This is my home

17 April
I've been staying in Jali village for about 3 months now. The Drammeh compound is where I eat all my meals. And the vast bush of the Kiang Region is where I've spent most my days working. Though, until recently, I still felt like a visitor. It was a few days before Easter, I was missing home, wishing I could spend the holiday back in Pennsylvania; laughing with my family and oodling over the dog. So I decided to trek up to Basse in Eastern Gambia to go to church and cook with some Peace Corps friends posted out east. It was great to cook American food, play cards, laugh about all there is to laugh about here, and spend such a special holiday with people I really care about. I returned back to site, in high spirits, and was blessed with an unexplainable feeling that this place, Kiang Jali village, in the Drammeh compound; is exactly where I belong. This is my home.

I came back from my 4-day Easter excursion with high spirits and ready to work! While I was gone, the men (finally) finished the fence for the women’s garden, 2 wells had been dug the desired 3-meters into the water table and 2 more were being worked on, and I was greeted with big smiles and genuine greetings from the villagers. Despite being exhausted from my journey (took an extra day because “sometimes transport is a problem in Kiang”), all I wanted to do was walk around, greet people, laugh, and talk about what a great village Jali is. My little host brothers saw me walking along the dirt path to the compound and their faces lit up with instant smiles as they ran around yelling in Mandinka, “Habie came! Habie came!” (That’s my Gambian name…) At that moment, I put down my backpack and nearly broke down in tears. My host mother came out, just as excited, and said, “you came home!” “Yes”, I replied, “I came home.