It is the end of my service here. I’ve got about 3 weeks to go! I now have to get all my paper work wrapped up. PC was nice enough to provide me with an indexed book of all the different forms that need signed with cute little check boxes. Included in that is my [...]
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Finals are finished. I had to make up three exams. The easiest was for my web programming class. The material was straightforward and led itself to easy test questions. The hardest was my networking class. The exam wasn’t just for the third term, but comprehensive over the entire year. The students would only have 2 [...]
I’ll write about my COS conference later. For now go to Ian’s website and look at the first 12 pictures or so.
Kane, Yee, and I helped the Gambian staff at GTTI rearrange their lab. Here is how it turned out.
Sorry for the formating. My wordpress theme takes out my line brakes so I’m trying this solution.
Ambiguous -adjective. Of doubtful or uncertain nature; difficult to comprehend, distinguish, or classify.
A while ago a friend asked me: ‘what was something I really liked about being a Peace Corps Volunteer?’ I replied that I liked how every day [...]
Last week I took my students on a field trip to Unique Solutions. The company is one of several ISPs in The Gambia. Although my students were late, seven showed up.
We met with the technical manager who led us on a tour of their server room. It was the most nerdy fun I’ve had in [...]
Mdi is under construction. I took some pictures and put them in some silly fancy picture loader thingy (that would be the technical term). Click here to check it out.
Oh my poor students.
The class average was 54%. The total for the term was 55%. My two students that show up regularly and do the homework both scored As on the exam and a B for the term. The next tier of students passed the term (all 3 of them!). That leaves 5 that have [...]
Teaching at GTTI has been great. Today is the term two exam. This term has been challenging. First term I covered networking theory: models, types of technology, a bit of history and different hardware. We did all of our work on Linux and Windows. Second term we did some practicals that the students had been [...]
Shameless stolen from Mike, a friend living up country in a village called Diabugu:
“Funny things happen here because of language. Two weeks ago Kasey was at my compound and was talking about how many ducks she has (’burro’ in Mandinka). Mandinka isn’t my host mom’s first language, but she speaks it pretty well, so the [...]
I was not feeling very good a few weeks ago when I had an infection. The infection was located behind my ear. This was better then last time (located on my nose) but still painful. I was determined to keep up with classes so other things were put on the back burner such as updating [...]
I’m home from WAIST and back to teaching. I haven’t been in the mood to write about my time in Dakar because I’ve been feeling bad. I got myself a little scratch behind my ear that turned into a staph infection. It’s almost gone, and when I’m back to 100% I’ll mention about that time [...]
I’m leaving for Dakar a few days early to go to an ‘All Volunteer Conference’ for West Africa. Strangely enough, not all volunteers are going. There are 3 of us heading up. After the all-vol. comes WAIST. (The softball tournament!)
It would seem that in America one has to pay bills. This is unfortunate.
Updates coming!
Yesterday was exam day. You’d know that if you had gone through the pictures I posted last night.
I am still waiting on one of my students to take the exam, so I haven’t ‘officially’ graded them, but I looked them over last night. I designed the test to be relatively easy, but require some critical [...]
I took pictures of everything I did for a day. It wasn’t a crazy day, pretty typical. Click more to see the photos. Hold your mouse over the photo so see an explanation of the picture. Or at least, snarky comments.
[...]
Pictures from my up country adventure! I traveled up to check out the progress of a garden project. The garden was looking really good. The community had pulled together and done a impressive job! Click on more to see some pictures!
[...]
I got roped into teaching on Saturday mornings.
It’s not that bad, but my weekend can’t really begin until about 2 on Saturday now, and even then the only things I want to do are grab lunch and take a nap.
The class is only 8 weeks long, and we’ve had two classes so far. The classes [...]
Halloween was madness this year. It started with a party at my house – the first official ‘party’ that Kane and I have tried to host. I think it went okay – we didn’t offer much in terms of food and drinks, but a good group showed up and enjoyed themselves. We even had a [...]
A quote from Calvin to his principle.
My classes have started up and are in full swing. I’m trying to teach networking to a group of first year software engineering students. This is challenging because networks is typically a class taken junior/senior year after a bunch of prerequisite classes. There are a few reasons why this [...]
More than 1 update in a week? This is madness!
This week a friend had Kane and I over for some remedial cooking lessons. We made shrimp fajitas. Absolutely delicious. Everything can be made from scratch using local resources. I need to start taking better advantage of my local fish markets. I can get a kilo [...]
Today was a busy day. Kane and I traveled to Kumba’s computer lab at Sukata. The school is a lower basic – what we American folk would call an elementary school. The school has a pretty sweet lab set up – dozen computers, some ceiling fans, and a big white board. It was far better [...]
My friend Hanna (see over to the right) wrote an excellent post about her leaving The Gambia. Its time for me to start considering what I’m going to do when this adventure is over.
I’ve got a new roommate. His name is Kane. Go visit him over at his website. There is a link to the left also.
I wanted to come say hi! because it has been a while since I’ve posted.
Then I decided to update the software that runs this site.
That took 2 days. My motivation for an awesome update is gone, but I’ll try again in a few days.
A tale from training village:
My host father opened the door to my house and let me in. It had been locked up for quite some time - one of the few families to follow PC rules about not using an empty house while there are no volunteers living there. It was dusty and the furniture [...]
It has been a busy week here in Kanifing. I was asked to help out with TOT - or training of trainers. This is a PC lead meeting that focuses on improving the training staff in preparation for the incoming education volunteers.
My main focus was on the COTE - calendar of training events. With one [...]
This past week was my in-service training. IST is a time when my training group gets back together, has some review sessions on things we’ve forgotten, and a few on things we want to know. We’ve been out in site for about 7 months now so we’ve got the hang of how things work. The [...]
Facebook fans will have seen some of these already, but I figured I’d put them up here too. These are mostly random from walking around town.
edit: this seems to be taking far to long to load. Is that just b/c I’m living in Africa? If it is, I can put thumbnails so that the smaller [...]
This ended up being longer than I had planned. I finally got over my fear of the Banjul Market.
I’m terrified of the Banjul market.
One of my fading memories of the first few days in country was when our training group took a trip to the market. We were mobbed the second we got off the [...]
Part 3
I showed up with my new, half sized crew in Dakar a little late. We were at a sports club that was on a road that ran up the coast. I walked over to the Gambia registration table and before I could tell them my name, my home stay had found me. I was [...]
There has been some requesting for more information about the mundane day to day stuff, so here we go.
Getting a hair cut here can be challenging. Up country it means letting a little girl take a razor blade to your head. Which is as much fun as it sounds. Or a little bic style razor. [...]
Part II
The next morning we gathered up our stuff, repacked the car, and put up the canopy so we wouldn’t get burned to a crisp in the Senegalese sun. We were packed in pretty tight. Not unbearable, just comfy. The boarder wasn’t quite what I expected it would be. I’ve never actually crossed into a [...]
i am continuing my travels around the country next week. I will heading up country (way up there) with the Dept. of State for Education to help out on some data audit work. So, no more updates for a bit.
Part 1.
(I’m trying using the “more” button below again. It looks a bit different now from the old website, but it still works the same way. To read the post, click on the button.
Background Info: West African International Softball Tournament.
Dakar, Senegal. Located to the north of Banjul. Languages spoken: French, Wolof.
Home stay: a system where [...]
I got back from an excellent trip to Dakar last week only to get an eye infection the next day. I’ll write something about the fun trip later after I’m fully recovered! Full recovery should be by the end of the weekend.
Another post about food. About food I hate!
Things I never enjoyed before coming here (but can handle now):
Tomato
Onions
Fish
Things I had to force myself to eat (but now don’t mind):
Boiled eggs
Warm mayonnaise
Various meat/fish with bones in it
Spam (or the spam like meat PC gets for their meals they feed us)
Truly horrid:
Tuna fish
I might be picky but [...]
Quality footwear is hard to come by in The Gambia. I’ve mentioned before that I walk a few km a day, so it is vital to my foot health that I have good shoes. I have one pair of sandals that has been with me since the beginnings of high school and they have served [...]
Tomorrow is Tobaski! (or Eid al-Adha if you speak Arabic) This is a Gambian national holiday that comes exactly 2 months and 10 days after the end of Ramadon. It is the festival of sacrifice.Tomorrow every head of family will sacrifice an animal, whatever they can afford but typically a ram, and split up the [...]
A belated happy Thanksgiving! It was a very hectic week, so a brief recap is in order.
Thursday was turkey day! The PCVs pooled some money together and had a feast at one of our APCD homes. There was a decadent feast featuring two turkeys, a few dozen chickens, various salads, drinks to be drunk, and [...]
Anthropomorphize: v.tr.: To ascribe human characteristics to.
My diet isn’t too bad here in country. I live in the “big city” so there is plenty of variety. I don’t have a family to buy food from though. Most PCVs up country pay “rent.” Included in that rent is 3 meals a day! Normally most volunteers get [...]
Stop complaining! Here are a few pictures that other people have taken since I’ve been here. More should come later.
The above title is from a comic strip in which Calvin answers a question correctly, then goes on to write about how now that he has written his answer he will forget the information. All he has really learned is how to manipulate the system.
It seemed appropriate because very shortly I am going to be [...]
Calvin’s Dad chastises him for seeing things in only black and white. Calvin’s response is the title of this post.
Today is Election Day over on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Being a good citizen I have sent in my absentee ballot in about two weeks ago. Hopefully the good folks that are running [...]
Care package idea list:
Books! I love books. Science fiction books are always good, as are thrillers and biographies. I don’t have any good Kurt Vonnegut novels to read, so anything by him would be grand.
I have turned over a new leaf: when ever I get a package with candy in it, I eat the candy. [...]
I’m still alive! I swear! I had a cold last week that left me in bed for most of the day. I slept ~ 15 hours a day and let my immune system do what it does best. It did it’s job and I’m back to 100%. I also seem to be having some sort [...]
In response to the question “What are you doing in the The Gambia?”I will first give the very text book definition of what I am doing here. The Peace Corps has three goals that I am working towards achieving. They are:
Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
Helping [...]
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