A Glimpse of The Gambia: March 2009

A new Sister

Since Yankuba (Eric) is leaving we decided to get Asobes (matching outfits). Don’t be too weirded out. Eric’s doesn’t really match ours and it’s something they do for a special occasions. We went with some of our friends to pick out fabric and talk to the tailor. Lori and I got a custom made dress for the equivalent of $7, Eric’s was about $17. But like we told him, he bought a suit when we just bought a Sunday dress.
We have a new sister! Our landlords wife had her baby on Feb 18. She is a tiny little girl named Mariama. And our outfits were ready just in time for the naming ceremony.

Eric holding Mariama after the naming ceremony

This was a mis-shot but you can see the end result of the skin dye from the earlier post

Me and Mariama

Fun stuff

We decided to make doughnuts about a week too early for Fasnacht day. We didn’t have yeast but we made cake doughnuts instead. We a great 3 man assembly line going and they turned out really well. The first ones got a little too dark but then we discovered that putting a potato in the oil with the dough keeps them from getting too dark.

We also had an evening of “painting” our nails. There is a local tree here that they pound and make a powder with. They then mix that with sugar to make a paste. It is very similar to the Indian Henna that we are familiar with. So they spread the paste on your finger tips, palms and sometimes the bottoms of your feet, cover it with plastic bags. You leave it on over night and your skin is dyed in the morning. They think it is very beautiful and on their skin I think it is too. It makes a very nice, deep tone. We aren’t too impressed with the orange color that it dyes our skin but that eventually goes away and we’re left with nail color.

rolling & cutting

Frying

Dipping in glaze & Cin/sugar

The finished product

Yay, doughnuts!

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Applying the paste to my foot

My fingers covered with plastic

Lori's feet all finished ready for bed

Abuko

A lot has happened since the conference. I’ve been unable to update my blog with pictures so the stories have been piling up. I will split them into a few posts.

On Monday after the conference our team had a day out. We went to a wildlife reserve Abuko; where we walked through the bit of jungle that is still left in the area. It was really cool because you turn off the main road in the large city and you’re right in the middle of a jungle. Here in West Africa we don’t have the big, exciting animals that you typically think of when you think of Africa but it was exciting to see monkeys, antelope, crocodiles and lots of beautiful birds. They also had a few animals in cages that used to be found in the wild here; such as baboons, tortoises, a pelican, and hyenas. Let me just tell you, hyenas are much bigger and scarier than “The Lion King” makes them look. They are almost the same size as a lioness and some lions will actually back down from a hyena in a confrontation. Scary!

Our little guard at the MEHDA Gate