Random Things I love about the Gambia

- Greetings, every time you see someone new you give/receive a series of 10+ greetings even if you only left them 10 minutes ago. It is so personal and it gets me talking to complete strangers that I would never think of talking to otherwise
- My village is amazing! It is super small 18 compounds (families) one well and lots of cows. They are Fula's the ethnic group that originates from Guinea but they are beautiful people. Just recently when I was sick my family was extremely caring and awesome about the fact that I was sick. People are really friendly and I feel so safe.
-Communal everything: communal food bowl, communal spaces, communal and open to any passing stranger. I can just wonder around and eat with people, chat for hours and practice language without ever worrying I am holding someone up.
-Slowly Slowly is the motto here and pace of life, and most of the time it is fabulous because it is like living in the woods, as long as our basic needs are met each day, a.k.a. we eat and fetch water, everything else will happen inshallah (God willing).
-The climate so far is great, the sky is completely blue with the oldest trees I have ever seen in my life, the best sunsets ever and the sun always shines during the dry season.
-The respect and importance of family, it is humbling to be told get your ass up and give it to your aunt now now!! I love it.
-I have my own garden, one with karrots and I spend some time each day shooing the chickens out of it, it is pretty funny because really I am scared of them.
-The dancing, the wolofs and fulas do this butt/foot work with their dancing, it is acceptable to dance anytime of the day and for any reason. I sometimes bust a move in front of all little girls at the pump and it creates a lot of laughs and is perfectly acceptable and within seconds I usually have a very organic drum beat on a water container (badong) or bowl turned upside down.

Sick but now oh so well!

Hello friends-
I have no idea what I ate or drank, but I got food posioning this weekend and came in to Kombo to get medically taken care of. The med unit has real campbell's soup and an amazing American nurse who takes care of all the volunteers so well. I am back to normal and hope to be back in village tomorrow. Just to update you on a few of the things happening lately in my world of village.
With Febuary in full force it means the cold season is ending and the next hot ten months of my life are about to begin. The day before I got sick I took a 70 km bike ride to another volunteers site for a break from village, and the country is long and beautiful. Even though there is a huge deforestation problem here and a serious lack of water table, there were gardens sprouting up around the North Bank which means there is hope for some edible yummy vegetables!
I am working on my own garden in my compound, I already have a bed with carrots in it and some moringa trees (moringa is the medicinal tree that helps add nutrients to a lot of their food) it is also called the never die tree as a slang name because it is really easy to grow and take care of anytime of the year. It is an on-going thing for me.
I will try to publish some more things tomorrow, it is a very random update and I just wanted to say hello and share some thoughts.