November has been busy at work. I have spent most of it away from home, which is now London. This has meant some time most evenings to do much needed work on the site, amending old and adding new pages and much emailing to old and new members.

At last I have had some time to make good progress on the first Newsletter, which I hope will go out to all members early in January 2001.

We have been recruiting at a steady rate, but there is still a temptation to do some site advertising. We have never cracked the problem of being listed on the 20 page of search engines and so have to rely on links from other sites and members recommendations.

Response to the site has been very complimentary, many readers think we are a massive concern because the site has so much variety and information on it - but we aim at catering for 2 to 4 couples a week during the dry season and just one couple a week during the rainy season.

Keeping the numbers low allows us to provide a very personal service and develop friendships with tourists who return over and over again.

A work colleague visited The Gambia and Ghana to see the work of the charity Concern Universal. He stayed at the Coconut residence and was extremely impressed, the week was hard work but what we saw was excellent, from farming projects to a woman's group growing and cropping timber to counter the fuel shortages for cooking. A wonderfully relaxing country, you wonder if we have got it right don't you?
(See side pictures and text)

The month has not been without problems, getting the container from the docks at Banjul to Brufut was hampered by not having the correct papers ready and then the lorry could not get onto the site without removing a neighbour's fence. The well diggers have been slowed down because they have struck rock, but are still making good progress.

The Kololi phone was unable to make international calls for the first couple of weeks and my ONE TEL connection decided to play up and refused to connect at all to Gambia. Both phones are fixed now, but email to and from Gambia is still impossible.

Foday sends his regards to everyone and says that things are going very well, it all seems far to good to be true and I am awaiting all the hidden problems when I get there in just over a weeks time. It is frightening as I have made no preparations at all for this trip and will have to do the whole thing on a wing and a prayer.

A very merry Christmas and Ramadan to all site readers, we hope you enjoy the GTS site and will think of taking a holiday in The Gambia supported by GTS.

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