill. We'll get where we're going at some point I think. The highpoint has definitely been the amazingly friendly people I have met who will go out of their way to make to feel welcome in their country. Whenever we've visited colleague's homes we're always treated as special guests, introduced to every member of the family and usually invited to a food-bowl meal.

Lucy with the especially friendly Jammeh kids.


We've said goodbye to another member of our Mansa Konko VSO team this month. Terry, our advisor to the Director, returns to Portsmouth after six months too. Terry is a VSO legend - having first volunteered in the 1960s in The Philippines. Since then he has visited Mongolia, Pakistan & Uganda to name but a few - he has even spent time with Napoleon on St Helena - sorry Terry you're not that old! Friday afternoon visits to the Roadside Bar won't be the same without the lines "When I was in...".

Terry and myself working hard at the office - photo courtesy of Lynn.

In an attempt to improve my Mandinka, Lucy and I have decided to take language lessons from our neighbours - mostly from Mrs Jawneh. I get quite a bit of friendly banter from the ladies in the office. I think it's friendly - to be honest I can't understand a single thing that's going on - so I need to find out. The lessons are really just a relaxed chat sitting in their compound. Mr Jawneh is the caretaker for our compound so he's always there to help us out. He also runs the main bakery in Soma (also in his house) so the Tapalapa we have at meal time is thanks to him.

Since we missed our last naming ceremony at Seedy's house we jumped at the chance to visit Adama's home following the birth of his latest daughter, Fatoumata. Both Seedy and Adama are cluster monitors - it's their job to monitor schools (teachers, lessons etc.) in one of the six clusters that makes up Region Four. Six members of the office made the short bike ride to Messembe - twenty minutes back down the dusty South Road towards Kwinella. Mr Choi took the lead with Lamin riding pillion, then came Lucy & Isatoh, followed by yours-truly giving Eustace a lift on the red hornet. Our convoy of motorbikes didn't have to stop at the usual security checks as we had NGO number plates - to be fair my bike was the only one with a number plate! Navigating a bike through sand is quite tricky - especially with a wobbly passenger. Thankfully we all arrived safely and enjoyed a Benachin food-bowl. I held baby Fatoumata much to the amusement of everyone - spot who's not a father! We travelled back before it began to get dark. I was concerned that Mr Choi took the lead back - on the wrong side of the road! Fortunately we soon swapped over after a mile or so, you rarely meet traffic so it's not that scary.

Part of the Region Four Gang. From top left: Lucy, Seedy, Lamin, Isatoh, Omar, Adama Cham. From bottom left: Local lady, Mr Choi, Eustace and Mrs Cham with Fatoumata.

A blog entry wouldn't be the same without a trip to the Kombos - yes we went again for the new volunteers party (VSO has two recruitment cycles a year, one in February the other when I arrived in August). We planned to set off at 6.30am to catch the first gelleh. We were still at the compound at 7.45am as I had managed to lose Lucy's house keys. I had dropped them the night before and our neighbour had picked them up for safe keeping. I paid penance by carrying her bags for the whole weekend! On the upside we found that the big green bus was running again!! On the downside it broke down at Kalagi - air was leaking out of the engine. We eventually got going again and arrived in Kombo for 2.30pm.

It was only going to be a short visit to Kombo - we met Ellie and the other new volunteers and agreed she was a big improvement on Kate ;-) We headed back on the North Road on Sunday, surprisingly getting stuck this time at Yelitenda (the south side ferry port only five miles from our compound). We were the last to get off the ferry by which time all the gellehs and taxis had disappeared - the only ones left were charging exorbitant fares. Lucy suggested walking back home in the 35 degree heat - tempting - but in the end we cut a deal with a Senegalese guy heading to Casamance to share a taxi.

On the following Monday evening we headed over to Seedy's compound in Sankwia to visit his family and new son, Fanding. We'd missed his naming ceremony due to gelleh problems a couple of weeks ago. We again enjoyed a good chat with his family, shared a food-bowl and went through his photo collection. Working out who's who in a Gambian family can be tricky so seeing a few photos certainly helps. I was using Kate's old bike as the red hornet had suffered a puncture the previous week. It wasn't a good week for bikes as Lucy's new bike broke down a couple of times on Monday, she then used Kate's which also developed a puncture (I think I caused it before handing it over). I did manage to get Terry's old bike going after swapping the spark plug twice, checking the spark, ensuring fuel was getting into the cylinder and then trying to bump start it with help from Alpha on the compound - all in the afternoon heat. It has "chopper style" handlebars, so feels quite cool - but really is a rusty old bag of nails. Hopefully when I return in six weeks I'll still have access to a bike - some are due for scrap soon so the red hornet may not make it!