Last week at work was very busy. We had a workshop at the office all week, the purpose of which was to explain what ‘learner centred methodology’ was to key education people in the region. The workshop was run by the Curriculum Department. It was an interesting and busy week and I found myself both involved with the workshop as well as completing other work I had to do, so I was very very busy (even took work home and worked until 10:30pm on a couple of evenings!)
Working in the heat can be very difficult and it really is very hot (it’s humid too because it’s the rainy season and at times there is so little air it even feels difficult to draw breath!) The electricity goes off during the early hours of the morning (3am) and the moment my fan goes off I wake up! Within minutes I’m wet through with sweat! The electricity comes on again at 9am but I am in work by then so from 3am until 7pm that same day I have no electricity which means getting ready for work in the morning is a sweaty task! Everything takes so much longer here because of the heat (even simple tasks like washing the dishes has to be done more slowly otherwise you’d be rinsing them in sweat)! I think I am getting used to it though and the only thing that really gets to me about the heat at the moment is my skin irritations (can’t wait to sort that out!)
Normally my house is very busy, it’s like the compound hangout and I’m rarely in there alone however recently big sister Lucy sent me some toys (a bat and ball set, a ball, some small children’s toys and lots of bubble making apparatus) and now I’ve managed to keep a lot of the children outside happily blowing bubbles and playing games with each other (well as happily as a group of children can do those activities together)! It does mean that my house has become more of a teenager hangout now (they love listening to my i-pod) but I can get rid of people as and when I need to (which isn’t really very often!)
Sadly though, many of the children on the compound have been ill with malaria over the last few weeks due to the rainy seasons (as there are many more mosquitoes around). The local health centre seems to be able to provide them with adequate medication though.
The weekend just gone was another fun weekend. Paul’s wife Courtney came to visit and brought a friend with her (both Courtney and her friend are American but not peace corp). I invited Priya over and on Saturday night we all went down to the pier and made a fire. We spent the evening there chatting and making ‘s’mores’ (apparently this is a well known American thing where you melt marshmallows over a camp fire and then sandwich them between biscuits with chocolate in the middle). They are called s’mores because people always want ‘some more’. They were nice but a bit rich for my otherwise chocolate-free diet so after having two I had to say ‘no s’mores’!
All the guests left on Sunday and I spent the remainder of the day chilling. I even watched a film on my net book (with the fan on full blast pointing directly at me) ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ and for a short while I forget where in the world I actually was! It wasn’t long though before the house guests came over wanting to listen to my new collection of Gambian music!
All in all things are good here and I am happy and life is treating me well. It’s nice to know that people back home are thinking about me and I’m actually quite jealous that you guys are going to get a winter and be cold! The closest I get to a cold chill these days is that first jug of water that I pour over my head whilst washing in the morning. It’s just cold water but it’s been outside in the bucket all night so it’s usually heated up a little. Very occasionally it catches me off-guard and it is actually colder than I imagine and that shiver sensation, whilst stood naked under the sun in my open-top pit latrine, is both the best and worst experience in the world!
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