Last week-end us youths were invited by Solbjørg to visit her in Gadjiwan, so then of course we went! Gadjiwan is a village in the bush 6 hours drive from here, not because it's so far, but because of the bad road! Especially the last part was bad, with a lot of BIG holes in the road., therefore we used 2 hours to drive the 25 last km.! Though we sat a little tight with 8 persons in the car, we had a really nice trip, we even saw some monkeys crossing the road :)
After we had arrived safely in Gadjiwan Friday afternoon, and got a good lunch from Solbjørg, we went on a trip sitting on the back of a pickup. People looked even more surprised of seeing white people here than in Ngaoundéré, and I was also surprised to find out that almost no one knew French. Most people from this village have not gone to school, so they only speak their mother tongue, the local language pèrè or also fulani. So then we had to learn some more fulani..."Sanou", "Jamna", "Jam", "Ozokko".
Saturday we went on a walk in the village. Solbjørg shown us around, and we visited many different families.
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| Walking on the main road |
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| Making peanut butter, by starting with crushing the nuts with a stone |
One of the persons we met was a girl around 15 years old. She was born without eyes, by she was still very happy. Now an old woman took care of her, and we visited them in their little house.
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| This is another of the families we visited, sitting outside their house. |
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| Outside the house, a man is digging a well, hoping to find water |
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| New roof? |
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| Washing up |
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| Serving couscous with fish ;) |
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In the evening we went on more visits. On the first one we got couscous to eat, not really a surprise. Normally people here just sit on the ground, but since they were ashamed of that, they gave us chairs to sit around a table. While we were eating, it was suddenly totally dark. Then we got a lantern and used our torches, cause there is no electricity in this village.
The next visit was at the house of the Muslim leader in the village. Here we got to sit on the floor, as they normally do, eating makkala :)
In the evening we watched a movie in the village. Then they just placed the little TV on top of a car, and since there's no electricity, they used kind of a compressor I think. A lot of people, children and old people met up, because there's not often they may watch a movie. They gave us some plastic chairs to sit on, while the rest stood or sat on the ground, under trees or by the well (there's no installed water in the village neither). The movie was in French, so during the film, a man frequently stopped it, to translate to the local tongue pèrè. And when we come to a funny part of the movie, it was shown four times! And still it was as funny the fourth as the first time :) I think it was a really good and special experience to watch movie in this way, outside in totally darkness together with around 100 others!
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| Watching movie |
Next morning we went to church. It's the first church I've been to without any chairs, only some stools. Luckily the church was built with stairs up from the middle and out in a circle. But we had a nice time there, before we went back home to Ngaoundéré. Except from seeing around in the village, Runar, Kristian, Andy (Kristian's friend), Johanne and me played a lot of cards, tried to hunt the big rats on the loft and got a lot of good meals and cakes at Solbjørg's house. I think we had I really nice and exciting trip to Gadjiwan, we got to see so much. For me it's strange to think about that there they live without electricity, installed water, phone connection, cars, TV's etc...There are so big differences from Norway. In Gadgiwan they live life in a very simple way. But even though they have much less than us, they were very hospitable, always welcoming us and we were served food from people we had never seen before. Amazing!
After we had arrived safely in Gadjiwan Friday afternoon, and got a good lunch from Solbjørg, we went on a trip sitting on the back of a pickup. People looked even more surprised of seeing white people here than in Ngaoundéré, and I was also surprised to find out that almost no one knew French. Most people from this village have not gone to school, so they only speak their mother tongue, the local language pèrè or also fulani. So then we had to learn some more fulani..."Sanou", "Jamna", "Jam", "Ozokko".
In the evening we watched a movie in the village. Then they just placed the little TV on top of a car, and since there's no electricity, they used kind of a compressor I think. A lot of people, children and old people met up, because there's not often they may watch a movie. They gave us some plastic chairs to sit on, while the rest stood or sat on the ground, under trees or by the well (there's no installed water in the village neither). The movie was in French, so during the film, a man frequently stopped it, to translate to the local tongue pèrè. And when we come to a funny part of the movie, it was shown four times! And still it was as funny the fourth as the first time :) I think it was a really good and special experience to watch movie in this way, outside in totally darkness together with around 100 others!
We walked along the beach to a waterfall. It's very beautiful, and we had a bath in the river in front of the waterfall. For once it was cooling having a bath, that was good for a change!
The Mathare-slum is one of the most known slums in the world, with about 500 000 inhabitants. Many of those living here are ashamed of coming from this place. Therefore they don't want to say were they are from. If they make going to school and getting an education they often want to leave the slum and start a better life another place.
