Before you yell at me, I know it’s been awhile since my last entry and I apologize to all my dear friends and family, dukare kana-n lipa (please don’t beat me). Where did I leave off anyways? Man it must have been a month or so ago. Dakar was fun, and I could tell the story but I think it would be easier for you to just go to blogster, type in: Spring Break Cancun, then just substitute anything that says Mexico with Senegal. Literally the spring break for Peace Corps volunteers from all over Africa; from Mali to Mauritania. Softball for 3 days getting banged up and bruised to win a few games for the glory of PC The Gambia then drinking away the pain of ripping all the skin off my left shin sliding into second… twice (though the second time I was going into third). Bloody Mary’s were the preferred morning coffee substitute and every night was a different theme party. First night we were all out bar hopping Dakar and I ended up in some place called the Viking; a nice little Loft esk bar that reminded me of downtown Kent. One party was at the Marine Barracks (pretty much a military frat house, w/ping pong table I might add), one at a rented out ocean front club which had a really diabolically treacherous set of stairs for drunk people, and the last was a classy ball after an even classier (and just as fucking expensive) banquet, where it just so happens I won two free tickets to “Magic Land” in Dakar (go me!). I want to thoroughly thank all the American Embassy workers for opening up your homes to all of us rather eccentric PCVs… you have no idea how much it meant to us to sit down and have a home cooked meal then watch the daily show and play xbox; heaven to a volunteer. It was as close as any of us were going to get to home until end of service.
Next thing I know we went strait from shot gunning miller lights to heading back to our home away from home in the Gambia. I slept through half the ride, thank god, and woke up just in time to see our driver do a drug deal a few villages before the border. I mean look I don’t know jack shit about drugs or dealing, but I severely doubt this 20 something year old boy was giving the driver all that Senegalese cefa for a little baggy of sugar; which the way people drink tea here wouldn’t be enough for a forth of a glass. I headed right back to site the next day to get to my first Village Insurance Committee meeting. If you read the last blog entry you’d know that the majority of my work these days is developing and getting out all the kinks in creating a village insurance policy. I set up all the chairs that afternoon, bought some tea, sugar, and attaya to brew for the meeting. Got all my papers in order then waited for people to arrive. And I waited. One came, I began to pace, two more arrived and we waited and the sun began to set over the mosque just in time for 5 o’ clock prayer. “This isn’t going to work today, why don’t we try again next week? I’ll let everyone know.” My chairman Modou said. I spent the week furthering the writing my policy and bylaws and researching how the hell to write any of those (thank you Eric so much for all your help!). Next week came and I went through the whole process again, waiting, pacing; Modou showed up and again we postponed. I wrote a brilliant, tear jerking, preamble to the village insurance committee constitution and waited for the third meeting to start. This time I didn’t bother pacing. God bless Modou too for working his ass off to try and get the “elected, responsible, members of the community” to come to the meeting. He even wrecked his bike once just trying to get to everyone’s house and remind them about it, that’s what we spent the fourth failed meeting doing, fixing up his bike. Meeting five and six came and this time I didn’t bother pacing… no one showed, and asked about it later by a third party they knew the time and date, things just came up... welcome to African development work.
I went with Modou to talk to the village Alkalo. I reminded him this was an amazing opportunity to take huge steps in developing the village and increasing the health of all it’s citizens. He agreed but resided in the statement, “look people are just lazy around here, it’s a good idea and I can account for sending people from your committee to do things in another village during the morning of the last meeting but other than that just keep trying.” I went to the capital to talk with Mike the CD who as I have said is an amazing business mind. We both ended up agreeing that it would have been a miracle anyways to get 10 totally committed people but at least, if I’ve found a few, I should try and pull it off with them… which if this 7th try doesn’t work I plan on doing. (update as I was typing this, had 7th meeting and a miraculous 4 people showed up, that’s 40%!!! Huge steps! But we rescheduled for next Sunday and 8th time is a charm).
In the weeks of trying to cope with setbacks in work and daily trials of living as a white man in a Gambian village I started helping my Drama and English group get there symposium, which we had got funding from CCF for, up and running. We practiced their play that discussed going to the hospitals before going to local medicine men for their malaria treatment. We had a set of amazing speakers lined up, one actually being a former presidential candidate of the socialist party in the country who would be concluding our assembly, along with a few great health workers from the capital to talk about STIs. I should have known really that this was a disaster waiting to happen by now, but I wouldn’t be able to do my job if I truly believed it, so I lived the lie and got super excited for the opportunity to truly motivate the children to work harder in school and live healthier. The program got off to the expected late African start, which wasn’t a problem because it gave me time to climb a mango tree and finish reconnecting the speaker system. Once at least the first couple speakers arrived we introduced the symposium to the raging mob of 400 or so students. We had to stop for a teacher and I to take some of the peer leaders (older “responsible” students like hall monitors) aside and give them a bigger pep talk on doing their job controlling the mob. I don’t think it really got through because after about 5 minutes of it being a tad less crazy they went back to the Gambian rendition of lord of the flies, older students beating younger students to ill effect in the noise department. The introductions continued and I began to start the speech I wipped up the day before as a truck from the department of education pulled up. All the teachers quietly got up and went to receive their paychecks. I’d only seen it a few times but their not shitting you when they say they drop everything to pick up those pay checks, but who could blame them. They urged me still to continue with my speech:
“Good morning and welcome ladies, gentleman, and distinguished guests. I’d like to thank all our guests for taking time out of their busy schedules to come down to Jiboro and endow our teachers and students with their great wisdom and experience. I am the United States Peace Corps Volunteer who has been stationed in this village for the past year to assist in the health and community development of the area. I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with some skilled older teachers and promising new ones and I thank them for their patience with me through the months.
The world it seems is growing significantly more hostile every day; wars and assignations occur and ignorance and indifference has become a plague on our society. Listening to the news you would fear it’s spiraling out of control. It’s ironic in a way to think that we’ve had the key to heal are breaking world the entire time. What are the weapons we use to fight ignorance and intolerance? What is the ammunition we use to fight indifference? … What is it if not education? The way we spark the passion of our youths and focus it with the knowledge of our elders. If you can’t at least point a man’s country out on a map, how can you hope to understand him? Education is that key, and our teachers have the opportunity to harness it. Think now of every dilemma the Gambia faces today. It could be argued that every single one of them can be fixed through the education of our youths, every one of them, and I challenge you to embrace this idea. Education destroys ignorance; it disbands stereotypes and teaches tolerance for all races, religions, tribes, and cultures. Education develops communities and economies, it helps us to yield more crops from our fields and work the land more efficiently. Education brings awareness to the importance of our environment and insures better health for our future. The development of our youths allows the Gambia to develop it self; and to forge from it’s own strong faith and culture a country to be proud to call your own and to raise your kids.
What does it take to develop a child into a leader for the future anyways? Children that can grow up to learn from and assist the already great leaders in the country, but bring about new ideas and inspiration for developing it further. We need to put an importance on critical thinking and on problem solving so that no matter what trials our children face, they have the tools, the discipline, and the creativity to fix it. It takes the patience of our teachers, to guide their students, but to also make an environment that relishes new ideas and courage. A Student that can be granted not only new knowledge from the books but the inspiration to write their own; because school is not only on learning facts but on learning how to learn.
For our teachers, I pray that you take great insight and tolerance from our guests and learn from their extensive experience. To our parents, it’s up to you to put a focus on education for our youths, encourage and push them to work harder, for it is you that decides if education is important to our families. For our students, take heed today and open yourself to new ideas; enjoy yourselves, but take advantage of this opportunity to learn something new. Allow your minds to concentrate and to absorb as much as possible, as only the mind of a child can; but allow your hearts to forever wonder in search of your dreams. Do this with patience, with confidence, and with passion. You’ll find that the world has a way of conspiring to help everyone achieve their dreams; it’s the determination we show, and our ability to learn and listen to our hearts that guides us along the way.”
You could almost here the woosh of the information going into and then unimpedidly out of the children’s ears. The talking continued as I tried desperately to hear my own voice through the speaker, “ahem. Uhhh, ok, uhh, yea I’ll now pass the mic to our next speaker from Bafrow. Alright quiet down please students she has some very important information to tell you. Peer leaders if you could please start doing your job!”
The speakers continued but during breaks I tried to get some of the older students together so maybe they could have a private Q&A with the health speakers where they’d be more comfortable asking tough questions. The teachers though did a surprisingly brilliant job at deflecting that attempt. I was next on the lecture schedule and I had planned a talk on Student-centered teaching methods and increasing student participation. The teachers who were really the focus of the lecture had gone on crowd control duty and I found no point in giving a lecture that would be used completely as a time filler as the mic too was failing and regardless the ones listening couldn’t understand it (as with the other lectures today) so I conceded. Pissed and defeated I made a few smart ass remarks to the teachers still at the guests table then walked over to the kitchen to try and nab some of the already cooked benichin (a really great oil based rice meal). Turns out one of the wolof teachers was also hiding out there and we shared an entire family bowl and a half of it for ourselves… mmm since when has being defeated tasted so good.
After lunch and prayer the lower grades went home and the symposium actually turned on the brighter side for a bit. The mature students were avidly listening and the speaker from a neighboring village spoke slowly and clearly. Our afternoon speakers were still AWAL and never ended up showing. A few weeks later I would find myself at the Peace Corps Security Officer’s desk looking over some Gambian news articles regarding recent “incidents” in the country (which I’m not sure I’m at liberty to discuss currently). Who’s face do I see smiling back at me in handcuffs on the front page than our AWAL honored guest speaker, who was currently considered an enemy of the state. I guess that’s a good enough excuse for skipping out on an important symposium for kids, I guess. I’m not positive of the date but either that day or the day after the symposium he was taken into custody where he still is now. Oh west Africa, how you never cease to amaze me. I love this place.
Needless to say I took a few days to get my head strait in the capital. I instantly began enjoying the Stodge’s new make over. The couches were re-oriented to face the two broken televisions and DVD player. The bookcase were moved to another room to form a cubical around the two work computers, and in the next room, to my surprise, was a very nicely built Ping Pong table. Wow, my life is complete. A small ping pong cult was already being formed and challenges made throughout the country to figure out who were the best among us. As I’ve mentioned before I’m ridiculously competitive, in everything, and ping pong was no exception. Tournaments were planned and the bop, bop, sound of the ball against newly cut wood filled the halls of the transit house. Praise the lord for ping pong and beer. And thus, I promise, this will conclude the typical PC mid-service crisis; nothing’s harder or more rewarding than trying to jump back on that horse with renewed vigor but that’s what I’m going to do! I should probably lay off the beer a bit though, cause I sure as hell am not giving up ping pong. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!
p.s. on a side note I just met a gambia PCV who ate baby west african manatee meat in her village, no i'm not shitting you, how crazy is that. you can see pictures at http://maggiegambia.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment