I attended a workshop with my counterpart, Jatta, and fourteen other PCVs and counterparts at Massembeh to learn about the orange flesh sweetpotato (OFSP). The white sweetpotato is a common food throughout The Gambia, but doesn’t have as high a nutritional value of the OFSP, so PC has been encouraging the consumption of OFSP for better health. This two day event was a cross-sectorial workshop with PCVs from… ....READ MORE | 2 Comments
I had an incredible time visiting the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Project (CRP) in the River Gambia National Park (RGNP) with Polly, her Gambian host brother Alieu, and Kevin who was visiting from Germany. Kevin lived with Polly’s family as a high school exchange student, and Polly’s two sons were able to be high school exchange students with Kevin’s family in Germany, and the… ....READ MORE | 7 Comments
I participated in an event called Future Trek, facilitated by the Education Sector. There were three groups of PCVs that presented programs at six different Senior Secondary Schools in the North Bank Region (NBR) on the weekend of June 23-24. This was the second year Future Trek targeted schools in the NBR, and next year Future Trek will be held in a different region for two years. The… ....READ MORE
I experienced my first Holy Month of Ramadan – the fasting month. I did not personally fast, but I took the opportunity to learn about the world’s second largest religious group. My host family and counterpart were very receptive to my many questions about the changes I was seeing, and endeavored to explain concepts foreign to me. I will discuss some of the things I saw and learned… ....READ MORE | 2 Comments
I previously wrote about joining the new Peace Corps The Gambia Media Team. During our media training we were divided into three groups, assigned a topic to research, photograph and create a video. Those videos are now published, and this post will tell you more about each teams process, with links to the videos. I have also included a video produced by Harry Dwinell at the 2018 All-Vol conference… ....READ MORE
I took myself on a field trip to My Farm, an educational center for children and farmers started by the Norwegian Charitable Foundation Africa StartUp. Their mission is to improve livelihoods in The Gambia through education in agriculture innovation, environmental protections and entrepreneurism. I was impressed with this beautiful two and half acre farm, located… ....READ MORE | 3 Comments
I attended a very informative permagarden workshop at the Jenoi Farmer Training Center, which is just across the river from where I live in Farafenni. This workshop was presented by Peter Jensen, who was sponsored by Water Charity and hosted by Gambia Rising and Peace Corps The Gambia. Peter is an Agroecology and Permagarden Training Specialist, and has spent the last two decades developing the… ....READ MORE | 1 Comment
This post will describe what my life is like when I’m home in Farafenni. I’ve been gone a lot recently, and travel again next week for a permagarden workshop, and I want to share my day to day routines at site. I am fortunate to have a comfortable living situation, a loving compound family, a good work assignment, and interesting people to relate to as I go about… ....READ MORE | 5 Comments
Once a year all the volunteers in The Gambia get together for an All Volunteer Conference (All-Vol). There were 100+ in attendance at Massembeh, including our program managers, the medical staff, the directors of finance, training, security and our new Country Directer – Megan Wilson. It was great to have everyone together and I met several PCVs that I hadn’t crossed paths with before. There is a lot… ....READ MORE | 5 Comments
I joined the new Media Team to help address the third Peace Corps goal: To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. There are nine team members from all five regions of the country, and our function will be to support other PCVs with photography, video clips, audio recordings and news releases when creating content for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other venues. I… ....READ MORE | 2 Comments