My stay in the safari Garden hotel was a real treat looking back. VSO really eased us into life in The Gambia by letting us stay there. The guys that work there are really friendly and the food was very good. I had difficulty sleeping but only because I kept being woken in the night by the sound of coconuts falling on the roof and rolling down and then dropping on the floor. Now I've moved house it is the sound of the people at the local mosque that wakes me up about 5.30am every day.

The last week has all been In-Country Training, the aim of which is to introduce us to life in The Gambia. On our first day I was given 7,732 dalasi. This will be my monthly living allowance. My accommodation is paid for but all my other expenses including gas, electricity, water, food, transport, clothes and socialising must come out of this. 7,732 dalasi equates to approximately £147 a month. Putting it another way I have 240 dalasi to spend per day or £4.80. Now some things are cheap such as a ride in a bush taxi which costs 7 dalasi but many things cost the same as they do in England and I'm not getting paid English wages. I'm going to try and live on my allowance only but I'm told most volunteers in the urban area dip into savings to cover their costs whilst volunteers up-country have nothing to spend their money on. The money stinks as well. The notes are old and grubby and someone told me Gambian men keep the money in their butt cracks if they have no pockets…It certainly smells like it.

Each day for 2 hours we have been learning Wolof which I'm really enjoying as it's so different to learning European languages. Wolof is just one of the African tribal languages but it is the most popular one in the urban area of The Gambia where I am living. I am trying really hard and my teacher Momodou says I am the kind of pupil that makes a teacher very proud and that I will soon be a Gambian woman! We have been learning 'survival Wolof' - just enough to get by. If you try and speak Wolof people are very surprised and really seem to appreciate the effort you are making. Greetings are very important to Gambians and they spend a long time greeting each other before they go on with their conversation. A greeting might go something like this:

A: nanga def? (How are you?)

B: man fi (I am here only/I'm fine)

A: Ana waa ker ga? (Where are the people of the home?/ How is your family?)

B: Nunfa (They are fine.)

A: jama nga fanaan? (How did you spend the night?)

B: jama rek (Peace only/Fine)

A: naka suba si? (How is the morning)

B: suba saan fi rek. (The morning is here/fine)

A: mbaa defolo dara? (I hope you haven't done anything/I hope you are fine?)

B: deedeet, defuma dara (No, I haven't done anything/I'm fine)

A: sa yaram jama (your body peace)

B: jama rek (Peace only)

I moved into my house on Wednesday night. I have my own 2 bedroom flat in Kanifing. It's the first time I have ever had my own place to live! It's very basic and I was a bit taken aback when I saw it but I quickly realised that I have an awful lot more than most people- I have electricity and water most of the time and I have an indoor toilet of my own. I can drink the tap water without needing to boil or filter it. It even tastes better than the water in Kent. If I shower in the evening there is usually water and it's warm. I have no water in the morning so I take a bucket bath which I can live with as I have plenty of water but the water is cold and I find that a bit painful first thing in the morning. Some of the volunteers up-country do not have access to electricity and have very little clean water so some of them even shower in the rain. Yes, I'm living a life of luxury compared to most so I've got nothing to complain about. One of the VSO staff members delivered a training session on how to work the gas stove, how to take bucket baths and how to wash yourself after going to the toilet. He said where he lives he doesn't have a gas cooker but cooks on a fire, he doesn't have a shower or tap but takes bucket baths using water from a well and he has a pit latrine rather than a toilet and washes himself rather than using loo roll. Most Gambians do not use toilet roll as it is a luxury they cannot afford. He explained how you clean yourself after going to the toilet but I still don't understand how it works. Gambians use their left hand to clean themselves and so they never pass anything to each other or eat with their left hands. This is something I'm trying very hard to remember as I don't want to offend anyone. I've even started thinking it might be good to go native for a while and try it myself as I can't really afford loo roll either on my budget. I'll let you know how that goes…

Getting around the urban area is pretty interesting. You can get a bush taxi to various destinations for just 7 dalasi. They are cars which you hail like a taxi but they run like buses in that they go along specific routes and they try and fill the car up. I got one to work the other day and was squashed in the back behind 2 African women. You can hire them for yourself which is called a 'town trip' but then they cost more like 75 dalasi. I prefer to walk but people here seem to think you are crazy for wanting to walk anywhere. Another interesting thing about getting around is that there are barely any street names so finding the location of anything is difficult. I live somewhere in Kanifing Industrial Estate. We learnt how to say where we live in our Wolof lesson today. I say ' Kanifing laa deka. Ci Ker Yata Corr.' Which means, 'I live in Kanifing. At the home of Yata Corr.' Yata is my landlady and she lives next door. That's the most specific I can be and that's what everyone in The Gambia does because people know everyone in their community.

On Saturday we visited a village called Ndemban as part of our in-country training. This was so we could get a taste of what village life is like. The women of the village greeted us with singing and dancing and then we met the village elders and heard how they run the village and keep the peace. We spoke to the Village Development Committee and visited the village development projects. They have started an eco-tourism project which they are hoping will be up and running next year. They have a vegetable garden where they grow different vegetables for the village and for market. The people of the village are very poor by our standards. The children and women were fighting to get our empty water bottles because they use them to play with or store home-made drinks in. One of their most pressing needs is for an ambulance so they can transport people to hospital as many people die if they get ill or have an accident as a result of not getting to hospital in time. The committee told us how 50% of their women die in child birth simply because they cannot get them to the hospital in time for treatment. Whenever the committee go to a company or NGO to ask for funds for a development project they always present their proposal for an ambulance too just in case someone is interested. We ate lunch in the village. People in villages traditionally share a large food bowl with each other. There can be many people eating out of the same bowl. Everyone shares no matter how much or how little they have. You are supposed to eat with your right hand and stick to your portion of the bowl. I tried to go native and eat with my hand but I spilt most of the rice over myself and so gave up and used a spoon.

Other things I have experienced this week are the bumsters- guys with no jobs who hang around looking for people they think have money and then try to become your friend and ask for money. The conversation goes something like this: 'Hey my friend, how are you? How is your day? Do you remember me? I'm Lamin, I work at your hotel. It's my day off. Do you know what they say about you at the hotel? They say you are so polite. It's nice to be nice. Come meet my wife.'…and then you know they just want money from you. They are no real harm just very annoying but the problem is it makes you suspicious of everyone who tries to talk to you so you probably brush many genuine people off which is a shame.

Gambian people truly are the most friendly people in the world and will on the whole do anything for you. Children shout 'toubab' which means 'foreigner' (but in a friendly way) at you and try to hold your hand as you walk down the street. People stop to talk and ask you how you are. Shop keepers have let me off paying when I have had no money on me. Strangers have bought me food at the shop as a gift. Gambian people don't have much but they will share anything they have with you.

Sorry if parts of this blog post don't make sense but I keep getting interrupted by a random Senagalese Rasta who's speaking Wolof to me with an Australian accent and trying to get me to go to a party with him. That's another thing about The Gambia- all the men want to marry you.

So my new mobile phone number is +2207732665 and my postal address is VSO The Gambia, PO Box 677, Banjul, The Gambia, West Africa.