moving 'up country'

We weren’t quite prepared for the renewed culture shock that moving up country would bring.  Leaving on the VSO truck packed to the gunnels with all that one needs to live for three months, buckets, sheets, brushes, toothpaste and toilet paper to name just a bit, we mooched, only an hour late to the VSO office where we signed for Senagalise money (in case of a coup), pristine white mosquito nets and malaria tablets and said our final goodbyes.  The beginning of distancing ourselves from the VSO safety net, the start of the relationship with our employers.

As we bumped and bashed our way along the road, brick buildings, lights and shops were soon replaced by wide stretches of sandy, yellow ochre scrubland, dotted with baobab trees and interspersed with small villages of mud huts and thatch. Some were contenders for ‘the best kept village in The Gambia’, the roofs trimmed to millimetre even edges, swept courtyards and designer fencing around small plantations of bananas and mangos, others were dancing with black plastic carrier bags, fluttering in the breeze like carrion crows, fallen down buildings patched with corrugated iron.  At each was a stone circle enclosing a well, with one or two bedraggled dirty children pumping hard, water splashing into an array of containers which were lifted with consummate ease and balanced with strength and elegance onto their heads for the walk back to their compounds.

On and on we trucked passing dried riverbeds, snakelike, curling their meandering journey through the earth.  Twice we saw troops of monkeys scampering across the road and moving silently into the bush.  Few vehicles, an occasional car or motor bike beeping past us, several donkey carts laden with women returning from market with rice and vegetables smiling and waving, children running alongside us with the athletic grace of long distance runners.  Goats skittered across the road moving at the final moment before impact.  Still further we travelled until we got to the first stop, Soma, where two volunteers, Kate and Lucy, are to live for the next two years.

We opened the doors to be struck, like a physical force, with ‘the trial’ of up country.  Barely able to breathe, we lugged boxes and bags into their accommodation and with neither water or electricity to bring relief from the energy sapping heat.

Another three hours of travel, more goats, donkeys and swarms of school children in brightly coloured uniforms ambling along and eventually we got to the outskirts of Janjanbureh.  An island in the middle of the River Gambia it is accessed by ferry, from either the north or south banks.  Ali, the driver, an amiable easy going fellow, drove with care onto the floating rust sheet and then all hands to the rope as the men (and in this case I was pleased to follow the female lead) pulled the steel cable and we creaked and groaned across the murky water. We slid off the other side.  And there we were, eight hours later, dusty, sweaty, scared, exhilarated and excited - our first experience of our new town.