Heading Upcountry

The first week in Gambia went very well, and now it's time to say goodbye to the West Coast for about 2 months. Our group heads to our training villages for language and technical training sessions. I will be living in Bambako, a village of about 50 family compounds. There will be 4 of us living in Bambako, each living with a different host family. The idea behind living with a host family is so that we will be fully immersed into the culture and language more readily than if we were surrounded by other English-speaking Tubabs (Gambian for white person).

I'm looking forward to getting out of the Kombo area, and settling into a more traditional Gambian atmosphere. I think the language and technical training sessions will be really interesting, and we are all looking forward to receiving our Mandinka names. While we're at the training villages, internet access will be sporadic, if at all, so I won't be able to communicate for a while.

Finally, I posted some photos taken from my first week in Gambia at:


http://community.webshots.com/user/skibumrobby