Kern

Kern i my name and i am working as a teacher mostley for carpenter students at the construction school in Strömstad / Sweden.

Another teacher at our school is working as a talesman for an NGO in the Gambia, called FIOH, future in our hands, or in swedish just "gambiagruppen" (the Gambia group).

In march this yaer we decided that it could be interesting for our building students to visit the Gambia and learn more about the diffrence of construction between Gambia and Sweden, as well as the diffrences of culture and standards. The named teacher, our principel and I headed to Gambia in march for recognisation, and we decided that it would be possible to bring along students. We get money from Atlas for exchange projekts and left Sweden november 7 to stay and work with school buildings to november 28 in corporation with FIOH.

FIOH has build schools in Gambia since many years and has a lot of experience.

The headoffice of FIOH, the office buildings. From here the volonteers are working and projecting. It is belayd in a compound together wih a second building with apartments for the volonteers and visitors like us. The compound is surrounded by a wall and has security service 24 hours a day. The office is belayd in Kololi, a suburb to the capitol Banjul. It is not a turist place, leaving the compound you are in an african suburb with shaggy "houses", pouverty and garbage.

The entrance of the office, nearly "western" standards, only air condition is missing. According to the volonteers it is most of the time possible to work without greater interruptions, but as a example the first days of our visiting the internet was down and it happened quite often that we had no electicity. That is commonly not a bigger problem, because the organisation has a Diesel generator backup, but for example today the Diesel was empty and we had to drive a longer distance to get new, because the whole quarter had no power and without that the gas stations didn`t work either.

One of the schools our students working on in Serrakunda, another suburb of Banjul near Kololi. In front materials to keep the form for the second and third floor at its place while filling with concrete. In the background the becoming school building. Almost everything needed for building have to be imported from Senegal. Nearly everything is made of concrete, starting a building the first thing to do is producing own bricks in concrete.

Outside of the becoming building, the form is ready to fill with concrete.

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Inside the room of one building, waiting for the concrete to the second floor. Biggest diffrence to Sweden are after the building method the tools. Almost everything common in Sweden is missing, the only electricity you get is from a little Diesel generator, but mostley everything is handcrafted, you got to fill the form with concrete by only using a spade for example. This is not easy at all for our students when the temprature is about 100 degrees F.

A learnig situation of a diffrent kind for our studets, the market in Banjul. It was not polite to take pictures inside the market, so this is only the panorama to see. The studets where impressed by the pouverty of the people and the hygenic standard on the market, mostley in the meat and fish selling parts. There was no refrigurator att all, the food was laying in the heat, coverd with millions of flys, while rats where running around att the ground.