Blogs from Africa - page 2975

welll im at the beach again... slightly too hot cos of being so near to the equator and all.. we were just sitting in the water looking around at the palm trees and the white sand and the turquoise water with little waves lapping, and just couldn;t really believe it.. in the last couple of days i;ve had quite an eventful time - went to a random village and watched a witch doctor doing her thing - they gave us coconuts and these things called chappatis which are like big fat pancake things, v tasty. i just realised i havent really said much about camp life here so i will in a min., but yeh the witch doctor "cured' a "mad" woman.. it was so so fake but still really cool, she was jyumping around this ... read more

Just for the purpose of people that think going to Skegness for a Summer holiday is going 'travelling' we'll start by explaining exactly wot an 'Overland Truck Trip' is all about. Basically you pay a one off fee at the beginning and most of your costs are included for the entire duration of the trip. This includes travel, accomodation (tents), food, activites and cups of rank tea. Refer to the photo for what the Truck looks like, it has many fold out functions such as kitchen facilities but sadly no toilets. When you are in the middle of nowhere for hours on end this of course becomes interesting. Squat and Squirt i think the saying goes!!!! We met the Truck in Joburg at a place called 'Africa Centre Lodge' where we spent the previous night. This ... read more

Memphis, Saqqara & Aswan Egypt For my last afternoon in Cairo I decided to squeeze in a visit to the ancient sites of Memphis and Saqqara located about 30 miles south of the city. Memphis was one of the great cities of the ancient world but has now all but disappeared from centuries of pillaging and floods. It’s a fairly unimpressive site with only a few significant monuments and statues of Ramses II. Nearby at Saqqara is the Step pyramid built for Zoser. The step pyramid is significant because it is Egypt’s (and the worlds) first stone monument. At most of these sites, the tourism cashiers like to double dip...they charge you to enter the grounds which you assume is the full admission, then once you park and walk up to the actual site, they charge ... read more

The other morning I sat down at a table for breakfast with a couple of bananas, an orange, and a baguette. As I turned to pull up a chair I heard a crashing sound as a monkey FLEW over the table and landed on the other side of the room with my banana. Jerk. I’m back in Mamou for Teacher’s Conference. Education PCVs in math and science invited Guinean teachers from their villages to meet and discuss teaching techniques. The conference is a good idea since the traditional method of teaching here involves kids copying pages and pages of information from the board and then memorizing things without understanding them. The back of every notebook at the market has a multiplication table, along with an addition table, a subtraction table, and a division table, all of ... read more

Only 8 weeks until I leave for Ghana - I've been organising this trip for months, and am just looking forward to going now. I've had what seems like a hundred injections! I am going to do some voluntary work with a charity called Cross-cultural solutions, and will be working with children in a local school or day care centre. Not a clue what to expect so a bit nervous, but will keep you updated once I'm there!... read more