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| Bissmillah! Welcome! This is the 1 km of road leading into my village off of the main road, lined with mango trees and other beautiful greenery. It is currently hot season (and MAN is it hot!!! I drank 7 water bottles and still did not have to pee... too much info?) So it is pretty dry but I have been informed that in the rainy season (starting in the end of May) it will be very green and lush and flooded.) From this picture, it looks like there is an electricity pole going to my village, but alas, no electricity, which I am totally fine with, just gives me an excuse to go to sleep at about 10 pm every night! |
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This is my hut! It is fairly large and will be well equipped since I am taking over from a current volunteer, quite convenient! My 'compound' is located on the edge of village, which I am grateful for because it means that we get some privacy and I wont constantly have people walking by my hut, quizzing me on my Jaxanke (the language I will be speaking in village). It also means that I get this view from my backyard.....
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| Yah!! so I get to look out onto the fields of livestock while I shower! There are dozens of donkeys (which are the NOISIEST creatures ever if you were interested in knowing), also some horses, cows, goats, sheep and other odds and ends of creatures. Also, lots of trash scatters the fields and is eaten up by the animals. |
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| Here is my backyard! that is a fold out bed thing that I slept on outside since it was way too hot to sleep inside the hut the 2 nights that I stayed there. The fenced in area on the left contains my pit latrine, fancy right!?! |
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| This is my 'compound' area, well, cow and all! There are several huts in my compound, so many I have lost count as my 'dad' is the chief and has several wives who live in this area. His name is Alaji Tanjan and he is extremely old, so sweet and a jolly man. I mumbled two greetings to him and I am pretty sure he was too deaf to know that I was not speaking the correct language to him as he just kept smiling away and started reciting an assortment of stories and prayers to me in an animated fashion. Super cute. His son (who has taken over many of the responsibilities as chief) and his wives live directly around me in the compound. There are 3 of them and they seemed extremely excited to have a girl Peace Corps volunteer coming to live with them. Additionally numerous kids come and go constantly, who knows exactly how they are related to me... Half of the village is a 'Tanjan', as am I, so it is kinda confusing to figure out the exact genetic makeup of people as the family structure is extremely loose here. |
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| So this is just to make all of you jealous about me getting to eat as many mangos and I want all the time for the next two years.... Pretty delicious, although too bad that other than that all I get to eat is rice with some oily sauce haha. | | | |
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So this is on the main road, in the bigger village of another new volunteer who is 10km away from me, a short bike ride. From there, we took a 3 km bike ride to a nice hotel that has tables and hammocks overlooking the Gambia river and the National Park that borders both of our sites. We relaxed there for a few hours during the scorching hot afternoon, listening to the chirps of birds in the trees, slowly sipping cold cokes, and watching the hippos playing in the river and the baboons and monkeys swinging from the trees. Not a bad life, this will definitely become a weekly tradition.
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