Sometimes, after being in a place for a while everything starts to seem normal. People have an amazing capacity for adjustment, and this is probably especially true for PCVs who are stuck in an area with both very supportive volunteers and who are strongly involved in their community or work places. Due to this familiarity [...]

Dear ole brother sent me a new camera a few weeks ago and I just received in the mail this Tuesday. I thought this would be a good opportunity to do another “Day in pictures” type post and play with my camera. It’s pretty punk rock. Enjoy… Day in pictures Early in the morning Making [...]

It’s been a while. Not as long as it’s been before. But. Awhile… The term for UTG officially started on January 24th or so, not that anybody really showed up or started teaching (including myself…ahem…). My first classes were last week, so, it’s been a little busy around here. For some unknown and inexplicable reason, [...]

I’ve finally gotten around to finishing my grading for my CPS 306 course, which is the web programming course I’m teaching for the University of The Gambia. The midterm exam went, how does one say, rather poorly. The class average was a mighty 38. Which, sadly, is actually just below a D on the Gambian [...]

So. It’s final exam week at the University. Since I managed to … forget … about my web programming test I thought I’d post pictures for the CPS 111 test. What is CPS 111 you might ask? Well, faithful readers, it’s a basic computer literacy course that all University students have to take. It goes [...]

So, Tobaski, also spelled Tabaski, is more or less the most important Muslim holiday.  It commemorates when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son has an act of obedience and just before the deed was done God stepped in and provided a ram instead.   What this means is that about two months after the end [...]

Three in like a week.  I’m awesome. My blogging skillz save babies.  It’s true. I meant to post Halloween pictures earlier but was unable due to aforementioned issues…  No such luck.  Samantha and I went on to jonjonburry with a few other kids to do a party thing.  The upcountry cats are always crying about having to come down [...]

So.  Several people having been asking me about what they can send me, the poor sad man in africa who is saving starving african er… programmers from… starvation visual basic (take that samantha!) for christmas and in general.  By several people I may or may not mean no one.  So, in the spirit of the season here [...]

Finally, after years of waiting my new lovely asus 1215n arrived here to me in  the gambia.  For those of you caught unawares my old lap top decided to pull it’s own card and stop powering on.  I’ve wanted to post some pictures but i haven’t been able to because of this. Most computers in [...]

Ok. So. Brother Time Volume II has been lost in the tubes.  Unrecoverable. Like brother. I’ve been pretending to be busy the last few weeks with going back to the Americas and coming back here and all of that exciting and powerful stuff.  Since coming back I’ve started teaching at the university again and at GTTI.  [...]

Ok, So, I haven’t blogged very much in the last month. You don’t care, I don’t care, let’s move on. Brother, the magical unicorn that he is, flew down from the AMERICA to The Gambia. Shocking, yes I know, he left the fuzzy embrace of the San Marcos to venture far from his homeland. He [...]

I finally got around to getting all my C++ tests graded. The positive news is that the best grade was a 94. Thats pretty high quality in my little peace corps opinion. The flip side of that is that the worst grade was about a 2. Not about a 2. Actually [...]

I went ahead and finally graded my C++ tests. My highest grade in the class was 96, which is pure awesome. Tragically the lowest grade was a 2. 2 out of 100. Not 2 out of 10, which would still be bad. 2. Of course, this was someone who didn’t do any of the homework [...]

So. I’ve been teaching this LPI class at MDI. We are getting pretty far along as far as the objectives go but the guys/girls have asked for more "practical" stuff. We’ve been doing little labs the whole time but it’s kind of hard to actually do a full blown practical lab because the simple server [...]

Today, I wrote my first test for my C++ class for the University of the Gambia. Mainly it’s things taken straight from the book but I’m really interested in seeing how well these guys are getting it. Seeing the difference between them and other I students I’ve worked with here is really a trip. These [...]

A few days ago I finally got a lovely package from the Americas. In addition to having a fabulous back pack that’s already served an important purpose of transporting booze from point a to point me it included t-shirts from our lovely greenhouse. So with no further rambling our first greenhouse rep in [...]

One of the projects I’ve just started is teaching a Linux class focused on passing the LPIC level 1 exam ( http://lpi.org ) and the UPC exam, which is an Ubuntu specific exam. This is an interesting little project in that nearly every institution that I’ve visited has asked for Linux training and no [...]

Ok. So chris, the roommate, did a post on his blog at http://www.threeincrediblecookies.org/ which is apparently down right now… see how my site is working all hip and trendy like? All props to monsterweb.net. Even Chad can keep a linux server going… Anyway. His post was a day in pictures. Now [...]

This title has nothing to do with this post. I just wanted to throw some pictures out there. I do, however, hate chris. Pics of IST and…stuff?                                                

We’ve been having IST for the last week. This stands for In Service Training and its our last bit of training until we are pretty much officially done with that part of our lives. We will, of course, have small things though out or service but we are now officially done with our [...]

So. Brother advised me I’m a punk for not updating this blog enough, or at all. whatever. So in the spirit of christmas, new years, easter and Halloween i’m going to stop failing and update on a regular. First things first. Thanksgiving/Tobaski: For the heathens out there in heathen land, Tobaski is pretty much [...]

So. I’ve got a porch swing. In Africa. Possibly the greatest thing ever. Want proof? Here. Yeah, we live a hard life here in The Gambia….

So, I got the Internet at my house now. I’m possibly the only PCV in this country to have done this. It’s not a badge of honor, but rather geeky shame. I blame Chris, the roommate. When you combine us we’ve got more geek than brother has ugly. Thats alot [...]

So…my work. I’ve started doing some real work now. Right now I’m working at a few tertiary education institutions. I spend most of my time at GTTI, Gambia Technical Training Institute. I’m currently developing and teaching a web development class. This class is, inshallah, going to go through (X)html, CSS, Javascript [...]

We moved into our new house. It’s located on a road called mile 7. It features: a water heater, ceiling fans like blow like woah, running water, electricity and a gambian family in the garage. I’m moving up in the world. Some day soon it will also include a [...]

So, I’m a PCV now. Which means that when you send me mail, it should be addressed to PCV not PCT. See how i said ‘when’ not ‘if’? Everybody who has ever accessed this blog should send me at least 3 used needles. If you don’t you’re just not a [...]

I, being the powerful being that I am, managed to score ‘intermediate mid’ on the language test. Which means, that I’m am what you call exactly adequate. I’m good enough to swear in, but no better. Which is really the way that I like to live my life. This means [...]

I think my cellphone might be in the ocean. Why do i think this ? i call it and there is some lady that says something along the lines of ‘you’re screwed’ also it sounds like she’s underwater, so thats also a clue. In addition to this, I went swimming in [...]

I posted some more picatures of marathon march. They live here => Marathon March! Hopefully i’ll be able to get some more up soon. I also had my last language test today. Inshallah, i passed and i’ll be done with it. I’m not sure what happens if i don’t [...]

So, Marathon March is were they have us do a genghis khan like trek across the african bush. No, i don’t want any comments about how that references makes no damn sense. In any case its long, something like 25k which took about 8 hours with breaks and all that. We [...]

So, I’m living out of what’s known as the ’stoge’ or ’stoage’ or I actually don’t know how to spell the damn thing. It’s like dodge with a st instead of D. I’m going with stodge. At somepoint in the future i’ll be moving into an actual house house, which is [...]

So, I discovered the internet, it lives in Kombo, which is were I’m going to be living. Again, I don’t really have time to say much but I should sometime in the future, jesus willing. A brief summary of my life in the gambia can be summed up with “Pooping in a [...]

I have a phone number. It’s there, in the title. It is international, clearly but you kids can call. Remeber the like, timezones though, dudes. Also Here! 011 220 784 9410 Bam

So, I made it to the gambias after an infinite long plane flight. We’ve already started training here in the Kombo area and I’ll be going to an actual training village on like july 7thish. The food has been magical so far and I’m staying in a nice resort type place at the [...]

Brother, the magical flower that he is, FedExed me the camera i forgot in S.A. He’s so lovely. He also left a present in it which I’ll post here for posterity. As far as staging goes, it’s pretty straight foward stuff. Team building and ice breaking exercises plus general peace corps information regarding the agency [...]

So, I arrived in the philly fairly save and sound and all that jazz. I also gots to meet a few of the fellow Volunteers, see how I capitalized that? it’s because we’re super. Not really much to report but I think I need to get into the habit of blogging even [...]

In The Gambia they appear to a grip of languages.  The Peace Corps has provided us language training files for downloading on to mp3 like players.   Turns out all they provide down there are cassettes.  Unfortunately the files provided are in something like 40 different zip files, probably because they are catering to folks without [...]

In order to appease the Peace Corps Blogging Gods I’m going to go ahead and make a cute little timeline.  It’s probably mostly wrong, but so are you. August July and August 2008 - Filled out the application, conned folks into filling out recommendation forms. August 2008 - Received fingerprint and other random forms.   Filled them out [...]

So, I’m going to The Gambia.  Yes, I know that I typed THE in front of Gambia.  No, I’m not trying to be funny.  Yes, it really has a The in front of it. Yes the The is capitilzied, no, I don’t know why.  Yes, I know other countries don’t have it.  Right, The France [...]