Don't Push

I would like to start this entry with warm birthday wishes to my loving wife, who deserves more then I am able to give her on this glorious day.

We made it to our new home! It is a nice little apartment looking place in a compound with the Baldeh family so we have changed our last names to match.

Work is coming along slowly, I have rather high hopes for this year but I am going to try to not be too optimistic, everyday I reminded that although I not in RIM I am still in West Africa, and if the teachers were as outgoing and proactive as they sounded they wouldn't have requested a Peace Corps presence. I will undoubtedly be working on organizing a library, training a librarian, developing the computer lab, teaching basic computer classes, and providing some teacher workshops. There are more things that I could do, but these are things that were repeated over and over during my assessment activities at the school.

Kristy has some interesting potential projects also, the library and computer lab were requested at her school, she will be able to work with a motivated environmental club, there is a man who needs help writing grants to further his development, and there is a possibility to work with the World Wildlife Fund (this last one she is the most hopeful for).

So far the Gambian people have been extremely kind to us, they work with our sub par Mandinka skills, and seem genuinely glad to have us around. It really feels like it's going to be a good year.

p.s. I will be bringing my camera to site now, we haven't been able to take pictures because we left early and it was in our locker over last week.