Snakes, Crocodiles, and Dysentery

These three hardships are things people want to avoid. The past three days I have dodged being bitten by a snake, attacked by a crocodile, and contracting dysentery. I know many people are afraid of spiders, and we have some big scary looking spiders here, but that is one thing we do not have to worry about because The Gambia has no poisonous spiders. We learned this information from taking some field trips around the Gambia to get a better feel for the country.

While there are some snakes to watch out for, we learned that it is not an event that occurs with a lot of frequency. If you leave snakes alone they will not bother you. All the Peace corps trainees visited a Reptile Farm where this French man keeps a lot of snakes and collects their poison to send it to the government to developed anti venom. It is also used as a tool to teach young gambians that not all snakes are bad. Gambian are terrified of snakes and will kill them at first glance if they do not run away giving the snake a lucky break.

We visited one of the many crocodile pools in The Gambia. They are considered sacred and increase fertility if you enter the pool full with crocs, but now they have turned into big tourist sites due to the fact that you can pet and shake a 2 meter croc's hand and back. The owners feed them so much food that they are so stuffed they do not want to move. Even though they say it is safe, I still got nervous when the croc started to move as I shook its hand.

Our body systems are not yet used to the environment here so we have the potential of getting sick. Two members of our group have come down with dysentery and many more have the runs. I do myself a little, but with time we will all get better and it is nothing to worry about. Even the dysentary gets better with treatment. When I go to my village I will have a cell phone, and if I get sick, I can call the medical officer to let them know what is going on with me.

That is all for now, but hopefully I can write more soon.