Final day: a sensible way to further our long term plans! We enjoyed this final day without school, cleaning, tidying or medical assistance! Did you know … … The Gambians claim the sun is red and the grass yellow? … The Gambia only has about 1 500 000 inhabitants? … Every time they saw us…
We got up early, ate breakfast without tea or coffee (Gambia wasn’t ready for it yet) and got on the bus to the school in Sifoe. This time another third grade class enjoyed our help. We all got teary eyes when this class sang a farewell song. At 11 am it was time to pray,…
Tomorrow we are the wrapping of the children’s sandwiches. Today we started our day in the Sifoe school. This time we introduced corner work to the third graders. Ina and Annelies did the tangram puzzles the local carpenter made for us. Griet practised the times tables with slates and dice (thank you Baert). Ingrid and…
Serrekunda Today we went to Serrekunda. We followed a bumpy track to the Picca Nursery School. The teachers and children in this school were incredibly enthusiastic! Each class welcomed us with a song, which lead to several goosebumps moments. Two puppets, Pipi and Birdie, introduced Miffy. Ingrid read the Miffy stories with heart and soul.…
Because we had two ‘missions’ planned for the morning, we decided to split up as a way to deal with the Gambian stress. Mission 1 Submerge the Sifoe school in corner work: a puzzle corner, a construction corner, a slate and chalk corner, and a colouring corner. It was extremely fascinating to see the children…
The common thread for today is the medicine we bought in Belgium and sent to the Gambia with DHL. We were happy to find the yellow DHL boxes at Kalifa’s. There hadn’t been any problems with the delivery and the boxes were still closed. Kalifa and his family welcomed us with open arms and many…
Midnight … we arrived safe and sound. We are ready for our first day. We will visit with our contact, Khalifa and pick up medicine and school materials. Our new friends will get to know the health centre and the school. An important goal for today is to evaluate the situation in the different health…
Last Thursday we packed all the medicine. It was real production line work. DHL will do the rest. Clothes, puzzles and educational materials will go in our luggage. Counting down to our departure on Saturday. Exciting!