I'm back in the U S and A!

The journey back was long and tiring, starting with an extremely frightening plane ride from Banjul to Dakar at 6 pm Gambia time (2 pm Florida time) on Wednesday. The plane was small but clean and modern looking. I'm sure there are scarier planes out there, but relatively speaking, this was the scariest plane I've ever been in. 30 minutes later we were in Dakar, Senegal.

The rest of the trip:
Dakar to Brussels: 6 hour flight
Brussels airport for 6 hours
Brussels to New York: 7 hour flight (I think)
JFK airport: NINE AND A HALF HOURS!

Our flight to Miami was delayed. So close, yet so far! It was frustrating. Our patience worn thin, we ran out of things to do, card games to play. We did some yoga at the gate (we looked psychotic).

We finally got to Miami International Airport at about 1 am or so. 36 glorious hours of traveling. The rest of the group had it worse, however, since they still had to drive to their homes in Tampa, Sarasota, and Orlando afterward. Sheesh!

And now it's time to enjoy air conditioning, warm water, fresh vegetables. It's time to enjoy not being the only white people around. It's time to miss the pungent odor of Gambian armpits, and the aroma of fly-covered-fish in the marketplace.

Despite the nasty stuff, It was an amazing experience, and I do plan on revisiting the Gambia sometime in the future. In my future visit, however, I can count on this past experience there to guide me. I now know that I can trade old t-shirts and crappy watches for paintings and carvings at the marketplace. I know now that based on the color of my skin, I will get charged prices that are up to 15 times the actual amount. I now know that the only way to travel is via bush taxi, but that I should anticipate a very hot journey that will take about 4 times as long as it should, and that I will likely encounter something stinky everywhere I go.

Other valuable nuggets of knowledge:

-The Gambians believe that fish are part of the food group "vegetables." The vegetarian in the group learned this the hard way when, even though he had been told the dish he was about to eat was "vegetarian," he found pieces of fish and a nice fish bone in his okra.

-Medicine is highly valued, even when they don't know what it does. A man at the craft market nearly gave me his left leg for the container of tums I had in my bag. I got a nice painting instead.

-Gambian children often assume that white people poo money out. On more than one occasion, I was approached by a little snot monster who exclaimed "Toubab, give me five dalasi!" Translation: White person, give me 25 cents. At first it was kind of cute, but quickly became annoying.

-The Gambians are a reasonably happy group of people, and violence doesn't seem to really be an issue there. Nice!

-Gambians LOVE the United States. They are obsessed with American clothing, Barak Obama, and Fifty Cent (do they call him 10 Dalasi? Bad joke!)

That's all I can think of for now.