A Photo a Day

Dear Readers (I'm not sure there are many of you left now as I have stopped writing on my blog)

So believe it or not we are down to our last 10 weeks in the usually lovely and frequently frustrating but always interesting Gambia... The Smiling Coast of Africa! For those of you who don't know, we will be leaving Gambia at the start of May and taking a couple of months holiday before moving back to DC to learn Vietnamese for 9 months and then moving onto Hanoi, Vietnam.

I was recently talking to some friends at a party who, for the past year, have been taking a photo a day. They said it has not only been a great way to document their time in Gambia but it has also captured the subtleties of living here that are often difficult to describe and even remember once leaving. So I am going to give it a go... a whole year sounds a bit much for me but I thought it would be a good snapshot of our lives here and a fun way to think about all the great things Gambia has shown and taught us. For the next 10 weeks I will post at least one photo a day (or every couple of days) and share a short story of what is going on. Some will be new photos from that week but I will also share some old photos and stories from the past couple of years.

So here we go... I’m going to start with a few photos taken from our most recent trip to Baboon Islands in River Gambia National Park. The camp is located 4-8 hours (depending on the road!) from the coast and is one of our favourite places in Gambia. We visited for the third time last month when Zack’s sister and her boyfriend were over from DC. As always, it was absolutely beautiful, and thankfully not too hot. On the evening boat trip we were lucky to see a whole family of Chimpanzees just hanging out around the river. Many of the Chimps, which live in family groups, have been rehabilitated after being raised by humans. They now live, mainly undisturbed by humans, on three islands in the middle of the river, people are not allowed on the islands and we view the chimps in a boat from a safe (both for us and the chimps) distance. We also saw some cute (but intimidating) hippos peeping out at us from under the water and enjoyed a glorious sunset from the balcony of our luxury tent on the cliffs.