Birthday treats

My first birthday here in The Gambia was lovely!  I started the day with tea and grapefruit, and eagerly opened the package that I had waited so patiently to open!

I was good and didn't peek until Wednesday!

The contents were a great surprise from my best friend Alex – cooking spices, dried mushrooms, stock cubes, packet sauce mixes, tea bags and mini eggs. She knows me so well! Oh and a princess badge which I wore all evening! I can't wait to make up the cheese sauce mix - if I can find some cauliflower or broccoli I will be in heaven, although even with macaroni will be a huge treat!

I opened the mini eggs straight away and ate chocolate for breakfast, which made it feel like a proper birthday! 

I worked in the morning and then spent the afternoon at the beach with Helen. Seeing as so many people had told me to enjoy my birthday in the sun I thought I would do just that. And then up to Aso Rock for the evening to eat celebratory jollof rice. I was joined by Helen, Nicola, Abdou, Joe, Jaap and Janneke. I received some great gifts; nail polish and jewellery from Nicola, a lovely African weaved basket from Helen, and a bar of chocolate from Jaap and Janneke! Perfect presents!

Julbrew is currently 20dalasi at Aso Rock (40p) so we took advantage of this and drank our fill, moving inside for the last part of the evening to escape the cold wind. Although Joe - the newest of the group - pointed out that it really isn't cold at 23ish degrees and that we must have really acclimatised to claim that it was 'freezing'! 

A fun day and night, and a happy Gambian birthday. 

The mangoes are coming!

Getting closer and closer to mango season! 

The same tree back in February

A couple of random pictures

A few weeks ago I had three baby birds perching outside my front door. They stayed there for about a week until they were strong enough to fly around and find their own food. While they were growing the mum and dad would swoop in and feed the chicks. It was great to watch them from my doorway. Every time I left the house they would all fly away, but to get out they would circle round and sweep out over my head, giving the sensation that they were dive bombing me! 

Around the same time I had Nicola, Abdoul, Helen and Rob round for dinner and I cooked a vegetable chilli. I haven't done a veg picture for a while, so I thought I'd post this one now! 

New volunteers - and some reflection!

Well, the new volunteers have arrived looking fresh and keen! They are a mixed group from England, Uganda, Zimbabwe, India and The Philippines. Oh and The Netherlands if you include Jaap and Janneke who arrived a few weeks ago. They are a nice bunch, and all bring a lot of experience and skills with them.

L-R: Rao, Aisha, Juliet, Joe, Munya, Janneke, Jaap, Helen, Martin,
me (holding a fruit plate - a present from our friend Carl the juice man!), 
John (old vol) and Johnson.

The last couple of weeks have been all about showing them around, giving advice and trying to relay all the information that we were given when we first got here. There's nothing like showing someone else how to do something to make you realise how much you have learned, or how far you have come. The things that felt so unusual and unfamiliar when I arrived have become so normal to me now, almost without me realising. I suddenly see that the confidence I have to yell 'Bakau' or 'Traffic Light' in the middle of the street in order to attract a 77 driver is a new found confidence - and one that has built up imperceptibly over the weeks and months of hailing bush taxis. Before you know it I will be hissing at taxi drivers to get them to stop! 

Listening to the language lessons going on as part of ICT takes me back to when we were learning the unfamiliar words, and trying to memorise everything we were taught. Now when I enter the VSO office in the morning I am grilled with 'how are you, how is the morning, did you spend the night in peace' in Wolof or Mandinka as the volunteers practice their greetings, and it makes me realise how much Wolof I use now and how much I have learned since it was me taking those lessons six months ago. 

Watching everyone become familiar with benechin and domoda, rolling fufu in their hands, or drinking wonjo juice takes me back to when we first did all of this stuff. And it was only six months ago, I'm hardly a veteran - and I certainly don't want to sound like I am patronising the new volunteers. It's just that so much seems to have happened in that six months it could almost be six years! 

And yet, at the weekend I realised that because I hadn't actually watched the meat man cut my meat he hadn't cut it up for me, and because I hadn't examined the meat he selected he'd given me mostly bone, and because I cooked the onions in palm oil (in the absence of vegetable oil) my whole dish tasted unlike it should - and I remember that as experienced as I suddenly feel I still have so much to learn about life here in West Africa. Sometimes I feel that I am learning to be an adult all over again, learning how to shop for food, how to cook, and how to use systems that I am still unfamiliar with, as if starting from scratch.

Yesterday I found myself facilitating the Employers Workshop - the first meeting between the new volunteers and their employer/partner organisation. I hadn't expected to even attend, let alone run the session, but there I was. At lunch two of the new volunteers asked me how long it had taken me to prepare for the workshop. I laughed and explained that I'd only learned I was going to it an hour before it started, and that I was making it up as I went along. They were shocked, and said they thought I seemed completely in control and confident - which was nice praise to receive. I can definitely say that it's one of the main things I have learned since I have been here - how to facilitate a workshop for a room full of people without any notice... or perhaps more simply, the art of just winging it!

Deadline met!

Phew! We submitted 25 out of 25 annual partnership review reports on time, meeting our 100% target. It was quite intense work filling in the reporting templates, and Ebou, Abdoulie and I were working crazy hours to get it finished (10+ hour days, evenings and weekends) but we got there in the end and it felt good! 

I really enjoyed the process - I learned a lot about the partners that VSO work with, saw more of the country, and learned more about Gambian culture, picking up a few extra Wollof words and some new Mandinka words along the way! And it has helped me to think about the Monitoring and Evaluation for the office, and what the volunteers need to be collecting to help with next year's reporting. I feel fired up and ready to go, brimming with ideas of how to work over the next few months...

But alas, as soon as I stopped working on the APR my body rallied against me for making it work so hard, and I came straight down with tonsillitis the day after we met the deadline. So - fired up I might be, but convincing the body to work hard might take a few more days yet! 

Thankfully it's pretty easy to self medicate here (with caution of course!). I knew it was tonsillitis - my Achilles heel - and after a few days of waiting it out to see if it was viral and/or would go away by itself I went to the pharmacy to get some antibiotics. While there the pharmacist gave me some painkillers for free, and the next day when I called in (he hadn't given me enough tablets) he gave me some free vitamin C tablets. I am used to the veg man giving me an orange or grapefruit or two, but it's quite unnerving when your pharmacist starts adding little extra pills to your bag, lucky dip style! Who knows what medication I will get for free next time! 

Lastly, here's a couple of pictures from the Growth and Competitiveness Project quarterly meeting we held in February.  

The NaWFA team - John and Aloysious (fellow vols)
with Njagga (Director) and Abou (Finance)

Rob, me, Shimoni and Abdoulie - the VSO Programme Manager

Me and Abdoulie kicking off the session before my presentation