The temperatures are rising here in Kanifing and from midmorning onwards it is best to be indoors or keep to the shade. Walking the fifteen minutes to the office every morning is fine because at 8.15, the sun is far from full strength but later in the day it is wise to be more careful. The many lightweight scarves I brought out with me are proving useful to cover the back of my neck and shoulders on the walk home. It is not yet as humid as it was last October which is something to be grateful for. However I am sure that those volunteers up-country are decidedly more uncomfortable already.
The weather is also affecting the many street dogs living around Kombos. Medium sized, lean, sinewy and tan in colour, they pay scant attention to people and roam the streets at will, dodging in and out of the traffic. However the older and infirm few that I pass each day, stretched out at the roadside are beginning to suffer, panting in the increasing heat. It is a distressing sight.
The walk is always on sand, some of it quite deep and difficult to negotiate but I am motivated by the thought of the good it must be doing my thigh muscles. Some of the journey is along small back lanes but as I get nearer to work, the roads are tarmac covered and much wider and busier. I pass the large Serrakunda Hospital and MDI building, part of the University of Gambia with its pretty mosque in the front corner of the attractive grounds.
Just opposite is Ndow’s Comprehensive Lower Basic School. Sometimes, if I am running a few minutes late (not really possible in Gambia but being English I can’t help but clock watch) I see the young master dressed smartly in shirt and tie ring the morning bell at the school gates. The pupils still walking down the long road immediately break into a run. As they draw level with the master, a slim man with closely cropped hair, they smile and exchange a hurried greeting. It is an engaging sign of mutual respect and I am reminded of the village school back home.
run stalls selling drinks, (some home made and frozen) , tapalapa bread and other snacks. They always return at the close of each school day too. Certainly a tuck shop with a difference!
Such snacks are also available in several bitiks on the way. Most people take breakfast this way rather than try to make it themselves before leaving home. It is possible to buy acra or nebbe (beans) or omelette in your tapalapa morning sandwich. Onions, mayonnaise and pepper are optional extras. If you choose to eat more healthily, but expensively, there are a few fruit stalls at the busy junction by the hospital.
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| Jainaba's stall at Traffic Light |
The small office “compound” where I work is just a little further on from the repair man’s stall, on the far side of the chaotic MDI junction. Crossing is perilous and can take quite a while. Cars, taxis, vans, gely- gelies and lorries whizz round left and right, often finding a short cut across the sand, alarmingly behind the pedestrians.
It is not uncommon to strike up a temporary nodding acquaintance with someone on the opposite side also trying to cross. It is such chaos that in its own way it is quite marvellous. Eventually we make it with a real sense of achievement and I enter through the gates to the compound, exchanging morning greetings with the watchmen in the small building at the front. The compound accommodates three organisations: Education For All is to the right of the central quad; straight ahead from the entrance are two separate buildings: the one on the left is the Gambian Teachers’ Union and to the right, FAWEGAM the union’s female wing.
Before entering I tip the sand out of each shoe and pop my head round the door to the meeting room to greet Adelaide, grandmother and founder member of EFA. Alahjie makes me a cup of tea and brings it into my small office opposite the main entrance.
I switch on my computer and the air conditioning with fingers crossed that the electricity will last at least most of the working day………. and sometimes it does!
