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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