Ebola Near The Gambia

Ebola has raised its ugly head in the region.  A forested area in Guinea, our neighbor to the South, has experienced an outbreak of Ebola, aka hemorrhagic fever.  This is an ugly disease, killing up to 90% of victims and doing it in an average of 9 days from the onset of illness.  The incubation period for the illness is up to three weeks so people can appear perfectly healthy while they have the virus.  The World Health Organization gave us a briefing last week and I don't think we are in danger, but it is kind of a spooky thing. Truck drivers are the people they are most concerned about since they move between countries and shall I say have not been known to be celibate.

Senegal, which surrounds The Gambia on all sides except the ocean,  has closed its borders with Guinea. However,  having accidentally gone into Senegal on trek, I know that the borders are leaky, though truck drivers would probably not travel on the roads I was on.

The interesting thing about Ebola and Africa is that the testing for it is not easy, the blood samples are being sent to Paris for testing.  Health workers are especially at risk, though with everyone on alert they are probably being more careful now.  But someone could come into the country with no symptoms and then come down with symptoms and expose the health workers.

As I said, I am not too worried about it, since it is still quite a distance from here.  But it is something to think about. They are saying to avoid eating bush meat which I don't think will be a problem for me. Love those bush rats.

The United Nations WFP Crew

Yesterday we went outside and had a picture taken of the whole WFP crew.  This is program staff, logistics staff and drivers. As you can see, I am the only toubob in the crew now.  The casually dressed man in the front is our finance officer who had popped in on his day off.  He just came back from 2 months temporary duty in Rome (wish I had been the one for that)

The head of the office, Vitoria Ginja is the second one from the left in the front row.  The two women on the right side wearing more western style skirts and blouses are both Christians.  The number two man in the office, the Head of Programme is on the right in the first row. Drivers are the men with with WFP blue shirts or pants. 

Just completed the second round of school garden training.  I was up country long enough to know that it is freaking hot up there in the afternoon.  We were outside for practical demonstrations and I thought I was going to pass out.  The volunteers up there tell me that afternoon naps are de regueur. I can certainly see why.  Working in that heat could kill you.  Let's here it for working in an air conditioned office. 

I will write more about training later but have not posted for a long time and this was an easy post.

Biggest crocodile yet

Well folks, I think this will definitely be my last story on crocodiles, but then I thought the last one was too. On my way to work every day I pass a craft market. This is an area where Gambians make and sell things for the tourist trade. Someday I will take some pictures of the men at work.  It is predominantly men that are producing the items.  I see some things in shops run by women but I do not see them actually making the things.  I will snap more pictures some day because their process is pretty interesting, but I had to stop and take this picture for this blog.  I had seen no evidence of this creature being carved, when suddenly one day there he was, in full glory, the biggest crocodile I have seen in The Gambia. I resisted the urge to sit and pet him but I did think he was pretty amazing. They do not use any power equipment for their carving -- hand tools only. If you could see the tools they work with to do carving, you would be very impressed.  I guess you can look forward to it as an upcoming feature.

And how do you charge your mobile phone?

If you teach at an up country school you may or may not have power, but mobile phones are ubiquitous.  What does a gal have to do to get her phone charged? Never fear, where there is a will there is a way. The picture below was taken in the head teacher's office at a school I was monitoring.  At the time I noticed this device there were about three more phones hooked up but I did not shoot quickly enough.  I don't know who manufactures  the device that all of the phones are plugged into, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was not originally designed to be hooked into a car battery.  I know some school actually have a money making concern going by charging mobiles. for people.  These phones are probably staff members' phones. 

Vortex Smortex and Monkeys Too

I don't understand all this talk about the polar vortex. I am enjoying weather in the 70's and 80's with gentle ocean breezes.  Surely you people are imagining things.  Last week we had our yearly retreat for the WFP.  We went to one of the local hotels in Senegambia and had 3 days of meetings and food.  It was tough but we managed to get through it.

Here are some pictures of the M&E (Monitoring and Evaluation) team during one of our sub-meetings.
As you can see the circumstances were pretty rugged.  I don't know how we dealt with it

Many of the team members in the picture are stationed up country to do field monitoring for post emergency food supplementation. They are providing food to pregnant and nursing mothers, identifying children who are severely malnourished and referring them for hospitalization, and identifying moderately malnourished children and providing them with food to take home. If a children is moderately malnourished they provide them with Super Cereal Plus. It contains maize (58 percent), de-hulled soya beans (20 percent), dried skimmed MILK POWDER (8 percent), sugar (10 percent), vegetable oil, and vitamin & mineral premix. If you notice the 10 percent sugar content, it is to make it taste good.  Many of the malnourished children no longer have an appetite.  The sugar makes it more taste tempting to the child. The picture below of some children who are not in either of the malnourished categories but are providing good evidence that Supercereal Plus tastes good.  A bag of Supercereal Plus had broken and they are licking up the remains on the table.

Recently Rustica Carlos send me a birthday card telling me to celebrate my birthday like a monkey but stop short of throwing my caca around.  It struck a familiar chord.  At the same meeting we had a coffee break outdoors when one of my co-workers felt something like rain.  He looked up to see a monkey had urinated on him from a tree above.  Is that close enough, Rustica?  Needless to say he got a new plate of food.  I took several pictures of the monkeys -- they were pretty big. They call them red monkeys here but I do not know the scientific name.You can see a few of  them below:

A monkey family:

Thank goodness they did not celebrate in the way that Rustica suggested that I avoid.

Crocodiles!

Yesterday was New Years Day and I had the day off so I decided to spend the day with a friend and visit the local tourist attraction, Katchakally Sacred Pools, home of crocodiles, lots of them. While wending our way to the pools we passed a tree that I have seen frequently in The Gambia called the Cotton Tree.  It grows very tall and has a very interesting trunk structure at the ground level. I am standing in the middle of a couple of roots (trunk parts??)

Here is another view from another side of the same tree (without the beautiful model posing):

But I promised you crocodiles and you shall receive them.  When we entered the crocodile area we got a guide who works for tips.  He informed us that the crocodiles were pretty safe because they feed them lots of fish before the park opens so that they are not hungry.  The first thing we could do is touch one of the crocs known to be tolerant of such things. Trust me these guys did not move.  Here I am patting the croc:

I don't know if you can see it but the croc has a greenish cast that looks like it is algae but it apparently is tiny plants that will become water lillies.  You can see there is another croc right behind me who was totally unimpressed with my presence. No I was not sitting on his head. I do not think that would have been recommended behavior.

The picture below is of our guide who tolds us all about the crocs and the sacred pools. Apparently before it became a tourist attraction the pools were considered sacred to help women who wanted to have a baby. They ,merely had to bathe in the pools.  Hopefully there were not as many crocs then.  I doubt that there were.  Our guide said that they feed the crocs fish every morning so they are fat and happy when the tourists come.  They control the numbers of them by taking eggs out of the nests.  I don't think that I would volunteer for that duty, thank you very much.

As we walked around we saw crocs of all sizes sunning themselves in the morning sun. I have no idea how many there were, but there were a lot.

If I were with you all I would sing you the song "Never Smile at a Crocodile" -- Patti I know this breaks your heart to miss it. But I would give you two examples of smiling crocodiles and I think you can see why you should not hang around smiling at them.

Note in the big smile below that the crocodiles have no tongues. So I guess they can't apologize for biting you.  The other interesting tidbit I learned from the guide is that crocodiles have their mouths open to cool off, kind of like dogs, but I could not hear him panting.

We also some some crocs who made it past the egg culling stage.  There are at least 3 different sized small ones in the picture belo

Then for an extra added bonus, I thought I would throw in a few pictures from the little museum they had with the pools. The first is a picture of the original, more up country version of the Kankurang. I have included pictures in other entries but they were shaggy red guys.  This is more the original version which was made of tree bark.

The next one I am not really sure what it is but I don't think I would like to meet him.  I don't think Gambians were ever into shrunken heads.

The final museum picture is of a marimba like instrument.  Palm fronds and gourds can make music too.

And then lest you forget that this was titled Crocodiles!, my friend and I went to the restaurant that had the Beware crocodile sign.  The resident crocodile actually graced us with his presence. You will probably have to double click to get the larger view, but he is actually in there swimming. That is not a log, it is a crocodile right next to where we were enjoying lunch. Not as big as the big ones we saw at Katchakally, but I would say 5 feet long. We did not try to pet this one.

School Improvement Grants

Gambian schools were recently  given money to use as a school improvement grant.  I just thought you might be interested in seeing what this school prioritized for its grant.  I like the improvement of garden one. The Nat Results are the standardized testing at the end of the year.  The results are usually not very good. When they say renovation of the toilet, we are talking outdoor pit latrine.