Concluding my second visit to Gambia

I'm back at Lamin's compound, Njie Kunda in Jambanjelly for my last night. The two Koras are boxed up, and I have just a few belongings to arrange for my departure to London tomorrow. Looking back, it feels like the trip has come an gone pretty quickly, but the duration of the trip was just about perfect. I'd definitely do a few things differently next time, but all in all, I feel it was a successful trip.

Today, I took my last field recording...a duet of Moriba and I playing Kora. We did about six tracks here at Njie Kunda, where it's a bit quieter than the compound in Brikama. Overall, I produced eight field recordings of Kora players, which is about 5 more than I came out with over my 3.5 month stay in 2008. I'm quite happy about that. Now I just need to figure out how to transfer them to the PC and edit them a bit. I've already promised a few folks that I will be transferring video recordings to DVD so that I can send it to them in Gambia.

This evening, I met with my good friend Fansu Jaiteh, whom I met in 2008. I had quite a bit of time with him during that year. Unfortunately, I only got to see him twice this time around. He has been working over 50 hours a week and taking classes simultaneously, and had to take a three week trip to Basse, at the east end of the country during the middle of my trip. He came to meet me in Jambanjelly after having spent the last few days in Kartong with his family. His father unfortunately passed away only the day before yesterday. He now lives in Brikama with his wife and child. I was glad to be able to have dinner with him here at Lamins and catch up for a couple of hours before he headed back to Brikama for the evening.

I hope you've enjoyed reading the blogs. I've got quite a few performances already lined up for the end of the month. Check out the performance calendar at www.myspace.com/seankora.

I'm anticipating that I will probably experience a bit of reverse culture shock upon arrival in London tomorrow. Then a bit of jet lag to follow the next day after jumping 8 time zones back to Seattle.

All the best-
Sean