day 23-28

Hello again

This week I was bald. And it was amazing :). I thought that when I was bald, the Gambian men would leave me alone, but this plan completely backfired as it turned out that I got even more attention from the men AND ALSO FROM THE WOMAN!!  Which is weird because before, the woman/girls would only say “hey how are you?” or something like that. But this week I had several girls and woman telling me I am beautiful and that I was looking very good and I cannot explain how good this made me feel :). I am used to men telling me this, but the men only say that in the hope that I will become their girlfriend/wife and that I will give them my money, so I don’t really take it personally when they say it to me, but when a woman tells me this, I believe them , and I think it is really nice :).

Anyways, what have I been doing this week? Well last the day that I shaved my head, I was staying home from my project because I was feeling sick. On Wednesday and Friday I did go to school but I could not give 100% of my enthusiasm, which was not very nice. I went to the hospital on Wednesday and they checked my  blood for weird diseases, which I did not have luckily enough, but they did give me a bunch of medicine and vitamins that I had to take for 5 days. And so I did that, but still I was not feeling any better, I still had diarrhoea and stomach aches and I was feeling very tired and cold. I still do not feel very well, but it is getting a little bit better every day, so hopefully I will be the old and well Anouk very soon.

Because  I was sick, I did not do very much, until Friday. There was a new volunteer that had arrived on Tuesday and I was showing her how life in the Gambia works. I had given her a small tour through the village in the beginning of the week, but on Friday I showed her how to use the taxi and bustaxi to go to the turntable. We first had to take the taxi to go from the main road to the coastal road, which is pretty unpredictable because at some moments there are a lot of taxi’s on the road and other times there are hardly any. We did not have much luck with the taxi, however we were lucky enough to run into Franco, who drove us to the coastal road. From there we got into the bustaxi and drove to the turntable. We had lunch and did some groceries and I showed her the market where we bought some fruit. After that we travelled back to the compound and I relaxed the rest of the day.

On Saturday we had a really busy day. In the morning we went to Franco’s place to attend a sandpainting workshop, which was very very nice to do. We had to make a drawing on a piece of wood and after that we had to “paint” it with glue and sand. It was very difficult to do, but we had a really good teacher and therefore the painting did not turn out to be a disaster :). I had made a giraffe standing in the dessert, which turned out quite okay and I was the first one to finish. I had to wait for half an hour for the rest to finish, but that was okay, because it was nice to see them working. Fleur had made a beautiful head of an elephant, Marjolein had made two African dancers and Ella made a nice abstract painting, which could be seen as a boat, a mask or a fish :). When we were done with the workshop we walked home and had lunch. Ella, Marion and Fleur took the bike to Paradise beach and Marjolein and I took the bustaxi. We spent a very relaxing afternoon at the beach and we arrived back at the compound just before dinner. Right after dinner we went to a disco birthday party at Franco’s place and we danced all night. It was a late night, but I had a lot of fun with Mariama, Yakuba and Siaga and a bunch of other Gambian boys I’ve danced with. The sad part was that we  had to get up early the next morning because we were going to Senegal.

So on Sunday morning, right after breakfast we left to go to Kafunting, where Marion is going to stay for one week to volunteer at a school over there. It was a very nice day and I got 4 new stamps in my passport. We had to drive for 2 hours to get there and when arrived we got a small tour through the lodge and after that we walked to the beach. It was quite similar to paradise beach but it was still very nice to make a walk through the sand. When we got back to the lodge we had lunch and after that it was time for us to go back to the Gambia. Another two hours later we arrived at the compound and after I took a shower I fell asleep on my bed. I got woken up by Achu telling me that dinner was ready, but I was so tired that as soon as I finished my desert, I went back to bed. I slept until 8 this morning and I was still feeling tired. Today Hawa and I went to go on homevisiting again. We went  to Fatoumata and Jariatou. The mother of Fatoumata told hawa that they did not have any money to buy the baby food for her, because her husband had had a car accident and could not go to work for 3 weeks. She asked Hawa if she had money, but Hawa is also stuggling with money issues.  I asked Hawa how much money one can of baby food costed and how long Fatoumata would be able to eat with it. It turned out that I could give Fatoumata food for 4 weeks for only 5 euro’s, so I did not doubt one second and went to the shop to buy the food for her. The mother and grandmother were very happy about it, but I still felt like it was only a short term solution. I am planning on talking to the board of the Bendula project about it, so maybe they will have a long term solution for the problems that the home children are facing.

After the homevisiting I went to the turntable to eat lunch and when I came back to the compound 2 hours later I had to give English lesson to Yakuba and Mariama. Normally Marion is doing that, but she is in Kafunting this week and she had asked me to take over the lessons, so I will be doing that every day this week as a small extra volunteer project.  

AND that is a small summary of this week :). I will talk to you later, byebye!