Back to the Land

As you all well know west Africa lives and breaths the game of soccer, their “football”. The European Championship has been going on for the last few weeks; that with The Gambia’s uninspired attempt to qualify for the 2010 world cup in South Africa has made this place glued to the TV. Each compound reserving all the generator fuel they can and left over car batteries to power their Televisions for the length of the game. Crouched around the screen in a packed hut, everyone’s skin glistening from the liters of water we’re sweating out to watch the game in this sauna. De Rossi takes the ball for Italy, time’s running out for the Italians with only 10 minutes in the game to go when, *Snap* African music begins to play and text flashes on the screen proclaiming, “Back to land”. The next 20 minutes involve an infomercial where President Jammeh is mock planting rice in the fields in a complete Nike warm-up suit, Nike hat, and Nike shoes (when the president of a small west African country got sponsored by Nike I have no fucking clue). President Jammeh’s no Michael Jordan. He inspects the cassava and picks ground nuts from the field now back again with his traditional white African gown and royal scepter. “Back to the land.” Flashes another time on the screen, like a juvenile reminder to the people who base their lives around the planting and harvest season that maybe, if they’re not busy or anything, go back to the fields. As if they weren’t required by their own growling stomachs to do just that. Regardless of the necessity for the infomercial I couldn’t help but scream, “BACK TO THE FREAKING GAME!”… but it was too late, by the time the game came on the referee was blowing the final whistle and a lengthy sigh enveloped the room.

Now it’s become a sort of inside joke with a few of the guys and I. After our typical Gambian greetings and proverbial nicknames they will exclaim, “BACK TO THE LAND DEMBA!!”, “You to sir! Back to the land!” I will reply. Actually indirectly I listened to the message and in my own boredom have constructed a garden (or in Mandinka, ‘naako’) in my bathroom. My bathroom isn’t very big. It has a cement walkway to a typical cement pit latrine in the back. It’s surrounded by a termite infested bamboo fence which is about 6 feet tall. There is also a fence between a small dirt plot and the pit latrine making ample space to plant a few vegetables or trees. The other day, having used every inch of space in my backyard/bathroom, planted several rows of sweet corn… thank you Wal-Mart for the seeds. I figured that since my watermelon and cantaloupe will have to wait till the dry season to be planted, I might as well plant the most American vegetable I could think of.

Time passed by as I’m updating this entry, my Toubabenou “Corn” has sprouted only a few of the seeds and I fear if I’m lucky I’ll get a 50% yield; and yes the Mandinka word for corn bares a striking resemblance to the word for white man. The rains have been coming harder and more frequently and the rats seem to be taking shelter in the space between my rice bag ceiling and the corrugate roof. That evening the lighting even frightened the little bastard enough to puke on my ceiling so that now I have the delightful aroma of vomit when I walk into my house. I’ve tried to find where exactly the smell originated but I figure even if I find it I’m not going to be able to clean it. Fortune it seems comes in pairs. The next evening I started to feel terribly sick. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, “no, no, Steven couldn’t possibly go into yet another repulsive story about getting sick in the peace corps”… but yet I will anyways ;). Being a veteran by now of getting sick in my house I once again feeling the onset prepared my bucket, towel, toilet paper, and even set my iPod to a delightful playlist entitled, “Music to spew to”; A little AC/DC, some Metallica, then to add a tad more melancholy to the occasion a little bit of Chopin. So there I am, rain crashing down on my tin roof, the sound of children outside screaming and playing in the rain, and me, pretty much doing a handstand over my bucket and putting the turkey vulture’s adaptation of projectile vomit to shame. A short interlude presented it self as I gasped for air and sighed in relief. My cat strolls by to check out the situation as I continue to catch my breath on my bed. She comes closer circling the bucket of fresh stomach sludge. I think to myself, “Don’t do it.” She circles again pondering. Don’t do it. She picks her body up placing her front paws on the rim of the bucket and sniffs the contents curiously. Don’t you dare, her paws slip as she falls to the floor. At the risk of a zoology major anthropomorphizing his pet… smart cat.

The explosions from my stomach lasted until 4 in the morning when I was able to keep down enough water to take a few Tylenol and knock myself out. I spent the next day relaxing and avoiding my typical schedule of working at the hospital or visiting the school. Come the evening I was feeling well enough to watch the Euro 08 final with Germany and Spain. After it was over and Spain’s victory put a smile on my face I sat outside to get some fresh air when once again… out of no where…I was forced to defend America. “YOU AMERICANS ARE ALWAYS FIGHTING AND CAUSEING WAR! I’m a Gambian, I am only about peace but you Americans just want to kill and make guns.”, my neighbor proclaims and I hesitate at first not wanting to go into it, I merely shake my head. “You made the Atomic Bomb, RPG, Missiles, the Ak-47” he exclaimed. At this point I had to interject, “You do realize that The Ak-47 was invented by a Russian scientist, and that the explosive gun powder from most of these weapons was invented in Asia? Not to mention that a weapon of any kind is completely harmless unless someone picks it up and pulls the trigger. Which is a decision arrogantly made by too many Africans” I even went off into a rant about if Gambians weren’t so fucking peaceful and stood up for once for what they believed in instead of wallowing in their countries own pity party of excepting handouts for all their problems maybe you’d be better off. Perhaps I went to far but he forced me to snap back anything that came to mind. The last thing I feel like dealing with after the night I had puking my guts up was to have to, once again, defend American ideology against blatant stereotyping and exacerbation. It’s exhausting and in a way so typical. Everyone has a right to an opinion, lord knows I have more than enough, but there has to be a better forum and decorum to it then attacking me for no reason on my front porch. Every day my job becomes less and less a humanitarian mission and more and more a cultural exchange duty. Most of the people here haven’t left their village let alone their tiny country and all they know of foreigners is what they see in the tourist district or from what they’ve seen on television and movies. So who can blame them for thinking that we are all John Waynes and Bruce Willis’s, gun toting, adrenaline pumped, fighters with an attitude. What stops them from taking it a step further that all the Chinese people they see are just super fucking good martial artists. What is here is there they say and I’ve met plenty a kid in northeast Ohio who had never left the state and yet still couldn’t tell me where Toledo was. This world we live in.