Friday 17 February 2012
Our morning routine was now established. At around 7am we were woken by the increasing heat and the appearance of spots of light in the metal roof above our beds where the corrugated sheets were joined together.
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| My bedroom, with a curtain over the door |
Each of our bedrooms had its own door into the back yard area - a strip of land about six feet wide and enclosed by a substantial wall. Domestic tasks are performed here. There is a simple bathroom at each end. JD and I were given exclusive use of one of the bathrooms. It contained a western-style toilet and the traditional squatting style toilet which doubled as a shower area. To take a shower, we needed a bucket of water and a jug. The water sometimes came up lukewarm from the tap, or it could be left to stand in the sun a while to warm up.
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| The narrow yard behind the staff houses |
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| The shower area of our bathroom |
As this was our last morning and as we had survived our village experience without resorting to our emergency food supplies, we told Sainey we would not need breakfast and that we had food to share for a change! She made us a hot drink anyway and we distributed cereal bars to all the teachers, explaining that this was the kind of breakfast we might have at home if we were in a hurry! They were perplexed by this small 'meal' but enjoyed the bars, then tucked into their usual fish and rice!
The children had started drifting in to school although there were no lessons that day because it was sports day. JD and I were due to be collected by Sarjor and taken back to our hotel. We wanted to leave our simple teaching materials at the school and entrusted them to Mr Bah who had watched with great interest as we used dice and playing cards to make maths a bit more fun! We had been touched by the generosity of everyone we had encountered, so we wanted to give back whatever we could, although we had taken almost nothing with us except the school supplies and our clothes. We had another fleece blanket which we gave to Mr Bah for his three-month old baby boy, Tabba, and Sainey and I exchanged pieces of jewellery.
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| Sainey |
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| JD sharing a meal in the school grounds |
We decided to take a daytime walk around the village as we had only really seen it at night before, except for the school compound, and wanted to take photos and visit the market. Mr Njie offered to accompany us - he was forever concerned for our safety and welfare, although we always felt perfectly safe.
We were shown the most important parts of the village - the small couscous mill, the one-room peanut butter factory with its single piece of machinery. We watched a man plastering the walls of a house he was building using traditional mud bricks, and visited the Chairman of the School Management Committee at his home - he presented us with a huge papaya from his tree.
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| The peanut butter factory |
At the junction of a couple of paths in the centre of the village stood a shaded wooden table with a few food items on it - balls of monkey fruit, hot peppers, stock cubes, a cabbage.
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| Market stall |
Other women simply sat in a shady spot with their produce displayed on a cloth on the ground. There were tomatoes, onions, dried fish.
Too soon it was time to return to the school house for the last time. Mr Mahmoud called us to his office along with his senior teachers where we exchanged speeches of farewell and thanks.
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| JD with Mr Njie, HELPING's link teacher |
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