Brother Time Volume 1

Ok, So, I haven’t blogged very much in the last month. You don’t care, I don’t care, let’s move on.

Brother, the magical unicorn that he is, flew down from the AMERICA to The Gambia. Shocking, yes I know, he left the fuzzy embrace of the San Marcos to venture far from his homeland. He successfully got on several planes, which let me tell you, was not at all a certainty and made it all the way here. It was only like a 50 hour flight for the little guy. Yes, Brother is very bad at booking plane tickets.

I, being a loving and kind hearted soul, traveled to Dakar to go pick his sorry self up. This involved getting in 1 "Gele Gele", which is like the van that your mom used to drive with about 20 seats added to it. In addition to this picture it being rolled down a hill like happens in THE MOVIES. No, it doesn’t blow up, this is real life, JEEZ. Now picture it being rolled down about 15 more times. That picture in your head? That’s a Gele of moderate quality. So, One of those, a taxi, a ferry, a donkey cart and what’s known as a sepalas. Same analogy for the sepalas as the gele, except picture a station wagon and less seats. Then another hateful taxi in Dakar, who’s driver was full of spunk and anger. Ever try bargaining for a taxi in three languages, none of which either party knows well? It’s good times.

Once here we hung around the "kombo" area for a good week or so. By hanging around I, of course, mean going to the beach and doing some "light" drinking. After that exciting time we decided to brave the "up country".

Now, the up country can be thought of like Lord of the Rings making sweet love with Mad Max and producing an offspring of unimaginable qualities. It’s full of busted cars, strange people who speak languages better left alone and the occasional wizard. Our first stop in this mythical wasteland was Jonjonburry camp. That’s probably not how it’s spelled. Still, we must go forward, not back. This place is basically a bunch of huts on the river on with a nice jungley(<==is a real word) feel. In addition to this Peace Corps has done several trainings there recently so we had good karma there. Thus, using my shrewd bargaining skills we were able to secure a discount for the low low trade of brother fighting the monkeys. They monkeys won. He let them steal some of our bread… OUR BREAD!

Anyway, this is the first time Brother had to spend the whole night with out power. He got to experience that wonderful feeling of waking up at 2:34 am and discover that no, the ceiling isn’t leaking, that’s a pool of sweat that you’re sleeping in. It’s only slightly better than finding yourself sleeping a pool of urine. I guess. It depends on who’s urine it is i suppose….

Also, we got to go on a boat trip to see hippos! Oh yes, we decided that it would be an excellent idea to pay a Gambian man about 40 bucks to take us out on a tiny boat with nothing to protect our fair, fair cracker skin but an umbrella. I forgot the sunscreen, drop it. It did turn out pretty well. The "captain" of this stalwart vessel could be found through out the three hour ride either sucking down a gin packet or inhaling various substances into his body, so he was pretty fun to talk to. And. AND! We did see hippos. Three. Bam.

Ok. So, this concludes this part of our series. Yes, it’s a series, Yes I’m referring to myself as "our"….

More to come.

I promise to finish this little story by July. I know this is important for both people who read this blog, one of them who was actually mostly there for this…