Blogs from Western Division, Gambia, Africa

Dear All Greetings again from Toubacouta, in Senegal! I have just returned here after three more nights in The Gambia since my last entry, but I have returned to Senegal a day earlier than scheduled for a couple of reasons, which I’ll explain below. For the sake of variety, and also because most of this blog entry will be about my last few days in The Gambia, I’ve chosen to name it accordingly and have its location as Bintang, where I stayed a couple of nights ago, as most of my photos are also from there. So last time I wrote I was spending my last evening in Bakau, before heading off upriver to explore deeper into The Gambia. On Thursday morning I caught a “gelly-gelly”, the Gambian form of a filled-to-the rafters, local clapped-out minibus ... read more

Being in a meaningful place is not solely bound to one room, one home, one state, one country, one race, one gender or one economic class. It in turn, is a state of consciousness where you constantly feel like you serve a purpose in every space that you enter. So the question is how do we design space to help facilitate Place for those who may be lacking this feeling of belonging? A seemingly omniscient and influential power permeates organismic behavior at every given second of existence. It can never leave, but it can always assume dynamic nature. This power is Space; re-defined, it may be a parameter in which psychology can reflect its own design. Once behavior can reflect happiness, productivity, and healthy function, Space can then transform to meaningful Place. This Space is therefore ... read more

Lately, all the local occurrences have made me feel more at home and excited for the future. There is a great level of comfort within finding that the steps towards achieving an ambition you initially thought would need patience to be seen. Of course, my primary dream is to practice physiotherapy in a place without the benefit of such services, while appealing to my ex-patriotism wanderlust that I cannot seem to shake. Of course, that is not enough for me. Understanding the needs of people are so great and diverse, I am thirsty to learn how to satisfy the needs for things such as clean water, business development, beneficial policy, and malnutrition. Even if I was to learn enough about one of these issues to find that it something I can only advocate rather than solve, ... read more

It is worth mentioning repeatedly that we are creatures of our environment, and that the situation on Agua Campus is no exception. For a few months, I spent time interviewing over 70 applicants for the International Sustainable Development Internship, and approximately 14 are coming over the course of this summer. Although we currently have three international interns, I can see the potential of structuring such environments with decorated, passionate, and intelligent individuals with the intent of producing some of the most productive behaviors towards innovation. Franco, the first to come and is now leaving today after 1 month, has shown me a lot about what it means to be on the receiving side of valued experience. As a finance and anthropology major, Franco has proven to be a fun-loving, driven, and globally-infatuated individual with changing the ... read more

In southern Gambia we stayed in Sanyang, a small fishing village. Its three mile sandy beach has attracted a few passing tourists over the years and now there are a couple of beach bars with half a dozen rooms out the back. The fishing village is impressive. There are, we are told, over 300 fishing pirogues.- long brightly painted mahogany boats that go out to sea before we are up in the morning. All afternoon they return in ones and twos, full of fish. Ugly sea snails; shiny black snapper, bongo, butterfish and ladyfish; small sting rays. As the boats return, their crew beach the boat and await help. Slowly, other fishermen wander down the beach to the water's edge, pushing a few old logs which will act as rollers under the boat. Once there are ... read more