Pageant News

[Once again a Pageant team is making the regular November visit to The Gambia. Regular readers of this blog will know that Internet access in The Gambia can be intermittent, so as before Pippa will be sending me (Dave the Webmaster) text and photos for me to post, My edits are shown in square brackets]

Arrival & Some Lights

Andy and I arrived on Tuesday afternoon after a very good flight...we were actually an hour early at Banjul!

 Andy and our amazing agents

On Wednesday we split forces...Wandifa and I did a load of admin  (reports, payments made to date and so on) while Andy went with Abdoulie and Yankuba to collect the wood that had been cut for bases for the new batch of lights. These lights will not be charged in a Solar Power Hut like the previous ones but will be self contained, each with its own tiny solar cell. We are trying this new approach and will see what works best. The team also looked at a number of vehicles to see what is available as we are thinking of getting a 'new' Pageant minibus.

wood for lamp bases

Yesterday...Thursday...we started making the lights. The hotel has kindly let us use a small room in which we can make them...and leave them and all the tools in overnight. The downside is that it does get pretty hot in there...not too surprising as the temperature is about 34C during the day here at the moment! The photos show the assembly team before the start and then at stages during the day.

making the lamps

We eventually packed up at around 6pm...14 lights completed with a few more partly done...only another 86 to go!! However, the process is speeding up now and Andy estimates they will do around 30 today.