Mail run!!!

1277 Kilometers
237 Newsweek Magazines
129 Letters TO the USA
114 Packages FROM the USA
79 PCVs visited
71 Villages visited
5 days
2 new guys and the coolest PC driver around

Those are the stats from my recent mad dash up country. In PC The Gambia we have a system call "Mail Run" this system is put in place to .... well..... deliver mail because the postal system in The Gambia is non-existent as we know it in the states. There are in fact post offices in the Gambia and you can get a P.O. Box if your lucky but there is no such thing as a mail man. So if you unlucky enough to be the vast majority of the population that lives far down a dusty track from a post office you have no hope of getting mail. Enter the mail run.

Since most PC volunteers live in remote areas and cant get mail PC delivers their mail to them once a month. This is a fairly daunting task given the number of volunteers, distance separating them, and amount of packages loving friends and family back home send. What are the ingredients in this recipe for disaster you might ask? Two parts PC volunteer, 1 part PC driver, and 1 part bad ass land cruiser (Toyota rocks!!). So here is the quick and dirty on how it all when down.

First off its a miracle that I even went on this trip since most PCV don't get to go at all or go near the end of their service. So for me to go at this stage was very lucky. I got a call from another PCV who was signed up for this month and he said he couldn't go and he offered the spot to me and asked me to find someone else to go with me. I got a hold of another buddy from training and the deal was done. That was about 3 weeks ago. Fast-forward to last Thursday with an empty truck and a room full of boxes and mail. Josiah (other pcv) and I stated the day long task of organizing and packing the vehicle. First breaking all of it down into the days they should be delivered and then jamming it all into the truck in a quasi organized sort of way.

Next morning our buddy John the PC driver picked us up at 5:30 and we heaed out to catch the early ferry across The River Gambia. Our course was to take us through the north bank for the first 3 days and then back along the south bank for the last 2 days. The first day pretty much set the tone for the rest of the trip. The roads are of course very bad as I'm sure you have heard me say before. The main highway on the north bank is not too bad but we spent most of our time off-road due to the fact that that is where all the villages are. First day about 250km most of which was off-road. It was interesting to visit all the volunteer and see their villages and huts. We found these promotion hats from some cell provider company in the the PC mail room while we were packing and we all wore them the whole trip. They were these random ugly white hats and we gave a free one to anyone who commented on why we all had the same random hat on. Anything to make a bush volunteer's life a bit more interesting. Anyway, we saw alot of cool places and lots of places I will try to get back to be for I leave. That's one of the main reasons its nice to get on mail run early in your service. We crashed in Ferafenni the first night and hung out a Josiahs compound and had some delicious dinner. Next day we made it to Janjanbureh which is an island in the middle of the river. We have some friends there so they showed us around and we just hung out and had some more great Gambian food. The next day was particularly hard core with trips of 50km one way off the main road to some more remote villages. But we had a great time through it all even though you feel like you have been beaten with a stick at the end of the day from all the jostling around in the vehicle. We ended that day in Basse at the PC transit house and hung out with some friends in the area. Last two days took us down the south bank. More villages and more volunteers. No major stories out of it just a general good time checking out the country.

Sorry I don't have more energy to put into this post. Long day. I went to check out some irrigation systems at a demo garden in a nearby village and then spend the rest of the day working on the road in the hot sun at the beekeepers center. A good workout anyway. Check out the pics of the trip. Let us know how you all are doing.