May I please use your cardboard as a prayer mat?

I'm going to start this blog by showing you the basket I bought from a market on Sunday. Zack laughed at me for being so happy with myself but I bargained hard for it so I'm going to show it off... plus I think Slobs looks cute. Although, I don't think he appreciated being put in a basket, it reminds him of dreaded trips to the vet. Well on to topics that don't involve the cat...

Life in Gambia is unexpectedly different. The country and the people surprise us in ways we didn't expect. When it was announced at the flag day ceremony, that Zack was being posted to "Banjul, The Gambia", I had no idea what or where it was. I needed my friend Kate to reassure me that we were headed to a good place and not a war torn, famine ridden, far flung country. Even after extensive googling I still had no idea what we were getting ourselves in to. Gambia is a fairly unknown country (except to the thousands of Brits and northern Europeans who flock here every winter so I should rephrase that by saying it is fairly unknown to Americans and Australians) and I expected to be living with poisonous spiders and eating rice and stew for 2 years. Turns out that Australia has more poisonous spiders than here and there are so many wonderful restaurants to try that we are never at a loss for where to eat (although our bank account may suffer). So the lifestyle change is big but we were surprised at how easy living is here - well for those who have money.

The main differences have been social and cultural. Nothing can be rushed here, patience if defiantly a virtue and sometimes there is just no explanation for why things happen in a certain way. Gambians love to talk about anything and everything. They will ask us every detail of our lives, including specific directions to where we live (which we are increasingly vague about) and I have learnt that it is polite to ask after family members even if you have never met them. Clothing above the knee is considered inappropriate yet nobody cares about shoulders, tummies or cleavage showing. The majority of Gambians are Muslim and thus they pray 5 times a day. It is not uncommon for us to open our gate at night to find our guard praying on the front step. The other day Lamin pointed to an old folded up box and asked "May I please use your cardboard as a prayer mat?"... well there's a question I had never been asked before and an example of the unexpected.

Well Zack is about to get home from work and we're off for our weekly icecream ritual - Monday is icecream night and we usually walk down to the beach and watch the sun try to set - I say try because most days is just dissapears into the haze on the horizon. However, I have been told that there is a season for beautiful sunsets so I'm looking forward to that. In the meantime I'll leave you with this charming photo I took on the weekend when we went for a walk in the monkey park near our house... looks a little like Zack after a long day at work! (Sorry Zack just kidding). Oh and by the way, he was a wonderful MC at the 4th of July party last weekend. Although, in typical Gambian style, nobody would stop talking long enough to listen to the speeches, even when the ambassador and foreign service minister spoke.