A Few Blatant Plugs
on Phil Bradfield (The Gambia), 07/Jun/2010 12:39, 34 days ago
(Written 07/06/2010 12:00, RED5, Janjanbureh)As well as me, various other VSOs in this country also maintain blogs (some, but not all, are listed athttp://www.vsointernational.org/life-changing-stories/blogs.asp). I’m going to recommend posts from a couple of them.The first one isPeteRunner. It’s maintained by Liz (aka Hawa), one half of Pete and Liz, who are my fellow VSOs in Janjanbureh. I’m not really sure why I’m recommending it as I’m sure she writes lots of embarrassing things about me (I haven’t checked, but I know what she’s like), but check it out anyway. They get outinto the schools and villages (The Real Gambia(TM), as opposed to the luxury of the RED) a lot more than I do, and they always come back with brilliant stories to tell. I’d especially like to recommend the postThe African Queen: I was on the boat as well during the whole procedure and was going to write something about it, but she’s saved me the trouble. And written it better than I could have done, damn her...The second is from another VSO, Kate, who arrived in my cohort but is now based in Soma. The particular post that I want to point you all at isLeaves on the Track, which describes her and her colleague Lucy’s attempts to travel from Kombos to Soma, down the infamous (though improving) South Bank Road. It makes for pretty horrifying reading and shows just how bad travelling in this country can be, although this journey is far from normal, Kate and Lucy just got really unlucky with it. I’ve had a couple of very dodgy crossings at the Barra ferry (there have been a couple of times when I’ve wondered whether the crush is about to turn into a Hillsborough-style incident... with me in the middle of it!) but the road vehicles I’ve been in haven’t been too bad. Well OK, they’d all be write-offs in Britain, but they haven’t broken down, fallen apart or come with drivers quite so objectionable. If there’s one thing Gambians are good at, it’s keeping vehicles moving long past what would ever seem reasonable to a Westerner. And, as Kate and Lucy found out, occasionally beyond whatisreasonable toanyone.