“Letter From …” is a column featuring a letter from a Mainer, or person with ties to this state, who is living or traveling far away from home. Abigail Curtis of Orono, a BDN news intern, ventured to the West African nation of Gambia in February. Curtis was one of four chaperones for six Hancock County girls who participated in a 10-day cultural immersion program. She recorded her impressions of life in the western village of Jambanjelly where the group stayed.

Today I heard the noises of Africa start to ring out before dawn.

First came the roosters, which begin crowing long before sunrise. They were joined by other birds which whirred and clicked.

Next, the French radio station next door was turned on and we heard the soft murmur of voices and music. It was underscored by the village women, who pound their rice with a huge mortar and pestle in a rhythmic way that sounds like drumming.

A little later, the bells of the school next to our compound pealed and were followed by the sounds of hundreds of children singing and playing in the schoolyard.

The village was awake – emphatically so – while we toubabs (white people) lay in our nests of sheets on the floor of the Christian Children’s Fund building. At that moment, we must have seemed unbearably lazy to the Africans.

In the afternoon, we went to Sanyang Beach on the Atlantic Ocean, only four miles away from our village. After what seemed a brutal winter in Maine, we longed to walk barefoot in the sand and take a dip in the sea. The water was warm, much warmer than Bar Harbor’s Sand Beach.

We found the four-mile journey much more interesting than four miles of highway back home. We piled so many people into the rickety, brightly colored van that it resembled a clown car. Our Gambian chaperone, Lamin Njie, and his family had prepared an elaborate picnic lunch for us, carried in large plastic bowls wrapped with vivid cloths. We were a giggling mass of humanity and food as we bumped down the road, past poor but lively villages and unlikely “fast food” shacks. Our white faces stick out here in West Africa and we attracted the attention of many people walking on the road or sitting and chatting over tiny cups of strong mint tea.

At the beach, we played soccer in the sand and my heart felt so light when we ran around. There’s nothing as fun as tearing down the beach playing barefoot pass with a bunch of kids, Gambian and American.

Lamin turned out to be an excellent soccer player and tried to show me a couple of kicks to dazzle folks back home.

In West Africa, the sun feels more intense while the Atlantic is a different species of ocean from the cold, gray waters of home. This sea is murky but temperate. You can swim and play in the waves all day. The gray sand underfoot is fine and chock full of millions of shells.

It isn’t too littered with trash, though, and may be the only place in this beautiful country where I haven’t seen the ubiquitous heaps of citrus peel, papers and black plastic bags.

Our six 12- and 13-year-old girls loved it here. They took turns burying each other in the sand, creating grotesquely large sand cone breasts, giggling and snapping photographs.

The Gambian girls eagerly took their turns to be buried alive. Lamin was brave, too – he let the girls pile sand on him until he became a giant lobster.

Earlier we had all swum and goofed off. Anna Sproule of Trenton and I played in the water with six of Lamin’s sisters and friends, all 14 and under. They sang a song in Mandinka, one of Gambia’s tribal languages. It’s a rollicking tune that incorporates a call and response. Anna and I smiled and listened – it’s hard to jump in because the pattern changes slightly each time.

Using a mixture of English and gestures, the Africans asked us to sing a song for them. We launched into the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and sang loudly in order to be heard over the sea and the wind. After we had finished the first verse, they laughed, shook their heads and started to dance the Macarena – which had been a big hit from us on our first day in Jambanjelly. So Anna and I complied and performed a salty, wet Macarena. The African girls loved it.

Later that day, the African women in our party bought some fresh fish from the fisherman who piloted their long, colorful wooden boats to sea. The women took strings of silvery small fish and descaled them with quick motions of their knives. Lamin’s sister Ndeye Fatou Njie found a dead skate in the sand and was very happy with her prize.

Our girls were a little scared of some stoned-looking Rastafarian shell-sellers who wouldn’t take no for an answer. One red-eyed Rastaman tried to sell the same shell all day long. Around noon it was 75 dalassi ($3). When we left at 7 p.m. he ran after us, shouting “Two for 50! One world, one love! You’ve got to be kind to get love!”

As the sun dimmed, some drummers from the beach town brought djembes and set up not too far from us. Some of Lamin’s little sisters danced to the insistent beat.

We sat, riddled with sand and so happy, listening to the drums, watching the kids dance and seeing the last fishing boats come in safely over the shining waves.

Abigail Curtis can be reached at abigail.curtis@umit.maine.edu.