Roller coaster week

This week has been a roller coaster – not so much for me but for many of my friends here. Work has been fine, pleasantly busy without being overly pressured, but has almost taken a back seat while I concentrated on supporting friends through difficult times.

Helen has documented in her own blog about the tough week that she had, and it was bittersweet to go through that with her – sad because I didn’t want to see her unhappy, but good in a funny sort of way because it made us all realise the importance of supporting each other, and the importance of open and honest communication. It also helped us to realise how far we have come in the last eight weeks. It’s easy to forget that we are still in the transition phase, and easier still to ignore pangs of homesickness and frustration and concentrate on having a good time. But every now and then I guess we have to stop and remember that life can be quite hard here, and we have to be gentle with ourselves as we settle in.

On top of that, another friend here lost her grandmother. Tara is the second person in our group to face the difficulty of losing someone when you are far away from home (Tara isn’t a VSO volunteer; she teaches architecture at the University and both she and Graeme, her colleague, have become good friends of ours – so much so that I think of them as being the 12^th and 13^th members of our volunteer group). Nicola’s grandmother passed away a couple of weeks ago, and much to her relief she was able to go back to England support her mum and family. But Tara is Canadian, and after looking at a flight that would involve four planes, take hours and hours, and cost over £2,200 – and that’s just one way – it became apparent that she wouldn’t be able to travel home.  

And finally, two more people from our group came down with malaria. That’s 6 out of 11 now! So we have all been checking on them and making sure they were ok. I’m glad to report that both recovered quickly.

So this week has involved lots of tea, tissues, phone calls and long conversations – but I am glad that as a group we have all been able to help each other. John told me at the end of the week that my job title of ‘M&E’ should stand for monitoring and emotional support rather than monitoring and evaluation!

But, thankfully, everyone is well and happy again and on the mend, and by the weekend it felt like we all needed to have some fun. So on Friday evening we went to a place called Old Bakadaje for dinner, drinks and live music, and on Saturday we had a Senegambia night. We all met at Williams’ place – me, Nicola, Tara, Graeme, Seth and four other Peace Corps people – and had a few drinks there before heading off to Senegambia. One of the places on our list was All Nations, a club that a new friend (an English Jamaican* guy that has become a customer at Williams’ bar) has opened just this week. The club didn’t really get lively until after 3am, but after some beers and lots of dancing all of a sudden it was 5am and time to go home. It felt like we had definitely achieved our mission of putting the week behind us and making ourselves feel lively again.

Today has been a calm day spent chilling with friends and exploring Kanifing. I think my tan must have deepened because as I was walking around one guy shouted out ‘hello chocolate coloured girl’! Better than ‘toubab’ or ‘boss lady’ I suppose!

Tara and Seth

Nicola and I

*He is from St Albans but has lived in London and knows Manchester so I had a great night the other night talking to him about familiar places and remembering England. It was funny to hear him use expressions like ‘cheesed off’ – not something I hear said that often in The Gambia!