Up country in Berefet

 

Berefet is a village up country (about 2 and a half hours up country from Happy Camp). We got to meet the akolo of the village who is the village elder and many other families in the village who were very kind. We also visited the school. Berefet also has an eco village lodge where people can come and stay. They mostly have Peace Corps volunteers and students of archeology stay in the eco village with the very occasional tourist. Our experience at the eco village of Berefet was very interesting. This is a picture of the restaurant/main house of the eco village.

This is what the guest houses in the eco village look like. They had two rooms per house and two beds per room.

This is a close up of one of the houses we stayed in. We were taught how to do the monkey dance by our language and culture teacher Daniel and that's what we're doing in this photo. The dance is you make this pose then squat and repeat the action. We make people do the monkey dance if they do something "bad" (like curse) as a joke. We look pretty crazy tho..

Inside the houses was very different than we're used to. Dirt floors and our bathroom was very bleak. The toilet didn't work and the shower spat at you loudly which was scary, but it's better than a hole in the ground (which happens) and buckets to bathe in. It put Happy Camp in perspective though. We used to always get frustrated when the power was out, but we only had power for an hour a day here plus the other accommodations made us very thankful for Happy Camp. And Berefet is just the beginning so we'll be experiencing other villages that are even less luxurious.

Kaylie and I took a walk to explore around the village. We had a lot of free time during our trip.. Along the way we came across a lot of cute goats and HUGE trees. We even saw some monkeys!

Berefet is just off the River Gambia on a side body of water so it has a beautiful view. We had a lot of free time to explore the small area, but found some good views. From Berefet we took a boat ride to Juffureh and St. James Island!