A change is as good as a rest

A strange array of fifteen men and women aged 24 to 65 sat around the table in the hotel lean to which, balanced on four distressingly rotting wooden pillars, waved to and fro in the wind over the sea crashing mercilessly against the rocks.  This was the venue of our VSO education workshop last week, an event in which volunteers from the Gambia meet, debate, thrash about ideas and eat delicious food.  Those ‘up country’ members can be easily spotted with refilled plated, mutterings of “mmmmmm butter” and visibly expanding waistlines. There’s no generalities to be made of our group, everyone individual with differing experiences, class, backgrounds, countries, coloured skin and reasons for being here indeed a veritable mishmash.

 A wicked break it felt like a holiday meeting our friends, drinking beer, eating cheesy meat pasties and shopping.  The biggest plus though did relate to work.  Having felt that we had achieved nothing the past two months we were asked to list what we had done.  We were mightily surprised by the length of ours and left the meeting feeling buoyed up and positive.

The journey home was another epic.  8 hours to travel 150 miles.  First catch the tin can taxi that chugged to the ferry port to discover only one was working.  An hours wait amid crowds of potential travellers, vendors touting their wares ranging from copy Barbie dolls through black hat thingies to homemade cakes.  Phil and I moved with the morass of humanity unable to stop or breathe whereas Pete’s was a slow take off.  We watched him crawl, rucksack like a snails shell, amid the final crush.  Standing room only as we swayed back and fore.  Disembarkation was more leisurely and a stumble through market stalls to find a ‘sept place’, supposedly the most comfortable transport.  Hmph. A beaten up non MOT’ed vehicle we were unlucky enough to be allocated the back seats.  It was friendly, knees and thighs touching, bums clenched we jolted from military stop to police check.  The final lap onto the ferry across to the island where we were welcomed back with cheerful shouts, cries of delight, hugs and handshakes.  It felt like home.

There has been much to laugh about.  How about the notice board in the heads office with Duty Roaster, or the Grade 9 exam paper,  Science is the study of a) roads and highways  b) weaving and texture or c)  animals and pants,  or the lesson plan, ‘activities for hard on experience.’  Just to highlight the Gambian experience read the book entitled Promoting English Language Teaching.  The introduction goes thus:  Continuing Professional development has helped many a professional to drag carts of professional obstacles along the multicoloured pathways of professional endeavours.

Now you know why my blogs are so weird.

NB.  Emails, letters and comments on the blog and flickr keeps our spirits high so please keep sending them however short.