One year.

"The places you choose to go in life, go there without fear, but with courage, compassion, and honesty in yourself."

No time for a posting this week, as we celebrated the 4th of July by gathering all together for an all volunteer Peace Corps Gambia meeting. We then cooked hamburgers, ate potato salad, and drank a couple of beers. The whole experience of eating that kind of food and being with so many Americans grounded ourselves in good old American culture; it was nice for the refresher.

Tomorrow our group will celebrate our one year in country anniversary. Time does go by fast. Living up to the PC stereotype I finally feel like I am able to start truly helping my community and feel the goodness possible in year two.

I also have a tremendous sense of hope growing inside of me that I will be able to use this second year to reach out and help fellow volunteers in my area as much as possible. We live in a very unique situation in that there is a heavy mix of people urbanizing from the rural areas and some of the infrastructure and economic development of the Greater Banjul Area. This means that we have a population made of of people who are on the move: people who bring a variety of skills from all over the country, centralized them in one area, and are figuring out avenues to make their futures happen. We can see it all over the town, and it makes life as a PCV more encouraging for displaying physical evidence of life in motion. For those of us in the area, living within this framework, we have so much potential to do good. The success of those around me and their happiness is almost as important as anything else, for that culture alone will permeate throughout the years.

Good people making small but real gains, there to help and support each other. Here's to year two.