Day Fula

Day two of staging has ended. The people I will be in training with are all incredible, even after only knowing them for 48 hours I feel so confident that no matter the entirety of the shit we will be getting into, we’ll be able to get through it all. I seem to always be so blessed with these great groups of people when I’m on trips. Most of the group is around my age of 23, we have no elderly volunteers (so I don’t have to room with grandpa thank god! Actually the conversation of elderly volunteers came up and I think it was said great, “Can’t trust them driving a car, so send them out to West Africa, they’ll be fine”. We do have a married couple who are our age and very nice. We were talking about risk factors today and the husband quickly spoke up, “STDs!”… the wife immediately followed with, “How the hell do you plan on getting an STD?”. It pretty funny.

Last night we all got dinner at some Thai restaurant; for some reason all these people insist on experiencing new and exciting ethnic food, regardless of my persuasions to enjoy good old American food while you still can. Needless to say I really don’t like Thai, I thought it was utter shit lol, but the conversation was great. We were planning our expedition to Timbuktu, and our “Gambian Junk Yard Wars” competition to build the best boat. The greatest part about it, is if your boat sinks… you fall into the Gambia River and immediately exposed to Schistosomiasis, it’s the risk factor that makes the competition exciting. There’s a reason why I hear Gambians don’t swim in the water, Crocs, Hippos (which kill more people in Africa than snakes and crocs), and Schisto (which we were explained with one phrase, “Trust me, you just don’t want to get it”).

So anyways after all the conversations we’ve had we’re all openly scared shitless I think; but with that deeply confident, maybe it’s a fear of the unknown. As one of my group members mentioned, “It’s like taking a blind leap of faith off a cliff and hoping the drop isn’t to deep”. With all the anxiety though we really do have an amazing training class that I think is going to bring a very new and uniquely strong spirit to The Gambia. Tomorrow we wake up extremely early to get our Yellow Fever shots and start taking are Malaria meds (which I hear give you some wicked hallucinations and scary vivid dreams). After that we shit around the airport till our flight at 5:30 to Brussels, then we’re actually off to Dakar where we’ve been instructed definitely not get off the plane, and then we hop off to Banjul. 98 PCVs are already in country. During Training I’ve been told we’ll have a lot access to phone and internet, but once we’re sworn in that will be very limited.

Tonight the 17 of us went out to eat at this truly inspiring Italian restaurant down the street (ironically right next to the Thai restaurant and to right the really great Mexican restaurant we ate for lunch). Just talking and laughing with them for some reason I just can’t stop smiling, as nervous as I am. Tomorrow begins the big adventure of traveling to the Gambia and I pray all our luggage gets there. Goodnight all.