Niets zo cliche als het zachtjes zuchten van de zee

One week later, one more week of experience in this country.

Weather:
Unfortunately for me, but maybe you are glad to hear, it has been raining a lot. Was there a lot of sunshine in the first two weeks I was here, since Friday this has changed and reminded the country we are still in the rain season. When it rains, it rains beyond what you are used to in Europe. Heaven drops down, within minutes more water comes down than in a month of London drizzle. It comes suddenly and disappears suddenly and it doesn’t leave even a huge amount of puddles. It only has a sustained effect on the intensity of the lush green colours.

Education:
Regarding education Gambians are trapped. Within the country there is no good education, salaries are low for teachers and with a population of 1.4 million it is difficult to fill universities within the country. The only realistic option is to study abroad; however all the neighbouring countries are French, a language not learned at school. Not easy, English universities are expensive and far away. Due to this there are just not enough skills in the country to govern itself. For example transport. The EU is investing in the infrastructure in West Africa, but talking to a guy from the EU this works as follows: the Gambia is eligible for funding by the EU, but since nobody in the country can do the paperwork the EU does the paperwork. When money is allocated money can be spend, but since nobody knows how roads has to be build this is done under governance of the EU with companies as Ballast Nedam (Dutch!) and other infrastructure companies. Engineers involved with the machinery are not local but expats. The show is totally run by foreigners. All shops/restaurants/hotels I know are run by the non-indigenous (Lebanese/Indians/Germans/Belgians etc.). Due to this the Gambian middle class is very small, and it needs a money spending middle class so badly.
One of the schools available is the vocational training programme related to SOS children’s village. Last weekend I spoke to a lady who works there, she told me there is a big shortage of vocational training facilities. A problem recognized by the department of education, where she worked before, but they were not able to change it. A shame because I truly believe that vocational training is the first step in the good direction, because it are mostly skills what can be traded within the community.

Why are there not more private schools? Apart from some posh ones for the expat off-spring there does not seem to be a wide selection. A teacher should be able to life from a class of 20/30 pupils you would think.

Demography:
Almost the only people I meet/see on the street are only boys in the age class 15-25. Seldom are it older people, and sometimes woman. This is directly related to the demography, which is heavily skewed towards the younger ones. 40% of the population is under 14, only 2.8% is above the age of 65. I am still figuring out what the total impact is of this on the economical structure, but I assume it will be more difficult to send kids to school if you have so many and you just are very busy to feed/dress them, drama’s of mortality, and that all those children has a big effect on the money you have to spend. But on the other side there is quite a big work force of people 15-25 what I don’t see is very actively used (aka sits on their arse).

Food
To spend as much money as possible while I am here, and also just because I am lazy, I never cook. Every night I eat out. But how do I do this the on the most morally justified way? So far I have decided that the way forward is to eat in the restaurant next door. By chance the most luxurious venue in the wide surroundings. Doing it this way I employ as many people as possible to get the food to my mouth. Not only the 4 or 5 waiters make a living, but also the security, the gardeners, the kitchen boys, and maybe some more useful staff making each night an experience as was it the afterlife deserved by mother Theresa herself. I feel slightly bad about it, but all people in the chain involved do employ some skills, try to work and gets rewarded. For my opinion it is a better system than giving money away. That I am top of the chain in this occasion makes it pleasant for me.

Entry 2

Computer problems
The IT restrictions are not helpful if you try maintain this blog. This because I cannot access any social network/blog or photo share via my work PC . Therefore I have to do things on my personal laptop via a) a wireless connection at work or b) the dongle, what gives me very slow internet. But most importantly when I started my machine Saturday morning it gave errors with the result it didn’t boot, pretty useless. Now 2 days later – with a lot of reading-trying and googling it is still not fixed, I only managed to get a boot-CD what allows me to use windows again, a giant step forward from nothing, but still...

My project
The project I work on is about the projected effect of different vaccination schedules of pneumococcal vaccination on the total cost effectiveness of the vaccination program. This will include a projected effect of the vaccination on the disease transmission and the cost involved due to disease and due to the vaccine supply chain. My role in the project is some sort of data broker, where some people have a pneumococcal model, some people have data, and I put those two parties together.

The MRC
The place where I work is the medical research council or MRC. This is a research institute founded and run by the Brits to do research on infectious diseases. The main compound is where I am based, on the coast in Fejara, but there are several other compounds scattered around the country. One of those field stations is in Basse, which is further inland. Basse is the main area where my data is collected and I will be going there to get the data and speak to the local investigators.
The compound where I work is a very spacious, secured area, which means there is a big fence and 24hrs security. On the compound there is a huge rugby field and a volleyball field, a number of houses adding up to a small village and several research laboratories. The labs are all in different buildings. Also is there a bar/canteen with an Italian chef which does decent pasta’s for lunch and although the breakfast is not superb, it works for me.

Electricity
One of the biggest luxuries I have is electricity, especially during the evenings. Since the sun sets at 7:30 the evening starts early, and when it is dark – it is very dark. There are severe problems with the electricity supply at the moment, this because 2 of the 3 generators of the Gambia are broken. Which means electricity gets on at random in the evening which leads to forced cell phone/candle light lit dinner, but also no air conditioning after sunset. In a climate like this air conditioning is the equivalent as a duvet in winter – essential stuff for a good night sleep. But no problems for me, I have even satellite television, with clear reception of god knows how many channels I do not want to watch.

Social life
There are some people (around 10 or so in total) my age (+5/-10yrs) on the compound, they are mostly students working in Fejara for a short term (there seems to be a high turn-over), but they are fun to hang out with. There are some more phd students but they tend to come with wife/husband and kids, what is perfectly understandable because there is not much entertainment or other social life around here. For now I am happy this project is only for two months, long enough to experience the place, and short enough not to become mentally distressed.
Friday I had my first night out at the local tourist trap. A taxi ride is 25p and a beer 80, not expensive. What you get is what you expect – loud music, flashing lights and the same music you hear everywhere around the planet, but it is fun and it makes you feel on holiday.

Bumpsters
When you run on the beach you will meet a lot of Gambians, they are all around 18-25, all men and they all do push-ups & sprinting, serious the beach is crowded with them. Those boys are called bumpsters, ready to give tourists a lot of attention, especially the ladies. This attention goes much further as just telling they are beautiful. Less obvious on the beach, but more obvious in the pubs and bars are the female counterparts, they ask very polite where my wife is, where my girlfriend is, and when the answers are negative they suggest that they will be a very good girlfriend. There seems to be a quite substantial part of the tourist in the Gambia for this reason, sad but true. It remind me slightly of the cat at home, the cats comes in and will give you attention in a trade off for food, but also you will give this attention in a trade off for something as warmth and attention. People fly in just to get a bit of attention, some maybe to feel pretty (since they are not really fulfilling the western beauty standards) some just because it is possible, and the locals will give this attention, just to survive or maybe also just to hang around pubs and bars to get some sort of western life style (a beer is a third/half of what an average Gambian person makes on a day). In this game however the winner takes it all, the most fit boy/beautiful girl (some personality might counterbalance it slightly) is the winner.

Sports
Life besides work is about sports, last week I played touch rugby, run 10k, played volleyball for two evenings, a game of ultimate Frisbee and a game of tennis. The last time I played tennis was during my degree in Groningen, but I totally rediscovered it. Will try to get some lessons while I am here. Unfortunatly I am injured at the moment - cut both my big-toes open at rugby yesterday.

That is it for now - click here for some pictures.....

Cheers, Albert Jan

Arrival

Dear family and fiends,

Firstly: All is well! No worries! I am save and healthy!

Let me summarize what happened so far:

Friday 01/10/10 at two o'clock in the morning I was wide awake, 3 hours to early, 3 hours to eager to leave. Finally I would go to the 'developing world'. This abstract description of countries where life is different compared to our developed world, but as the term suggest are also in the process to become like us. All exited to see what this is about.

The travel form home to Gatwick Airport went very smooth thanks to the direct train from St.Pancras, so at 7:11 sharp I was ready to queue at gate H for the Gambia Experience, the travel agency whom chartered a plane from Viking Airways. I expected a normal, non-low-cost carrier flight, and prepared myself accordingly, therefore no meal deal in my knapsack, but unfortunately Viking airways did bring me the joy of a Ryan air flight, however without the decent planes and flying on schedule (the plane was totally ripped off and we were almost 1 hour late), they would be far worse if they did not serve me a free snack/meal. It was not until north Africa I had the chance to buy myself some water and a pack of pringles.

Arrived in Banjul airport I was welcomed by Aladjie, a smooth talking Gambian working at customs in the airport, and a friend of my former flatmate Kia. It was his lucky day, because I had brought an extra suitcase full of presents. He gave me a warm welcome and it was nice to talk to him while the driver of the bus (bringing us from the plane to the terminal) was messing up the gear box. Within minutes the temperatures in the bus were rising steep, to levels that even my new made friend began to complain. Lesson one: friendly people but the 30kg of clean shirts would not be enough.

The MRC had send a driver to pick us up from the airport and drove us within 45 minutes to the compound. The Gambia is very green and flat, some sort of a hot version of the Netherlands. But since it is the end of the rain season, the green might be temporary. I shared the ride with a girl from Cambridge who does an internship at the local hospital. On the way it became clear we arrived in a Muslim country, big adverts of mobile phone companies shouting that you can win a trip to Mecca when you top op your mobile, and most of the shops were closed (as it was Friday). Despite the closed shops we managed to exchange some money. Once arrived there was no welcome committee and, organised as I am, I didn't have any phone number of my contact persons. What was present however were the keys to my apartment. The apartment is nice, clean and comes with a view over the Atlantic (very inspirational indeed). The rest of the evening consisted of a shower, a walk around the house, and a meal at the closest restaurant. What happened to be an Indian restaurant, so 1000 miles from home I had my standard vegetable Biriyani, nice!

Saturday was all about acclimatising, the high temperatures and especially the high humidity need some adaptations. Nevertheless I met my direct neighbours, did some shopping and made a very nice audio-slide-show of my apartment and view. Although it did cost me around 6 hours to make this audio-slide-show, it looks like the final result is way to big to upload any time soon on this website, maybe one day. Somehow.

Sunday was again about exploring the neighbourhood and sorting out a phone. My new number is +220 7467279, so if you need me, use this number as I will not be using my UK one.

In the evening I played a game of touch Rugby on the beach (one of the neighbours invited me), I still don't fully understand the rules, but I do painfully understand that I am totally not fit. A lot of training is needed. After the game I went for a pizza with some people. My social life had started.

Today, it was the first day behind my desk, the MRC is even more bureaucratic compared to the HPA, especially the IT regime is more stringent, as I cannot even plug-in an USB stick. Therefore I have to send files from my laptop via a dongle to my office computer, not ideal but it works (at least for small files). But the canteen is Okish, the menu consist mostly out of pasta and pizza, but the portions are big and the pasta not over cooked. This is it for now – I am going for a 12k run in the bloody heat, lets see how that goes.....

Will try to write more soon, and I am planning to do it more topical, I don't like diaries.