Sunday, January 8, 2012

The Big Reveal

I moved out of my village a couple of weeks ago to start work in the city. I served for two years in a small rural village yet unveiled on this blog. Since I no longer live there, I'm allowed to tell you all about the place now.  Drumroll please.  The place formerly referred to as Salliya is............. Kanjibat. Spelled like that but somehow pronounced Con-G-bot-toe.
Its a small village just off the south bank road in the Western Region of The Gambia. Home to a whopping 60 people and formerly me. Check it out on google maps. You'll be able to see http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Kanjibat,+The+Gambia&hl=en&ll=13.261333,-15.446777&spn=2.614285,3.532104&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.038806,56.513672&vpsrc=6&hnear=Kanjibat,+Foni+Bondali,+West+Coast+Region,+The+Gambia&t=m&z=8
Make sure you look at it on satellite view.  Probably more cool to me than anyone else, but you can see the house where I used to live behind where the A marker is to the left. The closest house to the marker was mine.  If you drag the screen to the right you can see the school I used to work with.  Further down the road  near my house you can see the garden.  Even further down that same road you get to the river. 
The cluster of 3 houses that are formig a rectangle with my house is Sanneh Kunda.  That was my compound.  Maybe that gives people a little better idea of what a compound is.  I know I've used that word with some of you and its not a concept we have in the US.  All the people who live in those 3 houses are related by blood or marriage.  They all eat together and share a lot of things- work, clothes, stuff, responsability for raising the kids, etc.  Its an extended famiy all technically living in different houses but in the same compound, and really I feel like people treat the whole compound like immediate family.
I miss it a little but I knew from the get-go that this was just going to be for two years.  And I'm really lucky and can be more objective about it than someone who is leaving the country because I can still see and talk to the people I miss.  Hopefully I'll get to go for a visit in the next month or so.  I'll blog an update on what I'm doing now- life in the city- soon.