One day I was hanging out at my friend Iris’s compound and a pathetic looking little street cat wondered in, looking for food and love. He was tiny, probably not more than 3 weeks old, scruffy, and terribly bug infested. I wanted to take him home and rehabilitate him, give him a bath and some food, and so I did. He hid under my kitchen counter for quite a long time. After my friends and I pulled him out we gave him a bit of a bath, it needed to be done or he would be horribly ill from all of [View Full Entry]

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A few of my groupies and myself felt like taking a little weekend getaway up country, so I opened the travel book, flicked a page, and so we went. Bintang is a small little village, primarily Mandinka, on the south bank of Gambia. We all had a blast in our little bungalows on the bolong. I thought it might be a good idea to jump into the water straight from my porch, and it was a good idea, until I hit the oyster filled bottom with my bum. The water was deceptively high looking, which left me looking a bit [View Full Entry]

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Working in a school that is not in your culture is a sure fire way to get some good times out of life. Sure, it is difficult and proves to be challenging everyday, but the shear hilarity I get from it surpasses all trials. Take for example when I was in the middle of a lesson, and a boy comes to me, taps me on the shoulder, and says, “teacher, can I urinate?” I didn’t understand what the boy was saying under his thick Gambian accent, so then the peanut gallery chimes in and says, “HE NEEDS TO URINATE”. I wanted [View Full Entry]

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I live in the Tower of Babble. With multiple different local languages, mixed with some form of English, and a bit of French, it is a sure fire way to get lost in a sea of translation confusion. As Bill Murray and Scarlet Johnason were, I too am lost in translation. Take last week for example. I went to Sukuta (a village about half on hour from where I live) to visit friends. Most of them speak Mandinka (which I know only greetings and basic phrases in), Wolof (which I am SEMI proficient in), and “Gambian English”. When white, non-local speakers [View Full Entry]

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It’s two o’clock in the morning, and instead of being in a sweet little slumber after a long day, I’m awake. Why you ask? At approximately 1:30am I jolted out of my bed after watching an episode of Roseanne, to a bitterly disturbing sound coming from my window. Previous to this incident, my friends and I were scared out of our minds when 1) my cat made the sound that incredibly resembled a human being and thus 2) made us think someone was in the house. After doing a once over, armed with a broom, we decided the coast was clear. [View Full Entry]

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My students were being naughty stubborn children this week. It doesn’t help that they have a hard time understanding me, but they never listen…to anybody. This does not surprise me as they are 5th graders and are in the prime time for weird behavior. Lord knows I was a disobedient little hell raiser when I was that age. I gave them a spelling test this week; their only homework was the study for the test. It went awful. To spare them from whipping, I decided to impart a different kind of public humiliation on them. Simon Says, in the middle of [View Full Entry]

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Notice: I write my postings in the comfort of my own home so I don’t have to watch 20 year old bumsters talk to their 70 year old tourist girlfriends through Skype at the internet café. Also, the internet is too slow and frustrating to stay on it for very long. Thus, you may have noticed I post several entries at one time- they are not necessarily to-the-day-current. My life isn’t THAT exciting that all of these things can happen in one day… Smoking is an enjoyable past time, but also a strange habit. Why do people start smoking, and why [View Full Entry]

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I am seriously hungry right now, and have been for the past week. It’s a pretty viable assumption that I probably have a tropical parasite in my tummy eating all my food and giving me the runs. My friend had this problem while living in Mexico, and the local solution for her was to not eat for 2 days, to starve the little critters, and then drink vodka, to get them drunk and confused and kill them. It worked for her, so if my problem persists I’ll give it a go. In homage to my hunger, I would like to share [View Full Entry]

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Some of you may know already that I have taken up teaching English for grade 5 at a primary school here. If you didn’t know that, now you do. It’s a pretty interesting experience. I thought this portion of my life would come much later. I also thought that me wearing gaudy gold jewelry to look hot would come later in my life as well…but I’m living in West Africa, and the time for both is now. There are 3 5th grade classrooms, with about 50 kids in each. They are with the same teacher for all subjects all day. They [View Full Entry]

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A few weeks ago my school participated in the Commonwealth, a federation of formerly British Colonies. Each grade was assigned to give a small performance about their designated country. My fifth graders were assigned Jamaica. Because I am “unbiased” in the school, I was picked to judge the competition. We all gathered in the open sand area and I had a desk set up for the serious judging of it all. The students were supposed to dress like their native countrymen, tell a bit of information on the country, and sing a song, recite a poem, or do a traditional dance. [View Full Entry]

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