I had another run in with the diverse assortment of animal species that live in my hut again. It was late at night after a meeting with the football team on how they need to get their act together. It didn’t end till 12pm and I was exhausted and feeling a cold coming on. Entering into my house I immediately stripped down to my sleeping clothes… aka the clothes G-d blessed me with. Don’t judge, it’s fucking hot here and a man’s got to sleep. So anyways, I sit down on my bed in nothing but my skippies and a dollar sized tanish scorpion runs right across my foot and into my embarrassingly large collection of shoes. I’m the beast-master and all but it was late and I’m not going to lie it scared the ba-jesus out of me. The first thing I did was yell at Dano, my cat, who didn’t exactly live up to her “hunter” namesake. Lazy bitch. I proceeded to then strategically hunt down and kill the intruder that so rudely disturbed my much needed beauty sleep. I cornered the monster in between my trunk and a large Listerine bottle. With the scorpion’s stinger ready to strike Dano decided to step into action and prove her valor. As to keep my kitten’s confidence up I pushed her away so she wouldn’t get her ass kicked. There I was poised and ready to strike, my weapon the back end of a plastic broom handle, and with a single focused blow slayed the monster in my hut. Dano jumped in to drag off the carcass before I could stop her and I spent 10 minutes chasing her down and disposing the carcass. Maybe when she gets bigger I’ll let her take on one of her own. As any of my stories would not be complete with out a touch of irony, coincidentally the name and official mascot of the Gambian National Football team is the Scorpions.
The other day the hospital received a very hefty donation of about 20 computers and monitors so that I could teach IT skills. I was taken aback by how quick we received them as I assumed I’d be waiting for months to even get one. I set an entire day aside to check them all and see how many I could use. One by one I went through all of them. Some made strange beeps then never turned on, other’s gave dramatic dying noises like a wounded animal. In the end only three ended up working, and of those three only one was in a useable condition that I could actually attempt to fix well enough to run a typing program. Yet all three… unfortunately… were in Dutch, a language that could easily be mistaken for Volgon; back to the drawing boards on the computer front.
On a worse note, I was toubabed in my own compound the other night. It was late and I wasn’t having the best day of my life, so I broke out my laptop and decided to watch an old episode of Scrubs with my family (if you’ve read early blogs about the problems associated with showing American television to Gambians, disregard it as my compound is a million times more exposed to western society than back in training village). There we sat, enjoying the humor of Zack Braff, my host mother even thought it was me (I was doubly flattered), and watched “the Todd” indiscreetly expose his ‘Banana Hammocks’. A young boy around 10 years or so walked into my host brothers house as we were enjoying the show and decided this was the optimal time to proclaim, “Toubab!”… yes, there is a white person in the room. It absolutely baffles me the nerve of these kids some times. What exactly was going through his mind, that he decided it was necessary to announce there’s a white person here, in the middle our compound, while we were intently watching a show. What confuses me even more is why the families here see nothing wrong with it. In America lets say, if a child were to be delivering a newspaper to my house in Cincinnati, while I was entertaining a black friend of mine; then he was to walk in and announce, “Black person! There’s a black person here!”. That child would be in an amount of trouble deeper than if he had called his sister a two cent Caucasian hussy. He would then be grounded for life and if it was me would feel guilty for a good amount of time after the punishment was over. If a child was walking around in front of other company screaming, “Blacky!” every time he passed an African American, the parents would be more than shamed by their child’s actions. Here though it seems they are completely ok with that behavior, more over in some areas literally train their children to say it. Just the other day I walked past a man (who after I had asked him how the home people are in Mandinka he morbidly responded with they are all dead) by the school his entire family chanted “Demba Toubabo, Demba Toubabo” at me. That not only tells me they actually knew my name, but that they also preferred to be perpetually ignorant. It baffles me.
So before I conclude another Iliad of a blog entry I’d like to end with one last story. After my football teams victory the kids wanted to raise some money for the transportation fees etc. and they all decided to throw a huge dance party at the school and charge 25 dalasis to enter. Doing the math in my head it was going to take 40 people to pay off the DJ who was charging us 1,000 dalasis for the event. It was a mess of sound and speakers packed into an office sized cubical classroom… a medical problem waiting to happen. I had fun the entire evening trying to teach the guys my age how we dance in clubs in America: aka I put a little crunk into a dance party which far more resembled a Jr. High dance than a club. Muslims schmuslims, dancing takes two. Regardless of the fact that the team actually ended up losing money on the event I woke up with my ears still ringing and a little disoriented from another night of lucid mephlaquine dreaming (the malaria medication… not to be confused with methanphenimines please, mother I don’t do drugs so don’t you dare think your kid ran off to the peace corps and started toking it up). Anyways in the confused mess of bringing myself back from the dream world there was an acute lapse in my thinking paradigm and I managed to put on a unique pair of pants. I walked the 30 meters to the pump to fetch water like any other day, greeting the dozen ladies who normally presence the pump for a chat while waiting to collect water. I sat down, continued my greetings, and waiting a few, what are now bewildering, moments to which I realized I had selected my favorite pair of genes that day. The pair that my mother pleaded I didn’t take to Africa as a cavernous rip was located right below my zipper… but they were my favorite pants, and I just assumed I’d be wearing underwear on a regular basis. That morning though, I had not, in a mess of daze and confusion, and exposed my testicles to the entirety of the pump. In retrospect I think I handled it very smoothly by not jumping at the realization of the situation; and not noticing anyone having remotely reacted to the spectacle I can only pray that by the grace of G-d my lanky legs had obscured my parts from view. Recently I was able to fix my jeans with the help of the sewing machine at the skill center, my favorite pair of jeans lives again. Just another day in the life of Steven in Africa.
The other day the hospital received a very hefty donation of about 20 computers and monitors so that I could teach IT skills. I was taken aback by how quick we received them as I assumed I’d be waiting for months to even get one. I set an entire day aside to check them all and see how many I could use. One by one I went through all of them. Some made strange beeps then never turned on, other’s gave dramatic dying noises like a wounded animal. In the end only three ended up working, and of those three only one was in a useable condition that I could actually attempt to fix well enough to run a typing program. Yet all three… unfortunately… were in Dutch, a language that could easily be mistaken for Volgon; back to the drawing boards on the computer front.
On a worse note, I was toubabed in my own compound the other night. It was late and I wasn’t having the best day of my life, so I broke out my laptop and decided to watch an old episode of Scrubs with my family (if you’ve read early blogs about the problems associated with showing American television to Gambians, disregard it as my compound is a million times more exposed to western society than back in training village). There we sat, enjoying the humor of Zack Braff, my host mother even thought it was me (I was doubly flattered), and watched “the Todd” indiscreetly expose his ‘Banana Hammocks’. A young boy around 10 years or so walked into my host brothers house as we were enjoying the show and decided this was the optimal time to proclaim, “Toubab!”… yes, there is a white person in the room. It absolutely baffles me the nerve of these kids some times. What exactly was going through his mind, that he decided it was necessary to announce there’s a white person here, in the middle our compound, while we were intently watching a show. What confuses me even more is why the families here see nothing wrong with it. In America lets say, if a child were to be delivering a newspaper to my house in Cincinnati, while I was entertaining a black friend of mine; then he was to walk in and announce, “Black person! There’s a black person here!”. That child would be in an amount of trouble deeper than if he had called his sister a two cent Caucasian hussy. He would then be grounded for life and if it was me would feel guilty for a good amount of time after the punishment was over. If a child was walking around in front of other company screaming, “Blacky!” every time he passed an African American, the parents would be more than shamed by their child’s actions. Here though it seems they are completely ok with that behavior, more over in some areas literally train their children to say it. Just the other day I walked past a man (who after I had asked him how the home people are in Mandinka he morbidly responded with they are all dead) by the school his entire family chanted “Demba Toubabo, Demba Toubabo” at me. That not only tells me they actually knew my name, but that they also preferred to be perpetually ignorant. It baffles me.
So before I conclude another Iliad of a blog entry I’d like to end with one last story. After my football teams victory the kids wanted to raise some money for the transportation fees etc. and they all decided to throw a huge dance party at the school and charge 25 dalasis to enter. Doing the math in my head it was going to take 40 people to pay off the DJ who was charging us 1,000 dalasis for the event. It was a mess of sound and speakers packed into an office sized cubical classroom… a medical problem waiting to happen. I had fun the entire evening trying to teach the guys my age how we dance in clubs in America: aka I put a little crunk into a dance party which far more resembled a Jr. High dance than a club. Muslims schmuslims, dancing takes two. Regardless of the fact that the team actually ended up losing money on the event I woke up with my ears still ringing and a little disoriented from another night of lucid mephlaquine dreaming (the malaria medication… not to be confused with methanphenimines please, mother I don’t do drugs so don’t you dare think your kid ran off to the peace corps and started toking it up). Anyways in the confused mess of bringing myself back from the dream world there was an acute lapse in my thinking paradigm and I managed to put on a unique pair of pants. I walked the 30 meters to the pump to fetch water like any other day, greeting the dozen ladies who normally presence the pump for a chat while waiting to collect water. I sat down, continued my greetings, and waiting a few, what are now bewildering, moments to which I realized I had selected my favorite pair of genes that day. The pair that my mother pleaded I didn’t take to Africa as a cavernous rip was located right below my zipper… but they were my favorite pants, and I just assumed I’d be wearing underwear on a regular basis. That morning though, I had not, in a mess of daze and confusion, and exposed my testicles to the entirety of the pump. In retrospect I think I handled it very smoothly by not jumping at the realization of the situation; and not noticing anyone having remotely reacted to the spectacle I can only pray that by the grace of G-d my lanky legs had obscured my parts from view. Recently I was able to fix my jeans with the help of the sewing machine at the skill center, my favorite pair of jeans lives again. Just another day in the life of Steven in Africa.
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