April 16 – The Beach

We volunteered with an organization called Tribewanted which is located on a very secluded and gorgeous beach called John Obey. The concept is pretty interesting; they’re building an eco-resort in collaboration with the local fishing village (home to about 350 people), employing the locals and providing assistance to the villagers so that they can build new homes, build new boats, fix up the school and so on. Tribewanted isn’t really a resort yet, it is in the process of being built so when we arrived the only people there were 2 of the founding members and a couple of other tourists. By the second night Lungi and I were the only guests left so we basically had the place to ourselves. We sleep in a tent directly on the sand with virtually no one else on it so we really feel like we’re in the movie “The Beach”.

Our private beach

 

Our home

We spend our days helping to build mud bungalows, cooking meals, playing volleyball or just lounging around on the beach. Lungi has been spending a lot of time in the kitchen learning local recipes and how to carry 5 gallons of water on her head. Yesterday I went into one of the nearby towns to join in on a soccer match with some of the locals.

 

 

I’ve realized that Lungi’s a bit of a novelty in most of the places we have been to in Africa especially here. Apparently the locals in the fishing village usually keep their distance from the guests but they really embraced Lungi. They all wanted to make friends with her, showing her pictures of their families, telling her stories about their lives and teaching her local customs. They even walked us to our car when we left and gave us goodbye hugs which they have apparently never done before. This morning I walked into the camp to find Lungi rubbing cream on to some local village woman’s upper body (including the boobies) which was a little weird but whatever. All the local men were just sitting around like this was a normal thing so I guess it is.

We decided to visit another stretch of beach up the coast, called River #2. Getting there was a bit of a challenge – first we went to the wrong village where the car got stuck in the sand. I had to get a bunch of local villagers to help push the car out, then haggle over how much to pay them for their assistance, and when the car finally got out, the driver was so excited to finally be unstuck that he sped off leaving me in the little village – he eventually came back to get me. We found a place to stay but they were full so they gave us a tent to set up on the beach with front row view of the local beach party which went on until about 2am.   

River #2

Roadside assistance

The fishing village

Some local villagers

 

 

Our transportation - usually 10 people fit in the back

Lobster on the grill