Achieving Normality, musings during Ramadan

Things have been slow for the past month and I find myself again apologizing for not being able to update my blog. Life here in an African village has, in the scariest way possible, become normal. Things that would have, and probably should now, be freaking me out seem extremely normal to me. Around my training group this has been the majority of the conversation, this completely oddity at the fact that nothing really is odd any more. First coming to the Gambia everything was new and exciting, and throughout trainings challenges we were continually assaulted by this new way of living. With that was that thrill of adventure and anticipation of the unknown that with pissing us off a little also fueled our advancement; even getting to a new site, meeting new people, chatting and spending hours psychoanalyzing our village and friends for potential counterparts and hard workers presented a test. Now though I’ve become a part of the family here in my village. Everyone knows my name, work has been dull even with the influx of patients due to the rainy season I am still awaiting the shipment of our lab and computers from Holland to start the majority of my work, and though school is in session most parents won’t send their kids back to school until after Ramadan. My family here no longer celebrates my arrival from weekend trips to the capital. Typically my comings and goings if even for a day trip would warrant sobs of, “We will miss you very much” to songs on my return with chants of, “DEMBA NAATA! DEMBA NAATA! DEMBA FELEE!” *Demba has come, Demba has come!*. Original this saddened me, that maybe they just grew tired of my silly jokes and magic tricks, but after further evaluation I found quite the opposite; that this was proof of my village integration. I was no longer the stranger to which celebrations were necessary but now a member of the family. Though I am still swarmed by the 10 small children that live in my compound every return it is humbling in a way to have been absorbed into this village.

All this though, as I mentioned previously, has presented a problem for some of the members of my training class. Some things that happen on a regular basis in village should still be weird to me. Shouldn’t they? When I see odd nostalgias of west African culture my mind reminds me I should be weirded out by them as an American… but I’m not. The Gambia has it seems become a home away from home and as the nostalgia of living in an African village has warn off coming to grasps with the normality of everything though seems incredibly easy is actually incredibly difficult. It’s odd how the best people for Peace Corps service are actually the worst. Most PCVs are restless travelers who seek daily new adventures and sceneries and the mere mention of settling in one place for any brief moment in time brings nightmares. Yet a two year service, in one village, in one job, with one family is probably the most difficult thing for this personality scheme. Even though it takes a person like that to make the plunge into Peace Corps service it seems most volunteers soon become subdued and calmed by the quite family life and are forced to fight and focus their own free spirits.

Again, enough of my rantings. With the arrival of two Dutch medical students from the University of Utrecht work has been much less stressing. I have two people to assist in health talks, more recently one on HIV and Aids, age mates to chat with and shoot the shit on western life, and the chance to learn so very odd card games from the Netherlands that involve farming and pigs. Plus it’s always great to look sweet speaking the local language and being the typical badass I am on a regular basis… or maybe just ass, that’s still debatable. Though the summer was tough in the food department the month of September was actually surprisingly pleasant with some extremely gracious care packages from family and friends back home. The month of Ramadan is a month of fasting during the day light hours so I cooked for myself most of the time, I am too proud of a Jew it seems to fast this year, I do particularly enjoy the opportunities I receive when I tell people that I am not fasting until Yom Kippur and that no, not all white people are Christian. I could take this opportunity to reflect on the beauty of the holiday of Ramadan but this was already the topic of several of my recent letters home and so I will leave you to them and wikipedia until next year.

The new group of trainees for the Education sector were sworn in recently and I again found myself on national television sporting a borrowed blue button down shirt and the intimidating Oakley’s I jacked from my brother before leaving… thanks bro. My host wife in the compound was particularly jealous as she said, “I’ve lived in the Gambia (pronounced Khambia) for 24 years and you come here for 8 months and have already been on the tele’ three times!” With the new swear in came once again another addition of the drunken debauchery that is the Julbrew party (read same titled blog entry from several months ago for more details). Though this time it seems it was subdued quite a bit even with the addition of a new “Julbrew Strong” lager added to the assortment of free booze (a new addition which had twice as much alcohol content as the regular Julbrew). The party started, 3 hours went by, and then all the beers were cut off. Either things got a tad out of hand, which I don’t believe at all as most people had their shirts on in comparison to last time and if polled most Julbrew veterans would have rated it anywhere from “completely tame-quite lame”. Or maybe it was the overall consumption of exorbitant amounts of booze, which I also don’t believe was the case as last Julbrew’s party lasted long into the night as apposed to this ones… plus I wasn’t remotely intoxicated yet so this couldn’t be the case. Rumor was (as the rumors fly in the peace corps community) that Julbrew had gone under new ownership and thus would be phasing out the amount of parties, which if so would warrant a long amount of sighing and possibly even tears from this tragedy among a community of young volunteers who lived for these epic parties of rejuvenation from village life. But instead I at least have decided to place the blame on the large amount of American Undergrad students studying abroad here and the young MRC (medical research center) workers, however hot some of those British girls were, who unturned crashed the party; crashing the party it just so happens, successively coincided with the cutting off of the booze. Damn red coats and frat boys! ARG!

Back at the home front a series of powerful storms has laid siege to my back yard. I wake up to find that the bamboo that protects my bare ass every morning from the entire village seeing me had fallen down in the storm almost destroying most of my Maringa trees; and, as is just my luck, found myself really having to use the bathroom. In opening my door to investigate the area my cat darted out of the door cracked open but I had no time to chase her. Immediately I grabbed my gear and walked briskly to the hospital and attempting to avoid the entire village who today wanted to have long morning greetings and chats with me. 100 meters away, I round the corner of the hospital compound and let out a sigh of relief to the porcelain throne that awaited me. To my amazement though the clinic staff was running all over the place apparently attempting to figure out some situation of which I could care less about. I greeted briskly, placed my stuff in the addmisions cubical and ran to the bathroom door. “Demba wait, you can’t use that. The rain all this morning didn’t allow the water pump generators to fully charge so the water has been turned off” … fuck. I ran inside in hopes there would still be enough water to flush but in witnessing an already used and unflushed spectacle I ran to each of the hospital wards in search of a clean toilet. After this proved unsuccessful I ran to the one “indoor” pit latrine we have at the hospital which did not need water… it was locked. Sometimes drastic measures need to be taken so that a grown man does not shit his own pants as I hope some of my audience can relate. Picking the only decent looking toilet left in the hospital I decided to just go and pray the water would come on soon to flush it. This being I’m sure not the last of an endless supply of poop stories.

After a recent attack by a former Peace Corps Country Director in Camaroon criticizing the effectiveness of the Peace Corps program I find it extremely necessary to stress how much good work peace corps volunteers are doing in this country. I hope to later put in a segment of comments from colleagues working as PCVs here with me, who are by far more poignant and insightful in such matters of debate than I, to discuss the ex-directors letter in a later blog. Though I did find most of his observations on the peace corps true and observant, none of them by any means concluded that the peace corps as a government program was unnecessary, if anything it stressed the importance of more data collection into effectiveness before any more budget cuts. I will repeat though that you be guided to some of my colleagues websites who have unlike me read his entire paper and come from educational backgrounds that are more apt in responding to such documents, unlike an over opinionated zoologist and part time jester. To diverge though I’ll update you a bit more on my local work projects: I went to the capital to escape village life for a few days a week ago and to talk with a friend of mine, located in a village east of me, about a program we just started to brainstorm. It would bring a new and more logic/critical thinking based class to the local school systems. I hope to base it off of something like the odyssey of the mind programs put on in America which focused on using the imagination and creative thinking to solve problems and Alex would like to add a bit more small business logic and skills to the program all of which are more than necessary in the lower education of the Gambia today. This included with some self esteem and team building exercised I think make it an after school activity that’s true importance is immeasurable. It’s something that I am really excited about and hope to update you all on later onto it’s progress.

I truly wish I could update you all on recent developments as I have a few really great stories to tell; but, ironically, these tales turned out to be a little too amazing to put in this blog for several reasons that I dare not go into, though I will briefly say involve border police late at night. Maybe one day when a movie is made on my stories, with me played by a young Harrison Ford mixed with a tad less wimpy Zack Braff, I will be able to fully reenact the tale. Until then I will continue to eagerly await my arrival back in the states for a few weeks and will bid you all adios until my next blog entry which I promise will be less lectury and more exciting as it will involve my trip to Dakar and inevitable culture shock with returning home and back to the Gambia. I will leave you then with a recent account of ridiculous t-shirts I’ve caught Gambians in my village wearing: “Mecca Casino, pimp’n” because not only am I sure the center capital of the Muslim faith indeed has a casino but it would inevitably have to be “pimp’n”. Shit… as I was typing this I just missed for the second time the chance to witness a delivery in our maternity ward! I walked in and she had already given birth. At least I got to say Mazel Tov. Maybe next time, I have no better chance to witness a baby delivery than working in a clinic in the fertility capital of the world, sub-Saharan Africa. I love you all, word to my homies, Metallica rules, Alhumdileligh.