listen to africa

Kumba is the housekeeper at Kaira Konko Scout Lodge in Soma, The Gambia, where we stayed for a few days. In this recording, Bex joins Kumba, Kadi and Fatimateh in the kitchen (well, by the fire in the courtyard) and chats about The Gambia, the UK, this and that while cooking the evening meal. We’re not sure who was interviewing who here, so we’re posting it under people and travelogues, and we apologise for the sound quality in parts of this recording.

We’ve mentioned before that we’ll sometimes post contact details for grassroots projects we come across in case anyone feels inspired to donate. The Kaira Konko Scout Lodge gives young boys and girls a haven where they …

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Our best border crossing yet; an evening with a missionary; thunderstorms and drug barons; and a close encounter with a steamed dog’s head.

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Another one for our in numbers series: how lazy and how greedy we were in Senegal (the short answer is “very”).

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Leaving Mauritania – with more questions than answers. An update on our last few days in Mauritania as we cycled from its capital to the Senegalese border.

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The fourth in our “in numbers” series: how many hours we spent chasing silent donkeys, the number of cars that hit us and other vital statistics from our time in Mauritania.

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Belatedly, here’s the third in our “in numbers” series: what we ate, where we slept, how much (or little) we cycled and how many squashed lizards we saw in Western Sahara.

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The second of our “in numbers” series – what we’ve eaten, where we’ve slept, how much (or little) we’ve cycled and how many squashed hedgehogs we’ve seen.

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On the way from Sidi Ifni to Guelmim in southern Morocco, we cycled past a women’s cooperative extracting oil from argan nuts. We went in to meet the women, get laughed at and repeatedly bash our fingers with a heavy rock. You can read (and watch a slideshow) about the cultural, environmental and economic importance of argan in Huw’s Spotlight: all about argan.

Recorded on: 18th June 2009, 14:00 local time.
Location: Between Sidi Ifni and Guelmim, southern Morocco (view on map)
Copyright: Listen to Africa

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The first in a series of “spotlights” on people, projects and ideas that we find inspiring. This one’s on the argan tree, the women’s cooperatives who extract oil from it, and the tree’s importance in preventing desertification.

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On our first night in Immessouane, we noticed Nawal cooking up a delicious tajine – the staple Moroccan dish – in the hostel’s communal kitchen. On our second night, we asked if we could record her as she cooked. We thought we’d post the result here in case anyone wanted to try out the recipe.

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