Monday, July 22, 2013

Visitors

My first visitors from the mother land came to visit this past week.  I dropped them off at the airport and watched them walk through the door to the gate after going through security and they didn’t show up at my house so I am assuming they made it home. 
My brother and his wife came to visit.  They spent the first day and a half relaxing at my house, the beach and the Peace Corps office.  We went to my favorite dinner spot and met a couple of other volunteers.
Brother and I at the beach
We got up Wednesday morning and packed up and headed to my old village.  I had to stop by the market and pick up some food to take to my family to cook for the time we would be there.  The option was to leave them in the car garage to be harassed or take them along.  I took them along and it was one of the busiest days I have ever seen in the market.  They were troopers and dealt with it well.  Afterwards I told him that there are volunteers that refuse to run the gauntlet of markets like they did so that was good.  It was a great time they realized that there are more potholes filled with water than there is actual road on the way to my village.  
 
Howa and I

Brothers
We arrived in early afternoon to hunger and no food cooked for us as it being Ramadan.  So I went to finding food.  This meant me telling my host brothers to bring us, fresh Guava, Mangos and some Cashew nuts to go cook.  After doing all of that it was just resting and meeting my family. 
Lamin
There was a lot of wide eyes from my visitors and a lot of the same things they were thinking and seeing for the first time was similar to my thoughts and sights a couple of years ago the first time I stepped in to my compound.   
Comedian Mike
 
Nicole with some women


Small kids taking care of babies


  
We walked around the village and met a lot of people and took lots of pictures.  The final day in village we had my host father arrange everyone for a large family portrait.
Baby Backary
The Fam

We came back to the city Friday afternoon and just relaxed.  Saturday we got up and went to the tourist craft market in Bakou for Nicole to buy some souvenirs to take back with her.  We then went to the fish market bought some fish and had a big family dinner with fish and chips, tartar sauce, cole slaw, fresh fruit and good company. 
Cookin

Family dinner

The Food

Sunday we just sat around packed and relaxed.  Overall it was a great trip and was real grateful and excited to have visitors
Sunset

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1 comment:

  1. Emilio FernandezSeptember 3, 2013 at 4:38 PM

    Good morning how are you?

    My name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.

    I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.

    For all this I would ask you one small favor:
    Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from The Gambia? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in The Gambia in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:

    Emilio Fernandez Esteban
    Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
    28902 Getafe (Madrid)
    Spain

    If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.

    Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.

    Yours Sincerely

    Emilio Fernandez

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