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Our compound is not far from a mosque so we hear the call the prayer every morning at 5:30am! It is a high tech mosque with a loud speaker. I am told it is a tape recording and not a real human being, but as we approached Tobaski (the local name for the Muslim holiday Eid Al-Addha which celebrates the day Abraham was going to sacrifice his son) the call to prayer seems to get longer and louder. Muslims pray 5 times a day: sunrise, 2pm, 5pm, sunset and 8pm. Sunrise is around 6:45am, so I was not sure why the first call to prayer is at 5:30am! I asked a neighbor who told me you can not prey unless you are clean, so they give you enough time to get out of bed and wash up (I�m a girl and I can be ready in less than an hour and fifteen mins!). In addition to waking the pious, the call to prayer also seems to be the signal for the local rooster community to go wild, so it is not easy to go back to sleep. [See pictures of our local Mosque, including the loudspeaker strategically pointed at our bedroom window!]

The workday is from 8am-4pm Monday through Thursday and from 8am-12:30pm on Fridays. However, timeliness does not seem to be that important and most people arrive sometime between 8:30 and 9am. Friday is the Muslim holy day of the week. The workday ends at 12:30 so the men can get to the mosque by 2pm. For the most part women are not allowed in the mosques and pray at home. This also means that there is no such thing as �dress down Friday� in The Gambia. Since it is the holy day, people pull out their finest. Most people look as thought they are going to a ball. It is quite impressive. Even people who wear western clothes on other days of the week, wear traditional African finery on Friday. Right now everyone�s clothes are even more impressive because Tobaski is the time of year when everyone buys new clothes for themselves and EVERYONE in their extended family. The local tailors (there are more tailors in The Gambia than there are Gaps in NYC) are working round the clock.

After the morning entertainment from the mosque and the roosters, I get up and eat enough breakfast to coat my stomach so the anti-malaria pill will not make me sick. The mornings are cool (after being here for a month, 75 degrees seems quite cool!), so I reserve showering for the evenings when the day is still warm and the water has been sitting in the pipes all day and feels warmer (we do not have hot water). My office is a 15-minute bike ride from home. Because it is a Muslim country, I must always cover my legs and a long skirt is preferable. I made a conscious effort to buy a girls bicycle because it is a bit tricky riding in a long flowing skirt. As I ride to work all the young children yell �tobaab� at me (meaning white person). I try to respond with a few of the local greetings, �Salaamaleekum?� (translation: Peace be with you). They usually look a bit stunned to see a liberated white woman on a bicycle speaking to them in Wollof.

We are lucky in that we live just off the new road (yet to be named). It was finished about 2 months ago. Apparently money was donated for a four-lane highway, but when completed it was only a two lane road (with a few signs marking the curves, but no pained line down the middle like we are used to in the West)� no one is quite sure where the rest of the money went (and no one seems to be asking). There are only about 5 paved roads in The Gambia. The other roads have varying degrees of deep sand and potholes. As I ride my bicycle around, I have quickly learned which roads have the hardest packed sand and the fewest potholes. In some places the sand is 3-4 inches deep and I have to walk the bike. Although it is often a shorter distance to take the unpaved roads, it is usually faster and less exhausting to stick to the paved route. The new road leads to the ONLY traffic light in The Gambia. It is a topic of much excitement and discussion. There has been an education campaign to teach the locals the meaning of green, yellow and red.

I am usually the first person to arrive at the office in the morning. The office building is a converted bungalow (an old colonial house). The house has three and � baths, which means almost everyone has a tub off their office (the former bedrooms of the house). The thing that puzzles me the most about the bathrooms is the fact that although there are very western toilet facilities, all of the seats and lids have been unscrewed from the toilets and set next to porcelain throne, on the floor! Apparently the transition from pit latrines has been difficult for some Gambians.

I work at The Gambian Social Development Fund (SDF), in Bakau Newtown (a suburb of Bajul). �The SDF works with Community Based Organizations (CBOs), Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) and Public Service Institutions (PSIs) in support of initiating and implementing micro projects and capacity building interventions to help alleviate poverty.� I quote from their publicity materials because I am still not 100% sure what they really do! Everyone insists that SDF is an independent charitable organization, however most of the money to run SDF comes from The Government of The Gambian (abbreviated GOTG� absolutely everything has an acronym here). The company letterhead even has the official government crest of the country on it. I think they have found that the many donors interested in poverty alleviation are more willing to give money if it is not directly to the government. I am working in the The Micro Finance Unit (MFU) which �supports MFIs, NGOs and CBOs engaged in savings mobilization and provision of credit in The Gambia.� I am working on a project to strengthen micro finance institutions of The Gambia. Micro finance is the concept of small loans to poor people who would not otherwise have access to credit, in order to encourage income generation and savings. The maximum an individual can borrow is usually 1,000 dalasi or about US$55. This might enable a tailor to buy a sewing machine or a group of women engaged in soap making to buy some start up equipment and raw materials. Currently, there are a few MFIs that dominate the market in The Gambia. Because of the lack of competition, interest rates for loans are between 25 and 35%. As a point of reference, the interest rate of The Central Bank of the Gambia (CBG) is currently around 12-13%. However, in other parts of West Africa micro credit interest rates are around 40%. SDF just received a report from Deloitte & Touche recommending a strategy to target 10 MFIs or emerging MFIs to strengthen. I will work with the team to implement the plan (all be it a vague plan� I am not sure the Banjul office of Deloitte recruits many Wharton MBAs). I feel very lucky to be working with such great people, learning about micro finance and helping to help people help themselves through entrepreneurship. My colleagues are all very well educated Gambians many of whom have masters degrees or PhDs from the US, UK or Canada (and returned to The Gambia as soon as their studies were done because they said it is too cold up there). Everyone in the office is very friendly and, contrary to stereotypes of the African work ethic, I have been incredibly impressed with the organization, thought processes, and work ethic of the senior management team.

The only tough thing about the office is that my colleagues speak English to me and in formal staff meetings, but all casual conversation and informal discussions are in their local languages. I have taken a few Wollof lessons (Wollof is the predominant tribe in the greater Banjul area), but everyone in my office seems to communicate in Mandinka (Mandinkas are the majority in The Gambia). To make matters more complicated, the head of SDF is Fulla (a third tribe which speaks a totally different language!) Since most of the recipients of micro credit are Mandinka, I plan to switch to Mandkina lessons next week with an instructor from the Peace Corps.

After work, Ben and I usually go shopping in the vegetable markets in Knaffing or Old Jeshwang near our compound. We have to shop for food almost every day because things are very ripe. We do have a refrigerator but the electricity can be erratic. To make it through the power cuts, the fridge is on a very cold setting the rest of the time and tends to freeze things... a no win situation. We have not really figured out where to buy fresh meat, so we have been having mostly vegetarian meals. They do sell meat in the market, but the flies are everywhere and it all looks very unappealing. There is also a fish market in Bakau where you can buy fresh fish off the boats as the fishermen come in from the Atlantic Ocean, but as just doing small things takes so much time and energy, we have not make it there yet. So we eat lots of eggs, peanuts (the major cash crop of The Gambia), and canned tuna fish that we buy at the ex-pat grocery store, and order meat whenever we splurge and go out to one of the tourist restaurants.

Gambians seem to socialize by just hanging out and visiting neighbors. There is a lot of sitting around. Most do not drink alcohol since 90% of the country is Muslim, but our UK volunteer counterparts have found a few local bars (usually run by one of the Christians who make up the other 10% of the population). Our favorite local watering whole is called St. Francis. St. Francis himself sells bottles of beer for 9 dalasi (about 50 cents) and sodas for 4 dalasi (about 25 cents) in a room about the size of a walk in closet. To be honest, after dinner, around 9:30pm, it is very dark and we are usually tired, so we often just go to sleep� only 8 hours until the Imam at the mosque starts to bellow again!