Gambian Adventure

You know you're a Peace Corps Volunteer when... you spend the entire night expelling amoebas from your digestive tract in all conceivable ways and instead of cancelling your 60 kilometer bike trip you stick a trowel and a pack of tissues in your saddle bag and hope for the best.

Luckily my gamble paid off. Despite its inauspicious beginning with a sleepless night of intestinal rebellion my trip to The Gambia was really fun. I met my closest neighbor, Jen, in our road town at 6:30am on Saturday to start the first leg of our trip...a 60k bike ride to Elizabeth's site in Nioro. Due to bad roads and a few stops to buy more water the ride took us about 5 hours and we rolled into town just in time for lunch. We stashed our bikes and ate at a restaurant owned by a group of women from a local trade school, topped it off with ice cream then waited out the hottest part of the day at the local Catholic compound. Jen and Elizabeth indulged in a local brew and I sipped on some oral rehydration solution to try and recover from the previous night and our long ride.

At four we took a charette to the garage to catch an alham to Danielle's site in Kaymore to spend the night. I didn't see much of the road on the way there because my amoebas were acting up and I was concentrating on not throwing up on the other passengers, but I felt every bump and bounce on the 45 minute trek out into the bush on dirt paths. We went to bed pretty early since we would have to be up at 5:30 the next morning in order to catch a car headed to Poste, the town bordering The Gambia.

We had expected to take another alham to the border, but we ended up scoring a ride with six other people in the back of a truck for 600cfa (a little over $1). We congratulated ourselves on our good luck since that meant we wouldn't have to wait around for a bigger car to fill up, but it turns out we spoke too soon. About 10 minutes down the road we got a punctured tire that flatted almost immediately, so everyone piled out of the truck to help lift it up and change the tire. Unfortunately the spare they put on wasn't in much better shape, so we had to stop again at the next village to find a pump to fill it up. After our driver spent 20 minutes filling the tire as much as he could with a bicycle pump we were once again on our way. Things were going splendidly until we got to the river. Thanks to the recent rains the road was completely flooded up to a foot deep in some places. The driver went halfway across the road before chickening out and reversing all the way back to dry land.


There were groups of men hiring themselves out to push/guide cars across the road and a lot of other vehicles made it across just fine, but our driver refused to budge. Instead he paid a passing alham to let us squeeze into their already full vehicle and we slowly trundled across an invisible road riddled with 1-2 foot deep potholes. Once across the river it was only another 15 minutes to Poste where we met up with Ari, another volunteer, and headed towards the border crossing. Typically Peace Corps volunteers are supposed to be allowed to cross the border with just their Peace Corps IDs, but we all had our passports just in case. Turns out if you show your passport you are also required to have a visa, so we had a rather long and complicated argument that involved all of our shared languages: Wolof, French, Pulaar, English and Seereer. Once we had the confusion sorted (if you don't show your passport you don't need a visa) we took a charette into Farafenny.

Sunday is luma (market) day we took a quick look at the giant vegetables and bought some fried dough before heading into the town proper. Everyone says the Gambia is the place to buy fabric so we all bought a couple meters before we went to the local dispensary to sample the Gambian brew.

We met up with a Gambian Peace Corps volunteer and some VSO volunteers (England's version of the Peace Corps) and it was nice to see whether the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence. The Gambia was settled by England so the national language is English, although people there speak English about as well as people in Senegal speak French. That is to say not very well. Still it was an interesting change of pace. After happy hour we went for some critically acclaimed chicken that was served with mustard, mayo, spaghetti, onion and cucumber. Our meal was accompanied by some ridiculous Nigerian music videos that included women in booty shorts dancing with people wearing masks of former US presidents. I wonder if Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford are aware that they are the stars of a bad Nigerian rap video?

After our late lunch it was time to head back so we jumped on a charette for the bumpy 10 minute ride back across the border. At the garage we squeezed into another alham for the long journey back across the flooded river to Danielle's site. On the way our vehicle was stopped and everyone was ordered out so the police could search the car for contraband...sugar. I'm not sure why, but it is currently illegal to bring Gambian sugar into Senegal, and I think the penalty is pretty steep for anyone caught with it. 

A lot of it makes it through though since the only sugar available in Senegal that isn't from The Gambia is expensive French imported sugar cubes. Every time I put granular sugar into my oatmeal I'm breaking the law! We got back to Danielle's village just as the sun was setting and the mosque was calling out the evening prayer and went to bed right after our dinner of millet and beans.

The next morning we slept in until 7 and then went out to help Danielle trench some mango seedlings to protect them during the dry season and plant some live fencing and wind break trees at the local community space. We did a good 6 hours worth of weeding, digging and transplanting which was more than enough to justify our trip as work related travel. We also went out to look at her Master Farmer's field and check out all of the crop demonstrations. Overall it was a really productive day and its always nice to do work with other volunteers...things get done so much faster when everyone speaks the same language and you don't have to have circular discussions about the best way to do something.

This morning Jen and I got up at 6 to catch a car back to Nioro. The original plan was to pick up our bikes and ride the 60k back to our villages, but by the time we got to Nioro it was already 8am and blazingly hot, so we opted for the back up plan and put our bikes on top of a station wagon going to Kaolack. Since we had to pay the full fare whether we got out at our crossroads or went all the way into the city we opted to come in for the day to check our mail and charge up the electronics. I was originally planning on heading back to site after my last post, but a massive thunderstorm rolled in (cross your fingers that my hut stays standing!) so I'm stuck in Kaolack for the night. I'm really anxious to get back to my site and assess the condition of my hut and just get back into my own routine, but you know what they say...when it rains make lemonade and the world smiles with you...or something like that. Anyway I figured I'd use the extra time for another blog post.