Hopefully this will work and I’ll be able to transfer all this material from my memory stick. Decided that its time to write something a bit more substantial as I always seem to be running out of time when I’m in the internet cafes, so I have written this in advance.

Not sure that anything massively interesting has been happening lately, everybody is getting tired – I think because they are hungry. Last night walking back up the road there was some major road rage going on, again because I think the drivers are hungry. Ramadan. Although to be honest the taxis never seem like the safest modes of transport. Here taxis act like buses and have set routes you just have to flag one down and jump in, but they are spectacularly old cars (one recently had a lot of cracks in its front window, doesn’t fill you with optimism!), and on a couple of occasions I’ve just had to close my eyes – so I don’t see the cyclist it looks like we’re going to knock down! And in rush hour cars drive up the sandy area that I believe is meant to be the pavement, the cars lack much suspension for these moments! But its ok cause it’s really busy the cars can’t drive very fast, so we should all be fine! The scariest area to drive seems to be at the traffic lights, there is only one set in the country and I think they cause much confusion. The traffic lights are also the worst bit for pedestrian crossing, someone told me that the green man isn’t quite synced in, not sure if that’s true I just wait till someone else starts crossing.

Had a few shopping mishaps when I first arrived here, accidentally buying very large quantities of things I didn’t really know what to do with, the shop keepers must have thought I was very strange. But that’s calmed down now and I’m managing the shopping, I even did an entire market transaction in wollof the other day, but that is about the extent of my wollof knowledge. My neighbours mother goes through the wollof greetings with me each day, but she always adds a new one on the end and laughs a lot, so I’m not too sure how far I’m getting on that front. The other problem on the language front is that I don’t know if people are necessarily speaking wollof cause at times they use one of the other Gambian languages, it’s a challenge.

I have to say, on the surface at least, coming to the Gambia is a huge ego boost, the boys are very forward. However, it is cause I’m a white girl and viewed as ticket to Britain – lovely. Had a bit of a depressing chat with my VSO neighbour about that sort of thing and how life is viewed for many here (she’s been here a year now). I think it may be teaching me a lesson for complaining about boys at home cause there are only a limited number of excuses I can come up with for not giving out my phone number. It's not a problem I've had much practice dealing with!

Was feeling quite sick last night, which in itself is not interesting for you but this morning I decided to read my health guide VSO supplied to see what being sick is a symptom of. It turns out there are potentially quite a few diseases I could have cholera among them (there is an epidemic here at the mo) so my hypochondriacism as returned! However, I’m drinking tons of water today and that’s helping so its maybe just simple dehydration – that book scares me, last time I read it I had some terrible skin disease, turned out just to be an allergic reaction – phew!

Well this is a pretty long ramble, it nearly didn't work as all the staff seemed to have disappeared from this internet cafe just at the moment I needed to ask for more time. But here we are, I will now attempt to post some pictures.