Stare at me any longer and I will eat your face

Another village and another compound where I sit quietly, the children watching me: an ancient relic, an abomination, or strange creature. This far out into the bush many children may have never seen a toubob (white person) before. They come running from all around the village and before you know it i am surrounded by children.


They watch me silently as if i will spontaneously combust they stare and stare and stare. Sadly this has made my love of children sour into a sheer question of numbers. The number of small objects in my way as i do something. I brush three wide eyed children aside as i open the car door, i lift up a small child and set him aside as he does not even move as I bear down on him on a path, i have to part them like water if I sit down to long. 

It was at the beginning of one of these stare sessions that i saved a small baby chicken. I had recently arrived in a new village and the people as they always do had scrambled to grab their best chair and put it out into the front yard. I sit and i wait for them to congregate enough for our training. I have accumulated my customary crowd of children staring at me from a safe the white man might eat you distance... i had been there not five minutes when a rooster began crowing. If you have not read my past blogs, roosters are my bitter enemy; they are loud bullies that get into crowing matches with other roosters at all times of the day, then cock fights... oh and to mate they hunt down the female and physically subdue her with their beaks, size, and strength I did not know this but they also eat their young if they are too weak or they want to thin out a competing roosters chicks

So i am sitting there, children all agape at me, when all of a sudden i see a small chick hurriedly waddle under my chair for protection immediately followed by a two legged rooster blur and a high pitched chirp from under my chair as the rooster grabs the chick by its beak preparing killing it. Emerging from under my chair, chick in beak squealing, the rooster didn't know what he was in for. I snatch the rooster up with one hand, in its total shock it drops the small chick that scampers safely away. The surprised rooster gives a load squawk, its limbs clawing the air like a small wind up tyranasourus rex. Slowly I rotate the rooster in my hand staring at him with the fear of onion sauce in his eyes. "Bad rooster!" I tell him, I then backhanded throw-release him to the ground where he stumbles around clucking for awhile before making his escape.
The chick is unharmed under its mom's protection once again but the kids remain staring, I am truly an abomination. 


My trek to the land of milk and honey.

Fresh milk and millet porridge was a staple of our breakfast on trek

I just returned from two weeks of trekking. On which I was stung continually everyday 5-10 times, acquired 120 liters of honey, drank local well water without getting sick, and consumed fresh milk straight out of a cow most days. Some day I will write down some fascinating stories to contextualize these experiences but as always for me a picture is worth more words than I want to type over a dwindling internet connection. Here is a short overview of the worst night of my Peace Corps experience thus far.

This was not the nightmare hive I am referring to, but it was a hive about this aggressive, that' me on the right 

Kiang... possibly the most isolated place in the Gambia. This is not because of the distance involved rather the quality of the road and state of poverty that is poor even relative to that of the rest of Gambia. I have now trekked for 12 days and the stress of daily going out, harvesting hives, getting stung, processing honey ie getting stung, baiting and sighting hives (the only time i dont get stung) is taking its toll on me. However being in one of our last villages I am assured that tonight's beekeeping session will probably be one of the last.

Me walking with a bucket on my head and rice sacks on my legs

Here in the Gambia we do not have the latest and greatest beekeeping technology so we make do with a number of local fixes. One of which is rice bags to cover out legs. Also, our suits are not thick and I have taken a number of stings through the suit but the rice bag over the leg always worried me. Today was my undoing.


The hives we are working with are in a thorn bush and horribly maintained. Ironically the man we're working with is a trainer for the National Beekeepers Association of the Gambia, despite this he was hesitant to suit up to look at his own hives. After convincing him to suit up I tie up my rice bags and gardening gloves to my customary suit that I have now realized it far too thin to keep out all stinger penetration. Regardless, I have become accustom to the 5-10 stingers that make their way through my suit on a given session. 


You would never guess it from my actions in joining a beekeeping NGO, but I have always maintained a healthy fear of bees and as the days have progressed with getting stung by I have been having a consistent string of "I am covered in bees stinging me" nightmares.  


We walk up to our first hive and open what is the most agressive hive I have ever worked with. Withing 60 seconds of opening the hive everyone is covered in about 1000 angry bees. Balla, who is attempting to hack away at pieces of the thorn bush with a small knife is clearly in danger of having his suit rip and taking 1000 stings from crazy African bees. At this point I am pleading with Balla telling him to leave the hive and try the other one not inside the thorny bush when I feel it. 


Little legs are climbing up my leg inside my rice bag and then BANG. I get it in the leg. 10 seconds later again and again, faster now. I abandon the others to walk my out out of my living nightmare. Cursing every step of the way. 


When a bee stings you it leaves a sent trail that other bees can follow. This way a small bee sized hole can turn into bees intelligently waiting their turn to enter your suit and sting you. As I am walking I am now unaware how many stings I have taken as the overall throbbing has made it very difficult for me to tell. I walk 2km back into the village and there are still some bees on me. After killing each one by squashing them, I remove my rice bag and with the help of a villager we remove each stinger from my leg one at a time... I put on a new hole-less rice bag and return to beekeeping. In the morning my leg is covered in itchy hives, in two weeks of consistent exposure to bee venom my body has developed a red itchy painful throbbing sensitivity to getting stung everyday. Before my next trek I will get gardening boots and I will wear long sleeve shirts to keep down the sting exposure. 


It is life changing to daily have to confront something you're terrified of. If you would have told me I would be doing this when I entered Peace Corps I would have told you you were crazy, there is now way I could do this. What a wonderful experience to have once you have come out on the other side but not when its happening. 


Spend your week in peace and Happy Easter,  

In Karentaba we sited a number of hives on wires so that termites couldn't get to them

Working with the villagers and interested small boys of Kuyang to set up their apiary 

One hive we colonized in a day, we put it out with fresh wax, and in 12 hours thousands of bees had a new home

Processing wax= heat over fire strain through a cloth

Balla fishing for honey

Me showing off a comb of half honey. The specs are stored pollen.

Some of the local boys made a rice sack and put leaves on their head so they could watch us beekeep without getting stung

Pressing heated wax through a cloth, fellow volunteer Hillary is helping out here

Now I really thought that this was a little too obvious. While walking through the city I was caught off guard by this... I mean smoking kills might need a reminder... I don't know about fire.

There are many open air hives in the Gambia. Bees will literally just build giant combs on the branches of trees

In order to get bees in your hive and for them to build correctly we put fresh wax on every bar of out hives. One bar should equal one comb

This is a cross combed hive. This is a nightmare of bee killing and knife work by contrast look back to the picture of me holding just one comb

Processing honey. Literally we just mash it up and let the honey drip through cloth.

However I did get stung a lot doing this because there are so many, dead or only half dead bees in the honey.

The beginning and end...

In the course of two months, I have started and ended a beautiful relationship at my current work assignment. I as a beekeeping trainer at BeeCause Gambia was just getting into the swing of my new job when my friends, mentors, and long time managers Mick and Jenny left the NGO after some work disagreements with the head trustees. I will not as a Peace Corps volunteer weigh in on what has happened except that my work in The Gambia looked to be on ice for awhile while this conflict developed. After 2 weeks of uncertainty, it now looks like I will have a future with BeeCause, though we now are operating on a skeleton crew without our previous managers and our doing our best to preserve a beautiful work site that has now been left vacant. . Without management on the site Balla (my counterpart) and I will manage ourselves by trekking out to visit with a train beekeepers in the village.This will mean over the next 4 months I will be trekking throughout the country doing roughly 2 weeks of trekking for every 4 days off.

Kumoo Kunda is a wonderful site full of sustainable bee keeping technology and ideas, like this bee hive made from a metal box.

Despite what was a very difficult situation, this has given me a silver lining; While I no longer get to work on the land and with the people that were so instrumental in developing it (the site called Kumoo Kunda). I now have the opportunity to travel around the country seeing all the different cultures and places that the people in The Gambia call home. So before I head out tomorrow, I wanted to write a brief post as to what it has been like working with bees.


Walking a Mile in Someone else’s Bee Suit… + or –  1 Cobra.

This story was written a month ago as part of a story I put in the new letter as Dave the volunteer I am replacing was a legendary beekeeper, ladies man, and fluent Mandinka speaker (where I am only a advanced Wolof speaker, but Dave was also here for 3 years)

Yesterday was my third training at bee cause, now that Dave’s left I am the full time bee keeper at BEECause (Cashew Guy at IRD = Seth). Catherine is here from the LLR, she has brought some students who are really excited about bee keeping.  We start this training by going bee keeping.  I retrieve the old rice sack Balla has set aside and I pull out the well worn suit that says “David H.” in big letters on the top. It is by far the most comfortable and flexible and feels kind of like a jubejue…  possibly if I wear it, I will find honey everywhere, subtly flirt with everyone in a way that is witty and hilarious, and that I will yawn and fluent Mandinka will spill out of my mouth… “Uuubi lee lay eekta rakata abi ami, aabaraka yamoy (I have no idea what this means as I speak Wolof)” laughs would certainly ensue from my mastery of the language and then people would stop telling me “Jahtu, that man can speak Mandinka” possibly if I wear Dave’s bee suit it all these things can be achieved.

This is some new comb with baby bees ready to hatch from their sealed pupae state

Most importantly, I have never been stung. I attribute this to Dave’s suit (“If you wear this, the bees they cannot sting you” I can just imagine the Maribou saying as he gives it to Dave)… and I am moderately terrified of bees.  These are things that do not seem to go hand and hand with a trainer of beekeeping at an NGO (BEECause) with aggressive bees and locally made suits. Perhaps the Jubejue is working… time after time I go bee keeping and other people get stung up but I am immune.  After suiting up, we all make are way down to a long string of hives located just outside the property... 

This is Balla and our new orange suits...

Balla (my wonderful BeeCause counterpart) and I have a running joke that came from a previous training with Dave a month earlier. A Gambian trainee forgot to zip up his suit all the way and a few minutes into training he starts to do what looks like the robot while calmly saying “The bees have entered my suit”... he was stung quite a few times in the face...

Yesterday we were standing a few feet away from our hives suiting up.  To remind people to zip up all the way I do the robot… “The bees have entered my suit” I say, I get some laughs. Then we enter hive #4, a particularly aggressive hive and immediately a cloud of bees are on us, and it had not been 20 seconds since my reenactment that I feel a sharp pain on my neck. OWWW! What happened?  Dave suit is quite thin, and Balla assures me that they just are getting me through the suit. Then again… what is happening? Well this time I see two bees climb up the INSIDE of my hood and I knew that I have gotten my comeuppance…don’t make fun or you too will have misfortune visit you, this is definitely a karma thing.  Sheepishly I go “Balla, uhh the bees have entered my suit… I have to run” I take two more in the arm on my way back as the bees follow me entering through a still unknown hole. I have to stand and wait for the cloud to leave me before I take my suit off and have Jen remove the stingers from my neck and arm. 

On a different day balla was trying to prove that a hive without a queen will not sting because of the absence of the
defensive hormone that the queen emits. This time he was not stung... the next time he tried he took a stinger to the face. 

After applying some cream we check the suit, we found a grape sized hole in the neck of the suit, Dave’s Jubebue had failed me, I get stung and am not fluent in Mandika… although maybe I am a funnier and more flirtatious. Take away message; check your suit every time for holes.

Just over a week ago, I had a slightly different adventure. I was upstairs drinking some tea with Jenny (One of the manager’s of BeeCause) when her children come running out of their adobe house in towels, one shouting “Mommy mommy a cobra just went into the house, up the stairs, and into your bed!”  So, Jenny who has a moderate aversion to snakes sent me into the house with a stick and a headlamp to discover the truth about the cobra claims. After prodding everything with a stick I was just about to declare the house snake free when I lifted up the mattress and discovered a three foot black cobra coiled on the bed frame under the bed.  After excitedly dancing around awhile to the tune of “Oh my God there is a snake in the bed what do we do.”  Eventually I volunteered to take care of the matter.  Armed with a headlamp, a bucket, bee keeping gloves, and safety glasses (I assumed it was a spitting cobra as Dave has seen a few during his days at BeeCause) I went back into the house with Mick, Jenny, Emily and Jen A. who happened to be there with their counterparts on training. Carefully, Jen and Emily lift up the mattress and Mick shines his flashlight down onto the cobra, which was now under the frame of the bed looking up at us.  It was really pretty it was a shiny black and had a perfect diamond head. After talking and pacing some more Mick finally told me to get it over with, lifted up the bed and the cobra made a break for the far corner… I hesitated for a moment but grabbed the cobra by the middle and stuffed it in the bucket. I had turned to take it down stairs when its head popped back out of the bucket, hissed, begin escaping from the bucket despite my best attempts to keep it shut (God these things are strong!)  After escaping the snake began slithering around the house everyone yelling (as best as I can remember) something slightly different… the only thing I can remember is Jen A. saying “get the machete cut its head off!” I looked for the machete but was mostly just fixated on where the snake was headed. I ended up grabbing it by its tail and lifting it up.  To my surprise most of the snake lifted too as its body of coiled muscle felt more like a pipe and less like a rope. I stayed a few feet back with my hand outstretched in case it wanted to turn on me…  walking outside with it I proceeded to huck the snake with a forehand motion like a Frisbee into the bush rotating and flying a good 20 feet and landing somewhere in the darkness. I did feel quite accomplished at the time… Sadly there is now question of was it really a spitting cobra, the argument for is the black color with diamond head… against is after being an idiot and grabbing the tale why didn’t it spit on me and I never saw the hood? Regardless I am now called the “Snake Tamer” by Mick which is not a bad start to my new job.

One of the many trainings I have been apart of, this time I didn't get stung

Interview with Dave Harelson (this is the interview that made it into the news letter, some inappropriate content, but it all made it on to print.)

X: You lived up country for two years. What was the greatest challenge you had living in the village?

D: Lack of privacy definitely and personal space.

X: Now that you have lived both in the village and in the city could you compare and contrast a few of the differences?

D: Yeah the village I don’t feel as stir crazy as I do in kombo. I feel way more stir crazy here, when I’m in the village even when nothing is going on I feel like I’m doing something. I have way more personal space in the city, the ocean is hear, I love the ocean, obsessed with bodies of water, food is better but I miss my host moms cooking but really privacy and personal space apart I like village better.

X: For aspiring mandika speakers, what steps did you take to get your mandinka from basic to intermediate to really really good?

D: Write the s$(& out of every word 20 times, write the s#*$ out of everything: chalk on your floor, markers on your corrugate, chalk on your pit latrine while you’re taking a s($*, notebooks with mandinka words and sentences: constantly and consistently applying new words in conversations.

X: I have an article in here about how I battled a uuhh cobra. It was a cobra right? It was long black and had
a diamond head. I mean what else could it have been?

D: Well it could of been a snake in the colubridae family: rat snake, corn snake they all fall into that family. Spelled C-o-l-u-b-r-i-d-a-e (Dave as you can tell is a biologist who loves snakes)

X: And they can be black with diamond heads

D: Some of them… but it probably was a cobra. I have only seen cobras at BeeCause

X: So I picked it up by the tail and chucked it. What would you have done? And could I have put myself in some danger that way?

D:  I would have identified it… if it was a spitter I would have gotten some eye glasses, I would have then pinned its head down with a rake or a stick, picked it up behind the head, taken it out and let go.

X: So a cobra spits at you what do you do if it gets in your eyes?

D: Rinse with warm water some salt hydrogen peroxide.

X: Your pretty screwed aren’t you

D: Yeah you either don’t see again or have permanently blurred vision. If you wash it out immediately though you’ll probably be ok.

X: You’re a prolific reader from my conversations with you, can you tell me a few of your favorite or most influential books that you have read while in country?

D: Jitterbug perfume, ohh that books gives me hard ons. No that book literally gave me hard ons.  The brief and wondrous life of Oscar Wao it’s a fictional book based roughly on history it has some of the f*)#@ed up things that was done under dictatorship in the Dominican Republic… it really makes me afraid of dictators now. Maybe not afraid just more aware of all the things they can do.  Oh, the sex lives of cannibals, that was a good one to read while here, I really connected with it in village, it’s funny you should read it! 100 years of solitude that was good, 40 days 40 nights.

X: Not sure Kate will let me put in the part about hard ons. Do you want to change that for print at all?

D: Ok, let’s go with, erections. That book literally gave me erections, that’s more appropriate medical terminology.

X: I’ll leave it for now. What is the most intense bee keeping experience? And if it’s not the same most stings sustained in a single beekeeping?

D: Balla and I in tumani tenda opened a few hives that were the most aggressive I ever encountered. Those we some angry bees. We were out there with Maureen and the bees got into her suit and started stinging her.  There were like 50 bees in her hair stinging her scalp. We had a hive on the water tower once which was cool.

X: Most stings in a single bee keeping?

Balla, suited up with a smoker

D: Forty

X: What is your greatest Peace Corps accomplishment?

D: The friends I have made

X: Any lessons that you have learned that you would like to share with out up country bee keepers?

D: Work with individuals and let others learn from that individual

X: Better than kafos.

D: Yeah definitely.

X: Have some fan mail questions here for you… you can pass on this one if you want… Bunama (Scott C.) writes Dear Dave, are you dating a national? And if so is it a guy?

D:  (laughs for a while) ok ok ok, tell him I have been consistently intimate with nationals but I have never dated a male national and if I did it would be Balla.

X: Balla writes, what is your favorite thing about bee keeping?

D: The sociology about bees is so complex and so interesting. It makes you just want to be interested in them… to watch them … to keep them… to proliferate them. The sociology is so unique. Oh and eating the honey, biting off fresh honey right out of the caps.

X: John Rozmus in well the middle of a swamp somewhere… writes how do you plan on maintaining your girlish figure when you’re back in America?

D: (laughs for a really really long time) I plan on doing spin classes at my favorite neighborhood gym and eat grape nuts.

X: Thanks for doing this Dave. Finally, Remy in the awesome village with a genie infested mountain writes: what is your favorite Mandinka proverb and what has it meant to you?

D:  Ding dingoli be ya duwo long bari itolu mang du da duwo long de. It essentially states that no matter who you are or what culture from you will never master everything.  You will always be ignorant and there will always be room for discovery. 

My Ending Message:


I am happy to finally go out and trek, and work and sweat. After 2 NGO melt downs of either politics or incredible wasting of funds, it is incredible to get away from it all and experience the Gambia and Africa without having to think about capacity building, sensitization, constituents, organizational cooperation, or fund justifications. I am so tired of NGOs and wasted aid funding right now that I am going to be a business major to look at sustainable development.

I would love to write you more about this if you have questions about my year of experience so far in Africa. It has changed my life even if much of that changed has been a barely organized chaos.

I will leave you with some pictures as I do not have the energy to write an accompanying story I will settle for small captions.

Spend your week in Peace,

This is a framed picture of the beauty of Kumoo Kunda (oh Kumoo Kunda is mandika for home of the bees)

Kids are afraid of my tallness and whiteness

This is the sum total of my year of work. A cashew steamer, millions of dollars and methodologies later, it has horrible cracks in the foundation from shoddy workmanship and is not fit to be used. A few more million dollars... we might have one or two functional units the waste is incredible when people just down the street are literally starving

Mick and Jen's son has found yet another African pet, this time its a pigmy squirrel mouse (i think)

Products made from our honey and wax include, lip balm, soap, and body lotion

Hat and the cat a new Dr Suess Remix

I did some materials development for publishing a pictorial manual on how to make a grass hive, here are a few photos.

One Day at a Time



This is my host sister in villag Fatu.
She is in the middle of pounding dinner which will be rice and peanuts with sugar



There is a saying here that goes “slowly slowly is the one who catches the monkey by the tail.” And after a year of being here with that I realize Gambia is a chinese finger trap, the more you struggle, the more it seems like you are in an endless prison of sunny days under trees where few things ever get done. Lately though, I have been letting go and realizing that I only get to take it a day at time.  With this view, I occasionally have a tendency to forget about America and forget about my life back there waiting for me a year in the future.  This has meant that I have been neglecting my blog in favor of more wholesome pursuits like enduring  two weeks of intestinal parasites and starting my new job as a trainer of aspiring village bee keepers.  But before I get into what has been happening lately I would like to catch you up with my month of January…

I have now stayed at Leybatos with both my Mom and Sam. It is a wonderful and innexpensive beach hotel on the ocean. It has some beautiful sunsets!

First I had Samantha visit me for New Years.  We kicked off our new years by watching fireworks on the beach, particularly dangerous when the fireworks are shot over the ocean with a strong off shore breeze raining sparks down on us. This was fine for our hotel, but the one about 5 minutes walk down the beach promptly has sparks go into its roof and caught fire at roughly 10 minutes into the new year. This meant that our real New Year’s show was watching the beach front of the Kombo Beach Hotel burn to the ground. I did not have a camera on me at the time of the conflagration, but came by the next day to survey the destruction.

Other exciting adventures we undertook, was visiting the local craft market, where we purchased many paintings… and one drum.

Shek the local painter from whom I have purchased about 10 paintings off of

I took this picture for Aaron... meet Lamin Sonko the maker of your drum.
This is him with your drum right after he carved it



We also made a mermaid from Jeremy on the beach





After that we visited my village family, who as always were overjoyed to see us, and we spent the day entertaining the village kids, drinking the local green tea brew that everyone is fond of, and eating the local fair.  The family I have in the village is amazing! This is the place where I learned Wolof and ate for the first time from a communal food bowl. Other than that, they do not have many of the characteristics of other village families, mainly the kids are well behaved and quite, yet engaging in a way that is more than just curiosity. I feel like I have a real connection with each and every one of them. And it has been awesome to have my mom and Sam see what an incredible family they are and have a real cultural experience.

One of the children in village always has a snotty nose and what I would describe as "Ancient looking eyes"

Domada a traditional Mandinka dish. Peanut sauce rice and veggies.

I always thing the veggatable sellers at the market are so pretty. They wear all these colors and have piles of veggies that are so beautiful

We also toured my new work as a trainer of rural bee keepers. The NGO BEECause Gambia has many value added products they derive from their use of honey and wax. Sam helped label bars of freshly made beeswax soap and pour honey into small glass jars...

 

Locally sourced turtle...



Bob the cat... the chillest cat I have met since Larry the cat at the Metge family house.





Threw this one in, we ran into a conkoran on the streets. Traditionally used to scare off evil spirits that want to posses freshly circumcised young boys, they are also have a part time job dancing and assisting the protection of the village at ceremonies



We also had a night of watching dancing and wrestling at a local compound. The national television station was there, and for the third time in my service I danced on national TV... Apparently it has been made into a commercial for furture wrestling matches at that compound. If I can find the commercial I will post it, but I now get daily texts from Gambian friends who say they say me on the TV dancing for a commercial. I am speechless as to how far this has gone...

Very poorly lit, but basically two people come lock up in a sand pit, and whoever can throw the other to the ground the wins. The end. Then the process repeats until the 20 or so wrestlers have all been in a match together.

There was crazy fast dancing before the match... as I said earlier I danced here, but was probably the worst. Compared with these girateing balls of energy... I am just the dancing Toubab.

Ok... so my mom was here, then I did some traveling well, when I finally got back to my house there were some mice.  We were sitting down when one walked right up to the door and began drinking water from a small pool of water from tea I had just spilled. After scaring it back into the corner behand my stored camping backpack and old camping matress we discovered 5-7 adults (who scattered) and an adorable nest of baby mice INSIDE the old camping mattress. My love of creatures put me in conflict as to what to do. Just then the trash man knocks on our door. While after doing mouse impressions and figuring out the word for mouse is "jena" he comes in and begins stomping on them with little or no consoltation while I run around scooping up the mice in a cereal bowl and a broom and placing them in a rice bag. Eventually most ever mouse was rounded up in a bag that was sent to the dump or stomped on by my trash man.



can you spot the mouse by the bike... yep there he is



As an asside the mice later returned and made a nest in the insulation of my fridge where they lived inside it eating my toothpaste and dried fruit... I then had a seperate more dark intervention I call the "jenacide" where I locked the door to my kitchen fumigated the fridge and inflicted blunt force trama to the escapees because I am tired of them returning... sorry guys I value my toothpaste and a mouse turd free house more than your lives. Also you ruined my fridge...  



Baboon Island/River Gambia National Park

To my great excitement Sam and I did get to travel to probably the most wild and seneic place in the Gambia. The River Gambia National Park was a place I had traveled to with my mom but was not able to get any photos because my camera died... this time however I was able to get a few once in a lifetime shots. Along with the enjoyment of nature it was fully worth returning.

The Termite mounds are enourmous there...

So our the Baobob trees!

at the departing dock I snapped a nice little photo of the Kuntaur Rice Mill with added small children

On our way in we saw a number of fisherment



This is the clearest shot I got of the hippos we saw. We only saw their heads above water.



Here is our guide.

and here is one of the many chimps that the park protects on the islands

My best crocodile photo... we saw a bunch of these guys. It was amazing!

Dakar Softball!

After another overland sufferfest (one coming one going) to Dakar, Senegal I had to say good bye to Sam. I had timed the trip so that I could then play in the West African Invitational Softball Tournament that is hosted ever year in Dakar. We practiced, we prepared, and we grew out our intimidating facial hair! None better than Mike's, that's why all my best pictures centered around him.

and in the end, after some incredible hard fought games and ties and tie breakers and finals... we got 2nd place out of 16 teams... not bad for only 3 practices and a bunch of us being hung over from previous nights of drinking!

Notice the red mark on my friend Brain's chest... he took a softball to the gut for the team, sliding into second or third I believe

That's all I have in me for now! I am dedicated to posting on my blog more. Sickness, travel, visitors, and new work asside, I am out of excuses and will bring you more of my African adventures soon. Next will be what has happened lately, but I am all tired out as it takes forever to organize a blog in the Gambia!