Down the rabbit hole we go

“Much has happened since my last blog entry. I’ve trudged through the holiday season away from home but come out the other end well enough. I’ve learned some information about the work and activities going on in my village that shocked me while I wasn’t ready for it. Most Peace Corps volunteers slowly learn the truth about their villages and the organizations they work for gradually throughout their service. I though, by some extensive blankets of ignorance placed upon me during the adjusting process, whether by myself or others, had either dismissed them with more rational explanations or had through acts of laziness completely disregarded them. I am now in the process of writing that wrong. In the time frame of about two hours one new years evening my eyes would be opened to many things regarding my work, my village, and foreign aid in the Gambia in general. It was a surprise at the time but several days of contemplating the information has brought about what I hope is a great opportunity to do work that will truly help the community I’m living in and not be the temporary crutch that is most of the Aid work here. All this information led me to not only finally set in motion the process of starting a community forest but to recommend an impulsive and rather extraordinary proposal to my VDC (Village Development Committee). A special thanks to Zack Rosen for the beach pictures seen in this entry, stay sane up in the boonies. But without further ado, and in recognition of my previous blog entry’s extensive length, I will begin the new entry I’ve entitled, Down the rabbit hole we go.”

The American holiday season had begun in full force in West Africa. Restaurants and clubs in the tourist region were at their best behavior (as best they can be) advertising their Christmas parties and specials. Fake snow was beginning to be sprayed in the windows of the PC transit house and plans were being made to cook elaborate make shift American meals. I came into town Christmas morning to relax for a day or two before I would have to head back to village for the Semi-finals of a village football tournament. A few of the volunteers who don’t celebrate Christmas decided to get together and do our own barbecue dinner. The night before I had been surprised with a improvised Chanukah party at my site mates village complete with a homemade menorah made out of candles and a cardboard box and including potato latkes made with ingredients Katie and Jennie could find at the village store. Back in Fajara though we prepared cheeseburgers and Alex and I negotiated a wicked great deal for a case of the local beer. It went down like this, we walked into a small happy hour bar that we frequent while we’re in town and asked the owner if she could scrounge up a case of the export beer (the lager form of the local beer). She says she could give it to us at the regular price of 25 dalasis per beer for the case with a deposit of 100 dalasi for the bottles that would work out to about 600 or some dalasi. I mentioned how we are return customers and are fully trustable to return the case of bottles, which are worth 5D a pop; then Alex, who I’m now quite positive has the ability to do the Jedi Mind trick, literally says with hand motions and all, “how bout you just give it to us at the happy hour price, 20 dalasis a beer?”, with out pause she responded with, “I will give it to you for 20 dalasis a beer.” Alex and I gave each other a look like: uhhh is she serious? No way in hell that should have worked. So without a word we thanked her and started walking the full case of export beer back to the transit house, mission accomplished.

The day after I returned back to my village to prepare for the big semi-final game that afternoon. It would be Leeds United vs. my team, Babylon. These teams for years have had a deep rivalry and for the past 3 no team has beat the other, year after year only being able to pull out a draw, of which is statistically ridiculous but which fully explains the extent of this feud. That afternoon would begin the typical pregame rituals. The team would meet at Jarju kunda in the back of the village, Aka the compound that was pimped out with solar panels, tv, and good cooking and we would all sit, chat, shoot the shit, and my goalie would show me the naked pictures of American celebrities that were texted to his phone, TIA. We sat, looked at a few family pictures (not the naked kind mind you), and talked English football. As the whole team arrived we met out in the back yard to begin the soccer rites to protect us from injury and evil spirits on the field. Three buckets were placed in front of us, one with clear water and a single palm branch in the bottom, the second, a smaller bucket filled with thousands of black objects of what looked like the tiny water crawlers found in stagnant ponds and lastly a bucket comprised of what seemed to be colored drinking water. We would all strip down and wash ourselves in each solution then sit down and pray for the safe victory of our team.

Lunch was then served, but like usual was too spicy for me so I nibbled on a few bites not to be rude and said my thanks as I went to the side of the house to put on my soccer gear and boots. Around a half an hour later we were all grabbing our things and walking to the field with our escort of the local child supporters from that side of the village. At the school we warmed up and the starters were read from a list. The game would begin and it looked to be the predicted repeated tie between the two teams, both stuck in a dirty nil-nil deadlock for the first half. In the later parts of the second half Leeds would score a great goal off of a jutting run and we would lose the game. I have since put myself on the market to be transferred and have already received several offers. I’m making them compete to increase my transfer fee that is currently comprised of Pancatoes and Cold Drinks.

Days came and went at the clinic as I spent most of my time getting a room ready for our new lab and fixing our one microscope with no light and rusty handles. Currently my laboratory is being used as a bachelor pad for three Kombo boys in town to help build our new skill center/video club. If you can’t tell I’m less than pleased, especially when I’m having to toss dirty socks and clear shirts off of equipment just to access my box of slides and alcohol swabs. I’m assured though that they will be leaving as soon as the skill center is finished, which could be anytime between now and the hot season 4 months from now. One afternoon I was sitting outside my place with a good book and mooching sweet tea off the local boys who were cooking it when I hear the death wails coming from the Alkalo’s compound. When someone dies in the community the family members begin to scream at the top of their lungs for their loss and alert the other villagers of the funeral which would take place soon after. A young aunt who had moved to a nearby village had died unexpectedly and they were transporting her body now for the funeral later that afternoon.

Since living in my village I have now been to more funerals than I can count on both hands and toes I’ve made a habit out of finding work to do which would prevent me from bearing witness to yet another tragic funeral. Today I was lucky, if I can even use that word, to be nominated to watch all seven bratty children in my compound whilst the older members of the compound went to grieve at the chiefs compound. This was a nightmare of epic proportions of which all the words that come to mind cannot describe just accurately enough. You must first realize that in Africa nobody hangs out inside their homes, compounds are mainly outside, there are no doors or high enough fences made here to contain and subdue the sounds of babies crying and small children horsing around. You must then take into account that in Africa, like most places, funerals are somber events that engulf the entire village; loud talking, laughing, and/or drumming which normally frequents the village, cease for several days. Try entertaining and some how controlling a compound full of 1-5 year olds with having to keep them quiet and telling them not to laugh, all of which in a new language you have still far from mastered. It was chaos. I usually pride myself on my ‘dealing with small kids’ skills but I was far far surpassed by their ability to be absolute pains in the ass. They must have watched old home videos of me as a kid and took notes. The Snyderman family loves to tell stories of the demon child that was young me, and the seemingly endless crying I was able to produce, which is sadly a talent that doesn’t pay the diaper bills. Karma had definitely come around and I had a vision of my dad laughing his ass off at the situation from the grave, giving me a look of “what goes around comes around”, and this made me grin.

The funeral proceeding next door at the mosque had begun and I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off chasing kids, pleading with them to keep their voices down and not embarrass me in the one responsibility I was given by my host family, and at the same time trying to make the fact that I was threatening to beat these kids believable (basically the standard parenting method in the area). Old men walking by gave me looks that said, “oh look at that white man disrespecting our culture and not controlling those kids who are running rampant, but hell I’m not going to walk over there and help.” Cue little mo-lamin crying. His cousin Musa took his lollypop and to a child the world might as well end. I pick him up and in a final act of desperation walk him across the street to get one of my host sisters to hold him, meanwhile all the men at the funeral turn and shake their heads in disgust at the toubab and his crying baby. Instantly, as soon as I leave the compound, the kids stop horsing around and sit politely on the porch… yeah, you got to be fucking kidding me, sigh.

The kids calmly sitting I then decide that I’d rather take part in the freaking funeral than have to deal with them any longer and I leave my post to go to the mosque and listen to the Imam give a speech regarding the woman. After it’s over all the men clumped close together and we were given time to pray and then as a group to walk to the graveyard behind the mosque and continue with the ceremony. Without fail and once again my phone lets out the croaks of an incoming text message and the faces turn. Thankfully though I don’t feel bad because at the same time another man’s phone rang and he actually picked it up. Here’s a rough translation, “Hey, how are you man? How is the wife? How are the home people? Yea that was a great football match! I’m telling you, screw Chelsea they bloody suck. Ok I’ll see you later, I’m sort of in the middle of a funeral. Ok, yea I’ll pick up some tea. Till later Sarjo.” Click. Culturally, even if the president is holding a press conference on the future of the country, when his phone rings, it’s answered. My guilt melts thankfully away.

The next morning I went back to the capital to take part in new years festivities with some other volunteers. We went out for some cheap dinner at a local corner stand where I ate the Philadelphia cheestake I had taught the cook to make a week before. Afterwards we collected some fire wood from the backyard of the transit house and dragged it all the mile and a half or so to the beach ignoring the stares and whistles of confused locals. At the beach a few of the girls decided that they want to walk another couple miles down the beach so that they can see the fireworks being shot off from Senegambia. They weren’t exactly carrying big branches, nor did they have a thorn lodged cozily in the side of their neck. Non the less we walked on and found a quiet spot on the side of a nice hotel along the beach and I began prepping the fire whilst the girls went to find some matches. They came back laughing hysterically. Turns out the hotel security told them that we weren’t allowed to sit on the beach and that the Government Tourist Authority was watching us, eluding to navy seal like characters hiding under the water waiting to come out brandishing automatic weapons and hand grenades. I continued to start the fire.

The night was beautiful with a full set of stars and the quiet ocean breeze. We sat by the warmth of the fire and watched the tide slowly come in, then realized that we had placed the bonfire in the tidal zone and had only a few hours before the entire area of beach was taken back by the sea. Not letting it bother us we continued to enjoy the evening as we are PCVs and could make any situation enjoyable. A few friends from Birkama came by but only stayed for a bit, they didn’t look to excited to chat in English. That could have been because one of the girls was named Kumba and I was giving her a hard time by calling her, Kumbo, which is Mandinka for “to whine”. Her friends got a kick out of it. The fire works came at midnight exploding directly over head, some even hitting the palm tree we were partially sitting under and the tide was still holding back from the fire. A few hours and a few more beers later we found ourselves walking along a back road and the girls finagling us a free ride in some random dudes Land Rover back to the transit house.

The morning came and I would spend most of the day relaxing and watching a few new movies brought back from some families of volunteers who had just visited. That afternoon I’d get a call from my counter-part’s older brother who lives near by in the capital. He had invited me earlier to visit his house some time when I was free. He picks me up in his late 90s SUV and greets me as his son is dozing on and off halfway between the floor and the back middle seat. “Demba, how are you?” Going into a story he then tells me that while I was hanging out in the capital for new years something grave happened at the clinic in the village. One of the nurses at the clinic, it just so happens, accidentally cut the penis off of a young boy in the process of circumcising several boys. “What!?!? No way.” I cringe and recoil putting my hands protectively over my crotch as if I was next. “So there has to be a rational explanation for this? What did the nurse say?” “I didn’t get to talk to him directly yet but on the 4th and final boy to be circumcised he clipped the entire head of the penis off accidentally.” “How do you accidentally clip the head off of the penis? What is he a regular Lamin Bobbit?” “It is very possible that the village over exaggerated the entire event. They are not familiar with the hospital and he very well could have only taken a little part of the tip off and it be mistaken by someone with out a medical background”, he would retort.

We would go on to have a further conversation about the entire history on how the clinic was founded and previous situations that had come up as well as some disturbing insights into my own village’s politics; including a very startling window into the fate of foreign aid money in the Gambia and with my clinic specifically. Perhaps if I ever end up writing a book one day I will include all of the chilling details, because it without a doubt has had a huge impact upon my tour of duty so far; but currently I will just continue with the circumcision story.

Anxiously wanting to learn the truth about the circumcision accident, and in great need of some down time to absorb all the information I had received the night before, I went back to village early next morning. On top of all of this I the next day would be giving a proposal to my VDC in regards to building a community forest and wood lot as both an amazingly profitable income generating activity in lumber sales and ecologically a huge step towards protecting one of the last forested regions of the Gambia. Essentially, 10 years from now the village will be able to harvest all the wood from this Gmelina and Cashew forest and make a shit ton of money, pardon my Wolof. A big step, but my mind was flowing other places and I sat down that evening with Elbou, my working counter-part and 30 some host brother, in his quiet living room. His door is right next to mine and I frequently take refuge there at night to sit on the big red, 70s style, flannel couch; usually pulling out a book and reading by candle-light or talking about cultural differences and local politics with his very bright and very opinionated wife. Elbou was relaxing like usual on one of the lounge chairs as his son slept in the single bed on the other end of the room. “So what really happened at the hospital a few days ago?” I asked him. “He did end up coming and admitting that he had cut the entire head of the penis off. The boy was rushed to the hospital in Birkama, he will never be able to use it normally again,” Elbou said. “So did he do it on purpose?” I asked. “No, he said he didn’t know what came over him. See in our African traditions there are many evil spirits and superstitions associated with the circumcisions ceremonies, which is why traditionally we have Kankurans (explained in previous blog entries). Very often during these circumcisions in the bush the man will be holding the boys penis and it will, swoosh, quickly be sucked in to make a vagina. Or the man will be holding the penis and it move on them to where they thought they were cutting just the tip they would then cut the entire trunk.”

The nurse is normally amazingly good at what he does and contrary to most staff in country extremely hard working, not to mention a really nice guy. Regardless that’s a mistake that makes a very difficult situation for the clinic. In the end they decided to not fire him but allow him to chose to leave if he wanted. During that night Elbou enlightened me on an addition problem. It just so happens that one of the original nurses of the clinic who was caught over charging patients and stealing from the hospital is back in town spreading a deadly hospital smear campaign; and what would you guess but he came at the perfect time, with the current situation providing fuel for his revenge trip. For the past few months he’s been wondering around the neighboring villages, sitting at the bantabas (village meeting place where men chat and relax) spreading rumors about the hospital, everything from giving the wrong injections to killing patients. He also has decided to set up an incredibly illegal private clinic out of the back of his bicycle; setting up appointments to meet patients at the border or even his house and using his stockpile of stolen drugs to treat them. In a time when people still come to the clinic and tell the staff not to dress their wounds because they, “heard it wasn’t good for healing” and that someone told them “it will make the wound heal slower to dress the wound”. This isn’t exactly the greatest set of circumstances for a health volunteer to promote healthy living and using the health clinic as a clean environment from getting better versus their backyard.



Though the timing was terrible I had a small epiphany. An idea to make the clinic both sustainable for a time when the caring people of the Netherlands decide to stop holding our little clinic a float; and a way to teach the community how important it is to set aside money every year for the health and well being of their family. In African villages everyone is family, especially in the tiny country of The Gambia. If someone were to set aside 200 dalasi in their closet for a rainy day lets say, and then their neighbor came talking about how they hadn’t eaten in three days and their child was ill, any Gambian could do nothing but give up all the saved change they had to take care of each other. Both the blessing and the curse of this society is that as soon as anyone comes across any bit of money, people come a knocking with a plethora of needs, and as a good Gambian Muslim they will never refuse. Even if that said person has been saving money for the past few years to send his daughter to high school or get his son a decent pair of shoes. This makes saving any amount of money completely unattainable. How then can a family who comes across some health issues ever take care of their family with no savings and no insurance? They just get sick, hope for the best, and pray the medical bill doesn’t go past the man of the family’s monthly income. I know it sounds ridiculous, but in a village like mine with a private clinic why couldn’t we create some type of village insurance policy?

Lets say that every compound, depending on their size, pays a certain amount of money every year, maybe 800 dalasis or so for the average family? What if all that money went into a bank account, overseen by a committee, and then that that fee granted every paying member of the village free health care? All medicines, visits, and even free ambulance transportation in case of emergency where the individual had to be transferred to a larger government clinic would be covered. And how bout if you even offered a free yearly check up to every villager? This would cost the hospital nothing and works as a great scheme to get every person, children especially, to come to the clinic and receive health education on living healthy: dental care and keeping clean. Gottcha kid! You just got health education with out knowing it. Ok it’s a little socialist, please don’t call me a hippy, but it would work. That amount of money is a lot for a compound but realistically is less than what it would cost them if any one member of their family got severe malaria this year, which sadly is highly probable. How do they pay for health care now then? The answer is they don’t, but the private clinic was made to help the village, so they take a big hit in the budget department and take care of the individual, or put them on a payment plan that they will ultimately never pay. This does not fix all the problems, the clinic will still be losing money, just not as much as it does now; but this would be a huge step into making our clinic sustainable so that one day, when the money stops coming, we can stand on our own. Which in my little chat after new years seems more likely to come sooner rather than later, and like most private Gambian run clinics in the country would crumble and their beautiful facilities would go empty as soon as the white people up north decided to stop sending money. Not that they should continue to send money, but the tough truth is that these clinics, and this country, needs to learn to stand on it’s own; to make those small difficult steps through muddy shores to reach their independent potential.

Sounds great right? Yea so do those products you can buy only from those TV infomercials, then you actually get the package. Now try convincing a community that currently thinks the hospital is the devil reincarnate to shell out a good chunk of their paycheck for health care. Luck is the current village health care policy and people pay dividends by crossing their fingers every month. Realistically they’re saving a ton of money on this insurance plan, and living the way villages here have been living for years: everyone taking care of each other. The families that are healthy essentially pay for the families that are sick and visa versa. So currently I’m trying to counter act the clinic smear campaign resorting to talking to specific elders in the village, the chief, and I may even get dirty enough to go to the religious leader and get him to pop a bit of info into his weekly sermons. Truth is though, with the timing, this will most likely fall just as fast as the idea was conceived. I am in turn forced to pay those same monthly dividends and cross my fingers.

Elbou is a very wise man I’ve found, even for his young age. Yesterday after he had heard enough of my venting frustrations on trying to figure out a way to make these two projects work and attempt to change the way I go about my classes at the school he said one thing:

“Look Demba, you could support a man in the village for ten years, pay all his bills, take care of his health care, and if ten years later you stopped he would act as though you had never given him anything and further to tell people you weren’t that great of a person to begin with. That’s just the way things work here in West Africa. People talk and nothing is good enough. People will even say that you Demba are not doing anything at the school to help their kids, even though we both know you are. If you tell someone to go and have a half of your bread, they’ll take it all. In the end you can’t just stop helping people. You will never get anything in return but you can’t stop. The only person who will ever repay you is God. Don’t help for the people, help for your self, and because it’s the right thing to do.”