To celebrate America's birthday this year I got bamboozled into taking a proposed three day bike trip to Kedagou, where the Peace Corps volunteers of Kedagou region throw an annual fourth of July party. The first day was a 70 k bike ride from Tamba to my site where I met several other people along the Gambia River. I was excited to not only get my first non-neighboring visitor, Kim, who had traveled all day from the North to see my site before heading to Kedagou, but also Anna, Jillian and Kourtney from my stage, Austin a Tamba PCV from a previous stage, and Aude a Tostan volunteer living in Tamba. We all spent the night a my site. We were very resourceful with sleeping arrangements. Aude in her hammock, Kim and I on a discarded donkey charet, Kourtney in her tent and the rest of the crew on mats in my backyard.
The real fun started at 5am on July 2nd with the call to prayer. Kim and I had last minute decided to join the bike crew and after waking up to the blaring mosque we all packed up and began a day we could not have previously imagined. Our plan was to bike around 70k before the extreme heat of the day and stop around noon to refill our water and eat lunch at a little “hotel” that a previous group had told us about. All of the second day was to be done through Nikola Koba National Park, which is government protected land without any shops along the road. We each had around 7 liters of water and a bean sandwich to tide us over until we reached this hotel. We biked and biked and biked thinking our break destination was just around the corner until we realized it was 2pm and we were being stupid biking through the heat of the day.
A few people got overheated and stopped to rest while another group member started experiencing major dehydration and continued biking serpent like with all her effort up a huge hill. I followed her and at the top she got off her bike and couldn't breath. She was acting delusional and after some salt replacement and rest in the shade things got better, but we started worrying about our lack of water for the next supposed 30-40 kilometers. At this time the other portion of our group had been chased out of their resting spot by baboons and the oncoming threat of warthogs.
While we were discussing how we were going to solve our water shortage a huge storm rolled in. The wind picked up and rain started pouring down. The song, "I bless the rains down in Africa," will forever have a new meaning. Freezing we started collecting rain water and huddled up into a group under the biggest tree we could find. In the matter of a minute we went from worrying about heat exhaustion to hypothermia. We started taking turns on the side of the road waiting for a car to either give us water or take us the to our destination for the night. We got lucky and a car of Peace Corps Volunteers rolled by. They gave us all their water and after the storms slowed down we continued on our way.
After 50 kilometers we finally found a sign for a “hotel,” and started off the beaten path towards it. The sun was setting and everyone was exhausted and frustrated. The half mile long path was one giant mud puddle completely sabotaging our bikes and to make matters worse we were followed by devilish children the entire way. We reached our destination and after they tried to overcharge us for a half hour we reached an agreement and settled into our nasty hotel room. We had biked 85 miles through the hills in all kinds of unusual circumstances, but our group could not have been better. Everyone was positive and at the end of the day we couldn't help but laugh our heads off.
The next morning we planned on riding our last 40 k in the mountains to a beautiful hotel on the Gambia River, but by the time we got done cleaning our bikes we couldn't have made it before the heat of the day. We rented a car and got there as quick as can be and plopped our butts rights by the pool. It couldn't have been a better decision!
The rest of the weekend we spent celebrating America. I got to catch up with all the amazing people who I spent training with, eat yummy food, drink yummy drinks, play games, speak English, listen to and dance to American music, and even had a fireworks show. There was a 5k run coordinated by volunteers in which both Senegalese and volunteers participated in. Spence ran it in jellies. We also floated down the river which was relaxing besides the possibility of hippos. I have to say Senegal is pretty good at celebrating America's birthday. Now back to the village...
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