Saturday 26 April 2014

15.4.14 Tuesday. Off to Kuntaur!



An early start this morning, we collected Anne and Steve from their hotel and set off through Brikama to the south bank road and the trip up to visit Sanaba and his family at home.  The road was clear, and no queue at the ferry, a short wait during which time we bought material for Gill to make into things to sell for the charity.  The ferry arrived and we got straight on and had to wait for the ferry to fill up! A real novelty.!  We arrived in Farafenni and went to buy two mosquito nets for Sanaba and uniform material for Jamwelly.  Fully laden we set off east on the road to Jamwelly to collect Channeh to take her home for the holidays, she had rung for a lift as she has large bags of rice and cous to take home to the family.  We arrived at the school and pulled into the playground to be met by Musa, the caretaker, and Tiger, the small dog we rescued a few weeks ago.  She is growing fast and is very friendly, the pupils are learning to look after her.  Channeh met us and then informed us that she had been asked to stay at the school until Saturday as the President is visiting the area sometime this week and all the pupils have to go to Kaur to line the road when he passes.  We left Channeh there and got back on the road to Wassu to buy rice and then on to Kuntaur to stay with Sanaba.  The weather was incredibly hot, 46 degrees and we were all struggling with the heat, so when we arrived Anne and I went to lie down for a while, leaving both Steves to meet and chat with the family.  Muhammed, Sanaba’s son (who has grown about a foot since we last saw him) entertained them until his father arrived home.  We had asked Sanaba to arrange a boat trip on the river for us on Wednesday morning, and so when it cooled down slightly for the evening we drove on the road through the rice fields down to the river to negotiate a price for the trip.  This area benefits from an irrigation project to keep the rice fields wet all year round, enabling them to grow more than one crop of rice per year, so it was all still very green and many people were out planting out the newly grown shoots.  We were met at the river by lots of the local children and the boatman, who showed us his boat and gave us his price for a trip at low tide tomorrow. Having successfully arranged the fee for the boat we returned to Sanaba’s compound to shower and get ready for the evening meal.  Halima, Sanaba’s wife had cooked fish and rice for us and we sat and ate with Sanaba before retiring for the night.  The house we were staying in is a guest house in the compound, and belongs to Sanaba’s brother, it has a sitting room and 3 bedrooms, separated by curtains and is built from red fire bricks, which maintain the heat, not such a good thing in 46 degree heat!  None of us slept very well, Steve managed 4 straight hours, being tired after the driving, but the rest of us were restless and hot!!  Still it spared the others from my snoring.

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