Jamma rek!

I have arrived! Either I'm in Africa, or I'm hallucinating from my malaria medication again. Wow, it's only been a few days since I've gotten here, but it seems like much longer with all these new experiences. Sometimes you get so used to your daily routine time just flies by. Definitely not the case right now. The Gambia has been great so far, but training has been fairly busy and time consuming. Today is the first day I've really had any free time at all. We will be around the Banjul area until Friday and then we will be going to our training village. I am learning the Wolof language, so I will be going to a Wolof village and live with a host family. Wolof is primarily spoken in certain areas of The Gambia and much of Senegal. It has been fairly hot and humid these past few days. The rainy season has begun, but we haven't seen any rain yet. It will go through October/November or so. I've been taking bucket showers since the first day I've gotten here. They're surprisingly mildly refreshing.

The trip over wasn't too bad for the most part. It felt good to be back in Brussels for a couple hours after my 22 year absence. After we arrived in Dakar, a plane crashed (nothing too serious) on the runway shortly after we landed, so there was a slight delay before we flew to Banjul. We sat at the terminal in the airplane for well over an hour. I thought it was rather bold of Brussels Airlines to play "Brokeback Mountain" for the very Muslim Gambians while we waited. They eventually decided that we could get off the airplane while we were supposed to wait 2 more hours. In actuality.. we got off the plane, took a bus to the terminal, got screened to get IN to the airport, and then they turned us around to get back on the plane. No one seemed to care about how it was handled because things are much more laid back and relaxed here. Definitely a different mindset. Well I have to keep this kind of short because there are many people waiting to use the computers, but I will post much more eventually. And I'm going to the beach soon! The picture here I posted is of a giant mango tree we have training sessions under and we relax/study there when we have time. Oh, by the way, Philly was great during the 4th. Do it sometime.