The Rat, The Hunter, and the Hurl

I’ve heard many a horror story of the first days on your own in country; I disregarded them haphazardly though as for weaker men. Looking back on it though, it probably was one of the scariest days in my life; and the weeks that would follow would test not only my patience but my mental fortitude… to the limits of my dedication. I know what it’s going to take to stick out these two years and do a decent job (which is the key, because if you’ve met some of the volunteers these days you’ll see they’re here in body… but not in heart); the problem is trying to put away all the hurdles we’ve all brought with us, our good friends at home (some of which still haven’t wrote me… I know who you are), our family (who at times I’ve felt I’ve abandoned at the most crucial moment), and the ever popular “what if” factor. I pray though, for both my loved ones back home and myself that I can find the strength and heart that brought me here to Africa, to accomplish my goal as a PCV. Ew this has turned into a journal entry more than some good stories I wanted to tell. So anyways back to my story (I really need to stop running off onto tangents, I can see Shari and Sugs screaming at my lack of any written focus).

I was the first to be dropped off that day in my group. I had woke up late and as usual was not ready to depart for site. Rushing to hurry up and gather my things, which included a rather large wicker shelving unit I had purchased by the beach, Peter our driver was encouraging me to move faster. We hadn’t ate breakfast that morning as we were now peace corps volunteers, and thus fully capable of finding our own food… damnit. Peter stopped the car at a stoplight and we screamed out the window at a young girl selling pancatoes, who literally had to throw about 15 of these balls into the car when the light turned green. As usual the road from Katie’s site to mine was atrocious and it’s a good thing I don’t get car sick. To demonstrate the extent of the roads disrepair I visited Katie the other day by bike and passed several cars on the road; it’s sad when it’s significantly faster to just ride your mountain bike than attempt to take a taxi. Due to my lack in haste this morning we were in a rush and after greeting my host family we pretty much tossed my things onto the porch. In turn I was forced to take the before mentioned trip to Katie’s site to retrieve my forgotten things. The next thing I know the old peace corps land rover was driving off in a cloud of dust… and so it began.

I thought I would come home to see some repairs made on my house, mainly my rice bag ceiling, but no worries. If there was anything I had absolutely no right to complain about it was my house; which by Gambian mud-hut compound standards was a freaking mansion. I was still in need of a bed but would have to wait till my next pay check to afford it. Currently I barely had enough to pay for the gilly-gilly ride back to the bank to even get paid. I began unpacking my things and trying to take this whole thing in, which as you can imagine was fairly overwhelming. The next thing I know I here a scampering of claws across my tin roof and then the indentation of a rat in my rice bag ceiling… the same ceiling that is barely hanging to the wall on tiny nails. I feared the worst, that the weak ceiling would give way, the rat fall down directly onto my bed, and me have to fight it to the death. Sadly though in many ways the actual result was far far worse. I proceeded to poke the bulge with a broom but the rodent did not move. Instead it pissed itself, and I watched a stream of golden liquid leak through the bags and directly onto my mattress. Welcome to West Africa Steven. Just perfect.

The next morning I awoke to breakfast with the family and received a spur of the moment invitation from my teenage host brother to go hunting with a few of his buddies in the bush. I just couldn’t pass that up. I threw on my shoes and off we went. Relatively few people in the Gambia actually own a gun so I wasn’t surprised to find out we were going squirrel hunting with the family dogs. The way it works is that the boys take a leisurely stroll in the woods (a mosaic of palms, termite mounds and mango trees) collecting cashew nuts until one of the dogs spot a squirrel. In which case we all start sprinting through the bush trying not to impale ourselves on branches or run into a bull. Most of the time (from my obviously extensive experience in hunting here) the dogs don’t catch the squirrels but run them into a termite mound. The boys would then light a fire on the mound in attempts to smoke the squirrel out. Needless to say that day we came back empty handed in the squirrel department, though collected a backpack full of cashews which we later roasted and ate with fresh oranges. All that was missing was naked women fanning me and feeding me grapes… maybe one day.

I stayed up late that night drinking ley with the family and listening to American rock and r&b songs on my Ipod. Ley is made like attaya but with milk. I think it was the milk but the next morning I awoke at day break to the wonderful feeling of intense nausea. From 6:12am to around 11:30am, I continuously emptied the entire contents of my digestive system. Don’t worry, I plan on describing it to you. As the thought earlier in the night of myself butt naked crouching over my pit latrine for 4 hours was to much to bare, I took my bathing bucket and put a plastic bag over it so as I could throw up if I had to from the comfort of my rat piss stained mattress. Ironically my throw-up closely resembled a few of the rice porridge breakfasts I had had weeks before; the balls of white rice still fully visible at the bottom of the plastic bag. As I threw up I could feel the undigested rice spheres pass through my esophagus. Alright I’m sure you’ve had enough. Nothing can quite describe the feeling of being ill in a foreign land where you barely speak the language. In the end though I was strangely not in bad spirits but on the contrary the day I was stuck inside my hut sick all day, was a welcome relief to the stresses of introducing yourself to an African village. It was nice to just sit and read, and I should be allowed if for not just one day to be anti-social, as if I am anything it’s the antithesis of xenophobic. My counterpart and neighbor, bless his heart, thought I had malaria, thankfully though I think I just came down with a short but potent case of food poisoning. In conclusion, God bless the man who invented Pepto-Bismol. Coincidentally all that hurling in the end caused me to burst a few blood vessels in my right eye, it looks wicked badass, though I think the children now believe I’m Satan. In turn I’ve been forced to wear sunglasses all day long, I look like a white Stevie Wonder.

Feeling better the next morning I went to a meeting of the elders in the community and the local chapter of a well known NGO: Christian Children’s Fund, which I am convinced films its late night infomercials in the Gambia. The meeting took place on west African time… aka it’s suppose to start at 9 but doesn’t begin until noon while the sun is directly over head. The meeting was also in Mandinka spoke at speeds which I am sure crossed over the sound barrier and were thus actually in light form. After understanding barely a quarter of the conversation I managed to cut out early giving the excuse I had a “meeting with the principal of the school”. I did actually meet with the principal that day, but not until later that afternoon. The meeting went very well though with the principal, whose English was far faster and meticulous than I could understand. A very good man though I think. We talked about the schools needs and he is allowing me to teach a “life skills” course at the school, where I hope to teach self-esteem building, team work, individuality, and public speaking; as well as help fine tune the library, which now is more like a dark closet with a pile of books in the center. Doey-decimal system here I come.

Since I got here I’ve been playing football (soccer) with the boys every afternoon. They’re super good by American standards but definitely play a different style of football. It’s very flashy but not as fast passing and thought out as the western game. A few days ago though I started teaching proper stretching techniques to the team after running. That progressed into leading a little bit of the training workouts so I put a little American Football flavor to it, up-downs, pushups, and suicide runs. Maybe a few Indian runs when I get the time too, they’re going to despise me but will be better players because of it. The next day I even gave a pretty much dead on “inspirational sports movie speech”: “win one for the gipper”, “soccer is 80% mental”, “soccer isn’t in the shoes, it’s in the heart”. THANK GOD we’re not in American or that speech would have been doubly tacky and unoriginal. Here though it came off as one of the most inspirational game day speeches to ever grace this village and it took all the constancy I possessed to contain my laughter.

Well due to the lengthiness of this entry I’ve decided to cut the stories short for now. I’ll conclude though with the introduction of a new member of my hut. I’ve named him Dango Nino (which means rat hunter in Mandinka) and he’s a 2 month old kitten who was born around the time I came to the Gambia. He’s white with black speckles over it’s body, a black tail and very cute. Shy yes but I hope that’s just because he’s still a kitten and has only been in my house a few days. I’ve never owned a cat before so didn’t know how the whole “Litter-box” thing works, in America, let alone here in the Gambia. So I Macgyver’ed myself a large flat box and filled it with sand. The kitten hasn’t pissed on my floor yet. Though I’m sure I’ll find a turd filled shoe one day. Also In recent news to be brief, the elders of the community have made me the official coach of the town’s football team, we have a tournament tomorrow, wish us luck.

Also it'd be wrong of me if I did not express how sad we all are to lose Dan from our PC team. You will be missed, we'll see ya again I'm sure. Take care of yourself and don't forget to stop by a Skyline Chili on you layover in the 'nati.

The Oath and Drunken Debauchery (Swear in and the Party)

The day has finally come as my training group cleans to go to our swearing in ceremony at the U.S. ambassadors place. Nerves are high and we all cram into the peace corps van decked out in African attire. A weird vibe was in the air and the streets were crowded with school children. It turns out the president of Guinea-Bassau was in town to meet with Yaya Jammeh (the Gambian President), so all the roads were closed and we were forced to take a sandy back street. This is the first time an entire training class has wore only African outfits and the stares from the people on the streets were looks of pure confusion. Toubab? Arab? Albino Gambians? You get mad street cred here though if you wear African clothing. Getting to the coast the Ambassador’s residence should be on MTV Cribs, it is so so beautiful. Over looking the beach and Atlantic Ocean the view is breathtaking, and for the first time in a long time I was able to enjoy ACTUAL GRASS under my feet. I went out of my way to go to the bathroom there; after shitting in a pit latrine for the past 2 months a beautiful porcelain thrown is like heaven. Though we have toilets here in the captial, this was a super nice one. With real soap and a TV in the waiting room! We took tons of pictures (though I won’t be able to post them until next time I’m in the capital because I forgot my cord). The program began as any Gambian events do, with prayer. Babucarr my LCF (language and cultural facilitator) said an Islamic prayer, Ruco went up and said a Christian prayer, and I went up… on national tv… and said the shahechianu and oseh shalom. Then the big moment came that I was so nervous for at the start, my singing of the national anthem. I go up to the podium, start singing, and pretty much butcher every high note like something out of a comedy movie. Parts I didn’t even sing because I had started to high. I felt like I was going to die, cameras in my face, all of the Gambia watching, The ambassador, 100 staring peace corps volunteers, the peace corps director from DC... needless to say it was a disaster. The most embarrassing moment of my life, in retrospect I’d like to think some great wisdom came from an experience like that, at the very least it put my feet back on the ground, lord knows I need that. But the show went on, and I tried to smile. The head of the Peace Corps in DC said a nice speech, taking stories from his experience in the first year the peace corps was started, he had gone to India. Our skit went like a charm and everyone got a huge kick out of our singing and my Gambian drum beat played on an old water canister. I was going to go sit down by the beach for a little bit and let everything just float past me when I ran into a few of the other volunteers. I told them how I was pretty distraught over the entire national anthem debacle. It turns out though, by some miracle, there had been a problem in the microphone right at the beginning and with everyone else singing the national anthem along with me they could barely hear me; and if they could they couldn’t distinguish me from the others…sigh… thank god! After talking to some people and realizing absolutely no one could even hear me through the speakers I felt a million times better. Even though I’m going to take a lot of flak for the end of our skit where I was suppose to say thank you in all the Gambian PC languages, “Ali abaraka (mandinka), Jerejeff, ning uhhhhhhhh, uhhhhhhhhh, uhhhhhh, oh yea! Jarama! (pulaar)” The blunder got a laugh though so it was worth it. The food I was told wasn’t as good as previous years but to us it was still an orgasm in our mouths and we scarfed down like we had been starving for the past two months… well we sort of had. Earlier in the ceremony we had said an oath, the same used by those going into the armed forces, to defend and protect the united states of America from enemies both foreign and domestic. Later they gave us a piece of paper with that same oath on it and our social security numbers and we were asked to sign it. Dan signed his name as “tits-magee”. I found it funny. Tits-magee and the rest of the bunch then took a PC car back to GPI to get ready for the Julbrew party. If you didn’t read my last post let me explain what a Julbrew party is again. To make it brief there’s only one brewery in the Gambia, and considering their main consumer of their product is peace corps volunteers (we pretty much keep their brewery in buisness) so they throw us about 4 parties a year all the booze you can drink. Mix that with recently graduated 20 something year olds living in a foreign country and the mental rigors of being at site (loneliness, isolation, and horniness) makes for a complete mess of drunken debauchery. Partial nudity, drunkenness, bad pickup-lines and tasteless toasts, screaming in 5 different languages, ass slapping, boys kissing girls, hot girls kissing girls, pissing in the bushes, people then passing out in those same bushes, the interrogations of the new trainees and grind dancing to old 90s songs. It was great. I need to get this shit on film, I could make enough money to buy a motorbike. I love this country. Thankfully we got our own private deck to have our party inside the brewery and far away from the scornful looks of devout Gambians. The best part of the evening was the volunteers who were outing themselves as Jews to me all evening, “I’m so glad you had the courage to say those prayers, I’m also Jewish” even non Jews were glad I did it. Supposedly I’m suppose to hang out with a few of them tonight for Passover but I don’t know if that’s going to happen. The pinnacle of the party was a large group picture of all the guys with our shirts off (supposedly a Julbrew party tradition, but I think it was just a strange excuse to be homo-erotic and/or have a large amount of black-mail material for eventual peace corps drama). After that the party was pretty much beaten till it was dead, I decided it would probably be smart to start thinking of how in the world I was going to finagle myself a taxi drunk in the middle of west Africa then get back to GPI. Most of the party was trying to move outside the brewery to a Gambian club but that had bad idea written all over it. So tits-magee aka Rambo (since no one knows you here sometimes people like to be funny and just tell all the villagers their name is “Rambo” or “Mr. T” or “The Rock”), Olivia, Katie, and a few others decided to all get a cab back together. We got back without any trouble, though a few of our group members decided they love to live on the wild side and stayed out till the morning. That morning we awoke to realize that we were now peace corps volunteers, in all our glory, and thus, had to find our own damn breakfast… sigh. I’m not sure when the next time I’ll be able to post a blog entry but definitely in 2 weeks or so when I’m able to come back to the capital to get paid. Tomorrow starts 3 month challenge, a requirement to remain in your village for 3 months and get to know people. I think it’s more of a “recommendation” than a “rule” but we’ll see how it goes. My mental sanity will always come first but more importantly being able to stay in contact with all of you, my family in friends. With everything that’s happened I really want to keep in contact with you all. A new adventure begins tomorrow, I hear it’s scary as hell to watch that peace corps vehicle drive away into the dust; but I am ready for anything. I have a few minor goals I hope to accomplish in the next few months up to the rainy season. Prepare my garden in the back yard to farm a few good fruits: watermelon, cantaloupe etc. Secondly I’ve bought some blue paint and have decided to paint my house Mediterranean style (blue windows and doors on a white mud brick house). On top of that I hope to start putting the data from the hospital into a computer, maybe teach a little English and IT, play lots of soccer, and read a few good books. To all my more frequent readers I hope you are enjoying my posts, and feel free to send me e-mails or letters with your comments, I know my grammar is f-ed though so don’t bother commenting on that. Stay tuned in two weeks to the next exciting installment :-P. Next post will be a good one too with my first weeks of three month challenge, grant it I survive it to tell the tale.

The Badass Factor, w/ just a hint of narcissism

Through the brilliant collage of emotion that was training it seems we have come full circle but have grown. We’ve found ourselves again in GPI waiting to swear in as volunteers. GPI is the same and this small strip of sandy Kairaba Avenue hasn’t changed but something is different. A feeling maybe, a soft sense of confidence; of what before was an unsettling anxiety has now turned into a silent optimism and familiarity. I’m still the same person that I came to the Gambia as: the strong willed, passionate, smartass I always was but now there is something more that I can’t quite touch on. It’s like I had so much space inside me, so much potential and I’ve finally started to fill all that room in. Tomorrow we swear in, take an oath to our country and ourselves… then party are asses off.

Yesterday we found out that everyone of the 15 health and community development volunteers has passed and will swear in, I personally was worried, but we made it. Every volunteer from Basse to Serrakunda has come to the Stodge for swear in. Have I explained the stodge yet? Well the stodge is something only found in Peace Corps the Gambia and not found in other Peace Corps countries. It’s literally a PCV frat house where people can stay for 60 some Dalasis a night while they are in the capital doing work. It is the site of many nights of drunken debauchery and making bad decisions. There’s TV where we watch all the DVD’s of tv shows sent from home and movies, a library of books that are passed through the PC grapevine, and two floors of rooms full of bunk beds and mosquito nets. Toilet paper is worth it’s weight in gold there and the bathrooms for some reason have an extra toilet for washing who knows what called a bidet. Damn French. After a few nights in the stodge due to the influx in PCVs in the capital we’ve been moved back to GPI till we go back to site. It’s very nostalgic as I described earlier and it sucks to think we had 2 more people in our group then. But life goes on slowly slowly, thus is the Gambian way.

Being here now with a knowledge of local languages it’s effect on the way people treat you is more than noticeable. Even though I still know my knowledge of Mandinka is far from fluent, when people hear me tell them in their native language I’ve only been here 2 months they think I’m a genius. It’s a big moral booster. And the respect that you gain by merely being able to do a full Gambian greeting is immeasurable. Language is so so important and I pray that on my own I can still advance my Mandinka. Plus it’s a huge help in haggling. They’ll give you their daughters hand in marriage for less than a butut. Our haggling skills had to come in handy today as we were giving our swearing in allowance to buy things for our huts. Beds, mattresses, gas burners for cooking, and paint to do a little decorating, I’m going to do my walls Pollack style.

It’s important to make your house your home here. Some days here the world may seem to collapse upon you and your home has to be your refuge and your escape. So yes for those of you who know me you know exactly how my house will end up looking (pictures to come), maps everywhere with soccer and animal posters on the walls. In the peace corps during your first few months in service we have what they call the “3 Month Challenge”. Technically I’m not allowed to leave my site for 3 months, but due to certain circumstances I really find it necessary to keep in touch with my family via e-mail, if not for my family for my own sanity. Honestly though I am super excited for 3 month challenge, painting my house, and getting to know my village. Wish me luck.

At swear in we’re going to be required to put on a skit for the director. That skit we’ve decided to contain a spoken word dancing and drum melody. It’s going to be interesting. An amazing part of it though is a beautiful poem/spoken word that another guy in our group wrote in training village that will start off the presentation. It paints a picture of life here in the Gambia is incredibly powerful and needs no introduction:

When the sun goes down in Africa
The Song of Gambia begins to sing.
And I ask myself, “With Bald Eagle’s Wings,
What harmonies can I bring?
What melodies can I sing?
If anything…”
“Domanding Domanding,” I’m told.
But here, our drums beat fast.
And will those same syncopations
Create relations like they did in our past?
And will they last?
We’ve learned that every chord progression
Consists of chord changes.
So we should never diminish, not even half-diminish
Any major or minor exchanges.
Though in all our arrangements we try to add the sustainable fourth,
We can’t forget the source, that sweet Gambian melody that came before.
With each note that we play and each word that we say,
We want our showmanship to display.
But hey…today…today…
I know in my soul, with the rhythm of our flow,
There’ll be no lyrical stuttering
No mandinka muttering
Just the smooth groove of the Peace Corps band,
Lending a helping hand,
Sweet as Tendaba bread and buttering
Uttering words unfathomable to some, but commonplace to us
Because playing the songs of the world is not a should, but a must.
-Alex Choy

Site Visit and Miny Toubabia

The day had finally arrived, I was driving to the site where I would work for the next two years. Alex and Katie were dropped off before me with the look of shear fear in their eyes as the peace corps SUV drove off in a cloud of dust. Driving down to my site I was nervous but actually more excited than anything else, for some reason I had a feeling that I was meant to go to this particular village, though even know I haven’t found out why. We had trouble finding my compound so we first stopped at the health clinic where I was going to do some of my work, to ask for directions. This wasn’t any normal clinic though, as soon as we stepped into the gated hospital we could tell this was different. Walking though the buildings, the men’s ward, women’s ward, children’s ward, maternity ward, and even a dentistry unit being built I realized this was nicer than some inner city clinics! The entire place was pimped out with large solar panels, powering the entire facility with electricity, and what more, to my amazement, the glory of a flush toilet (with TP for that matter)! The first time I sat down with my counterpart and the Dutch women who headed the clinic they uncapped an ice cold bottle of coke for me. “American’s love their Coke”, she said, and I was in to much sheer happiness to tell her I was a Pepsi fan. This place was not like Kiang at all, and may very well be the only green area of the Gambia, with an abundance of fruit like something out of a movie. Mango trees everywhere, Baobabs, and to what I’d find out later would be an Orange tree in my back yard… yes… that’s right… fresh, squeezed orange juice. I was in heaven. If that wasn’t enough we then got to witness my house; my compound is rather large and from the outside it’s like any African housing, shops very close as well as easy access to a pump. Opening the door to my house though (though it’s still mud brick and a tin roof I’ve upgraded my residence from hut to house, though some would still consider it a hut I guess) it was a freaking mansion. Easily more than 3 times the size of my dorm room of which I lived comfortably in for 4 years. The house was brand new with green floors and even the nice rice bag ceiling to protect me from falling woody debris from the supports.

Did I mention my backyard had an orange tree??? And plenty of room for Maringa planting (there I said it, so all you Ag-fo’s can leave me alone), as well as my Wal-Mart watermelon and cantaloupe… is it racist to plant watermelon in the Gambia??? Just curious. Ironically it grows super well here, as well as other warm soil plants. The people here are all very nice especially my host family and counter part who have been more than amazing! Not to mention the hospital has been so kind to me in my first days here. They’ve lent me a bed to sleep on till I buy some things in Kombo. The people overall in the village go out of their way to be kind, but maybe it’s that I’m new and I have come from the Bronx. It’s also nice to know that several compounds in the village get Senegalese satellite television and watch all the live football games… oh yes. You should see it, it’s really odd to see African tin roof compounds with satellite dishes and color tvs. This place is so perfect that I’m severely nervous of the terrible secret this village must hold. Maybe they sacrifice people every month or have secret Nazi youth meetings, what ever it is I’ll get to the bottom of it. I played soccer with the kids for the first time too the other day. I was nervous if I played shitty the first day they’d never let me play with them again. They have some big tournaments in the rainy season playing other villages and I really hope to get on the team. The men here are much better than those in Kiang where I was the local Pele, now I’m just a toubab who can play, but I guess they assume I’d be good just cause white guys from England come all the time and are pretty good. The entire American soccer community’s positive perception rests souly on my shoulders.

On the last day before I had to head out to Kombo for swear in the most proud moment since I’ve been here occurred. We were negotiating payment of rent, food, and laundry and my counterparts brother went into a long speech where he explained that they went through the long peace corps volunteer application to bring me here and that they felt it was their responsibility to take care of me; that I was part of the family, part of this community, and I shouldn’t worry about those things. It made me feel such a sense of responsibility that I have to this community to leave it better than I found it, and to give all the time, experience, and passion I process. It’s kind of daunting now that I think about it. Either way I definitely plan on sneaking a few bags of rice, jimbo, and oil, whenever I can to help pay my way. My next post I hope to talk about swear in, which is going to be the sickest party this side of the Atlantic. Every peace corps volunteer in county’s coming to the capital for it. I love you all, keep reading, writing, and calling. Oh and on a side note, I just found out Amanda’s puppy is still alive… though it’s probably better off dead than to be an animal in west Africa.

Fire in the Sky, the last days of Kaiaf

Training village has finally come to an end and we have all departed for our site visits. I’m currently in the woman’s ward of a decked out solar hospital in my permanent site, random I know, but I’ll go into that later. I’m sure you’re probably wondering by the title of this post what happened so I’ll go strait into the story. A long time a go, in a distant land there lived a knight and a dragon or something….

So the last week in training village went rather smoothly actually. The whole group got together in Medina (the wolof village between Kaiaf and Serra Samba) to visit a baker who could make pizza, they were really huge calzones though. Language was still a struggle but I made some amazing advances in that department the last two weeks. My LCF (language and cultural facilitator) says I should do fine on the test if I don’t stress but I’m still worried. God willing the next post will be talking about finally being able to swear in having passed the language test, but right now I’m pretty nervous. Looking back on it though if any of you came and visited me here you’d probably think I was fluent, but I’m honestly not even remotely close. *cross your fingers for me or I’ll probably be home in a few weeks lol* In the last post I mentioned about swear in how the head director of all the peace corps, aka the head honcho, is coming to The Gambia; and that our entire ceremony will be taking place on live Gambia TV (which sounds amazing but if you actually knew the viewing population of the one Gambian tv station you’d laugh). Regardless I am being asked to say a Hebrew prayer for the Jewish volunteers in the Gambia, which I’m pretty sure is only me but I guess I’m enough of a Jew for the whole country. If only you could witness the Jew-fro I’m currently sporting in all it’s glory. I’m going to get my ass lynched. Not to mention I am going to be singing the national anthem on television and have decided to do the Whitney Hueston super bowl version.

I’m rambling again and I apologize, back to Kaiaf. The real excitement happened the last 4 days in village. We were too leave on Wendesday and that past weekend we had all gone to Soma to buy fabric to have our African garb made for swear in. That Sunday Katie got into a huge fight with her host family over payment of her laundry or something, and earlier that day Amanda had got a puppy (4 days later may he rest in peace). So come Monday morning we were all pretty riled up. That afternoon I got on my soccer gear to head to the field like usual and to my shear amazement witnessed a grotesque spectacle that only the horrors of a late night movie could compare to. A large semi-truck full of generators, computers, school supplies, and cricket sets; and hanging on to the back end of the truck a large fat British chap, shirtless, his belly “homer simpson” style hanging over his belt line as he shouted directions on removing a large generator from the truck. The entire village had come to watch… it was a mob. I ironically sat in the background looking from a prospective I would have never thought, that of the local who working for the peace corps knows the importance of sustainability in a community. After being able to make fun of the toubab in Mandinka I left to go home and bathe. It had already turned dark and I was taking off my shirt to bathe when I heard a huge explosion in the distance towards the school. The day before we had joked about how we should call in an air strike (possible napalm) for this village and put it out of it’s misery and I feared our wish had come true. What made me more un-easy was the story I was told a few days ago.

It turns out 3 years ago there had been an armed robbery in Kaiaf by escaped Cassamance rebels from Senegal. They had shot three men and killed a Mauritanian fellow. Why they would rob a broke little shop in Kaiaf I have no idea… the criminals here aren’t exactly the smartest bunch of guys. Another explosion went off directly overhead but this time I spotted the culprit. A large fire works display was being shot off at the school in all it’s brilliance. I threw back on my shirt and ran to the school. It was evening prayer time in the Arab world and my host mother, bless her heart, was completely ignoring the explosions overhead, focused in prayer… that’s faith. A few of the kids I’ve played soccer with in the village ran up to me with the look of terror on their face, “Demba!! What is this!?!? Why is the sky exploding?!? Can this hurt us!?!”. The kids had never seen fire works in their life and who could blame them. Not only was this white man from the UK sending off fireworks shirtless during prayer time but I was soon to find out had no idea how the people were going to use any of these electronics. At the school I got a chance to talk to him. Turns out he was from Sheffield and had once been homeless; coming across some money though had decided to organize a gathering of materials to send to Africa. I tried to tactfully ask why in the world he’d choose Kaiaf to give his things too and he explained how they were his “sister city”. I started to ask him a few questions on how he had planned to teach them how to set up the generator and computer lab, or if he had sponsored an IT teacher to come in and teach the students. He responded with quote, “Well if you could find someone to come here and show ‘em how to do it that’d be a load off our backs.”… sigh. I really don’t blame the man at all, what he did was extraordinarily kind and generous, and lord knows most Amercians won’t lift a hand for the remote let alone Africans. The problem still remains though, that one of the largest problems here in Africa is the lack of sustainability of projects and in turn the reliability of handouts from the western world.

I think in the end both sides our needed. Without donations from westerners wanting a tax break and a healthy conscience there would be no supplies to even teach these people valuble skills. On the other hand without sustainable programs of NGO’s and organizations like the peace corps; oh who am I kidding now other programs are like the peace corps, even NGOs aren’t on the frontlines like us… we’re f-ing badasses ;), nothing would get done and people would rely on handouts. Back to the story, yep there’s more. It was already dark and I had promised my host family a bumping party for my departure. I bought ingredients for pancatoes and the family started cooking. Amanda and Katie brought jolly juice, a type of powdered “gator aid-like” mixture that we’re sure causes cancer and/or can be used as a pesticide. They also brought attaya, a sugar packed green tea, an ESSTENTIAL for any Gambian event. This is where I decided to break out all the stops, I borrowed Bakary’s boombox and started playing some tupac from my iPod and once everyone was there finally showed my family the laptop. We watched an episode of scrubs which like any American show was WAY to raunchy for an African village. The best part was when “The Todd” pranced around in a banana hammock and my host sister’s mouth about dropped to the floor. All in all a successful evening. Two days later we were saying good by, and though I will miss my host family, who was amazing (and I thank them infinitely for giving me the one meal I like everyday) I think we could all agree that it was very easy for me not to tear up that I was leaving the Bronx for good. Hoping in the Peace Corps SUVs we headed off to site visit.

If you were curious to what was going to happen with the computers, the day before I left I set up the generator and made sure the computers were working. A few word of wisdom to anyone who donates a computer, make sure to take off your personal files before donating or people like me will get hours of entertainment reading all your files. Also, another reason I was so nervous about people donating computers and me having to be there to show them how is this very fact: the power voltage here in the Gambia is different from that in the USA, so a common situation is that a school here will get a large donation of computers, hook up the generators, and fry everyone of them in a matter of seconds. Thanks for the donation, I guess it’s the thought that counts. If the school is lucky though they have someone who knows a bit about electronics set up the system and make sure to change the voltage. Thankfully though newer computers compensate for voltage automatically, so it won’t be a problem in a few years. I was able to get a hold of an IT PCV in Birkama whose going to contact his friend in Soma and hopefully if he’s not busy he’ll be able to take a few of those 15 dalasi gilly rides to Kaiaf and teach some IT.