The past month has been a busy one. I’m delighted to announce that Patrick has been assigned a post! It was touch and go for a while—he took a two day trip to a place called MacCarthy, which is a rather adorable little town on an island on the Gambia River, about 2/3 of the way across the country from Brikama. There he was told he would be working in the ass end of the universe—a minuscule village called Sandu, located in the far eastern end of Gambia, in a desert, basically. Here’s what he said about it:
Sandu is hard. It has no correct network and the temperature is always higher than any other place in Gambia. My phone wasn’t able to charge because it shows that its temperature is too hot .
The clinic there is not as the ones in Brikama and the market too is weekly, which is called lumo. In simple terms the market operates every Wednesday and other neighborhoods villages come there, even some parts of Senegal.
This didn’t sit too well with him, and he immediately started filing petitions or whatever it is he does when he’s trying to solve a Gambian red tape issue. After a week or so he let me know he’d managed to transfer his assignment one district to the west, to a larger village called Daru, which is fairly close to a decent-sized town called Bansang. Bansang has a clinic—a hospital in fact. And a market. And even a couple restaurants and hotels. So like, a real town.
The school offers him a cheap room to stay in, but it’s not large enough for him and all his siblings, so that’s a problem. And the salary is laughable, though for the first time in his life Patrick has a bank account. So problems as always but he’s moving up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
He also has a passport. He’s a citizen of the world!
It’s been tough getting him to send photographs of late—as great as all this is I think he finds it very stressful. But that can wait. He starts his new job bright and early Wednesday morning—probably around 2am EST, so be thinking of him.
Until next time.
Fletch