Other Adventures

Postcards from West Africa: Polly in the Gambia
During my six month internship in the Gambia in 2000, I wrote e-mails home nearly every week. The following are excerpts from those letters, with pictures to illustrate my experiences there.

• Week 1 – In which our heroine is repeatedly kicked in the teeth by fate but emerges smiling and drinks a cheap beer on the beach -
• Week 2 – In which our heroine refuses to let one misfortunate incident colour her Birthday and an otherwise excellent week-
• Week 3 – In which our heroine learns to party like a Gambian, pokes a crocodile in the eye with a sharp stick, discovers bugs of all kinds and moves into her new house -
• Week 4.5 – In which our heroine is adopted by hoardes more Gambians and gets married off several times, but life becomes a little too much for her so she runs away to drink cheap beer on the beach -
• Week 5.5 – In which our heroine toughens up a bit and actually starts to have some fun; in which our heroine has too much fun and gets heat exhaustion; in which our heroine brings Big Two to the Gambia, and the Gambia introduces our heroine to Maria de Los Angeles -
• Week 6 – In which our heroine has an uneventful week!! -
• Week 8 – In which our heroine meets and parties with The Beautiful & Rich; in which she lives through the nightmare of spiders in her hair -
• Week 10 – In which our heroine starts a coup, so she runs away and drinks cheap beer on the beach -
• Week 11 – In which our heroine sees the rest of the Gambia, spends an afternoon in a refugee camp, and discover why Ramadan really IS that hard -
• Week 16 – In which our heroine is not dead -
• Week 17 – In which our heroine gets compared to an American icon -
• Week 18 – In which our heroine escapes for a weekend, misses a riot and recounts some Gambian trivia -
• Week 19 – In which our heroine goes AWOL –
• Week 21 – In which our heroine runs away again, plays a tourist in Senegal, and returns to take over her workplace in a hostile takeover -
• Week 24 – In which our heroine gets to be the official photographer at a ritual sacrifice, and takes fashion into her own hands -