So, last weekend, some friends of ours invited us down to go camping near their village. We woke up Saturday morning and just before lunch hopped on our trusty PC issue bikes and rode about an hour to our friends house. They had prepped a set of delicious snacks for us, employing the use of their own solar cooker, and we rode out about ten minutes from their house to the camp site.
The camp site is actually just a spot their host father has of empty land, near the river. It is close but you can't get too close because of the mangroves. There was a slight elevation and you could see across the water to the Barra Ferry in Banjul. Andy brought his binochulars and we got to check out some monkeys near the mangroves and look across the water.
Our sleeping accomodations were simple, but nice. Because it is chilly, sometimes verging on cold, to us here, (70 degrees!) we brought a heavy blanket to keep warm. We put a plastic woven mat, (used here for everything, praying, sitting, sleeping, etc.) and strung up a large mosquito net underneath a cashew tree.
When it started to get dark, we started a fire and did the thing that people do when they sit around fires.......
Stare into them, and sometimes talk. hehe.
Sometimes villagers would walk by on their way home from watering and tending their gardens nearby and they would greet us and question us, "Your going to sleep out here? why?! " It is funny, because even though they live in a place that most westerners would consider "a little scary" all the time, they think it is crazy to sleep out in the bush and that a bad elf, or something will come get you at night if you sleep outside. This is why often times, even on the most sweltering nights, people don't just don't do it.
Well, the only thing that bothered us over night was the full moon shining in our eyes and the blowing winds. I pulled my bandana over my eyes and Andy used my headwrap to cover his. The winds woke up our fire that wasn't quite out and Andy and I got up in the middle of the night to put it out and went back to sleep again. When we finally woke up it was a beautiful morning near the river.
We rode back to our friends house, and they treated us to homemade pancakes, and some fresh roasted and ground coffee.
The coffee was a myth come true. Because as people who have been here, or anywhere in W. Africa, know, typically the only option for coffee is the dreaded, Nescafe! So, a volunteer discovered that there were actually coffee beans in the unroasted form sometimes found in the market, but you had to really search it down and ask around. Our friends that had us over did just that, and after going all over our local Brikama market, found them when a little boy took them to a particular stand. They bought a kilo or so and roasted and ground it.
Overall it was a nice time. Still to come later family pics and bio....