Final session in Soma

We drove up to the Education office at about 8.45 and had a breakfast of tapalapa and nyebe (beans) before we began the session. Today was a bit different as it was just a final placement evaluation for Helen – we will do the Annual Partnership Review when Ellie leaves.

So, the session was shorter, but still very enjoyable. I have really loved facilitating these meetings and found that I was able to improve and refine my approach as I went along each day.

We wrapped up at about 1pm and headed into Soma to get some lunch – stew and rice at a roadside restaurant.

Once we were fed and watered we set out for our journey home. Ellie joined us for the return trip and it was nice to talk through how the sessions went with her, and talk about the data collection that she was doing for her office. The journey went by really quickly, and I got home at about 5.30. It was fantastic to walk into my nice clean house, and have a long long shower! Being away ‘up country’ was brilliant, I really enjoyed it, learned a lot, and worked hard… but it made me realise that as much as I enjoyed the peace and tranquillity of the bush, I am so happy to live in bustling Bakau! I think I will always be a city girl at heart! 

Janjangbureh

After finishing at Bansang Hospital Ebou and I prepared for the next session, and then chilled for the afternoon. After dark Ebou, Ba Sarjo, and I wandered out to get afra for dinner which we brought back to the rest house to eat by moonlight. I was shattered so decided to watch an episode of the West Wing and get an early night.

Afra - take a whole load of meat...

Sling it on a big fire and add some onions...

And then sit back and enjoy the meat feast! 

This morning we travelled to Janjangbureh and did the session with Beth and Cath, or Nyima and Tida if you go by their Gambian names. The session was different once again, but very enjoyable – and nice to discuss education… an area that felt a bit more familiar to me. Breakfast was arranged on site and consisted of grilled meat with onion gravy served in food bowls and tapalapa – I still haven’t got used to eating meat for breakfast, but it was tasty enough! Lunch was food bowls of stew and rice – with a huge fish or part of a fish at the centre of each bowl!

Food bowl complete with huge fish head!

Cath and lots of food bowls.

The day was a long one – although we arrived at 8.45 we didn’t really start until about 10.30… we were waiting for people to join us, and then waiting for breakfast, and then we faced the usual problem of people wandering in and out just as we were about to start the meeting, and then wandering in and out throughout the meeting, or using their phones, or just having a chat…! But it went well and we got a lot out of the session, and I managed to get the agenda back on track and finish at 4pm as scheduled, despite the delay in starting.

 

Me looking very serious!

Once we finished up we drove to Soma. We found a room in a rest house that was… how can I say… not quite as nice as the other places we had stayed! 

I had a frog in my bathroom but no washbasin!

Ebou and I grabbed a quick dinner and then Ellie came and picked me up to take me through to her and Helen’s compound on her bike. It was Helen’s last night so they were having cake and juice with the children they live with, and it was really nice to join them. No electricity meant that we sat outside under the moonlight, and it was a lovely. 

Me and Ellie

Helen's last night in her compound

Bansang Hospital

This morning I came out of my room to see the early morning sun across the river, which was already burning hot by 8.30am.

We got into the car and went to collect the breakfast that we had organised the night before… only to find that the guy had failed to get the order ready for us. So we headed to Bansang hospital empty handed, and arranged for Ba Sarjo to collect breakfast for the group as soon as it was ready.

Bansang Hospital

Note the vulture sitting on the roof of the women’s ward!

Today’s session was quite different – we had less people and it was in the Principal Nursing Officer’ office, rather than a big room. We were there to see Asha, who is a nutritionist at the hospital, working within the paediatric unit.  We weren’t able to have service users at the meeting, but the doctors and nurses who work with Asha all came and were very engaged throughout the day. We paused only for breakfast when it arrived – more spam, spaghetti and tapalapa!

Like yesterday, it was great to hear about all the work that the hospital are doing, and hear the success stories of the feeding programmes and the outreach work with local communities. Most childhood malnutrition is due to lack of knowledge about food and hygiene rather than food shortages, so they are doing a lot of work to educate parents about the best food to give to their children, and how to ensure good hygiene to prevent illness which might lead to malnutrition. They are also running food demonstrations in local markets to give practical experience to mothers who may not know what to cook for their infants.

As well as working with parents and communities, Asha has been sharing skills with hospital staff, training staff within the hospital about basic nutrition and how to tell the difference between malnutrition and dehydration – and then how to treat patients accordingly. As a result, child mortality rates of those admitted to the unit have dropped to less than 5% - which, going by World Health Organisation guidance, is a good result.

After the meeting finished Asha gave us a tour of the hospital and the children’s ward, including the malnutrition unit where she is based. After a rush of children following the rainy season it was fairly quiet, with only 4 infants and their carers – three very small babies and one boy who could have been about 5 or so.

This little one was happily eating an egg, but you can see his distended stomach typical of malnourished children, and he had such huge eyes in his tiny head. The other two babies were so small they looked like frail little birds. But their prognosis was good, and the unit is really making a difference to the health of children in the area.

Arriving in Bansang

After leaving Basse we drove for an hour to reach Bansang. We came to Bintou’s Paradise Hotel, which is right on the River Gambia, and after checking the rooms decided to stay.

It was really nice to be by water, and I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the river. It looked so different depending on the light.

The ferry across to ‘Bushtown’ was also fascinating to watch – the vehicle ferry is pulled on a rope, and the passenger boats are steered across by small boys who are dwarfed by the punts they use to move the boats.

The vehicle ferry to Bushtown - this one is carrying a tractor.

The rooms were fine – very dark when the power was off, but clean and comfortable. So far, in both Bansang and Basse, the electricity has been scheduled – it’s on from 9am to about midday and then goes off until 18.30 when it stays on until 2am. At least with this schedule you know when you can charge your laptop etc, unlike Bakau where it just randomly goes off and you don’t know when it will come on again!

After dropping our stuff we went to find food – we tried for afra but all the fresh meat had gone, so we ended up having a slightly strange but tasty concoction of spaghetti, omelette, fried spam (which Gambians call corned beef) and half a tapalapa. After dinner I had some attaya so managed to stay up a bit later than the night before! After the success of the day, and the strong tea, I was buzzing and didn’t sleep until about midnight. 

First session at RSOD

Our first Annual Partnership Review and Final Placement Evaluation was for Simon at the Rural Support Organisation for the Disabled (RSOD).

We arrived just after 9am, and I was given a quick tour of the building. The centre is a school where able and disabled nursery children are schooled together to promote inclusive education. The centre also acts as a base for women’s literacy classes and as a training centre for disabled people in the community.

The centre

After introductions and prayers we had breakfast (cake, chicken, meat pies and sausage rolls – definitely not a cornflakes kind of breakfast!). Once all of that was out the way we were able to begin. The session included 12 people, a mixture of staff, board members, and association members, including a number of disabled people and a couple of people who only spoke Mandinka.

Attendance - note the thumb prints.

The session was challenging at times, and the beginning felt a little bit stilted, but once everyone started participating it really flowed. I was unsure as to how it would all come together, not having facilitated an event like this before, but it was fantastic! Ebou and I worked really well together, and I loved hearing about what RSOD have done over this last year, what they have learned, what challenges they have faced, and more importantly what impact they have had on the lives of the people they work with.

Me working with the board members.

What's a session without post-it notes?! 

This year they elected a new board, 7 elected members and 4 co-opted members. The 7 elected members are all female, which is testament to the work they have done to empower women and prove that women, including disabled women, can have a voice. They have run adult literacy classes, loads of group training sessions – both for RSOD staff and community members – and have encouraged people to learn income generating skills such as soap making and Omo making (washing powder). They are looking to expand to a little garden project to support further income generation through vegetable production.

Perhaps the biggest change of all has been their advocacy work for the rights of disabled people. This has empowered parents to send their disabled children to school, including sending 10 deaf children to the local primary school, and has led to disabled people in the community having the power to stand up for themselves. One lady explained that she now felt confident enough to tell taxi drivers that she shouldn’t have to pay extra for her wheelchair, and that asking her to do so was like charging somebody to bring their legs into the car. 

Another lady said that due to the work she had done with RSOD she now knew that disabled people didn’t have to just sit around and do nothing, or go out begging, but could make things, and grow things, and work to support themselves and be included with the rest of the people in their compounds.

Imagine sitting on this for more than a few hours...

I found hearing the stories really moving, and it was amazing to get out and actually meet and hear from the beneficiaries that VSO and their partners are working with. I really enjoyed leading the session and felt a huge sense of achievement at the end of the day. One feedback post it note from a participant said the thing that they had enjoyed about the day was ‘the manner and the way it was conducted is what I like most’ which felt very encouraging to read on day one of doing the Annual Partnership Reviews!

Positive feedback! 

As we travelled through Basse to leave I was able to get a few snaps of the place, and check out more of my surroundings. The craziest thing was the number of vultures soaring over our heads – I have never seen so many! And it was great to see the rural mix with the urban, with donkey drawn carts, and cows everywhere. Basse was quite lively, but it was soon time for us to leave and travel to Bansang to find our next lodgings for the night.

A main street in Basse. Edwin and Pompeyo - 2 VSO vols - are in the distance.

Two boys who wanted their picture taken.

Donkey carts were everywhere. 

A day of travelling

On Sunday at 9.30am Ba Sarjo came to collect me and Ebou to start our journey up to Basse – the furthest point in the east of the country that VSO has volunteers.

Ba Sarjo

We gave Ellie a lift back to Soma, so I had Ellie’s company for the first 3.5 hours of the journey, and it was fun to chat with her as we travelled. It was also good to take her recommendation of buying some biscuits from a little shop we stopped at, because they turned out to be the only thing I would eat until we got to Basse!

The journey took 8 hours, but included quite a few pit stops along the way, such as; dropping supplies off to Ba Sarjo’s family, calling at Soma to drop Ellie (and looking unsuccessfully for food), stopping at Janjanbureh to see Beth, Cath and Eleanor and to pick up supplies that needed to go to Basse, and calling in on Asha at Bansang, before finally arriving in Basse at 17:30.

The journey to Basse by public transport can take eleven hours or more, mainly because getting through the police check points in a gelli takes so much time. Thankfully for us, with NGO licence plates, we were able to sail through them without showing our ID or having all of our luggage checked.

Military check point

The road was good – we travelled along the south bank and there is only one stretch that isn’t tarmacked and is just sand. This section took us about an hour, but I can imagine it would take a lot longer in wet season.

It was really interesting to see the scenery change – from urban to rural, past termite mounds that made the landscape seem like one big sculpture park, and past different styles of houses, such as these round houses with thatched roofs.

We lodged at a rest house, and after dropping our stuff went out to get some food. We dived into the closest place we could find and had a rather small plate of chicken and cold chips for a steep 100 dalasi, which left Ba Sarjo and Ebou still feeling hungry! After arranging breakfast for the workshop the next day we headed back to the rest house and chilled before bedtime. After all the travelling, and being up late at the gala dinner the night before I was shattered and slept through from 10.30pm to 8am, only waking briefly at the call to prayer before falling straight back to sleep!

My room

Our rest house

Weekend activities

Friday was another bank holiday – this time because Muslim New Year fell on Saturday, so New Year’s Eve was given as a day off. After confirmation of this (which came at 1pm on Thursday – slightly more notice than the last public holiday I suppose!) everyone rushed around to get everything done ready for the long weekend. For me and Ebou at the VSO office this meant making final preparations for our trek on Sunday, and going to the bank to withdraw our float for the week away. As all banks would be closed on Friday and Saturday we weren’t the only ones needing to draw money, so you can imagine the queues! Thankfully it didn’t take too long, and we were soon able to begin our long weekend.

On Friday I met Helen, Tara and Eduardo for lunch before heading to the beach. There I discovered a new passion… body boarding! It was so much fun! We have really noticed a change in the sea lately – the temperature has dropped and the waves have really increased. When we first arrived it was calm enough to lay back and float, and it was the temperature of a hot bath, but now the waves crash and roar and it is definitely cool enough to make a swim feel refreshing. The waves are good enough to surf and body board, and after a quick tuition from Doodoo I was instantly hooked and spent about two hours in the water. Workout DVDs and watermelon hand weights may be a thing of the past – this was a far better way to exercise, and I could really feel it in my shoulders and arms the next day.

Nicola body boarding

On Saturday evening Helen, Nicola and I attended a disability gala dinner, a fundraising event organised by one of the other volunteers here. VSO had bought some tickets for the event and wanted some volunteers to go as well as office staff, so Haddy generously offered the tickets to me to share with Helen and Nicola. The event was held at Ocean Bay, one of the big hotels at Cape Point, and was a funny evening. I was lucky with the raffle and won a meal for two at a Lebanese restaurant worth 700dalasi! Helen won a DVD player, which would be a great prize if she owned a TV!

And then this morning I was up at 8am to go ‘on trek’. A couple of weeks ago VSO asked me to lead this year’s Annual Partnership Review. This involves meeting with all of VSO’s partners and holding a meeting or workshop to evaluate the impact they have had over the last year. As many of the current volunteers are coming to the end of their placements, and leaving over the next few months, we are also combining the APR with Final Placement Evaluations and have quite a busy schedule programmed to see everyone before they leave. I was excited to go up country, as so far all my time has been spent in the Kombos, but had no idea what the week would hold…

Live music at Aso Rock Gardens

After taking photos and exercising (see last blog post) I got ready and headed to Aso Rock Garden’s – Williams’ Nigerian bar and restaurant. Last Wednesday we had a VSO dinner there which was a lot of fun, so this week we decided to repeat the experience but with live music and a whole load more people! We texted, called and emailed everyone we could think of and ended up with a fantastic group of VSOers and Nigerian regulars.

Getting the place ready

The day's special dish was very popular.

Quick glass of wine with Nicola before the guests arrive!

The entertainment

The music was great – provided by a group who play at Alliance Francaise – and the food was delicious. The new cook is fantastic and is keeping everyone happy and healthy with her wholesome freshly cooked Nigerian food.

African vegetables with catfish and sweet potato

Unfortunately I was busy taking to people and stopped taking photos before the place really filled up – so these pictures don’t really do the night justice, but they give a flavour. By about 10pm or maybe later every table was filled and people were dancing around the garden – it was a great night.

Not sure what John just said to Salome! 

Happy customers!

Frank and Ambrose, my compound brothers, came for the evening.