Thursday, July 5, 2012

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July everyone! We celebrated by doing the most American thing we could think of: we went to the beach. The beach we went to is located in a part of Gambia called Senegambia, and fairly close to the monkey park I discussed in my earlier post. We arrived at around noon at the beach bar called Poco Loco, and enjoyed some hamburgers, spaghetti bolognese, Gambian beer, and of course a nice glass of Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch. All of this cost only around $20, which made it even better.

The ocean was extremely warm, the warmest I've ever felt it, and the water was fairly clear. The waves weren't too high, but succeeded in removing my sunglasses and hat on my final walk out of the water. Fortunately, we found my hat. Unfortunately, my sunglasses were never found again (sorry, Michaela, you're always right). I survived the day with only a small major sunburn on the part of my back I couldn't reach with sunblock, but this is a really bad place to be burned when you're doing bench press at the gym the following day.

In the evening, we tried to go to the casino near the beach, but were really disappointed when they didn't have a craps table and when there was a minimum D1000 buy-in to any table games (there were only three total, as the casino was perhaps 100 square feet). Thus, we left without ever placing a bet. I suppose that is never a bad thing to break even after leaving the casino...

Today is Thursday, which is always the busiest day at the health center. I assisted in distributing mosquito nets to the pregnant women and women with infants. When I worked a travel clinic on Tuesday, I vaccinated about fifty babies against polio and administered vitamin A supplements orally. I'm hoping that I can move on so syringe injections by the next clinic.

I'm looking forward to a cooler, less humid weekend here, one that allows me to sleep soundly and not in a puddle of my own sweat. I think the luxury I miss most of all at this point is air conditioning.

Here are a few  pictures of the beach day and other things. Now that I figured out how to post pictures I hope to include them more often:


 Above: The health center in Jambur where we held one of our field clinics


Above: Some of the public health students and I crammed into the ambulance. There were 17 of us in this vehicle.


Above: Fourth of July with the flag at Poco Loco. Notice it is "No Shave July."


Above: Sunset at the beach




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