Jambanjelly, Kartong Festival

Hello!
Apologies for the lack of activity on the blog for the last 10 days. I've been out in the bush since Wednesday, hanging out with Moriba near Kartong at a beach resort called Mama Santchaba. He's had some European students taking lessons from him.
The Kartong Festival has come and gone. It was just as wonderful as it was in 2008. Three full days of wonderful music and dance performances took place from Friday the 10th through yesterday, the 12th. I would say there were two dance performances in particular that were my favorites. They had percussion accompaniment, which includes the djembe, sangban, kenkeni, dundun, bells.....The way that people here dance....is incredible. Its hard to describe....they're not professionally trained either. Ordinary citizens will run up to the stage if they are moved by a performance, and dance to a wild abandon.....and they do it so well....almost as if the dance was planned, but it seems so spontaneous.....
Unfortunately, I missed most of yesterdays festivities. I've had a stomach bug for the last couple of days. Even today I haven't been feeling all that great. Peter Borshik did a remarkable job of organizing the festival again. I can't imagine trying to do anything like that. It's enough of a challenge just being in a foreign country for me, and Peter can handle this and organize numerous music festivals additionally.
Tomorrow, Moriba and I are headed back out to Mama Santchaba for four days. For the next couple of weeks, he'll have classes with foreign students here from Tuesday through Friday of both weeks. I'll just be tagging along and getting lessons with him when he's not working with the others. While he's in class, I'll have time to practice. There is plenty of music for me to practice. I've still been focusing on singing to songs that I've already learned, and I'll be shifting my focus to learning new songs for the second half of my trip. Today marks the halfway point of my stay. Three weeks remain.
Last week, I believe last Monday to be exact, I went to Jambanjelly, which is about a 15 minute drive from Brikama, to stay with my friend Lamin, who I met in Maine while I was there for a month in 2005. I met him before I ever discovered the Kora, so it was sort of a miracle that we managed to stay in touch! I saw him briefly during my stay in 2008, but only for an hour or so. I spent the night with his family, entertained them with Kora music, and visited his garden. His garden is amazing. He has cultivated about an acre or two of land into a haven of vegetables, oranges, etc....He learned about gardening while in Maine, and he has taken his knowledge and created a sustainable land for his family. He first broke ground about 3 years ago. It is quite amazing how far it has come. For most of the day, Lamin, his brother Ousman, and myself sat under a shelter at the edge of the garden, drinking attaya, listening to popular music on the radio, and catching up. I'm going to try and make sure that I have all of my musical business covered a couple of days before departing so that I can go back to Lamin's place for a couple more nights.
That's all for now...I'll try to post again this upcoming weekend.