Our last days

The last few days in Gambia were pretty crazy running around trying to see everybody. Both sides of Gabou's family had small parties for us on friday with lots of good food & laughter. Saturday was mostly packing & getting ready to leave & seeing a few people one last time.

There was however an overwhelming sadness that I felt while we were getting ready to leave. I made so many connections with people & it felt like I was part of their family. I don't know when I'll get back to Gambia again, but I know it'll be as soon as I can.

Hope you enjoyed the blog & I'll probably post one more time just with some extra pictures.....for now I guess we just try to go back to normal life, however I know i'm forever changed after this experience & a new normal will surely come.

Colleen

Oh Henry...

He was delicious. I made him into chicken benechin.

My first chicken....

A long time friend of Gabou's grandmother & father gave me a gift yesterday! A chicken!
I named it Henry, but I think we're going to eat it.

Animals!

While I haven’t seen a hippo or a hyena, or other exotic animals yet, I have had some fun experiences that I thought I’d share. We went to Bijilo National Park – which was really just a series of trails through a wooded area, but the fun part was the monkeys. Although not native to Gambia they were great to see anyways. For some peanuts they’d even come right up to you & take them from your hand. So cute & cuddly it almost makes you want to take one home with you….almost.

Another adventure lead us to Kachikally Crocodile Pool – which was mostly a swamp with a fence around it & a few small buildings with local artifacts & musical instruments. The main attraction as you can imagine are the crocodiles & they were docile enough to pet. Kind of a crazy thing – petting a crocodile….I even gave one a handshake for good measure.

There are these cute little lizards all over the place. We see them everyday just climbing the walls & playing in the trees. Gabou said he’d pick one up for a picture, but I just preferred to let them run around & try to catch a quick picture instead. As for other friendly creatures there are chickens, sheep, goats, dogs & cats that seem to just roam the streets freely. We even have an adorable little rooster that helps wake us up every morning…ugh!

Hunting!

They call it hunting. A tradition that originated in Freetown, Sierra Leone but has since migrated to Gambia as well. There are small huntings that happen starting Christmas Day & go through the New Years Day & then there is the large hunting “battle” that happens the day after New Years Day.

The small huntings are mostly groups on neighborhood kids that get together & create an elaborate costume of palm leaves, shells, & funny looking heads with horns. This creature becomes the “devil” and the kids chase it through the streets singing & dancing & beating sticks together. It’s a competition to see which group of kids has the best costume. We were with the Red Tigers which included some of Gabou’s siblings & cousins – They even dragged me into the middle of it all at one point to dance with everyone!

The large hunting is basically the same thing but on a larger scale, which includes real animal heads. There are groups that come to the streets of Banjul every year to battle for who has the best heads & costumes. There was the Odilleh & Okum Baba Societies – this year the Odilleh society won the contest & I had a second row seat for the big show. I saw heads of an antelope, fox & giraffe, the antlers of what I think was a moose & I missed seeing the lion’s head but I heard it was there as well. There was tons of dancing & music along with some nice fireworks. It was quite a spectacle in the middle of the street.

Seeing all of this was such a fun & exciting experience, something so unique it’s quite hard to describe actually. I took a bunch of videos but they take too long on my internet connection to upload, so you’ll just have to wait until I get back to see the actual footage. If you search for Gambian Hunting on youtube I think you can see some similar ones.