Manduar!

Thrown even further in to the deep end, I don't think anyone was prepared for Manduar. Upon arrival, 2 hours later than anticipated, we were presented with quite literally a whole road full of people, backtracking all the way down its path, waiting patiently to greet us. The moment we departed the bus, hundreds of children scwabbled over taking our limited amount of hands, with a few settling on a finger each of my own. We then walked with the locals to check out the site for where we would be developing the Educational Hub, which is why we were in The Gambia all together. Enroute I was bombarded with questions and greetings with people of difficult african names that I would not remember a moment later - try as I might, even 'normal' english names truly are a challenge for me.

I snapped this photo, of Akira and her newly adopted children, amongst many other which were hard to chose from; the children were obsessed with my camera! I picked this photo as I thought it had a nice, happy composition, although I, and perhaps you, overlooked the less enthusiastic and frowning child in the bottom right corner. I think it's a notable reminder that behind the Gambian smile, they are still suffering from poverty.

Once the sun began to set, the villagers performed for us some intriguing and, quite frankly, bizarre entertainment, which included a man swallowing a live snake! The party then began to kick off with native Gambian dancing around a traditional Shaman get-up (which I forget the specific name of). Essentially this 'get-up' was a man in stilts under a red robe wearing a scream mask, who's role was to scare away the evil spirits - well it definitely worked on the children at least.