Life in Protugal

I've gotten some questions about my new living situation now that I'm in the city, so I thought that I would slowly share what the new place is like.  Today, outside the compound...

Here's my gate.  Keep in mind that I took these in the early morning.  There are always, always people around here- day and night.  It seems like around 7am is the only time there are no people on the street, so I took advantage to take some pictures.  I'm usually not on the street at 7am either.

 Here's my street.  I live on a side street in a densely populated area of the city.  The side street has no vehicle traffic ever due to the mound of dirt and gravel across from my car gate which I never use and the fact that sometimes, the end of the road you see here is only a ditch.  Other times they put concrete slabs over the ditch, I guess whenever they clean the ditch they leave it open for a few months so people never get in the habit of driving down the street.  The area right outside my house-less than the length of a block is called Portugal.  I have no idea why and neither does anyone else, but I promise though I've never been to real Portugal, this place is nothing like it.  But within 200 yards of my house there are more shops than there were in all the villages within 5 or possibly 10 kilometers of my old place.  Big city living!

This is the view down my street in the other direction.  It has a T junction into another street, which is where I go if I want to hang out with some teenage girls.  There's a family just a few houses down that road with 6 teenage-early 20s age daughters.  They're a fun group to go hang out with.  I can also go the other direction to head toward the market.  It's not right around the corner but close enough I don't mind going every couple of days to get vegetables and etc. I'll say it again- Big city living!  It has its advantages.

Next stop.....

inside the compound.

The Gambia vs. Algeria

Yesterday, I went to my first international football match. (Internationally, it is called football, not soccer- to all of you Americans out there.)  It was Gambia vs Algeria.  The day before the match, I had gotten to see the Algerian team arrive at their hotel.  It was right across the street from the UN building and I got stopped on my way home by a police entourage protecting the Algerians until they were safely in the hotel.  

I skipped out of work a couple of hours early to go to the game along with a few thousand other people.  Actually, a lot of people didn't have to skip because a lot of employers gave their employees a half day in honor of the game. The place was pretty packed.

At games here, there are still people selling food in the stands, but its very gambian appropriate.  Cashews, bags of frozen juice, bags of water, cans of coke, sour milk and coos...  And the vendors are mostly women with the goods on their heads and babies on their backs.

Lined up before the game for the national anthems.

The teams taking the field.

This guy was wearing a Gambian flag themed outfit and was a combination of cheerleader and self-appointed usher.

Playing the game...

We had pretty good seats.  A little less than $4 gets you a seat in the shade.  I'm really glad we had the expensive seats- way better than frying in the sun.  And we had a good view as long as most people stayed sitting down.

The game was fun.  Gambia didn't play very well and broke their tradition of "never losing a home game" according to a guy at work.  They were defeated 2-1.  Afterwards, it was interesting to see the Gambians attitude of team loyalty.  It could be summed up as a 'never root for the loser' philosophy.  Walking out of the stadium, you'd think that 75% of people had come to root for Algeria.  I'm still a Gambia fan, but if I ever get the opportunity to watch them play again, I hope they do a little better.