20 November 2016
Day 18 -
Saturday
A shortish day
today
We started at
The Water Point where we signed the contract for the borehole at Kani Kunda and
made the initial payment. They hope to start work no later than next Wednesday.
The school will be delighted.
Then to the
stationers to negotiate the purchase of the exercise books. The shop did not
have sufficient in store so some were sent for. We were told this would take an
hour, but we suspected this would be a Gambian hour.
We then went to
a compound for a short visit and then returned to the shop. Two hours after we
had first left we had loaded the car with all the books that could be found;
just over one half of those we needed. We may look to buy something else with
the rest of the money.
Back to the
hotel, picking up Linda on the way and we had our first ever formal Gambia Pageant
meeting with Abdoulie, Wandifa, Yankuba, Linda, Pippa and me there.
Among the
matters discussed were possible schools to visit for our Gambian Team to deliver
workshops, and also follow-up visits to schools where workshops had already
been carried out, together with the funding to do this. We also discussed ways of
encouraging parents to deliver the students’ third term reports on time so that
the team does not have to waste their time chasing them up when they have more
productive things to do.
We welcome Ann
and Brian Keating tomorrow who are coming over tomorrow for just over three
weeks. It will be good to be together if only for a short period
I had hoped to
take a photo of all the team at the meeting to publish here
but I forgot. I
will try again tomorrow when we are all together.
