Travelling to Basse and Swimming in Fatoto

I came to Basse this morning because there is a small work party going on to paint the House that we all stay in here. I dont do much work when I am in the village, and would prefer to do even less when not in the village, but since Im so close to the house and it is so nice to have I feel like I should contribute to the effort of beautifying it. Malcolm is on the house committee so he is here too, and our friend Alysa needed to take a trip so she decided just to come up and see us first and then we would all ride down to Basse together. They got to my house Wednesday night, and Thursday morning we had planned the whole day by the river. Since its so hot weve been scouting swimming spots, and found a great one to try yesterday. We rode bikes there around noon, laid down the bikes and set up to get in the water. Malcolm didnt find it sufficient to just get in the water, he wanted to jump in off the bank. So he did. Then Alysa decided to do the same, she took a slow running start and then got a little cold feet, so instead of jumping off the bank she just slid down it on her butt, but still made the water. I jumped in next and we all swam across the Gambia river and back again. We got out of the water, ate sausage sandwiches (summer sausage brought from home), mangos and then all napped in the shade, for most of the afternoon. Around five we roused, and got back in the water for round two, and then of course some more sitting and chatting before we got home. We relaxed so hard that we barely made it home before dark. Everyone was pretty drained, so we just went right to bed and decided we should take a vehicle today to Basse instead of our original plan of all riding bikes. The thing is the only vehicle leaves at six am, and the town is about 15 minutes away from Sami Koto, so we had to get up at five to get there in time. We managed that part, but as soon as we were on the road realized we had a flat bike tire, but there was nowhere to go but forward. We pumped the down tire and then rode a fast sprint for about three minutes before stopping to do it all again. This repeated maybe five times, and to be honest it was a pretty amazing effort to make Garawol in the time we did having to pump the tire, however it was still 20 minutes after the vehicle was gone. From Garawol we decided to walk another 40 minutes out to the main highway where we might catch another vehicle passing by. We laid there, still tired for about two hours wondering how long we should wait before calling it a day and trying to get on tomorrow. Luckily, this big cell tower service truck was coming out of Garawol and pulled right over and told us to get in the back seat and drove us all the way to Basse.