Leafe ni je- I went on vacation

Casey, Eileen and me overlooking a valley. Guinea has topography!!!

Thankfully, our guide had plenty of poses he wanted us to do for pictures, so we never had to think about how to stand for pictures.

We got to swim in this waterfall and then ate lunch beside it.

Huge rock formation we hiked around

Vulture over the valley

I just got back from 8 days of traveling in Sierra Leone and Guinea Conakry. I traveled with 2 friends from Peace Corps The Gambia- Casey and Eileen.We flew into Freetown, Sierra Leone and took the ferry to meet Chelsea and Mike, my friends who live in Freetown.  They took us to River #2 for a great day at the beach.  The water was a perfect temperature, the beach was beautiful and it was awesome to get to catch up with friends I hadn't seen in such a long time.  Casey, Eileen and I were planning on visiting a national park in Sierra Leone, but after finding out how complicated and perhaps impossible it would be to get there, we decided it'd be more fun to just go to Guinea from Freetown. We loaded up in a station wagon (public transportation) and headed across the border.  We spent one day in Conakry. Between the city being crowded and confusing and everyone speaking French, it didn't register as one of my favorite places to be in the world. We left the city asap. Once we were out of the city, the drive was BEAUTIFUL. Being in an overcrowded compact car for more than 8 hours was actually pleasant because of the scenery. We're used to flat, dry Gambia and Guinea (Sierra Leone too) is nothing like that. There are hills, valleys, and trees everywhere!  After 2 days in transit, we made it to Dookie for hiking.

The hiking was a ton of fun. For a couple of days, we clinbed around on rocks, swam in waterfalls, swam in waterfalls inside caves, saw valleys, mountains and cliffs. Once again, coming from flat, dry Gambia this was all SO impressive. Also, coming from flat, dry Gambia, we were all SO sore afterwards.

On the way back to the city to catch our plane back to The Gambia, we spent a night in a huge village on the way toward the capitol. It was a nice laid back night (with air conditioning!!!) followed by getting to hang out with the resident Peace Corps Volunteer. She showed us around a bit, took us to a restaurant and then used her French to get us in a cab straight to the airport.  Its really awesome to be able to link into the Peace Corps network. You meet some cool people and I'm so thankful for all the help we got from volunteers along the way.

Now I'm back in The Gambia. Even though, it doesn't have mountains or waterfalls, I'm glad to be back!

Butesap

First of all, I have no idea what the aforementioned word means. It might mean banging metal together; it might just mean cultural party; it might mean whatever happens before a circumcision ceremony, but whatever it is, it just happened in my area.
A couple of days ago, we had the official announcement of when the circumcision ceremony near me is scheduled to be. This was a huge party. We had people coming in from all over the area, the city and the Cassamance to attend the event. The event was supposed to start around 8 or 9 am, but in tradition of Gambian Maybe Time, it began around 4pm. There were a couple of hundred people dancing on the highway for a while to the music of girls banging pieces of metal together. During this dance, there was one old man in the front who was using something which was possibly formerly a cow's tail to fling ceremonial water on people in the crowd. A few times during our time spent in the road, some men did a display of the magical powers of their jujus by attempting to cut themselves with knives or machettes, but they were never cut because they were protected by their jujus. There was maybe an hour of dancing in the road before the whole crowd moved into the bush to wait for the date announcement. On the way, the crowd upset some bees, making everyone run a small portion of the trail to avoid being stung. This episode also made the crowd really nervous of bees, thus contributing to a couple of stampedes later in the day when a few people in the crowd thought they saw a bee. Before we walked back to town, an offering had to be brought to the bees to convince them not to sting anyone on our way back out. It must have worked because there was not nearly so much running and yelling as on the way in.
While we were in the bush, there was more dancing to clanging metal with the ladies, while the men all went to sit under a big tree where the date decision was being made. After an hour or 2, the date was announced and the men paraded back to meet the women waving tree branches and singing.  We all walked home for dinner, and then after dinner, there was a party with a drumming group and lots of dancing until late into the night.
After all this, I assumed the date would be all anyone talked about, but in fact, no one seems to care about the date that was announced- the entire purpose of this party. I think there was just too much fun to be had to worry about some date. I still don't know when it is and I've asked around like crazy. But whenever that date is, I've been promised that the party will be bigger, better, and last a whole week.

What's in a name?

Most everyone knows I go by Sally while I'm in Gambia.  Its nice to have a Gambian name partly because, with a Gambian name, you know people you meet will be able to pronounce it.  But probably the best part of having a Gambian name is the "toma effect."  A toma is someone that shares the same name as you.  Meeting a toma is great.  Its an instant guarantee of friendship and your tomaship will probably be announced to everyone around.  In America, I feel like being in a group with several people with the same name its a little annoying, but here they love it.  There's a standard bank of names that most people use, so I'd guess that at least 75% of the country is named names from the top maybe 25 names.  (And I feel like that's a conservative estimate.)  Most of the standard names are Muslim names: Modoulamin, Muhammed, Ebrima, Fatoumatta, Mariamma, Isatou... These, and nicknames that derive from them, account for tons of the population. 
One of my favorite conversations with a middle school boy at school was about names, and he said all boys should just be named Lamin (a shortenig of Modoulamin). It's the best name because so many people have it, and if all the people named Lamin decided to fight everyone else they would win, no doubt.  Sounds like logic is on his side. 
In my village, its no exception to the name situation in the rest of the country.
- A full 10% of my village's population (not women, total population) is named Fatou Badjie.
- My host father has 6 sons, 2 of them are named Ebrima.  
- My host father had 4 wives- 2 of them have exactly the same name.
- The oldest son in every family in my village is named Modoulamin.
Its just crazy that this much name overlap is unheard of in America but is so common here.  So common that I'm the only one around who finds it confusing.

Nna dimbaya- "My Family"

These are a selection of pictures that the first grade class at the school closest to me drew for Kayla's Kindergarten student teaching class. I just thought people might like to see.
The class has about 40 first graders. I don't know how Mrs. Gibba handles it but somehow she does, and after being in class with her for that day we did drawing, she's coming out ahead as perhaps my favorite teacher at the school.
I'm giong to have to ask you all to turn your heads to enjoy these pictures. I forgot to turn them before loading, and loading again is not an option.