Village Justice

So yes I know it's been awhile. I'd first like to make a plea to any graduate school reading this blog to please turn back now; it is a long, boring, and absolutly uninteresting blog and it would behoove you to surf the internet elsewhere. Also regardless of what is written i'm a decent guy and if nothing else have way to much character for my own good. For my other readers please continue with the understanding that the last blog entry I put up was a pretty long time ago and I was under the influence of some really nasty malaria propholaxis and giardia.
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Much has happened since my last entry and a great deal of time has passed. I’ll try not to take long catching you all up because I’m currently in the peace corps office waiting to go to a meeting with the minister of education. Not quite sure why I labeled this entry village justice but it sounds cool doesn’t it. Maybe it will be the title of the next Steven Segal movie… I can see it now…*narrated by the dude from those navy, “accelerate your life” commercials, isn’t that the same guy from The Unit? What’s his name anyways?* “ONE MAN! ONE VILLAGE! ONE MACHETE! Fighting to defend the honor of his recent bride! Steven Segal, featuring a brilliant performance by guest actor Jean Claud Van Dam as Musa the Fula war chief!”

There was though a recent conflict in my village. I was away for a week at my close of service conference (that’s where they tell you to not start any new projects and start saying goodbye to your little village cause you’re shipping out soon). That Monday after the conference I was in the office when some of the staff called over to me. They nervously asked me why my village decided to declare war on the village just north of me on the main road. I was confused. The staff then showed me this article: http://www.freedomnewspaper.com/Homepage/tabid/36/mid/367/newsid367/4886/Breaking-News-Gambia-Violence--Erupts-In-Gambia/Default.aspx

I love the wording like, “villagers… in Kombo East District clashed over a disputed land, which nearly rendered the country into instability” which I found hilarious considering I called my counterpart just after reading it and he said there was absolutely no fighting, they didn’t even lay a hand on them.

I went back to village though to find everyone one of my friends in village, Malang, Adaboy, Lika, even the teachers I worked with at the school and the man who helped me develop and insurance policy for the village, great guys… all arrested. There comes a certain point in a mans life when you start to re-evaluate your thinking paradigm when you’re sending text messages to your friends like this, “Adaboy, please text me back when you all are released from jail and let me know when your court date is so I can be there.” They were released a few days ago but the entire country is still talking about it. Now I understand why there is so much censoring of the journalism in this country, who could blame the government at all, the reporting is absolute shit. What really happened was 50 years ago the elders of my village wanted to help some wolof families who had no place to live so they gave them a piece of their land by the main road (prime realistate mind you) as a good deed to help their fellow Gambians; twenty years later they need more land for their children and ten years after that they didn’t even ask and expanded to create their own municipality. Frankly the elders were less than amused at how the people of Gidda replayed their hospitality, but still they didn’t make a fuss over it. Which brings us to the day the boys in my village were arrested, most of them where helping the women clear another part of the community garden when they got word some members of Gidda village had began clearing some farmland belonging to Jiboro residents. Having to go home anyways they took their gardening tools and passed by that farm to check it out. They told the Giddans to please step off their land, that their must have been a confusion over the land and that they should go home. The Giddans went home and the Jiboro men stayed for an hour or so to make sure they were going to come back and continue to work. At this point the Giddans went and called the police who immediately sent an entire armed battalion to respond to the supposed “village war”. They found the men from my village sitting on the land with “weapons”, really just the gardening tools and machetes they were using to clear the women’s garden an hour before, and immediately arrested them all… at least that was the story told to me in Mandinka. Court date’s on the 16^th if anyone’s interested in going.

Going back in time though let me briefly update you all on the past few months. Interesting tid bit, I was working the RCH clinic in November and had to break up a pregnant woman fight, got kicked in the junk in the process too. I mean say what you want about pregnant women but damn are they strong. RCH (reproductive and child health) is where babies are weighed and women are checked to make sure they’re healthy before delivering. Realize this place is a powder-keg on a regular basis, imagine if you will: hot, stuffy, enclosed mud brick clinic… a hundred screaming children and babies ages newly born to three years old… another 80 pregnant and hormonal women who just walked 5k to wait in line, dressed in the nicest clothes they own… and only 1 peace corps volunteer and 5 community health workers. I was taking blood pressure of the pregnant women when a fight broke over the ladies place in line. One younger girl vs. an older pregnant woman. They began tearing at each other’s clothes when I jumped in between them. It sounds heroic but really it was just stupid. They start trying to kick each other in the already engorged stomachs and I’m trying to deflect the blows with my legs as try and pull them apart with my arms. They had a freaking death grip on each other that short of divine intervention or Popeye forearms I wasn’t breaking. Thankfully a few of the nurses came in to help a few minutes later… it did end up taking 5 guys though.

Two Islamic holidays passed while I’ve been on blog hiatus, Ramadan and the holiday locally known as Tobaski, both of which I enjoyed with great break fast meals and really good benichin. Come December I was medivac’ed to Dakar but it turns out it was nothing dangerous. The annual naratawn football tournament played out and I took both my Jiboro Kuta and Jiboro Koto teams to the final only to have us both get second place in each of them. If any of you really know me you’ll know I’ve never gotten first in anything. It seems I am doomed to forever be a jack of all trades but a master of none. I did score the game winning goal in the quarter final match though which I’m quite proud of. In the last few months we also said goodbye to our old country director Mike who will be dearly missed. He was a great friend to have and boss. Cornish our new director while having different, less liberal, methods of going about things is equally friendly and efficient at his job and I’m confident that the country desk is still in good hands. We’re all getting ready again this time of year to go to the all west African softball tournament in Dakar and with Mauritanian out of contention after being evacuated our Gambian peace corps team is looking mighty strong. Lastly we finally received money (thanks to G. W. Bush’s PEPFAR funds) for me to host my girls leadership and HIV camp the first week of April.

Right now I’ve moved out of my old hut and am living the good life at the clinic in my toubab style apartment. Thank the lord I was replaced by a new volunteer who is positive and really cool living in my old place and taking over my work. Knock on wood but the Steven Snyderman stock is looking mighty strong these days as I cruise the last few months of my tour out till I come home in mid April. Miss you all and see you soon.