We're gonna walk down to Kairaba Avenue...and then go on computer (you know the tune)

UPDATE: Had a big victory with the temperamental shower last night. Got home from the office at 6:15, grabbed a small snack, threw on my runners and headed out for a 5k jog. Got back went to the shower...no pressure. EEENNNNN, I said. Took a five minute break to stretch and have a drink of water, went back to the shower, and...YEEEES temperamental shower! Pressure. Oh the small victories in life.

UPDATE Con’t: Today...not so lucky. Whoomp whooooomp. (View bucket shower procedure--previous post). 

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On Today’s edition of “The World According to Matty” >>> Kairaba Avenue

Kairaba Avenue is the main artery that dissects Fajara from West to East. And, as it has come to be, our one-stop shop for, well...everything.

Starting at the water’s edge, Kairaba Avenue is the primary route for visitors to the area, and locals alike, to take to the gorgeous, and seemingly endless, Fajara Beach (it keeps going, and going, and going, and...). From the beach heading east, the avenue is bursting with restaurants; small, medium and large, one “barber’s shop” (but many beauty salons), a soon-to-reopen night club, several travel agencies, fruit-stands and vendors, lunch counters (for what appears to be a local delicacy...the chicken and cheese sub), as well as the infamous bookshop Tim”book”too (insert laugh track here), which lies just off the street. As you pass the former NSGA office (recently vacated by my colleagues) you approach what I have come to revere as a national landmark of sorts in the The Gambia, “The Street Light” (More to come on “The Street Light” in a later post).

Crossing “The Street Light”, where Kairaba intersects with the coastal “highway”, we come upon more fruit & vegetable stands, a GALP gas station (air conditioned...yeeeeeeeees air conditioning), the Standard Chartered Bank ( air conditioned...insert Matty happy quote here), tailor shops, garment shops, appliance and electronics shops, Supermarkets—we’ve now frequented both Safeway and Harry’s and are still trying to decide where our allegiance will lie, cellular providers, restaurants with wireless internet (our early favourite being La Parisienne—Gelato, air conditioning, and seemingly always a European soccer match on the television, although the internet is hit and miss with our laptops) and so on, and so forth. Kairaba continues for a good clip, until you arrive at Westfield junction, where the avenue intersects and ends at the road into Banjul.

Essentially, Kairaba is the hub of action in our still to be explored neighborhood. The early issue, however, that has risen for M.C. and I, is that Kairaba is a half-hour walk from our apartment in Old Jeshwang. Now, I know that isn’t far and I’m not looking for sympathy. I can handle the walk. But, a half-hour walk in the presence of the “Heat Monster” scares Matty into a sweaty mess. If absolutely necessary, there are cabs aplenty constantly roaming the highway to Kairaba that we stroll—which intersects where???...that’s right, at “tThe Street Light”—and they are supposed to charge us no more than 5 Dalasi (20 cents) for the trip. What more often than not happens, however, is that M.C. and I are caught bargaining down from 50 Dalasi with the cabbie, to take us for 25 Dalasi total (approx. $1). Again, I’m not looking for sympathy.

Our normal routine has involved finishing work for the day, heading home for a quick bite and some exercise, and then taking the trek into Kairaba for some personal time on the internet (only every second or third day though). We’re doing our best to stay in touch with those at home to keep you all updated on our adventure here on The Smiling Coast.

Until next time, Don’t Stop Believin,

Matty

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FYI: M.C. and I head out on our first roadie here in The Gambia on Thursday. We are off respectively to the CRR (Central River Region) and URR (Upper River Region)—deep into the country, to help deliver HIV/AIDS & Life Skills workshops to community youth groups as part of the NSGA mandate (More to come on the work of the NSGA upon our return from “the field”).