The Love Shack Next Door

I know it’s been awhile since my last entry (do I say that every time?). Mom keeps saying I should make these into a book… I think I’d end up getting sued some how (if a publisher could even get past the copious grammatical errors). It’s been a difficult month or so and I’m just trying to get through it. I know I’m going into my second year here but I’m still not close enough to my close of service (COS) to stop coping with things, so I just live day by day, maybe I can take a life lesson from that one day when I’m older and wiser; though I do know I should start thinking about my plans, grad school maybe, work, either way I should probably get on some letters of recommendations. This is why I haven’t returned the letters etc, but I promise they’re on their way. Also I should probably start trying to find a time to go to Dakar or the capital here and try and take the GREs. Eugene (Data) is studying right now to take the MCATs here and it sounds as if it’s a living hell, not the test as much as trying to wrap your head around it living in a third world country in a little hut where you go each day just trying to fight back the gag reflex to get a few calories more of spicy rice down your esophagus. But he’s still studying, somehow. Supposedly test scores are greatly reduced when taken in the peace corps, still, I shouldn’t keep avoiding them. Anyways I’m done rambling I swear, shall I continue?

Since just after the first rainy season there’s been talk in my compound about a few “extensions” that they wanted to put on the house. Our house is really set up like a long thin strip of double rooms going away from the road along with three other strip buildings encircling a few logs the old men used to sit on back in the old days, this is Jarjukunda, this is the compound. My place is the closest to the road and I’m right next door to my counterpart and host brother Elbou. There is though another room connected to my place and not to Elbou’s. It was being used as a closet for storage, originally to set up a small shop, which it’s not used for now but that’s for later. Talk was high after the rainy season about these “extensions” to our strip of houses to make them a few yards thicker. People talk a lot here and even with the brick building I really didn’t expect it to happen while I was here. Any construction here in the Gambia needs to be completed before the rains though if it’s going to happen, everyone will say, “samaa sitaa” literally this means rain sharp-time but comes out to mean, “the rain ain’t gonna wait for no one so hurry up and finish this work before we have to start planting and the rain destroys all the mud bricks”. The first drizzle came last Wednesday (the 13^th of may) and the boys started working double time, they may actually end up pulling this whole thing off in the end. I’ve been helping them move the bricks we made last fall, loading them in a truck, and taking them to the house, then going back to making more bricks with a little more cement than mud which is expensive but stronger.

Along with updates to the girth of the house I got a pleasant surprise coming home from the clinic one day. I ride my bike back around mid day, the sun beating down on my head as the days start to get more unbearable, then pull into the compound to find a few of my host sisters watching GRTS (the one Gambian television station, we pronounce it “grits”). We’ve always had a tv in my counterpart’s place for the big football games and news every now and then when we have foil (gasoline); the TV was funning but something was missing, there was no distinctive buzz of a generator in the background. Walking into the back I see a brand new, and fairly large, solar panel fixed to the corrugate roof of the house and a set of two huge batteries and a power converter. I heard Elbou say something about it but once again never figured it’d happen. I tried not to ask to many questions but I just couldn’t help myself. We ended up borrowing the panel from the clinic as it was collecting dust in storage for a while. My jaw drops. I just may have power for the next year of my service. There is a god.

Two days later we’d get a call from his brother, the head of the clinic. He had been planning on trying to sell the panels and wasn’t so happy his little brother pulled a quick one on him. It was a good attempt, lord knows I tried it with my parents, if you just go and do something it’s harder for them to say, “no” after the fact. Thing is big bro didn’t care how much of a pain in the ass it was to take it all down again; it was going to come down. We enjoyed it for another few days till a mechanic came and I was carefully trying to navigate the corrugate roof and detach the panel; making very sure I was stepping on a wooden bracing strut of the roof and not the incredibly thin metal of which I would fall right through into the house, most likely in great pain. I cried a little inside as they carted the panel away in a wheelbarrow, my counter part wasn’t as taken aback by it all as I. He had expected the trick he pulled on his brother to either work or not; he hadn’t grown up with electricity his entire life. Look, maybe I should clarify this now, I have no problem with my living conditions, I have no problem with the candles, it actually makes life far more interesting with a romantic, I live in the African bush, kind of feel, and shitting in a hole is actually not remotely as bad as it sounds, it’s actually nicer in some ways. When push comes to shove though, if I get the chance to have electricity I sure as hell am not going to be some hippy peace corps volunteer who turns it down. I’m not that masochistic. I got over it, and a week or so later I actually heard down the rumor mill we may get another chance at the panel, but I’m not getting my hopes up. It’s easier just to accept a situation than be teased with something more for even a little bit more of high life.

There are many little things that drive a peace corps volunteer over the edge. The stress of life, the struggle to walk through the muddy water that is trying to make projects happen here or for people to even just get up and help themselves, the ridiculous drama of living in Real World The Gambia, and that’s not even including the drugs. No, not heroine or acid, I’m talking the legally prescribed compulsory malaria treatment we are all rigidly kept on. I’m no doctor, even if I feel I have enough experience watching House and ER to sell it, but a medication whose side effects include everything from rage and depression to suicide and whose maximum duration is said to be no more that a few months doesn’t seem like the greatest thing to put on an already strained PCV. As the months have gone by I’ve been on the medication for over a year. I take Lariam every Wednesday, every Thursday consequently then ends up being the worst day of my life. I turn into the incredible hulk of the Gambia minus the huge pectorals. I really should just start locking myself in my house those days, and yes I know you’re asking, “Steven why don’t you just get them to change your meds!?!?” Well first off I’m not getting put on Doxy, I just won’t be taking anti-biotics everyday for the next year, I love only taking a pill once a week. Secondly, there’s no way the U.S. government is going to pull a few extra Benjamin’s out of their pockets to put me on the good stuff, the malorone. So on top of everything this Thursday comes and I became completely content in finishing watching my copy of the Pianist and wallowing in self-pity for the rest of the day, but nooooooooooo. I get a call from my site mate saying that a friend from north-bank had decided to throw in the towel with peace corps and find a much more fulfilling job back in the states with his beautiful fiancé. Personally I do not remotely blame him. I’m then forced then, as not a complete asshole, to throw a few clothes in a bag and head up to Fajara to send him off in style.

I try and take a deep breath, I do the old count to ten bull shit when really throwing crap off a couple story building would do just the trick. Then I hop on a car up to the capital. I came mere milliseconds, a good ten times, from breaking my fist in a few wannabe bumpster’s faces. After waiting an hour or so getting in some ridiculous argument with a border policeman about how much money peace corps volunteers make and him strongly hinting, like I wasn’t born speaking English and didn’t pick up on it, that I was secretly a C.I.A. agent. Seriously, I wish. You’d think if they thought about it long enough they’d figure out that the people living in the Gambia don’t even want to be there, so why on earth would it be worth it for the united states government to waste preciously trained intelligence agents on one of the smallest, most stable, peaceful, and natural resource free countries in the whole of Africa. Trying desperately to not pop a vain in my neck I’m saved miraculously by an almost full gilly heading to Birkama. I hop in and greet my host brother, one of the nicest teachers at the school, my villages Alkalo, and my host-aunt. Pretty much the last people in the country to deserve the shit storm that is Demba “the hulk” Jarju. I put on my headphones in an great effort to just calm down for a second as the car moves up the road.

If you’ve been keeping up with my entries you’d know that the road was under-construction but which was just completed recently. The president himself came the day it was opened with a convoy of about a hundred cars sporting party colors, his characteristic stretch hummer, an ambulance or two from his clinic, a few personnel carriers full of troops and two giant trucks with large 10 meter long artillery guns on the back. I would have had a great picture on my camera of the president in his car but I got pushed by one of the men living in the Alkalo’s compound who was running like 16yr old school girl trying to get a glimpse of one of the Beatles. The convoy ended up hitting a young Manjako girl who was quickly rushed in the ambulances supposedly to the president’s private clinic in Banjul. Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the convoy’s fault. This is a newly completed international highway, whether the cars were going to fast or not it’s still a highway, not a new gravel playground for the children of the village. Back in the hulk I was trying to sooth my mind with some easy listening classics on my iPod. It didn’t help. A minute later we were screeching to a stop. It’s a brand new highway, how the fuck are we stuck in a traffic jam. Looking out the window I saw a ‘grits’ news team interviewing the passengers of the cars to get opinions/compliments on the new road. “So sir, how do you see the new road?”, the anchor said. Most of the interviewees were taking this time to get on TV and sport their APRC pride (the presidents political party, color green, I forget what it stands for but it’s resembles a sort of labor party) and presidential thanks, “Thank you so much to our great, kind, and generous, president for granting the poor people of the Gambia a new road” I’m about to lose it. I put away my iPod. “ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS!!! I’m in a hurry and trying to get to the capital and all of you are just wasting my time trying to get on tv. IT’S A GRAVEL ROAD!!! It’s not even finished yet!” I walk up to my driver who’s waiting in line to be interviewed and give him the old, ‘uhhhh could we get going’ look. With a huge smile on his face he’s looks back at me with the ‘uhhhh I’m going to be on TV, it can wait’ look. Construction trucks were passing by on the auxiliary dirt road and I walk up to the cars apprentice and with a look of, ‘seriously don’t fuck with me today’ on my face I ask him for my money back. “Kid, I’m just going to hitch a ride to the next junction where I can catch a taxi to Birkama, just give me my money so I can go.” I pleaded. “No really we’re going to be leaving soon soon, just wait.” He responded. Damnit. Pacing back and forth I pick my head up to see a red LED lit on one of the GRTS cameras. Well what do you know, I was on national television in the background of the interviews the entire time. I’m so getting fired. Thankfully I guess no administration saw it, or just got a good laugh out of it. I guess the look on my face was enough to get them out of the interview line and into the car because we left shortly after. My hands were shaking but thankfully the closest I came to the hulk was slamming the window on the nose of a pain in the ass car park punk in Birkama. I got past the pit pocketing danger zone at the Westfield car park and hopped into a taxi going down the pipe line. Being white and living this country you deal with people talking shit to you on a daily basis but today I jut wasn’t having it. I only had a D50 on me for the 5 dalasi taxi ride and the lady in front of me started going off on me like I didn’t understand here obvious shit talking “What kind of white man doesn’t have change? Are you serious, the nerve of these fucking white men, they should all go home.” I clench my bag with a death grip and get out of the cab. I walk up to Omar’s Peace Corps Kitchen not saying a word to the 7 PCVs sitting down outside, shaking and about ready for my very sanity to just snap; thank the lord for those delicious cheese steaks Omar makes, they’re angelic. That and a few hours of ping pong and drinking at the happy hour bar and I was back in business. The next morning I went back to village a little bit more refreshed with my goodbyes to my friend heading home said. We’ll all miss ya bro.

You may be asking yourself, “Well after reading most of his blogs we know what Steven does on a daily basis during the day between bullshitting at the clinic or helping out at the school but what’s going on at night? Hell is there a night life in little African villages?” Yes, definitely, and let me assure you I stayed far far away from it living in my sheltered little hut chatting with the older, elderly community for as long as possible… till you end up going to play cards with a few of the boys at the chiefs compound and catch your previously innocent younger host sister making out in the shadows by a pile of cement bricks. For quite sometime my good friends in village have been trying to set me up with girls but do to the copious amounts of complications involved with something like that I avoid it entirely; no matter what, having the color of skin that I have alone carries to many false connotations and ignorant stereotypes which would make it impossible anyways. That and it would likely completely ruin the rapport I have worked to gain for the past year with work. Problem is that if you don’t date than you’re considered a racist, “What so you don’t like the beautiful (which they are) black women here?” but if you do than you’re just another colonialist slave driver stealing their women… you really just can’t win. Still, I was curious, I come from a scientific background and need data, I mean just how does dating work here anyways? Around this time my good friend Malong, (which literally translated means “I don’t know”, he’s a great guy and either way it’s better than my other friend who people call, Jongkong, which means ‘the place you go to take a shit’) was in the previously mentioned dumps, though metaphorically, in regards to his love life. I posed the idea, “Malong, how bout this, I’ll be your wing man a few nights and help you score a few hot ladies in return for you showing me how this whole thing works here. I’ll hook ‘em in with the American accent. You’ll be making second base before Friday! (I then had to explain bases)” “You have all these systems, that’s why you American men are so dangerous with the ladies.” He replied “I’ll take that as you’re in Maverick (I went on to explain the glory that is Top Gun)”.

Any dating that’s done in the village is done at night. A village will completely change at night, it may be small town Kansas in the day but when the sun goes down it’s Vegas. During the day women will wear only wrap skirts (now shirts may come on and off but boobs don’t have the same single meaning like in America) but at night women feel comfortable enough to break a few cultural conservations and break out the tight ass-hugging blue jeans and shirts girls would wear out clubbing back in the states. Everything changes at night. Even a couple that is “dating”, if you could call it that, during the day are just friends, they’re not boyfriend and girlfriend as an American would know it really until night. When it comes to ‘getting it on’ if you think about the make up of an African village it gets sort of tricky. Most families sleep in the same room or more than likely share it with another brother etc so you can see the complications. There is usually that one friend of yours in village though that has his own place, he’s the go to guy. Girls rarely have their own place so the guy, if his friend is nice, will usually let his buddies “make use of his room” when he needs to borrow it for a little bit and that’s if you’re lucky and don’t have to use some random place in the woods or from what I hear the old nursery school; but lets not get ahead of ourselves. In village dating the wingman is utterly necessary as I soon learned becoming one for my friend. The wingman will have very polite and culturally acceptable conversation with the girl the friend is interested in, someone to pass messages along as an intermediary (even though everyone knows what you’re doing), which was my job. Then after the family realizes they’re just having a normal conversation he will invite her to go outside and chat another time, usually in a dark area where the friend just so happens to be waiting, in our case I brought her out to an old tire where my friend was sitting then made my self scarce. There were several other encounters and I’m pretty sure it never went anywhere but it was an interesting nonetheless. Most of the time, when it’s not me holding my friend back as a terrible wingman though he would just go on a double date with another one of his friends to chat with two girls together each picking one.

In America people would usually go to a bar to pick up a girl, or some party which involved most likely copious amounts of drinking. Drinking in a way may make the whole awkward dating process quite a bit more easier. In a Muslim country though getting a girl drunk hoping she’s start to dig you ain’t gonna work. Instead, on almost a monthly basis, young men will organize a DJ to come with big speakers and have a Disco. This is where people come to strut their stuff, put on some of their good cologne or perfume (which they call, “spray”) to impress the opposite sex, or go to score some cheap weed to get them through the hot African days, usually from some sketchy Rasta guy who hide in the corner of the disco hut selling. Usually there’s a cover of like 10-25 dalasis (50cents to a dollar, which actually I find expensive) or for a decent performer will be up to D50-100. People are usually sweating there asses off singing along to their favorite Jamaican hits till 5 in the morning. I’m back in my house trying to go to sleep by like one.

Previously my room had the luxury of being mildly isolated from the rest of the compound. My bedroom had the nice buffer of the room I use to put my bike, trash, and my cat’s litter box. That buffer room was on the other side of my host brother’s place and my room was only adjacent to a storage closet that was originally built as a local shop. There’s about 40 shops in the general vicinity, they realized location wasn’t that greatest spot. Recently though a few extended families kicked my host brother Adama out of his place as they moved in. Needing a place for Adama and his friends who frequent it they offered him the closet, which mind you is just as big as my room. A few days later it was a fully functional bachelor pad. I learned very quickly how thin the walls really were. Adama just so happens to have an amazing stereo set he hooks to a car battery, instantly I was back in college, banging on the wall, “I’m trying to freaking sleep damnit, Adama turn that shit down!” Thankfully I had brought a foghorn back from America… you never know when it’ll come in handy and let me tell you it fixes the problem instantly, I fully recommend purchasing one. So the music stopped. The next day I barge in, which is something all the guys do around here mind you, his house is a chill spot, and I burst in on a local NGO worker with quite the attractive young woman (I won’t name names but I urge all of you to continue to support Christian Children’s Fund, believe it or not their food at programs here are the bomb, spared no expense thank you). “Well, welllllllll, helllllllooooooooooo, how are you both. Whelp, just looking for Adama, I guess I’ll be on my way. You guys just continue what you’re doing.” I said as obnoxiously as possible.

IT training at the hospital has gotten fairly monotonous. You have no idea the extreme frustration it is to watch someone struggle to move a mouse further on the screen when they ran out of mouse pad and you just continue to tell your self, ‘be nice, be nice, take a deep breath, try not to sound belittling’, no offence mom but it’s scarily reminiscent of trying to show you where the power button of our first desktop computer was. So to take a break and take a deep breath from IT for a bit I came back to the school. Trying to get all the things settled for a “Take our daughter’s to work weekend” I had started helping with I overheard some teachers planning there next science lesson. “Seriously, Shley, you need to let me come in and help out with a lesson someday.” I told the 8^th grade science teacher. “Alright sure, tomorrow we’re going to talk about microscopes any ideas?” The next morning I ganked a very old mirror microscope from the clinic that wasn’t being used, remnants of a failed lab project I tried to set up 6 months prior. Now it would be going to a much better purpose. The kids at the schools here almost never get an opportunity to do anything hands on in the classroom, it’s listen, repeat, memorize, go home. Being able to look at even things as simple as sand and seeing how it looks under a microscope, or the compound eye of an ant, the inner veins of a mango leaf, and the edge of a human hair; I’d like to think I saw a short twinkle in their eyes as they got a chance to see science in a different way. But who knows, it was only one day.

I had received a call bored one day at the clinic a few weeks ago asking in I had any girls at the school I taught at that were exceptional students who’d be willing to take part in a women in the work force shadowing experience they were calling, “Take your daughter’s to work weekend”. It sounded like a great opportunity sponsored by peace corps sponsorship along with assistance from a local women’s NGO. I jumped on my bike and ran to the school to see if the principle had anyone in mind, there was only a week till the program. He did have a few girls in mind and along with a few teachers we picked three to represent our school. The program would eventually be postponed for a few weeks (the girls were devastated) but I got a call and it had been rescheduled. It was my job to visit the girls parents and see if they had any questions about the weekend and make sure that they were supportive parents planning on pushing their daughter to further their education. In the money’s mind it would be a complete waste of money to let a girl come to a weekend focused on encouraging them to further their education and go onto the work force if, like the majority of parents around here, the next week keep her home from school because the wives were busy and someone needed to cook lunch; Or worse, just not caring about their child’s education at all. I road my bike to the three neighboring villages to talk to these parents all of which strangely were absent of father’s which was sad, two dead, one away at work. All of these girls though had been nominated because of how well they were doing at school and it was really great to see examples of a few decent parents who are tough on their kids when it comes to their education and appreciate how important an education… even for their girls… is.

Well with the good comes the long list of failed programs I have to update you on sadly. This is the main reason I haven’t updated my blog in so long. To be quite honest, recently, absolutely nothing that interesting has happened, and with frustrations with work, malaria meds, and the mid-service crisis I’ve just been getting by. with my health insurance policy I developed for my village it turns out the game my village was playing trying to get out of paying and instead trying to get sponsored from the land of the white people was lost. The the program is suppose to assist the community in being responsible for their own health care, the money is there, but in the end they’d rather just hold onto the money and take the risk with out insurance. It’s the same in America with insurance and a lot of people don’t purchase it, who can blame them. I’m still in the process of trying to sign up people up on an individual basis at least, so that even if a lot of people don’t sign up now maybe one day they will want it and have the access to highly affordable and reliable health insurance at their local clinic. This is a huge step for the development of my community here, but in the end if they’re not ready for it, they’re not ready. Both my bosses are still encouraging me to stay motivated with the project and to continue to initiate it, these days though motivation is running low. In a week I’m taking a break, a short vacation to go up to St. Louis, the original capital of Senegal on the border with Mauritania, for the Annual African Jazz Festival. I’m super excited and right before it my training group will all be meeting, by the pool in the president’s village, to celebrate being in our final year of service. Till the next time. Oh and check out this artical published in the New York Times about the Gambia: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/africa/21gambia.html?_r=1

Above is a picture of one of my friends "Lamin" in village with a Jesus shirt which I found hilarious. After I told him what it was and that he prob shouldn't be wearing a shirt with a giant jesus fish around village he agreed and I haven't seen him wearing it since. Even better today I saw a dude with a giant israeli flag on his shirt that said in both hebrew and english, "Israeli Solidarity Day". That may be better than the burning Osama Bin Ladin shirt I saw. Oh and saw a kid at my clinic wearing a university of Cincinnati shirt too, I was like, "GO BEARCATS!" he gave me an odd look.