This past week I went to Casamance. It was beautiful! We took sept places (7 place vehicles… think mini station wagons… they are very crowded!) through the Gambia. Now I have a little Gambia stamp in my passport. The trip itself took about 9 hours… a truck had broken down on the ferry boat that crosses the Gambian river. My roommate and I stayed with this really sweet American couple, Kristin and Tate. Tate works at Enterprise Works -a non profit, and Kristin teaches English. We left Saturday around 11 and arrived pretty late. Sunday, Tate made pancakes for breakfast. They were soooooo good!!! I haven’t had American food in awhile. We then walked around, and saw the Colonial area of town, it was so quaint! We had a beer by the water at a hotel, and then went to a restaurant that had this really good shrimp and pasta.
Monday, we left in a Jack Ndiaye (a big white van that seats 14 people) for Cap Skirring, where we stayed at a hotel owned by a friend of Rebecca’s. We went into the local Rice Fields and watched the women cut rice. Then, these really nice men lent us their bikes, and they walked while we rode their bikes all the way to Kabrousse, a small village on the river that divides Senegal and Guinea Bissau. There, we stayed and spoke with the local people, and they offered us food and water. This was probably a big mistake on my part because I got pretty sick to my stomach later that night. But the women were so nice, and gave us a tour of their village (which took about five minutes - it was very small). But it was still so charming, and the kids just attached themselves to me… they were getting into fights over who could hold my hand. I couldn’t even communicate with them, they spoke Pulaar and a little bit of Wolof. But seeing as how communication is 70% nonverbal, we got by. We also picked up baby goats! They were so cute and so little, less than a week old. One still had its umbilical cord.
We then went back to Cap Skirring, where we walked along the beach. It was absolutely beautiful, and we swam for the rest of the evening. Then we returned in a sept place that made great time, and I spent most of the afternoon playing with the kitties. Then we went and visited a really neat guy named Dennis. Dennis was in the peace corps like 2 years after it was first started in the 60s, and then he went on to work with USAID. He then retired to Casamance about ten years ago and works with the local Catholic Diocese and various other volunteer activities.
We finally returned by Ferry to Dakar… it’s a brand new boat that takes trips between Dakar and Ziguinchor. We almost missed it because we had so many things to do at the last minute. Rebecca also decided to adopt a baby kitty and so we had to bring it back in a basket. It was so cute! We also got to spend a lot of time up with the Captain where we met the funniest guy ever - he was the second mate on the ship, and he was from Indonesia. We finally made it back this morning. It was really a great trip, and I learned a lot about the history of Senegal. Dakar and such was colonized by the French, the Gambia was colonized by the British, and Portugal colonized Casamance, so a little bit of Creole is spoken there. Mostly, the legacy that the colonization left behind has had a huge effect on the citizens here. Ok, that’s the update for now! I’ll try to keep up better, but we had little internet access in the Casamance.
