Bicycle tires and solar panels
This week kicked off with a visit to the Lumo in Wassu – the local market. This day we wanted to require most of the necessary materials for the solar dryer. Among other things we bought metal corrugated sheets, metal rods, tools, gauze, bicycle and car tyres and different kinds of glue, which we all took back to Kuntaur on our bikes in the bright afternoon sun! In the late afternoon we visited Jakaba, the village where the solar dryer of last year was built. Here we met half of the committee who maintains and manages the solar dryers. We got invited to the compound of one of the committee members where we immediately got to meet his entire family. We waited for Sarja to arrive, because he is the only committee member who speaks English. We asked, through our interpreter Sarja, if everything went well last year and we asked them several questions about the maintaining and the preservation of dried foods and such. The outcome was quite positive! It even occurred to them that there is a language barrier with us and Ndokey – where the solar dryer of this year will be built – and came up with an idea to demonstrate and explain with their solar dryer to these villagers how it works. This was exactly what we had in mind so we were definitely glad to be on the same page! We discussed further details and the excursion with Ndokey and Jakaba will be next week.
On Tuesday we went to Kuntaur to buy jerrycans for the drying boxes. We first went to a lady who was able to find five empty jerrycans in the back of her little shop. But we needed 16 empty jerrycans in total. So we went on to the next shop. Here, a man completely surprised us by opening a door next to his shop, where we found one big wall consisting of piled up empty jerrycans! This succeeded a lot quicker than expected. In the afternoon we cleaned all the jerrycans together with two men of the staff at the Gambian River side, with green soap and empty onion bags as scouring pads. Sometimes it is amazing to see how inventive people are here in order to save money!
On Wednesday we cycled to Ndokey with Sarja as the interpreter to talk to the villagers and to propose our building plans and the idea of the excursion with the Jakaba committee. At first the villagers felt a little embarrassed because apparently we forgot to mention our visit before… An improvement for next time. We first gave cola nuts to the alkalo – head of the village – as a sign of respect for the community. Despite of the language barrier the conversation went rather well. Youri even ended up dancing with all the women in the village as a good bye gesture. Well done Youri.
The next day we travelled to Tanji, or actually the next very early morning. We woke up at five in the morning to start walking throughout the rice fields in the dark, with fully packed backpacks under the beautiful starry sky. We walked for about an hour until a little van stopped in the middle of the road. He asked us if we wanted to get in to his car so he could bring us to Barra, the exact place we wanted to travel to. At first we didn’t trust him completely, so we ended up calling Boy – one of the staff – to talk to this man on the phone. This way we did end up in the van and drove a few hours to Barra. Here we took the ferry to Banjul and walked around the country’s capital until we were too exhausted to walk any further with baggage. We took a cab to a Dutch pancake restaurant in Senegambia. Here we met the other TU Delft students group! It was amazing to finally eat cheese again… After lunch, we travelled to Tanji to the guesthouse and eventually spend the whole night making music and singing with djembes and Youri’s ukulele at the campfire.
The next day we wanted to go to Serrakunda to buy the other materials for the solar dryer, but apparently it was a national holiday, so most of the shops were closed. We ended up joining a group of women from the guesthouse on a trip to the Lamin Lodge where we had a lovely lunch amid a lot of aggressive monkeys. After lunch we made a boat trip past the mangroves.
On Saturday we did went to Serrakunda to buy all the other materials. It was chaos on the market and the sun was burning on our skins, but apart from a few little things, we bought all the necessary materials. It got late and dark before we even noticed and the streets were crowded with hundreds of people walking back and forth to who knows where. It this complete chaos we tried to look for a cab, which is apparently not that easy around that time of the day… But fortunate enough we eventually came back home in Tanji. In the evening we went clubbing in Senegambia with a few of our Gambian friends!
On Sunday we were not that fit, shortly said. So we decided to take a relaxing day at the beach with the other student group. We went to Ninki Nanka beach and we have to admit that we really enjoyed this day of ‘toubab’ luxury.