days 10-17

HELLOOOO AGAIN

Two days ago I got a message from my mom asking me when I was going to upload new blogs. I have been here for 17 days now (which was exactly the amount of days I have been in Japan lol) but I have only written blogs in the first 5 days. Somehow I haven’t been feeling like writing any blogs, because being here in Gambia is so impressive and it takes so much energy and there is honestly so much going on here that I could write a hole book about every day, but I simply have not had the energy for that. UNTIL TODAY!

Yesterday I started writing a summary of the binnenland journey, which costed me a lot of energy but I finished it and I am happy with it, even though I could not write about the most impressive things I have seen there. This is mainly because I still have to process a lot of things and because I am not afraid of forgetting those things. You see, I am not only writing this blog to fill up my free time and to keep you updated, but also for myself, so that I can read them later on in my life and not forget anything that I have experienced on my journeys. And because some things were touching me so badly and sometimes even making me emotional, they are very clearly in my mind and I am not afraid of forgetting them soon.

What I am going to be telling you in this blog is how my life has been here for the last few days after the binnenland. Anouk, can you fit 8 days in one blog? Probably not, but I am still going to try it!

The day after the binnenland journey, 4 out of 8 volunteers got sick. They had pretty bad stomach aches and were laying bed all day (and sometimes running to the toilets pretty fast). This lasted for at least 3 days and still some people are having stomach problems today. Anyways, in the evening of that Thursday, there was a djembe band playing for the 3 volunteers that were going back to Holland on Friday. The party was meant to be for our whole compound, but we only went there with 8 people, Fleur, Mariama, Connie, Astrid, a friend of Astrid, Mohammed, Achu and me. The djembe band consisted of 6 players, two of them are brothers from Alhagie and so I already knew them. The other players introduced themselves to me but I could not remember them, except one man ( I don’t know his name but I remember his face) who randomly showed up at our compound last night while we were celebrating Sinterklaas. The evening was very nice, we listened to the music and danced a little and played a dancing game called “Bing Bang” which is probably typically Gambian.  At the end of the night we walked back to our compound and one of the band members (one of Alhagie’s brothers) JJ was walking with us. It was a very gezellige walk.

The next morning I said goodbye to Connie, Anja and Astrid and went to my project again, just like Thursday, but I will come back to that later. For the first time I went to wash my laundry outside, and for the first time in 18 years I washed my own wash with my bare hands, a bucket of water and some soap. It was a very interesting experience :). In the evening we had dinner with only 5 Dutch people instead of 8 and we decided to play Jenga afterwards. JJ randomly showed up at our compound and at a sudden moment he whispered in my ear that he had a surprise for me. I did not really take it seriously because Achu had also told me that once and it turned out that he had made a drawing that he made for all the volunteers, so I decided not to anything with JJ’s statement. When we played a few games I decided to go to bed.

The next day was very weird.  Alhagie was coming into my room and said “Anouk put on your shoes and come with me.” So I grabbed my shoes and got into the car with him. I have seriously no idea what he was doing or where he was going, but he went from one place to another and then he stopped at the ATM. He told me that Petra had said to him that I needed to go there, which was why he had took me with him. When I was done he drove again to some place and to another and eventually we went home. On our way home we met Petra, who was driving towards the direction of the turntable, where we were coming from. She said “Anouk get out of Alhagie’s car and get in my car.” So I got out of the car, crossed the street and got into the car with Petra.  We drove to Tanka Tanka, a mental hospital, where Fleur wanted to volunteer for 3 weeks. Fleur and Ella where already there and so we went inside and made sure everything was arranged. When we went back, Fleur and I had to sit in the trunk of the car because the car only had two seats. It was a very nice experience :).  In the evening my day got even weirder. After diner I went to my room to go to the bathroom and when I wanted to go back outside I heard a knock on my door. I opened it and all of a sudden it was JJ standing right in front me. He said to me again “I have a surprise for you”. He grabbed my hand and put a bracelet on it. Then he said something like this “Anouk, I really like you a lot.” (I cannot remember the exact words because was happened next just blew my mind). He grabbed my waist and pulled himself closer to me and then HE KISSED ME!!! What in the holy damn world did I do to make a man kiss me?! I was so surprised I had no idea what to do next. I talked about it with the other volunteers and with Petra and they told me how to turn down a Gambian man, so that is what I did on Sunday morning.

After breakfast I walked over to the compound were JJ was living and I told him that I just wanted to be friends with him and I gave him back the bracelet. It was a very sad conversation and I hope I never have to do that shit again! I walked back to the compound  while calling Mariska to update her about the whole JJ thing and when I arrived there I went to my room to put on my bikini. Together with Ella and Marion, I cycled to Paradise beach (which was a big disaster because cycling in sand is honestly the most impossible thing to do) and I spent the whole day swimming in the see. This seemed like a very good idea, but of course I forgot about the dangers of the sun. My whole back had turned bright red and so did my face. And of course, to make things worse, I forgot to bring After Sun with me from Holland.

The next day I went to the beach again, this time with Fleur, and the cycling was become a bit less difficult. The waves were really high, because it was windy, but the water had a really nice temperature. One would think I had learned from my mistakes, but no, my sunburn got even worse that day. Fleur came to the beach almost every day, so she knows all of the staff members. She introduced me to Dulli, who walked with us from the beach to the main road and we had a discussion about how to call him. His real name is Abdullei, but Fleur always calls him Abdulli. He told me that I could call him Lei because that was his nickname, but I said I preferred Dulli and therefore I will call him Dulli from now on :). 

On Tuesday I was watching Marion, who was teaching English to Yakuba, Mariama and Isatou. I was very shocked about how little English they knew and so it was very good of Marion to expand their vocabulary. After the lesson was done we went to the turntable together, because I wanted to learn how to use the taxi and bus taxi. It turned out to be very easy and so the next day (aka 5 December) I went there all by myself to do some groceries. Doing it alone was a bit less complicated, I got asked for my number 3 times by 3 different men and one of them even had the balls to kiss my hand and tell me he loved me. Anyways, I when I got home safe and sound I started to bake pepernoten as a surprise for the group. It was a very different than when I bake at home, because this time I did not have a scale nor did I have measuring cups, so I had to guess everything. The pepernoten turned out quite alright and everybody found them very tasty. They really appreciated the gesture, even the Gambians liked it and so we celebrated sinterklaas together. It was a very fun evening :).

In the meantime I was also going to my project every day, the Bendula project, which is a class for disabled kids. I am learning them a few Dutch and English songs and I have been making all kinds of craftworks with them, like bracelets, necklaces and masks. I also gave them some balloons, which they enjoyed very very much and every morning we play a round of Mens-erger-je-niet.  On Mondays we are visiting some children at their homes, because they are too disabled to come to class. I met Fatimata, who is a 9 year old girl and is paralysed. The only thing she can move are her eyes and eyelids and her mouth a teeny tiny bit. The other girl I met was Jariatou, who has spasm. She was a very happy girl and she really liked to play with her ball, so that is what we did. 

ALSO I had received some amazing news from the Netherlands, namely that my mom is coming to Gambia on the 31st of December  and of course, I am really looking forward to it, because I miss her a lot :).

Aandd with that last bit of information I will end this long-but-still-very-short-if-you-realize-this-all-happened-in-8-days-time-blog. I hope you enjoyed it :).