I would like to assure my family and friends that actually I’ve been very healthy the past month, knock on wood. WAIST is coming up soon (the softball tournament in Dakar, Senegal) so everyone is excited for that. Even more than excitement for Dakar is my groups realization that we have now officially been in the Gambia one year. Many things are associated with this mark but most of them include an epiphany of sorts. A realization that wow, you’ve made it a year, and for the most part in tact; and hell, I’ve carved out quite a niche for myself in my little village. So now I know which people are super fun to hang out with, and on the contrary the people and areas I should definitely stay away from. People know me and my language ability has gotten to a pretty decent level; not fluent by any means but I can get around enough to crack jokes, yell at assholes, and get the job done. We start to feel comfortable with our surrounding knowing what makes us happy and what provokes a PCVs rage and reaching that hump is encouraging, soothing and yet deeply scary.
We’re called upon as “veterans” now even though we really don’t feel like we’re experts on anything. This epiphany shows it self in the maturation of the peace corps volunteer, it’s the realization of what being a peace corps volunteer really is… a muse. One whose greatest accomplishments will go unnoticed and any praise or recognition will be given to others to bathe in. Your most meaningful projects will not be known and yet your failures exploited. It sounds terrible, but the epiphany is realizing how beautiful of a thing that really is. The fact that your real jobs as a peace corps volunteer is to plant that idea into the minds of the receptive, and to be the inspiration in a place where people have long accepted their circumstances. Hell yes that’s ridiculously frustrating, but yea, that’s our job, and like it or not you got a year and a month or so left. Integration’s as good as it’s going to get, so now all you can do is buckle down and make sure by the time you leave, something, anything, ends up being sustainable.
Lately I’ve taken up a role helping out the Drama and English Society at the school; a club that was created by a few teachers to enhance the noticeably poor English ability of the students along with giving them the chance to compete in a regional Drama competition. Now I’m no actor but I think I’m eccentric enough of an individual to fake my way into actually knowing what I’m talking about, my English is probably no better than there’s now that I think about. I helped do a mock play with the teachers the first few weeks. Tuesday we’d work on English and Thursdays were drama day. A week or so passed and I decided to do a lesson on getting into your part. I had all the students name some emotions on the board and say a simple sentence like, “I’m going to visit my friend today.” using different emotions. Needless to say after some prodding we had 4 adjectives to work with. In retrospect I probably should have worked on public speaking first because no one really wanted to get up and give an example. I’m really a terrible drama teacher. As the activity failed miserably I sat everyone down and asked them to try and remember a time when they felt one of these emotions, so that they could tap into that when they were acting later. I told some story about when I felt happy, scoring some goal for my soccer team in college, then I asked for one of the other teachers to tell a similar story about an emotion. No one volunteered. “Well Mr. Jatta, do you remember anytime you were happy? You are married right?” “Yes.” “So why don’t you tell me when you first fell for your lovely wife?” … probably a bad question. “Actually I’m divorced.” “Well that would be a great example of the opposite emotion I guess then.” I said under my breath. I called it a day after that one.
The thing about falling though is learning to pick yourself up again I’m told, so next week I schemed and thought about a more interactive drama activity. The other teachers decided that was a great day not to show up but I didn’t let it stop me. “Alright kids, today we will be role-playing, improving if you will. I want us all to make a mock restaurant.” I took volunteers for cooks, waiters, management, customers, and bus boys. I had one boy assigned to management take care of making sure his restaurant ran correctly and I took the customers outside. I gave each of them a more specific character, some were taking a girl out on their first date, others were rowdy soccer players coming off a winning game, the rest then were families and friends with specific quarks. Go. It was amazing to watch, the week before they were scared to even volunteer for the exercise but today they were getting into it, yelling at waiters that the food was bad, causing trouble, ordering desert…beautiful. Most were getting into it but I walked up to the two who were suppose to be on their first date, the girl was reading a book and the boy had put headphones in his ears. “I guess the date’s not going so well? Did you at least pull the chair out for the girl? Or was she trying to get a piece of salad out of her teeth?” I then also got bored, and proceeded to, with the help of one of the students, hold up the restaurant and steal all the cash before they were able to negotiate food for both of us.
Kulios or naming ceremonies as they’re known in English are big events here in the Gambia. It’s a bar-mitzvah and baptism all wrapped into one event for a baby a week or so old, who will never remember the amount of money spent by their parents for this one event. Jammeh-kunda, the compound that Katie my site mate is staying at, invited me to their kulio. I have to say, I have not been to a bigger kulio, wedding, or even funeral since being here, and let me tell you I’ve been to too many. The amount of people who came packed all three neighboring compounds as well as the Jammeh’s. Lunch had 5 courses and dinner had another 3. Hanging out with the family all day was exhausting. I sat in a group of about a dozen intimidating elders all waiting for their shot to test my Mandinka skills (and they weren’t even Mandinkas! Most were Jolas!) and see if I was just another tourist full of shit and African naivety. I guess I passed their test because I had them all laughing and making fun of each other in 15 minutes. I had been talking to a broad shouldered elder in all white for awhile as people gathered to pray for the new born child. As other men sat down they would start talking about, “the white man” this or “the white man” that, and the old man laughed when I told the two men I could clearly hear what they were saying and that, “their mother must have done a shity job in raising them when their kids don’t greet”. They quickly apologized. I then proceeded to go into my whole “you’re all spitting on Martin Luther King Jr.’s grave” speech. This argument in Mandinka that I’ve had many many times is where I explain that I don’t like when people lump me in some category with other white people and that you can’t call Europe “Toubabadou” (the land of white people) when I have actually never even been there not to mention I’m America and by NO MEANS European. Then I go on to explain how MLK fought his entire life so that people would judge men, “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”, I then pound my chest in display that I am my own person. Throw in a few shots that my people were actually enslaved by Africans on this continent and then I conclude with the whole, “only uncivilized people, naive, ignorant people, judge another man by the color of ones skin”… game, set, match.
All the men around me nod in agreement and even take a few shots at the man who didn’t greet me for making them all look bad. That’s right, this is one toubab who knows how to defend himself. “You can’t just talk crap about people who you think don’t understand you and get away with it, you never know who’s listening.” The man in white said to him very fatherly. He looked at me, “Demba are you ready?” “yes? For what?” and the broad-shouldered elder stood and grabbed the microphone. “As the Imam of this village I hereby commence this naming ceremony. Those of you who don’t understand Mandinka can have someone translate for them. Many of you, who speak many languages have come. The Jolas, Mandinkas, Manjakos, Fulas, and Wolofs. Even people from far off lands have come, and yet we have all come for the same purpose. To bless this child with a life of peace, so that he may be a light to our community and to his country, and bring honor to us all. We all are one, we have all come for one purpose, White, brown, or black, to take care of each other…” Another man sitting near taps me and waves, pointing at the microphone, “This is your speech Demba. Do you hear?” The imam goes on, and in powerful fashion delivers the speech I had just given to the young man sitting behind us on an old tire.
Typically at these events a Griot of sorts is hired. Their job is to introduce any person who walks into the event, very loudly, and very obnoxiously, to literally berate and embarrass them into giving money for the child. Other kulios have women sing weird songs about you being cheap and having diarrhea. This man though, I have to say, was a natural. He was so good at his job a few strangers asked me if I knew if he was crazy or not. I mean this guy was good, hell thank god he didn’t come over to me ‘cause I would have hocked everything in my pockets just to get him to leave me alone. He followed this poor woman around for 15 minutes till she gave him a few dalasi coins. Good work sir. Actually turns out he was a tad crazy, but I’m glad to see the Gambia is a equal opportunity employer.
The party raged on into dusk until the moon climbed high in the sky. The family hired a DJ who came all the way from Senegal to entertain the kids all night. Most of the adults had left to go home or went to seek the quieter solace of chats in neighboring houses. The kids came though, from here and wide, un-supervised, and Katie and I were stuck in the middle of it. A mosh pit of trouble and chaos the kids began having the time of their life, and later a few of the adults even joined. Sitting on the side though I decided to mess with the kids a bit and pulled out the whole light up thumb magic trick I like. I soon began to draw a pretty big crowd as I pulled a light out of kid’s ears, swallowed it then farted it out. Clapped my hands and made it appear then blew it out with the wind. I had them believing it, the audience was mine! Kids began to actually get kind of scared. “Wait a second? Maybe this isn’t a trick? He’s not a sorcerer is he? Uhhh mommy?” Ok now they were pretty freaked and I didn’t do anything to show them it was just a trick with a cheap LED light and a plastic thumb. This wasn’t my village anyways haha, but none the less sooner or later they were going to figure out the trick if they were crafty enough, so I put the thumb away and decided it was about time for bed. An hour later I’m on the floor trying to ignore the blaring sound system of the party when all the kids cheered followed by, “Barak, Obama, Barak, Obama, Barak!” It was beautiful. Gotta love American soft diplomacy. I don’t know how these kids learned this song but they knew every word, and if I wasn’t half a sleep I probably would have ran out and chanted, “YES WE CAN! AND WE WILL!”
Life in village went by; I made a habit in village about bringing different DVDs to the neighboring compound so that everyone could watch. I was thinking, hmmm, what movie would still be good and have eccentric enough characters for even non-English speaking kids to enjoy. You know what, I’ll show them School of Rock everyone likes Jack Black. 10 minutes in, “Demba turn this film off, this is not sweet, we want some war films!” and Malong Ba, the head of the compound turned off the film. Alright I was a tad upset, I had been rocking out to some of the music in it and it seemed like these kids really just thought classic rock was shit, I find that to be heresy. I appreciate plenty of their Jamaican reggae rock with over used laser sound effects and hours of Jeliba playing the Quora that all I ask for is them to at least put up with a little of my music. The next day I showed them Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. They were in ecstasy, “Demba this film is very nice. Very nice!”. What can ya do? Next week we’re watching Platoon.
The next morning at around 6am I hear a cat wailing from across the road, a scream of death and horror. An hour or so later there’s a crying coming from on top my rice bag ceiling as my cat stubbles down through the crack near the wall and falls limping onto the bed in a crash of plaster and dust. His right limb still bleeding and significantly swollen, what the hell just happened? I’ve seen a good amount of animal wounds in my time, and there was no doubt about it, this was definitely an animal trap; the slipknot and wire kind or maybe even a modified mousetrap. Look I’m probably the last one to get all lovey-dovey about my cat, but the little rodent kind of grew on me, and I was pissed. Not to mention the entire day he looked so fucking pathetic. Limping around, crying, licking the wound, crying some more, I may have even seen him frown at me if I didn’t know better. Oye. So I cleaned it up and even made a make shift splint out of knee wrap using Neosporin, still labeled by my home towns animal shelter to my late St. Bernard, Bernie. Don’t ask me why I brought it to Africa, but hell I like to have all bases covered. You never know when you’ll need a fog horn, two different sizes of tweezers, or glow sticks; I just like to have these kinds of things around. You know, for spur of the moment raves and stuff. Anyways I’m happy to report that a week later he’s doing much better, he may have had a little break but the little rascals a fighter, and he had to have gotten out of that trap somehow.
I was invited to come back up to Pete’s site, a soon to be COSing (close of service) volunteer, could show me how to teach and use various lab equipment and identify TB and Malaria and do WBC counts under a microscope. Turns out the power only comes on in the morning and at night so we found ourselves (a few of the volunteers in the village), hanging out in the lab at around 11 o’ clock at night looking through old malaria slides. I saw a dozen or so open vials of what looked like blood over in the corner. “Hey Pete, what’s that for?” “Oh, that’s where they test for HIV, yea I tell them all the time that they need to remember to actually clean up before they’re done with their work but they never listen.” “Are you serious? That’s like 10 or so open vials of suspected HIV/AIDS patients?” If the public only knew. Africa’s all about keeping you on your toes. Well after a few hours staring through a microscope counting cells and searching for rods and crescents, drinking soda and popping Advil to subdue the head aches, I learned all there was time to learn and we headed back to bed.
The Next few days I planed to stay at Somita to chill with Alex and the rest of the guys from my group I went to Dakar with. Guys weekend was relaxed, hanging on the bamboo bed out back, debating passionately the more attractive girls in peace corps, and cooking some REALLY great egg fried rice and chopped beef. We ate well what can I say. We walked to a dried rice field 2-3k towards the river and hung out enjoying the little oasis in the middle of nowhere and that afternoon found our self letting our lunch settle over a game of texas hold-em. CRASH! “What the fuck was that!?” I ask Alex as the sounds of the entire village screaming and the pounding of feet flood our ears. “I don’t know but I’m going to find out” he responds. I race outside the compound and time feezes, the sounds of the radio fade in the distance and all I hear are screams and cries as a car engine revs and dies in the background. A gilly had crashed right in front of the mosque, right outside Dramme-kunda. Everything felt so foggy, but I shouted to Travis who was closest to the house to run and grab the med kit. Jogging closer I started to ask if someone had called Bwiam hospital yet to let them know there was a big wreck. It seemed someone had. I walked up to the van which had skid a ways on it’s right side. Windshield wiper fluid was spraying out the front still and I stuck my head through where the front windshield once was to make sure everyone got out. My breath was taken away from me. The window lay flat, still generally intact with one single broken indentation on the passenger side with a splatter of blood. I curse. Thankfully in the few minutes it had been since I had gotten there all the passengers had been taken out and only the skeletal insides of the van remained. The story could be seen from the inside. The front passenger bench had been ripped from it’s foundation and flung almost through the dash. Blood ran down some of the windows and bags were thrown everywhere. I looked again to make sure it was clear of people and walked around to the back. Black oil ran down the tranny and another blue fluid leaked out from the engine, but as the engine was dead I figured it wasn’t going to blow anytime soon. Then again what do I know about automobile accidents?
I wanted to do something, I needed to do something, I ran to see if any wounds needed to be taken care of. I’m no doctor, but neither was anyone else in the village. It seemed like all the serious cases were taken into a local shop so that they weren’t in the open but there were several woman with severe head injuries just walking around. One of them walked by me and readjusted her head wrap when I saw a large chuck of flesh and blood flap down across her neck. The bleeding had stopped but when I asked her to come to the side so that I could put a bandage on the wound she kept walking. There was a man on the side of the road, obviously in shock and trying to stand. A giant gash ran across the side of his head, like the woman’s, so deep you could see the bone. I started saying something but really no one was listening. I was speaking in broken Mandinka and any English went right over people’s head. I heard once that in sudden moments of excitement or fear people always revert to their native tongue. It seemed like anything I did I just got in the way; which was more frustrating than I could ever express. An older woman, not from the gilly, was running around screaming with a haunting shrill in her voice, “A FAATALE! A FAATALE! I BE BE FAATALE”. At the time I was pissed off, this woman was walking around inciting panic and yelling about how they were all dead. I stopped, put my hands on my knees, took a deep breath, shook my self off and went back to the road. The best thing I could do was just to get out of the way, and get all the children who came to look off the road.
After shooing a few kids off the road I went back to the van. If I couldn’t help anyone I damn sure was going to figure out what the fuck happened. I tried to listen as best I could to the people chatting but it was like fighting through a fog trying to understand the words and think clearly with the adrenaline pumping powerfully through my veins. Something about the axel or the break line, I couldn’t tell. I stopped and stared at the tred marks and the damage. I figured, hell I’ve watched plenty of CSI episodes, I can figure this shit out, I’m American, I can do anything; but my futile effort only helped to alleviate my own anxiety. I walked back towards the house trying to find the rest of the group. Once I found them my hands fell to my knees again, striving to grasp what had happened, and why? Why today? Why here? What happens the next time I have to ride in a gilly? Why wasn’t it the gilly I had come in on? ...It could have been me. I pushed my self up and shook my self off again, fighting the confusion and helplessness. As we walked all I could do was talk, not sure why, it made me feel like I was doing something I guess, running ideas through my head. Walking back into the house I heard the same song that was playing when we left. Symphony X’s 16-minute piece entitled, The Odyssey, recounting the tale of the Iliad in music. But here’s the thing: when we left the song must have been 5 minutes or so in, but by the time we returned the song still had a minute and some remaining. Had it really been only 10 minutes? We never finished that game of poker, I was getting my ass kicked anyways so I was sort of glad. For the next two days though I felt a fuzzy feeling in my gut, this anxiety you just can’t rationalize.
I had another meeting with the community in regards to my insurance proposal. It took them a few hours to show but they showed in full force. Omar a man living in the Alkali’s compound took responsibility to gather all the information regarding the number of compounds and ages and people in each one. We started to take nominations for members of the program I dubbed the VIC, Village Insurance Committee. When I get back from Dakar we will take another vote for the 10 members of the committee including a representative from each of the five regions of the village called ‘cabilos’ (doesn’t it sound like some Italian mob ring?). Overall it’s looking very positive and I’m trying very hard not to jinx it. All I can do is pray that this thing will work. By charging each compound enough to make the insurance committee and clinic sustainable but charging low enough to make it affordable for every member of my village. The next day I did some math, went over it a few times, and if I’m not mistaken this crazy idea just may work with a little luck and cooperation. I took last year’s data on the amount of money it cost the hospital to run: medicines, upkeep, and other expenses. I took the information on the number of patients they had per year and the income they make yearly. Ground out the numbers and after calculating it all out, even with subtracting the entire amount of money that we get from sponsors over seas, the hospital would be doing better than it was. And on the other side, the VIC would have over 450,000 dalasis to work with, more than enough to cover every, and all, of the communities health needs, at least from the amount our clinic charges. With a 17% bubble in case we go over. So that in the end, if we charge 100 dalasis per person per year to be placed on the insurance policy. Which now that I think about it is really set up more like an HMO. That for only about 5 American dollars (100 dalasis), they would be completely covered and the hospital, in a matter of 5 years would not need the assistance of any foreign money to hold it together. I just have to wait for the census to come in so I can get a percentage of members of the insurance policy divided by the average patients per year and I can get a more exact number. Cross your fingers guys and wish me luck. Oh and if any of you knows a thing or two about the insurance/HMO business and or writing legally binding constitutions or insurance policies for the VIC please let me know because I could use all the help I can get. In the mean time, all I can do is crunch a few more numbers and find the muse inside me to sell this idea to a few more villages.
