To spread awareness about HIV/AIDS in the Gambia, a bunch of health volunteers have worked super hard to put together a curriculum and plan all the logistics so we could trek across the country, dropping knowledge bombs on unsuspecting students.
Our team left from the island of Janjanburreh, and biked about 120 kilometers over 5 days. We stopped at six schools along the way, showing videos, doing activities and teaching about HIV. We ended in Farafenni, a fairly big town in the CRR. Another team left from near the capital, and traveled across the Western Region, and a third team traveled around the Farafenni area.
While teaching sex ed to adolescent students is hard enough, try it when they speak very little English. I had to say words that I’m uncomfortable saying, but I had to repeat, elongate and enunciate agonizingly well in order to be understood. There were a number of hilarious stories involving our subject matter and the questions we were asked, but this is neither the time nor the place.
Our first day was an easy ride. We left Janjanburreh at about 5pm, and only had to go like four kilometers to the next village, where we planned to show a video. Before we had gone one kilometer, we were stopped at a checkpoint, which normally you can just ride straight through on a bike. I was immediately perplexed. The militiaman approached one of our team members, and pointed to her camoflauge blanket strapped to the back of her bike, and said angrily, “What is that?!?” This was made increasingly terrifying due to the machine gun in his hands. After a little bit of tense conversation, we learned that it is ILLEGAL to own or wear camoflague in the Gambia. I guess it’s like impersonating an officer. He eventually let us go, telling us to hide it in our bags for the remainder of the trip… yikes.
When we finally arrived at the school, we were greeted by dozens of students and parents, all waving leafy branches and singing a welcome song. They all shook our hands as we went through the human tunnel they had made. Awesome.
We tried to show the video that night, but after three different generators failed to work, we gave up and just had a Gambian dance party. We also had failed to plan a meal for that night, and so we had mayonnaise and spam sandwiches. Not as bad as it sounds. That first night, we also were pitifully unprepared. We had no surfaces on which to sleep, insufficient mosquito nets, and most people hadn’t brought any sort of bedding. I know it’s Africa, but it gets pretty cold at night. It was miserable. We also had to take bucket baths at night with three of our team members guarding against villagers with flashlights. It was like an ASP center, except there was no electricity, more creatures, no showers, and the classrooms had no windows.
When we arrived in Farafenni our last day, we had an entourage of other volunteers there to greet us. We immediately went and ate chicken and chips, and two cokes each. Then we went to our lodging for the night, which was the Farafenni hospital.
So. Gambian hospitals. We had heard it was nice. Air conditioning, running water, and we assumed the conditions would be fairly sterile. As we walked in, we saw cats running about, people on mattresses on the floor outside. We entered our room and saw roaches scatter. There was no electricity in the bathroom, no running water, but there was air conditioning… We had just finished a week of living on the road, biking hours every day, and sleeping on the floor, and I would have rather have done it again than stay in this gross hospital. So that was the end of the bike trek.
But the story continues. We had to get home from Farafenni then. Saturday was supposed to be set-setal, which was an idea of the president’s. Every month, for one Saturday, people are supposed to “clean their environment”. Everything is closed, no one is allowed to travel, and from 9am to 1pm, the country is supposed to stop. So we were planning to go halfway and stop for the night, until we learned that morning that set-setal was cancelled. So the trek began. We took one gele gele (bush taxi) from Farafenni to Janjangburreh. About halfway to Janjangburreh, the car broke down. For like an hour and a half. So we’re sitting in this tiny village with all of the other members of our car, waiting for another car to come or for them to fix it. Finally we got started again, after loading up with two more people and like seven rams strapped to the top, that I’m pretty sure bent my bike significantly. We left at about 11:30, traveled about 300 kilometers, and got home at around 9 pm. Gross.
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