There is never a dull moment in Gambia and although my trip in May was supposed to be to attend the Fair Trade Conference and then have a holiday, it turned out to be one of the busiest and most productive two weeks I have spent there.

Early in the two weeks it became apparent that Cham our head chef had been working against the interests of Dardeema, its staff and GTS and planned to take over the restaurant himself. He left in early June.

Adam and I met with the landlord and discussed the lease and have now signed an agreement that extends our tenancy of the GTS Garden to include all of Dardeema in 2004 and that continues through to 2016.

With Foday's very unexpected disappearance to study music in Europe, the whole structure of GTS had to accelerate, to provide management after Fo's departure and our absence over the rainy season from June to September.

Lamin Drammeh has taken over the management of Dardeema and Kabirou Jabang has taken charge of GTS Member Services with the support of May who stays as our sponsorship co-ordinator.

Lamin Manneh, is transferring from Dardeema to the Member Services with Kabs and both are tasked to grow the GTS host staffing by a further 8 during 2003.

Bunja returns to Dardeema as Head Chef and we are delighted that Serif and Lamin Darboe will stay as assistant chefs.

Fatou, our charming waitress has started her literacy course which will improve her spoken English and give her the skills of reading and writing that she missed through lack of education. Fatou will start again with GTS when her course is completed.

Amadou the GTS builder and I visited 3 school projects, one to enclose the school with a wall, another to put a roof on to make it useable during the rainey season and the third Lambai to negotiate bigger and much better premises nearby.

All this and we also completed discussions to go ahead with a large Eco Tourist village project which will start to coincide with the arrival of our first group of GTS gap students in November 2002.

Not quite what I expected, but an excellent conference was the prelude to a most productive two weeks. Gambia is like that, all or nothing.