04 February 2018
Sunday 4 February
Family Compounds
As it was Sunday we decided it
would be good to visit families we knew and sponsored children, past and
present. The weather has improved back to the usual Gambian sunshine and
warmth. Not too hot with a gentle breeze. The cold North wind has stopped much
to everybody’s relief.
First stop was to visit Lang, a
lovely teenager who will be taking his GCE exams (yes UK ones) in the summer. He says that he likes science and also reading any books he can get his hands on.
On to Ebrima’s compound where we
met him and Fatou, who despite being recently married to Yankuba, goes every
day to cook for Ebrima and Ebe as well as Fatoumatta who has a 4 year old lovely daughter, Isatou. Ebrima’s barber's business is doing well but at the
expense of his garden which was only just getting going. We had hoped to see
Yankuba and Fatou together but he had been called in to work on his day off.
Several sponsored students arrived while we were there and were paid their
money. The word goes around very quickly that Pippa is visiting, almost
magically fast.
A short drive took us to Abdoulie
and Aminata’s compound. Their new baby, Isatou had grown considerably since we
saw her last November and enjoyed being cuddled.
Abdoulie’s orange tree was
doing well and his nephew Ousman climbed the tree and Abdoulie deftly caught the
oranges for us all to enjoy. If you haven’t had the blissful
experience of Gambian oranges on a hot day, they are very juicy but full of
pips and they are peeled with a knife and sliced in half. You then suck out the
juice and feed the shells to the goats. Meanwhile Pippa had given sheets
of paper and colouring pencils to all of the many children who had appeared.
This amazingly produced a ten minutes of peace as they all worked on drawing something
for her. All the pictures were really good efforts and the children greatly enjoyed showing them to her.
Our final visit of the day was to
Wandifa and Mariama’s compound which is not far from Abdoulie’s. It is a lovely
area with some fantastic trees and a very calming atmosphere. We were surprised
and pleased to see that the mango tree that was diseased last year had
recovered completely. An even larger number of sponsored children arrived with
reports and some with letters for their sponsors. Sponsorship monies were duly given out
.
Back to the hotel after a good
relaxing day. Tomorrow will be different as we are intending to go upcountry to
Soma to visit Pakalinding and Misera schools. This will be an early 6.00 start
and a long day.
