day 2

Hi everyone!

First of all I want to tell you that I will not be updating my blog every day, because this costs me too much internet. My plan is to go to an internet café once a week to upload my blogs for free, therefore you will receive a lot of blogs at once, and for this I apologize.

Today I woke up and had breakfast with Petra, Connie and Anja. I was glad to see that they served bread for breakfast and some weird African stuff. They even had Nutella and all kind of jams, including pineapple jam and I am absolutely in love with it. After breakfast, Petra gave us a tour through the neighbourhood.  We went to visit some old friends of Petra at Kairoh garden and we went to the goat farm, which belonged to our compound. At the goat farm, there are working people with disabilities, for example a man that limps. His story was very touching and Connie even got tears in her eyes from it. I did not remember the name of the man, however I will not forget his story easily. He told us that he got bitten by a snake in his foot when he was 15 years old. It became a big wound and let to Carpathian tunnel syndrome, which caused his foot to fold up against his leg. This made sure the wound on his foot could not heal properly and was infected for almost 3 years. Since one year he received medical treatment and his foot hurts a lot less than before, however he is constantly walking on his heel and he says that it is very painful to walk or stand for more than 2 hours. He is such a nice and strong guy and I feel a lot of pity for him. We also met a woman that was deaf-mute, she could not speak, but she could read lips, so we were able to communicate with her a bit. She was very nice and loved her job at the goat farm. We visited my project, the Bendula project, which is a small class of disabled children which I will be teaching in the upcoming 5 weeks. At last we went to visit the local hospital, where we met an 80 year old German woman. Her heart and soul was in the hospital and she wanted to work there for far more years, however she is becoming really old and she notices that it is not easy for her to work there. She told us that she was looking for people to take over her job, even though she did not want to give it up. It was very beautiful to see how much she cared for the hospital and her staff there.

After our tour we went back to the compound to eat lunch, which basically consisted of vegetables with some bread. Even though I did not like it, I ate everything, because I did not want to disappoint the cook,  Mariana. She is a lovely woman and is always working hard. I noticed that I had so much respect for everyone I met today, because they all work so hard and went to so much trouble and they are still able to smile all day long. Alhagie already told me yesterday something about the land of smiles, and at first I thought he was exaggerating, but it is really true that everyone you meet is always smiling. It makes me a bit emotional, but in a good way, because I find it so beautiful that all of these people are happy, even though they do not have a thing. I want to be able to be like that too someday.

After we finished our lunch, we waited for Ella to arrive at the compound too. With the five of us we went to Senegambia to buy sim cards for our mobile phones in order for us to communicate with people in the Netherlands. I went to change money, 200 euro’s and I got back 2 big piles of Gambian money and I felt so rich at that moment! We drove to a bar called Poco Loco and we sat down at a table on the beach. I ordered a hot chocolate, even though it was 32 degrees outside, because I felt a bit unhappy and chocolate always cheers me up.  Right across our table was a guy standing against the wall. He noticed that he was constantly looking in my direction so I had already turned around a few times to see if there was something interesting behind me. I looked over at saw the beautiful ocean, but besides that there was nothing special. It took me almost 10 minutes to realize that the guy was looking at me. I looked back at him and he smiled, so I smiled back. He then gave me a really big smile and it was kind of creepy so I looked away. I felt really uncomfortable because of him, because he was staring at me the entire time! When we finished our drinks we went inside to pay, when I walked passed the guy I smiled at him and said “hello”, he smiled back and said the same. We had to wait at the bar for a few minutes and all of a sudden I see the guy again, also at the bar, and still staring at me! It was sooooo very awkward! When we finally paid our drinks we went to our car and I turned around at the guy and smiled at him one last time, it was a really awkward smile, but he gave me a huge smile back.

Luckily the guy did not follow us to our car and I felt a lot more comfortable. We drove to a hospital in the area, because Ella had an appointment with the president of the hospital. She wanted to work over there for 3 weeks and so she came to ask if it was okay. We were there 20 minutes too early, and we when it was finally time for the appointment, we got a message from the president of the hospital saying he got delayed and he would arrive at the hospital in half an hour, so we had to wait outside for a very long time. It was not unpleasant though, because we had a view over the road and the most crazy things passed by. For example people on cards that got driven by donkeys, trucks overloaded with people and bags of food, people sitting on top of cars or hanging behind cars and all that kind of stuff. We also made a friend, a little girl who could not speak English, and I took a selfie with her, which she liked a lot. When her mother noticed that her child was gone, we waved at her and signed that her daughter was with us. She was okay with it and the child stayed with us almost the entire time. It was nice to have her around, even though we could not communicate with her.

When Ella was finally done with her appointment, we wanted to drive back to the compound, however Petra could not get the car in reverse, so we had to push it back. Petra was laughing her ass off in the car while we had to work hard to get the car to move. It was a very nice experience. When we drove back to Tanji, we had to pass a few police officers. Most of the time they let us pass, because everybody in Tanji knows Alhagie, and most of them also know Petra, however these police officers did not and they made us pull over. Normally when they make you pull over, they check inside your car if you have any forbidden materials like drugs in it, but they did not do that. You know what they did? They started to hit on Petra and Connie! They said they looked beautiful and asked their names and asked where they came from and all that stuff. Petra was not happy about it, so she mentioned Alhagie’s nickname (Tupac) and the officers immediately backed off. Petra later told Alhagie about the officers and he called their chief to tell him what had happened. The police officers got called out and Petra was again laughing her ass off :).

We got back to our compound and I took a shower. Funny thing is, here is Gambia they do not have warm water, so I had to wash myself with ice cold water and it was really really cold! The first few seconds it is really nice, because the temperature outside is very warm and you want to cool down, however when you are standing in the shower for more than 30 seconds you become so cold! I think it will take some time before I get used to this. When I was done, went outside to the dining table and we had dinner. Mariana had made very delicious rice for us, but the rest on the plate was not very tasty in my opinion. There were sweet potatoes, tomatoes and unions, which I really really hate, so I only ate the rice and the fish.  For dessert we had strawberry and orange yoghurt, which was really nice.

After dinner we chatted for a long time and at a sudden moment, mr elbow guy came. I had already met him yesterday but I did not catch his name, but he always gives us elbows when he sees us. What is an elbow you ask? It is basically a high five, but with your elbow. I think it’s awesome. But anyway, mr elbow guy ( Update; on 23-11-2018 I learned his name; Achu) can do readings on people with his tarot cards or with regular cards, which he did to Fleur yesterday. Today Connie wanted to have a reading as well and after that it was my turn. It was very confronting, and it even made me cry a little, but it was also very helpful so I’m glad I did it. I don’t want to share everything he said during the reading, because it is very personal, but there was one thing that he said that me smile a little. He said that my body was from a woman, but my heart was from a man. He said I was very strong, bold and brave and I did things that other men did not have the balls to do. He also said I was very intelligent and I should not stop educating myself. And somehow  that made me feel really good about myself. After that he gave a reading to Anja, and also she had to cry at the end. When he was done, we started chatting with the people that were still there, some already went to bed because it was pretty late. Alhagie told us that there was a new gym in the area and he wanted to buy an abonnement over there. He knows I like sports too so he invited me to sport there together with him and his brother. I think it would be really cool to do that with them, so maybe I will buy an abonnement for one month.

I know this was a really long blog, but trust me, this is just a summary. So much more happened today that I would love to tell you, but I also want to have stories to tell my family when I am home, so I will end this blog here:).