day 4 and 5

Good evening everyone and welcome back to my blog :)

I hope you enjoy reading my blogs as much as I like to write them. Today was again a very interesting day. This morning I woke up and ate breakfast, I was not feeling ill anymore so I went to my project for the first time. Ella, a woman staying in my compound, was also volunteering at the Bendula project this week and she was already there when I arrived. I first introduced myself to the children of today (there are different children every day) and I tried to start a small conversation with each of them, however this was more difficult than I had expected. The first boy I met was I think around the age of 5, which made him the youngest student of that day. His name is Bakary but  I could not figure out much about him, because he looked totally normal on the outside. He was really cheerful and full of energy and he is very good at playing Lummeltje. The next boy I met was also named Bakary, I think he was 6/7 years old and he was born with a water head. Then I met a boy from I think 7/8 years old, his name is Alieu and he has very poor eyesight. He is also very quiet but I think he is a very nice boy. At a sudden moment I was playing a hand clapping game with him and he really enjoyed it. While I was playing with him, Mariama can to me and signed to me that she also wanted to play it with me. Mariama is deaf-mute but she is a very clever girl. She was the oldest one in the group and I think she is around 11 years old. Last but definitely not least I met Buba. He is a very charming 10 year old boy with a mental disability. He likes giving hugs and kisses, especially to me, and I think he even told his classmates that he had claimed me as his girlfriend… He also wanted to hold my hand the entire time I was there and followed me around the whole day. There are two teachers teaching this class, first you have Mr. Darboe, who is supposed to be the main teacher, but always sits outside and let Hauwa, the other teacher, do all his work. Hauwa lives in the same compound as I do, so I already knew her. She has a 9 month old son, who is named after Alhagie and he is very adorable.

Anyways, after I had met all of the teachers and children in the Bendula class, I started to join in with the lesson. First we played a little while with hand puppets, which led to the hand clapping game. After that we gave each person in the room a music instrument and started to sing Hallo Allemaal from De Luizenmoeder, which was kind of chaotic because the children did not know the lyrics, however they hummed with us in their own way. They enjoyed making music a lot so we did that for almost half an hour. Then Ella found a tennis ball and we started to play Lummeltje with Buba, Bakary and other Bakary. Mariama wanted to draw and Alieu did not want to stop making music. After that we did some crafting with paper wads and at last it was lunch time. After lunchtime the school was over and the kids were brought back to their home with the bus taxi.

When I arrived at my compound I had lunch with Petra and a new volunteer Marion. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do in the afternoon, so I stayed with Petra and Marion for a bit. At 3 o clock I  left the compound with my camera to make some pictures, however this was not a very good idea, because this made the Gambian people think I had a lot of money, so they were all bothering me and asking me to give them money or my phone number and all that, so I decided to walk back to my compound. I found Alhagie sitting there with Mohammed and another man who’s name I have forgotten. They invited me to come sit with them, because they were making Gambian tea and they wanted me to taste it. So I sat down with them and joined their conversation. The tea took a lot more time to make than I thought it would, I sat there for at least 45 minutes, but that was okay because it was very nice. Alhagie explained to Mohammed and the other guy some differences between Europe and Africa, for example the gay and transgender topic. In Africa, being gay or transgender or anything like that was taboo and most African people do not even know this existed. I was very surprised to find out that Mohammed and the other guy also did not know about transgender people and they were very shocked about Alhagie’s experiences with them in the Netherlands. I was laughing my ass off because of their reactions, because they really did not believe it to be true! Alhagie also told me that because of a gay person he met the love of his life, Annemarie. He told me how they met and how their relationship was going. Apparently they were always fighting and at a sudden moment Annemarie asked him to move with her to Europe. Alhagie said no and they broke up. But instead of accepting the fact that he lost his woman, he did everything he could to win her back, aka he called her 3 to 4 times a day, every day for almost a month, and when she finally picked up, she surrendered and they got back together. However not soon after that Annemarie got cancer and she wanted to commit euthanasia. Alhagie was the last person to see her alive and he said that he still thinks about her every day, which I thought was very beautiful. Alhagie then told Mohammed and the other man about the boys and girls in Europe, who did not know true love and would date or have sex with a lot of people in a very short time. When Mohammed and the other man did not believe this, I told them what happened to my relationship two weeks ago and they did not believe it! Their reaction when I told them that my boyfriend broke up with me and started a new relationship a few days later with a middle aged man, was absolutely priceless! It still makes me smile when I think about their faces and the things they told me. They said they could not believe that someone could be bisexual, they did not believe that someone would wanted to dump me and they did absolutely could not believe that someone would pick a middle aged men over me, and hearing them say that made me very very happy and it took away the last bit of love sickness that was still inside of me. BUT, the real reason that I was sitting there was to taste the tea they were making and after the story of my love life, it was finally done. It was very strong Chinese black tea, with a shitload of sugar and some mint. It was served in shot glasses and Alhagie and the men did not expect me to like it, because you had to learn to drink it, however I thought the tea was surprisingly tasty and so I drank the whole glass instead of only a sip.

When all the tea was finished I went inside the compound and a started to clean up my room and take a shower. We were going out for dinner as a gift to our cook. We were with 11 people and we had to fit inside a van that was meant for only 9 people. We had to drive for 30 minutes and then we arrived in Senegambia. We went to a new Italian restaurant and ordered our food. After diner we went to another bar to see a Djembe show with African dancers, which was very interesting for the first 30 minutes, but after that it became kind of boring because there was very little variation in the songs and dances. At 11 o clock we drove back to the compound and we all went to bed.

That night I did not sleep very well and the next morning I was feeling sick again. I spent the whole morning sitting in my room, typing this blog, showering and cleaning up. I also started to pack my bags for the Binnenlandreis. We are leaving tomorrow early in the morning and I am very excited about it. In the afternoon I went to Senegambia again with Petra, Connie and Anja and we visited Myfarm, which is a training and education centre for young Gambians. They had all kind of little greenhouses where they grew their own vegetables and herbs and they also had some animals like pigs, chicken and bunnies. The bunnies kind of made me laugh a little, because they were all albino’s :).  Aaand this was kind of all that happened today, so not very interesting compared to the previous days, but that is okay. During the binnenlandreis I will not have any electricity and therefore I cannot charge my phone or anything, so do not worry if you do not get any messages from me.