Under African Skies

Village Justice

2010-02-03T07:45:00.006Z

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.

The Great Sock Fiasco

2009-09-03T14:23:00.003Z

Here's an update of highlights from the summer, I know it's been awhile since I've posted anything. Don't forget to check out the previous blog of my story about the St. Louis trip. Enjoy.

A few weeks after the Jazz Festival it came time in my village to host a Gamo, a huge reading of then entire Koran. People stay up all night reading together around the mosque with food coming even into the late hours… at least for the adults. For the younger generations it’s the biggest party all year. Youth from all over the region come to hang out and chat. Also, for some strange reason, this is the best chance for any of them to get some. Every one is at the mosque with the blaring loudspeakers and commotion making it very easy for couples to slips off into the shadows. I found it all oddly ironic that nothing made people hornier than the thought of everyone getting together to read a holy book with directions on how to live your life more holy, that's how you know it's a really amazing book. I guess it's the same thing with Church though, if you want to pick up girls, get involved in a youth group I mean man, those kids clean up. But I don’t want to sound insensitive, I’m just bitter as you well know from two blog entries ago; my walls are thin and I’m just a guy trying to get some sleep. As sleep slowly proved an impossibility I awkwardly made my way to the swarm of people at 3 in the morning surrounding the mosque. Thankfully as the night went on most of the guys my age had gone off to hang out at their places and chat so I joined a few and we all chatted till people started to pass out on the porches of the compounds near the mosque.

Weeks would pass as school closed for the summer until after Ramadan and the great sock fiasco would come. Since I’ve lived in Jiboro my host sister Siby has been helping me out a ton and washing my clothes as I am completely incompetent. Since coming to Jiboro though a day not a day has gone by that she hasn’t busted my balls about something. A few months back I had left a few of my soccer socks accidentally in my laundry, which is not culturally appropriate, like underwear, for your sister to wash. I apologized thoroughly and explained that it was an accident and I’d wash them on my own but she said, “no, no, no, really don’t worry about it, I’ll wash them. I don’t mind.” “Well are you sure??? Ok then thank you a ton!” When that load of wash came back she said she didn’t have time to take care of the socks now but would another day, so I didn’t worry about it. Weeks went by and every day I would go to the field to train with out socks. The boys would tell me everyday, like I didn’t know, “Demba, really you need to wear socks when you play look how cut up your legs are getting!” Till finally I went to Siby and explained, “Look don’t worry about it, I really need these socks. I’m completely capable of washing them on my own, thank you. Where did you put the socks so I can wash them?” “No, no, no, I just haven’t gotten to it yet but I’ll do it.” “Alright then but I really need them.” Several more weeks went by till finally, one day extremely sick and hallucinating with fever before I was about to go on vacation for a few weeks I needed these socks.

The night before I had been rolling in bed, freezing and half dreaming/half hallucinating. I was on a battlefield, bullets flying from everywhere with no real concentrating of fighting. I was being carried on to a stretcher and taken through the war torn plains to get medical attention. I screamed at the men carrying me, “Damnit don’t take me to that fucking rebel clinic! I want to go to a real American military hospital not a dilapidated, unsupplied, local clinic!!!! Nooooo!! I want to go to an American facility!” and I woke up in a pool of sweat. Still dazed that day I needed those socks, this wasn’t the day I wanted to get them back but I had no choice, I was traveling. “Siby, seriously, today is the day, I really need those socks” She ignored me for a few minutes until I finally got a confession out of her. She had lost the socks, every single pair of the only soccer socks I had brought to the country, gone. In the end though they were just socks, I was more upset that I trusted her as responsible to watch my things and I had already had a few situations of other people wearing the stuff they took of mine drying. She said she felt very bad and that I should talk to my host mother kotu-fatou.

I went to talked to her and she sighed and explained to me, from what I could translate, that they had been thrown by two of the trouble maker kids in my compound, into a pile that was to be burned and not seeing them they were lit on fire. This made me feel better as no one was really to blame, kids are kids, and they are just socks. It sucks but what can you do. This was the same kid who a minute after me giving him a kiddy shovel to play with took it and threw it down the pit latrine never to be seen again. Relieved a little that my trust had not been betrayed in my host sister I apologized and needed to sit down as I wasn’t feeling well. At this time all the boys were coming back from practice at the field and my good friend Malong came and sat down to tell me how training went. Then I start to explain the situation with these stupid kids who destroyed my good football socks when I look down. Malong was wearing my socks. I start to freak out, seriously what the fuck, he just sat there and listened to my entire story about my socks being destroyed thinking he’d get away with it. The screaming commenced, “Malong explain to me where you got these socks” he ignores me and starts walk away, “Where did you get those socks!? You know they were mine, you’ve seen me wear them” He responded, “Lika gave them to me” “Where does Lika live! He’s a thief and I’m going to have a little chat with him! *random curses*” A crowd begins form. “Malong where did he get these socks, explain it to me!” “No. Don’t go to his house!” and he starts to run of in fast Mandinka that I didn’t understand being sick and angry. The forestry worker who lives in my compound and is a complete and utter tool walks over. In a attempt to be the intermediary he begins in English, “Alright, alright, everyone calm down. First off you need to know two things about Demba (me)…. First he is selfish, and secondly he is immoral.” I snap. “IMMORAL!!!! IMMORAL!!! I am immoral? WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!!?!? I swear if you say one more fucking word I rip the tounge directly out of your prick fucking mouth. I have been called many things in my life, but the last of which would be immoral.” He smartly walks away as Malang sister begins to to call me selfish and explain in madinka that if I were to just lend people my things this would never be a problem. “Hold up, hold up, I’m completely confused. So what you’re saying is that no one would have to steal my things if I just let everyone borrow them. I must have this mistaken are you serious?” She shakes her head yes. Wow I don’t understand this place at all and what does Malong have to do with this, he said Lika had them. I dragged Malong away from the crowd and into my house so he could calmly explain to me the truth.

He would go onto explain that hanging around the compound one day Lika and him had seen several pairs of my nice socks in the burn pile. They had assumed I didn’t want them anymore and took them as their own. This confused me considering it was Lika and him who had told me to wear socks in the first place at the field and asked what had happened to my nice socks… after of course I told them they were being washed. In the end they had made up this bogus explanation in their heads that I had legitimately thrown out my socks to validate them taking it and not asking; because they knew, if they were to go up to my door and say, “Hey Demba, you threw some really nice socks into the burn pile do you really not want them?” I would say, “Oh my, why thank you guys so much, no I never put them there but thank you for bringing them back” or if I had indeed thrown them there then, “Of course, go ahead I didn’t need them any more” This would be if they had the assumption that I was a typical rich white person who throws out perfectly good socks just because they get dirty. “Look Malang,” I began, “all you had to do was ask, you knew they were my socks, but I realize I shouldn’t have made a scene. I’m sick, and not feeling well, not to mention you’re a friend. Just return the socks and tell Lika to bring his back too and we’ll forget about it.” In the end if I had understood a cultural attitude in the Gambia this could have been handled differently. The truth of it is that yes they knew they were my socks, and yea they should of asked, but their excuse allowed them deniability. How then did I turn into the bad guy with a swarm of people, it was my shit of course that got stolen, yet I was selfish and immoral. In actually in the Gambia it is just far far worse to call someone out on stealing or to call them a thief in public than it is to actually steal to begin with. I know it sounds counterproductive the fact that it makes it easier of an environment to “borrow things permanently”. The shame though, of everyone knowing Malong had taken the socks with out asking, made me the criminal. Malong and Lika ended up returning my socks, we forgave eachother, and the situation blew over as an ignorant American who doesn’t understand how things work. To solve it the Gambian way I would have to either say it in public jokingly and lightheartedly that you had permanently borrowed my things and later they would bring it back or take them aside privately, still not calling them out as a thief, and saying “You have my stuff, I need it back.”

Later I would have a similar experience when I would find my athletic shorts missing, thinking they had just got misplaced I’d forget about it, but on the football field one day I would see it on another player. Now these were DEFFINITLY my shorts, I mean they still had my initials on them from summer camp as a kid. I told him after the game, “Lamin, (yes the same Lamin from blog entries at the start of my service, another “good friend” in village) I know those are my shorts *he laughs*. If you could just return them to me when you’re done with them that would be great. Thanks man, no worries.” I decided this time I was going to try it the Gambian way. He responded, “Oh, uhhh, I’ll explain to you where I got the shorts later.” “Ok”. Later came and he explained, “These are the shorts my brother in sweeden gave me, they are not your shorts.” Laughingly I say, “haha look Lamin, of course they are my shorts, they say my name in them… see S.S.. Lamin I know they’re my shorts, don’t worry about it, just return them when you get a chance.” I gave him a few days and after no show I went to his house at night to chat. It really was a nice evening, another friend from my compound was there and we watched American rap videos on his iPod touch (don’t ask me how he procured this). He bought eggs and soda for all three of us along with egg sandwiches, we ate till we were full and laughing and chatted with the family till it got late. In west African custom he walked me half way back to my home and on the way I mentioned calmly again, “Don’t think I forgot, when you get a chance I really would like my shorts back.” “My cousin gave them to me.” “Is that the story you’re sticking with? I will get my shorts back, they are my shorts, I think it would be better if you did it the easy way.” He laughed, and we said our goodbyes.

In conclusion it’s been months… he still has my shorts and short of me making a scene (doing it the American way) or going black ops and stealing them back my self I will never see those shorts again. He’s a clever kid, I tried it the Gambian way, it didn’t work. And it is my opinion and mine along, as culturally insensitive as this may sound, that this system ends up encouraging everyone to take everyone else’s things and only really harms people who actually have nice things, which is probably why it’s not a problem. If this situation was with a normal moral Gambian and not a punk little trouble maker with a shady reputation in town, unlike Malong, I would have received my things back in the normal local fashion, though maybe with the articles not in perfect condition. None the less, I believe you come to a point here where in the first year you let everything go. You label it as cultural sensitivity. The pedantic way people may talk to you, or a stolen sock or two, you’re the outsider and so you make a decision to just let it go, this is a new culture. Come your second year of service you wake up and find out, wait a second, some of those times people were being legitimately condescending or insulting to you; but hell there are assholes all around the world. Though at a certain point, you shuffle through the things, from your youth and from your experience, that you found to be the write and wrong way of doing things and some of those things won’t line up with other cultures but this is what defines your beliefs and your identity. There are things you may decide cross-cultural boundaries and are not cool where ever you are. For instance I come from an east coast American way of life, where if you don’t like someone, you tell them or just keep it too yourself. If you like someone, you let it known. And if someone steals your things, you either decide to let them get away with it or you don’t. I come from the belief that talking slander behind someone’s back is far, far worse than calling them those same things directly to their face; the complete opposite of Gambian methodology. I feel you’re not going to like everyone in this world and if they ask you should tell them the truth or don’t mention it to anyone. The Gambian culture has different ways of dealing with things and I understand that. Even so, to this day I would rather that a man call me an immoral infidel to my face (and deal with the consequences), than to go around and tell everyone in the village but me that he thinks I’m immoral. This is a very passive-aggressive society that for very positive reasons avoids confrontation at all costs, because of this though gossip is indirectly encouraged and calling someone out which would be typical in America is here far worse than then the initial crime.

On a different note, the rains have come again in full force. Actually it’s been terrible for the crops with such a large amount of rain with little break. Communities all over the country have fell victim to weakly built houses and flooding any many families have had to leave. Actually just the other day I was at Lamin’s house helping the family move all of their belongings to another house while they fix the roof that started to crack and collapse. One morning a sinkhole dropped out under the porch of the compound next door to me. Turns out about 30 years ago there was a well built in that spot that everyone had forgot about then they built the porch halfway over it. The well then dropped out about ~5ft down (not sure exactly but lets just say taller than you haha). A little girl even sprained her ankle bad falling in it thinking it was a shallow puddle instead of an old well that filled with brown-red water thru the night. Realize this was the most interesting thing that’s happened in the village in awhile so the whole community was standing around it watching a few small boys use buckets to take out the water best they could, even though it was pouring down rain completely negating their work, I think they just wanted to jump in the well. To make matters worse I found out that when they built the health clinic and hooked it to solar they had paid to run an electrical wire from there to the mosque on the other side of town which coincidentally ran right through this, soon to be found, old well. So the bottom was like 5ft but the wire was running across the middle of it about 3ft down and when it was filled with murky water the kids kept poking the hole with the business end of a shovel to see how deep it was. Thankfully they never split that wire or I would have been treating electrical shocks all morning. Recently I took part in a Football/Aids Education camp for young boys. It was set up like Take Your Daughter’s To work except with football and guys. Other than having to spend the week in an incredibly shady hotel room (which is saying a lot considering I live in a flea infested hut) playing camp councilor to kids who ranged from 12-29 (thank you Gambian NGOs for doing such a great job at keeping it in a tight age bracket) it went very well. I gave my communication lecture again which I’m getting incredibly good at and helped out with the coaching; I even somehow ended up being the adult male reprehensive for the lecture on healthy relationships, feel free to laugh.

A few quick snidbits before I call it an entry I was watching GRTS (Gambian news station) and they reported arresting 16 terrorists, 4 Gambian, the rest Senegalese, who were plotting an attack to destabilize the Gambian government. The only crime in this country is the petty kind so any violence to begin with is strange; what was stranger was that it was in the village right next to mine. Good to know. Also, I’ve had a few creepy run ins with a certain symbol popping up in my village, which is both humorous and creepy. One of the boys who used to work in the clinic went off and joined the Army. Back from training for Ramadan my host wife (my host brother’s wife, I think I’ve explained this) ironing his fatigues and I picked up the hat to look at it when I noticed a swastika on the underside of the bill. I explained what the symbol meant and how it was very strange to find it here in Africa on a military uniform. I know Dino (yes that’s his name, but it’s way better than the other kid in my village: Dodo) didn’t draw it but still I wouldn’t want to fight and god forbid die wearing that symbol as they were just as oppressively racist as they were anti-semetic. Then, 3 days later I was walking my site mate back to the main road and stopped at a shop to return some bottles when she laughed and told me I should look at something. 4 cute kids in my village were pushing a cart of several yellow bedongs (water containers) to fetch water. Each bedong had a large red swastika painted on the front. Obviously they’ve expanded the Nazi youth fan club to little ol’ Jiboro. I think it’s a big step that they’re accepting black people now. I’m actually quite pleased. Mauritania recently evacuated all of it’s Peace Corps Volunteers and we got 3 of the refugees wanting to complete their service. Also the new group of Education volunteers will be swearing in soon (and again I did an encore of the foni bike trip but in western region, we’re getting 4 new volunteers) and they’ve decided that they will be sending all of the people who were scheduled to go to Mauritanian and instead send them here, to the smallest country in Africa. Come November it’s going to get a little crowded in this place. Here comes the drama.

I was giving an impromptu wound care demonstration for the parents of all the pain in the butt kids in my compound who refuse to wear shoes, and yet wound them selves on a daily basis because of it, then the next day not wear shoes again. I used a boy Trodor (I like to refer to him as Trogdor the Burnanator) who’s big toe was cut up, as an example. I explained that he needs to start wearing shoes and stop putting his toe on the ground right after I just cleaned it, “Kana banko ma I seinkumba kuwo kola! Dukare” Please, I said, Don’t touch the ground after washing your big toe! Then, out of nowhere, I hear mockingly, in a high pitched voice behind me, “kana banko ma, kana banko ma, kana banko ma” A completely healthy middle aged woman was standing right behind me making fun of my accent. I look back at here giving her the death stare and in Mandinka ask, “What is wrong with you? Are you an adult?” She looked at me like, of course! What a stupid question. I went on, “Because where I’m from only children stand behind someone and repeat everything they say.” She walked away seemingly undisturbed. I mean seriously, If people want to make fun of me while I’m attempting to save their children’s future welfare what really is the point? But I carry onward. Trodor in the meantime had run off like a typical kid to go play in the mud. I sigh and look at him and his mother again. “Wash it, and call me when he’s ready” 10 minutes later, Trodor, completely naked and dripping wet from a full bath, walks into my house. Well at least they went above and beyond, though I really only meant to rewash the toe. I carried him back to his place so he wouldn’t, again, walk on the dirt and get the toe dirty and I bandaged it up. His mother thanked me and said she would keep it clean from then on.

…. The next day he was running around in the mud again, bandaid hanging off his toe. “TRODOR!!! Where are your shoes!?!?” and I watch him run off with a big smile on his face. I look at his mother. She shrugs a, “what can ya do”. Oh well, until tomorrow inshallah. “Domanding, demanding”

Good, finally you guys are updated. 7 and ½ Months to go.

St. Louis Jazz

2009-09-03T14:10:00.001Z

I won’t even begin to apologize, I have a lot to catch up on, but I’ll make it as entertaining as I can. Stay with me and I’ll tell you the story of my trip to St. Louis then stayed tuned in the next few days when I post a recap of the summer.

Late spring I was involved in a Take Your Daughter’s to Work Weekend which I mentioned in the previous blog entry. It went very well and to this day I feel like if I contributed anything to this country my entire peace corps service it was helping out those few days, my little piece of the take your daughter’s to work weekend. I put on my regular course of communication, problem solving, and creative thinking but I added a competition at the end where using household items/things you could buy at village shops five teams competed to build the largest free standing structure with the materials given. These materials included: a large amount of magazines, paper clips, seran wrap, string, and other random things that they were able to choose in turn with the other groups. It was amazing to see the ideas they came up with and to see their minds being given the chance for the first time in their educational career to think out side the box and be given an obstical that involved multiple different answers. As I’ve explained before this is severely hindered in a strict lecture classroom where the kids are truly frightened into asking any questions, especially the majority of Gambian girls who would die before raising their hands. There’s a DVD taped by the Gambian Television network of the event flying around somewhere, I’ll try and get a copy.

After Take Your Daughter’s to Work I set off with a few friends to northern Senegal to a little island city on the Mauritanian border, the original St. Louis. The ride up had typical west African travel complications. We were told the day before we would be able to catch a car from Barra (the village on the other side of the river in the Gambia) strait to St. Louis but I sensed that was typical bullshit. “Yea we can get you a car to anywhere in Africa from there if you wanted, no problem, we’ll see you tomorrow morning.” … yea for a price. After a minute talking to the car park manager in person we just walked away and headed for the border at the village of Karang where, after some heated negotiations got a car that would take us strait to St. Louis (pronounced san-Louie). In the cramped station wagon we spent the next ten hours traveling through the full heart of Senegal. Gigantic groves of Baobab trees and small Sahel villages turned into scattered acacia trees to rolling dunes of sand. Donkeys and horses gave way to herds of camels and broken down cars; towns of kids running around or working in the fields turned to ghost town of newly built suburbs where people hid in their houses from the mid days heat. We past the center of west African Islam the city of Touba where the most famous of Senegalese Imams stay and pray at the largest mosque in the country, a beautiful Taj Mahal esk structure that towers over the contrarily juxtaposed urban poverty of the city. Falling in and out of sleep in a daze of my cramping back and neck and exhaustion from the baking car’s interior; but there it stood in the distance, floating in the middle of the sea, two islands of asphalt surrounded by the cobalt mouth of the Senegal River, what better home could there be for the African seeds of Jazz.

Stepping out of the car sore and tired from the long days ride as the sun was slowly swallowed by the Atlantic we walked through the busy square streets of towering French colonial apartments. The laundry that draped over the balconies was being taken in for the night as the cool salty breeze relieved us. We found a small hostel in the heart of the old city with the help of a nice Mauritanian peace corps volunteer who we had met at W.A.I.S.T. and put our things down for the night. With the sun gone the yellow glow of street lamps littered a crowded street. The smell of smoky fish in the air and the sound of light guitar and heavy drum beats from the local bars. This place truly is the New Orleans of west Africa and why wouldn’t it be, New Orleans was created here in the streets of Saint Louis from that heart beat of an Senegalese drum with French and Wolof in the air. New Orleans just put the spark of the American spirit as icing on the cake of modern jazz.

We spent the night strolling the streets and popping our heads in little hotel bars and clubs where white tourists crammed into packed rooms and local kids packed the streets peeking heads through windows and open doorways awing musicians who 10 years prior were where they are. Music has and will always be the soul of this place and every year it opens it self around this time opens itself up to this festival, if we can manage to weed through the tourist clouds. The next day we took our time, the cold breath of the sea blanketing us from the peering sun, walking around French coffee shops and little art bungalows of local sculptors and painters, munching on cheap 500cefa benichin, a oily testament to truly great Wolof rice cooking. Somewhere along the way the girls in my group stumbled into a beautiful home and pool, which was just now having the finishes touches put on it. They charmed the man who owned it into giving us a thorough tour. It had the rugged feel of a New York loft apartment mixed with cultural nuances of west Africa and the filling of an expensively modern mansion. We’re talking showers with 53 settings and music, huge plasma televisions, and themed rooms (the morocco room, the African safari room, French room etc.). Somehow, the girls in typical fashion managed to score us a ticket to his housewarming party in a few days which would be littered with the cultured Dakarian elite, French imports, and hired jazz performers. Score.

The rest of our group arrived the next day which made about 8 of us grungy peace corps volunteers and the girls, knowing this, spent the day trying to buy clothes that were classy enough to be seen at this party. Eugene, Alex, and I went walking through the market in search of good food and a bit of trouble. Didn’t find any trouble but we came back to the hostel that afternoon with our stomachs full of Moroccan dishes. After all getting some egg sandwiches from a corner shop we got on the nicest clothes we had in our backpacks and headed over to the party. My mouth dropped as we walked through the door. Live music around a pool, people having intellectual conversations about development or the economy, eating salmon (yes, salmon, alhumdililiah), and sipping on aged French wine. There we are, dressed unhelpingly down, strait out of our sandy Gambian villages and now we’re eating escargot and talking politics… talk about a culture shock. We were the life of the party, turns out the party needed nothing else then a bunch of strangely-eccentric Peace Corps Volunteers. Everyone one was laughing, listening to music, and if we hadn’t go drunk of the wine or brandy we definitely were after the Champaign. It was the most fun I had had since coming to Africa but it wouldn’t of been the same if it didn’t have the pretence of living a year in my quaint border village. The eclecticness of it all, the good, the bad, the poor and the rich, the tourist hotels and grass root huts; a wise man could make an interesting anecdote on the dualism of life, but I will leave that for the more judicious.

Saturday would come and we went to eat at a nice Vietnamese restaurant that overlooked the river and Mauritania. From the other bank of the river we could see how true the saying was for them that the grass is greener on the other side. The Senegalese side was flourishing with the city of St. Louis complimenting the vast expansiveness of the Sahara on the other side, sand blowing in the ocean’s breeze. From years of desertification the dunes of the Sahara have finally begun it’s decent across the Senegal River. That day a group of French university students on vacation filled our hostel, an exquisitely multi-ligual Italian man had befriended Jenni and helped us charm the a ticket lady into getting us a group rate, with the French students, into the huge staple jazz concert of the festival. For the same cost it took us to drive to St. Louis we watched an enchanting old-school American jazz singer who sung some of Gershwin’s classic compositions and spoke what sounded like flawless French. Then after an intermission we watched an amazingly talented French jazz accordion player and his band. I know, jazz accordion?? Seriously, but it was fantastic. That then evolved into a duet with famous local Kora player (a characteristically Sene-gambian stringed instrument) mixed with one of the most amazing drum solos I have ever seen live. So no it wasn’t any Coltrain or Miles and the whole week I didn’t hear one trumpet but somehow it was still thickly classic jazz. That didn’t stop me though from yelling, “FREE BIRD!!!” between songs. I truly hope someone got it.

The next day we headed back to the Gambia and were back by late afternoon. The car dropped us off and at customs I realized I forgot the brand new coat that had just been sent in a care package to me. I dropped my stuff, told people to watch my bags then ran off towards Senegal to catch the car. I must have looked hysterical, then I must have looked even more hysterical as I tripped on a rock in a big crowd of punk kids and badly cut up my palms on shards of broken glass and stones. I laid there motionless and closed my eyes trying to blank out the thunder of laughter, mind you laughter not, “Oh my are you ok son?!?”. Time though was of the essence and out of a motionless slumber I jumped up, blood draining down my arm, and ran towards the car park. A man came up to me saying, “You forgot you thing right? Come with me the driver is waiting for you.” Which sounded to me like he had actually talked to the man and knew the situation, It would be quite the contrary. We get to the car park and I wipe the blood off on my already sweaty shirt. After running around for 10 minutes people giving me completely opposite advice I locate the car, and my coat. Relieved I jump back on this mans bike who I begin thanking for quote, “going so far out of your way to help me get my coat back and not charging me”. This is where I found out he really didn’t even know the driver, he just took a guess from me running that I had forgot something in the car, he then proceeded to tell me I should pay him 1000cefa (a crazy amount of money for the short trip) for him helping me, I then proceeded to tell him to go fuck himself and calmly explained (seriously completely calm, the adrenaline that had proceeded my freak out run and fall had worn off) that he never mentioned a price when he had picked me up and instead ran with the rouse that he sort of new the driver and had, as he definitely said, had heard from the driver and been told of the predicament. I ended up throwing him 20 dalasis, with coins, to get out of my face, twice the amount of a typical ride to the car park and back and went through customs. It was a rocky ferry ride in the darkness of night as I cleaned my wound with anything I could find in peoples backpacks, which ended up being hand sanitizer and we were back over the river in Banjul.

The Love Shack Next Door

2009-05-24T14:23:00.005Z

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.

The joys of ping pong and beer

2009-03-22T11:14:00.004Z

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/

Awakening the Muse

2009-02-11T17:35:00.003Z

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.

The Foni Bike Excursion

2009-02-11T17:22:00.003Z

Greetings again to all my readers, I pray the New Year has met you all well. Things have really been picking up here the past few weeks and I have many stories to tell. You know what, while I’m thinking about it I want to apologize for lying to all of you when I said the next blog entry would be short … yea it really wasn’t. I hope though to make it up to you in this shortened (yes I had to shorten it) addition of my blog entry, The Foni Bike Excursion.

With all the commotion of the new group being sworn in and preparing for the big West African softball tournament everyone was looking for a last weekend escape before digging in for a month or so in village. The thought being that if you put one good hard month or so into trying not to leave your village, to use the internet or eat some American food than maybe, just maybe you can thwart off the guilt of leaving for a week to Dakar to get drunk and play softball with a few hundred crazy PCVs. What to do? Fajara was out of the question. The transit house in the capital was turning too much into a drama filled disaster area than a real escape. The new volunteers had just gone to site for their “three month challenge” so the idea came up between Alex and I that we should do a south bank bike trip to visit all the new volunteers as they trudged through the first difficult months in village. This would not only be fun for us but hopefully a welcoming escape to the green volunteers.

So it was planned. I road my bike along a little dirt trail that followed the countries border so that I could take the back road, at 7 in the morning, to Annie’s new site about a 50 minute bike ride east of me. I got there faster than I thought I would, it’s freaking creepy to ride your bike along a bush road in the middle of no where Africa by the way, visibility not being so hot as the sun began to rise. Waiting there in her village I posted my bike up at the Barak Obama Photo Studio, (no I’m not kidding, a nice little shop actually) and ate a granola bar. I’m not very patient as I’m sure most of you now know so a few seconds after completing my snack I decided to just keep riding until I ran into him going the other direction. It was still too early in the morning and I’m not enough of an asshole to wake the poor girl up before eight so I just rode. I caught up with him a village or two down the road and we ended up spending the next hour or so attempting to locate the one place in the whole freaking village that had eggs for breakfast. After our fruitless efforts to find breakfast we found her house and hung out for the day. Her place was nice and the last agro volunteer did a great job in the landscaping department. It was that afternoon that we started the tradition of building a water bidong basket for everyone’s house we stopped at. The sun was setting fast so we said our goodbyes and headed for alex’s village another hour or so down the road. His village doesn’t get any eggs so we stopped at, I’d say, every single shop along the way to ask. Every shop keeper said the same thing, “Try the next one. I’m SURE it’s there.” This got super annoying very fast when the 15 consecutive shops after that each told us the same thing.

Day one had come and gone and day two had begun before we knew it, as the bike trip continued. The Foni region of the Gambia is really a beautiful place, lined with tributaries and palm groves and a few hills along the way to mix things up. Breakfast wasn’t as hard this morning as a woman in the compound next door to Alex’s ended up making fresh pancatoes. The ride was nice and cool and we made it to the next village on our trip pretty quick. Jessi seemed abnormally positive actually for just getting plopped into a new environment and turned out to be an amazing host… no apologies for finishing your stash M&Ms. It was a nice house, a real ceiling (which any PCV will tell you is a HUGE plus to keep out the rats), and a cement back yard. Overall a pretty nice set up, what made it even better was the extremely funny “Politically correct Jesus” picture hanging on the wall that not so subtly made sure to have a young child of every ethnicity enjoying Jesus’s company. And so the epic 100 or some kilometer bike trip up the dusty south bank road continued, onward through Jola country we peddled and sadly, to quickly, we became bored, which almost always eludes to trouble.

A punk looking Kombo dude was riding his bike in a hurry down the road with a basket full of bread for sale in the back. “WOOOOAAAA! WOOOAAA!” Alex let off some siren noises that I’m sure the guy didn’t hear and I rode closer. “Sir, SIR! Pull over the bicycle now sir.” I said as he kept riding, “Do you have license and registration for that foleyosuwo (bike in Mandinka, literally translated to ‘rubber horse’) sir? I’m with the village defense league and we’ve been getting reports of people smuggling nudy magazines through these parts” “Sorry what did you say? Do you want to be my friend?” he replayed. “Alright sir, you are free to go, please ride safe, and greet the wife for me, thank you”. 15 minutes went by and we hadn’t passed any one, when this poor kid, not knowing what trouble in the form of two exhausted aid workers in their mid-20s in west Africa was coming his way. We turned on the sirens, “WOOOOOP! WOOOP! BEEP! BEEP!” “Boy! Boy! Please pull over the bike son”. He stops. “Son, do you know how fast you were going?” I asked authoritatively. “My name is Ousman.” he said smiling. “uhhh, do you know how fast you were going??? This is a 5k section of road and my radar says you were going 6” “Morning, morning, my name is Ousman. I am going to school.” He responded cheerfully. Wow that was like the fasted way you could ruin the fun kid, thanks! Ok so I’m really not that much of an ass, so I told him to have a pleasant day and to study hard at school and blessed him with a day of peace in Mandinka. Alright now that that was out of my system we could continue with the trip and finally, after another half hour or so, we made it to Bwiam, a bigger village in central Foni.

I had been to one of the three volunteers now staying there once before but it was a long time ago and I was amazed at actually remembering where they lived. We all hung out, took a nice hike through a palm grove, and then grabbed some beer at a shop. We parked our bikes outside the door and went to sleep. Come early morning I get up and wake Alex so we can catch a gilly gilly back to my village. What the fuck? Where are the bikes!?!? I spend the next 15 minutes trying to figure out where the police station is in Bwiam and then, half awake, proceed to attempt to track the thieves by following the tire marks in the sand; that’s weird because I don’t really see any new tracks? I look again, yep only to pairs of tracks coming into the, gated mind you, compound, and none leaving. Well at least that limits the thieves to Dracula, Harry Potter, and those monks in Tibet who can levitate. That will make for much easier paperwork for the police. I walked back to the house confused when one of the volunteers host brother’s walked outside. I greet him, “Good morning, you haven’t by any chance seen I fanged man wearing a cape lately or a scrawny boy on a broom have you?” I ask. “Oh are you looking for your bikes? You shouldn’t have left them outside all last night so I put them in the house for safe keeping.”… why thank you, that would make sense.

Catching a gilly was easy and we decided to even drop back off at Kafuta and take the bush road back to my site. Along the way we stopped real quick at a skill center that I read about on BBC that was close to my site, sponsored by some guys in Jersey, UK, then headed back to Jiboro. The road that connects my village to the main national highway was just starting to be built, but currently was in complete disarray as bulldozers cruised down building what seemed like a superhighway. They say it’s going to be paved by the end of March but I’m not going to get my hopes up. So instead of taking the dust vortex of death that is the road currently we take yet another back road to the Brick (what PCVs call Birkama). Riding up we run into a group of pigs; now this might not sound strange to you the reader but let me tell you, in the Gambia, it is. We jumped off our bikes and tried to catch a few. I don’t think we actually planned on catching any so it was really more an effort of humor. It looked like there was a small Christian compound that owned them down the way. The road jutted north and we came across a long segment of deserted road, when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I see a man about our age riding up to us. As he passes he smiles and keeps riding, holding a freshly lit joint in his mouth… what every passes the time around here I guess. It’s illegal but generally known as commonplace to the locals. Boys everywhere will go off to an old tree and light one up. I though, being a good peace corps volunteer, always refuse.

Up in B-town we spend the day hanging out with a few PCVs in the area, one of which, Olga from my group had a friend in town from Japan. We all sat down and chatted away at Jokors, a local bar and nightclub till it got dark. I’d find myself again in the Brick a week later to watch the inauguration of President Obama. The speech was moving I thought, I even yelled at the guy working the bar to change the channel to CNN from BBC because we really couldn’t be bothered watching a “red-coat news station for the inauguration of a great American leader”, was a tad drunk (for some reason I have a huge beef with the British when I’m drunk? I’m not exactly sure why, they’re the original fast talking-prick imperialists). The winning of Obama is probably the most celebrated event in Africa since Mansa Musa built Timbuktu. He’s a house hold name, they’ve even started calling me Obama for the very fact that I’m American. For an entire week after his inauguration I woke up every morning to the “Barak Obama Song”, yes there’s a song, I think written by a Jamaican dude. It goes something like, “Barak, Obama, Barak, Obama, Bama bama.” Ok it doesn’t really work when I write it, but look it up online or something. It’s pretty much the new Macarena.

Down the rabbit hole we go

2009-01-12T10:24:00.010Z

“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.”

Eye patches, Scars, and Diseases you get in Oregon Trail

2008-12-13T17:54:00.015Z

Exclaimer:
“I’m sure you’re wondering, Steven, Steven, what the hell did you get yourself into this time? And in love of my worrying mother I shall inform you before going into the whole story that I am indeed perfectly fine and healthy now, at least physically, and that I will try not to get into any more trouble in the future… yeah. Again let me reiterate, mother I am fine and healthy and you need not worry, though I still miss all of you dearly. Can I use dearly in a sentence with out losing huge man points? Well hopefully the proceeding tale of pain and mild adventure will win me back at least a few; and so I will begin the tale of Eye patches, Scars, and Diseases you get in Oregon Trail.”

It was a dark, and stormy night, and the westerly winds whistled haunting lullabies through the trees. Alright so it wasn’t dark, and it hasn’t rained in three months but the wind did whistle through the Mango trees as the leaves began to fall. The nights, and days for that matter, had started to get significantly cooler. My host family would even don their heavy down jackets and children would zip up their hoods like there was a blizzard outside. Tourists came and went, a few even suffering from mild heat exhaustion from some imaginary heat they were exposed to. European girls sporting their tank tops and gravely inappropriate tight slacks and European men walking around with short shorts and t-shirts. Seriously, short shorts are never cool, I’m no Miles Davis but unless you’re playing for the 1985 Knicks you should not be wearing that crap… sigh. I in all of this was quite content. The weather for me was beautiful; I even made a habit of wearing long sleeves throughout the day and at night even broke out the sleeping bag. Clear blue sky and a cool breeze, Oranges beginning to ripen, and my work finally picking up again I decided to (not at all on a whim mind you) to travel back up to Kerewan then take a trip up to Wassu with Tara and Travis to get a local scarring done. A Gambian Peace Corps tradition for many years (not that that justifies it, but we can debate my actions later); in local Fula tradition they symbolize tribal identity when their done around the eyes, in Mandinka tradition they’re said to ward off evil, a type of body Juju. The decision seemed quite simple at this point.

Kerewan was nice as usually. I ended up getting stuck at Jenni’s compound for an hour or so waiting and thinking again how fun and cool it was to be able to just shoot the shit in Mandinka for a few hours with complete strangers. Tara was a great host and I got the entire history of South Africa one evening sipping red root tea and chowing down on some Velveeta Shells and Cheese® (where are mine by the way?). This is about the time in the story I started to feel a cold coming on. The next day we attempted to get to Olivia’s village who would be throwing a Spanish themed party that evening. The thing is there is only one car that goes to her village every day, that car departs her village at the butt crack of dawn, goes to Barra, then anywhere between 1 and 6 o’ clock it will pass by Kerewan so that we could hitch a ride. That means that as we started waiting out there around 2 there was the potential to end up waiting out there all fucking day for this car that would never be coming or have already passed. So I was slightly ticked off to say the least, I really have zero patience and to this day am curious as to why the Peace Corps saw me fit to be a volunteer. By the grace of god we did end up catching the ride and the next thing I knew was making tortillas and downing tequila shots at Olivia’s.

The prior mentioned ass crack of dawn hence came and what I found out was that contrary to popular belief the consumption of alcoholic beverages (especially those made in Mexico) only temporarily relieve cold symptoms and might as well have put a gun to my immune in regards to my developing flu. That mixed with the stresses of travel and the added anxiety of the fact that the next day I would be allowing a woman to cut my shoulder open and stuff ash into it, in turn put my illness in full bloom. Now this is the part where any normal man may take it upon himself to contemplate the possibility that maybe, just maybe, a higher power out there, was trying to tell him something. A neon sign if you will that says, “Hey buddy, why don’t you wait another time to get those scars and head back to a nice air conditioned room and let your body heal”, but that of course would be a very expensive sign. As I’m sure you have figured by now though, my incisive readers, is that that would also not make for a very great story line and thus our protagonist would therefore venture onward upon his journey to Wassu.

Wassu is however very far, and being the college educated group that we were decided to stay overnight at Kristin’s site who lived just south of Wassu. They spent the night chatting nervously as I drowsily moaned and groaned for the entire night in a Nyquil© induced slumber, waking occasionally to either blow my nose or put my two cents into a conversation, which mind you I will never be too sick for. I am, as a site-mate recently concluded, “The most opinionated person she’s ever met” which I will not deny. Back to our story though somewhere in between my feverish bouts of sleep we drew lines as a guide for the woman the next day to follow as she cut us. Travis on his calf, and in strange act of spontaneity decided to put another pair on the base of his thumb (my idea actually mind you but it really does look great there); Tara then with a little help drew three lines on her shoulder blade, and I then drew mine on the front of my shoulder. Kristin had actually gotten her scars done the year before on her foot and after some more anxious deliberations regarding logistics we fell asleep.

Morning comes, no relief on the cold front though I lie to myself and say my fever has gone down. This time it is only the partial ass crack of dawn and we, still half asleep, waited by the side of the road. Time passed, slowly, as it usually does waiting for a gilly gilly. Many cars it seemed were going east, but none were headed west. A east bound car an hour and a half later ended up stopping and said to hop in, that they were on their way to Barra (which would pass Wassu) but that they had to swing by Janjanburri Island first. Not wanting to wait any longer we hopped in the van and headed east. The road goes right up to the shore of the Gambia where cars hop onto little ferries for the short ride to the island. We didn’t have to wait long till we were looping around heading back west to Wassu. It seemed to me it was a tad early in the morning to be trying to see how fast they could drive the car. Clunk, ka-clunk! Everyone looked back. “What was that?” one said as the apprentice and the driver start to scream at each other in Pulaar. The car screeches to a halt and we all instantly bang out heads into the people in front of us. As the apprentice jumps out of the car people finally begin talking in languages I understand and I find out the delinquent apprentice didn’t tie the bags to the top of the car and a few were lost in transit. A few minutes later the bags are recovered and 10 minutes after that we would finally reach Wassu.

Wassu, alright so no offence to any poor volunteer who ever gets placed there but it’s sort of a shit hole of a town. If you are from there, I don’t apologize either, because you should know and have done something about it. In a blurry benedryl induced daze I attempt to drunkenly follow Kristen and the others through the town to try and find a so called, Fatou Ceesay. We greet a compound near the center of Wassu and they send a kid to take us to her place. A mango tree shelters the entrance of a typical Gambian mud brick compound. We greet again as a child runs in fear of us. A younger woman with her child on her back guides us in to a smaller room on the right and we sit on a bed with the mosquito net tied up, again nervously greeting Fatou. An older woman maybe in her early 70s, short, and sporting only a pair of pearly white incisors and a left canine in her mouth but smiling always like she doesn’t mind. “Your friend came here a week ago for scars on her back, she took very long to find me and said she had been walking the entire village all morning. The children do not speak the Fula language, only Mandinka.” she says in a gentle Mandinka as we laugh anxiously. Another Peace Corps friend, Ana, had come a week before but only speaks Pulaar and didn’t have as easy a time finding Ceesaykunda as we had. Finally, after a little bit of small talk and greetings we show her where we would like our scars done and Tara and Travis run to the shop next door to buy a razor. I had come prepared with a ready-to-use disposable surgical scalpel and the old Vietnam med kit I took from the back of my dad’s car.

In the back room she prepares a wooden stool and looks over the razors familiarizing her self with the edge of the blade. She ties back the mosquito net in the back room and motions us all to sit. She begins to rustle through a few dirty sheets to pull out a blackened, partly charred rams horn. It had been hollowed out to become a primordial flask of deep indigo peanut ash; and it sent a chill down my spine. Tara was very nervous, also, and asked to go first so she didn’t have to watch. Fatou sat her down on the bench and shaking took off her tank top to allow Fatou to access her shoulder blade. I prepared some first aid materials to bandage her when she was finished and Travis and I sat and waited for her to begin. Unflinchingly and with a kindred familiarity she took the razor to her skin as a drip of blood fell down her back. One after another in a matter of a few seconds she had finished the three cuts and reached for the ash-laden horn. I tried to hide my cringe from the others as Fatou began to shove the now cavernously black ash into the wound. I pulled out a few bandages from the med kit and covered the black square on her back with tape and gauze. Tara began to turn pale and we helped her lie down as Travis propped his foot on the bench.

Again, with what seemed like a lifetime of experience this kind and toothless old woman began, without hesitation, to cut into my friends calf. This time though as the blade made the first cut the skin sprawled out widely from what I could only surmise was due to the tightness of the skin in that area. Blood began to run heavily down his leg, much more than Tara’s, which only came in drops. Travis though, twiddled his thumbs like he had been cut in the middle of nowhere Africa by random old women hundreds of times. Once more she pushed the ash from the horn into the wound then she moved on to the two cuts at the base of his thumb. I spaced out as my mind began to run in circles, finding every way to rebel against the intrusion the knife would soon make through my skin. “Hey Steven, it’s your turn. You ready boss?”, Travis said coolly, “Fuck no I’m not going! Are you fucking kidding me!?” I exclaimed. I walked out into the back yard for some fresh air and paced for who knows how long. I can only assume they were saying something to calm me down but I did not hear them, I was in my own world. I paced for what seemed like forever, but in the end I gathered all the will power I had and decided to go through with it. So I sat, slowing my breathing so that I wouldn’t shake, took off my shirt and gave her the scalpel. “Domangding ding ding! Ya moy?”, I explained, “a jamfata backe bari a booka cunta jamfa le…” trying to in a cloud of contemplation and cold medicine explain how I wanted the cuts done, and the other two were thankfully able to help translate.

It was over. And as we sat waiting for our car to leave for Barra I exhaled. I was drained completely, emotionally exhausted from fighting with myself in the back of that hut, physically drained by hunger and flu, and mentally void of any lust for thought other than dreaming… “shit!”, I swore as I woke up an hour or so later as my head bumped roughly against the metal door when the car hit a bump. I took a few bites of some street pancatoes and slowly began to feel stronger. Pancakes are to me like spinach is to Pop-eye. We were in Barra now and I had to put my mind back together to prepare myself for the mess that is the ferry crossing. Then, we were sailing and the salted breeze blew against my face from the top tier of the ferry; I was able to get some sugar in me from a boy selling cold sodas for 15 dalasi. Now, a taxi ride from the ferry to the transit house in Fajara as time passed in exhausted sections. The driver blared a really terrible political comedian from either south Africa or India, I couldn’t tell, in what I could only guess was early 80s UK. “You do realize this is not poignant nor funny at all right? There are so many better political comedians from that time, this is truly agonizing to listen to.” I stated, again never to exhausted or sick to put my two cents into a conversation. And I awoke in the transit house a few hours later feeling a million times better, though it would still take a few days of eating good food in the capital and some time in a hammock on the beach to fully recover.
The wounds healed rather quickly, because my cuts were long but not very deep. It would take Travis’s a few weeks later to heal. For me though I was feeling well enough 3 days later to go to a Softball tryout for the competitive Peace Corps team that would compete in a tournament in Dakar in February. The tournament is called W.A.I.S.T., West African Inter-legit? International? Softball Tournament, but what is really a bunch of Ex-pats, Marines, and crazy Peace Corps volunteers getting drunk for a week and playing softball (but that blog entry will come later). Anyways it was great to get out there and play softball with some Americans and I’m stoked for February. That afternoon was thanksgiving and we were all invited to one of the AgFo sector staff’s really nice house where for about 250 dalasis we got to eat American imported turkey and a few homemade dishes. I still miss a real American thanksgiving, but I think we did it right here, minus my friends and family back home. The next morning came the all-volunteer meeting. A clutter of paperwork and logistics, the entire health sector met together and then we were left open to attend a training session of your choice put on by fellow volunteers. I went to both the bee keeping intro and woodlot construction for timber harvesting, both of which I hope to implement in my village in the upcoming few months, but details later.

We would have one more softball practice that Saturday. I felt guilty for having been away for so long on my trip that I was really debating even staying for it. But in the end decided to stay one more day and play. I was on fire that day, let me tell you; any athlete will tell you that there are some days when you’re just in it, unstoppable. I don’t remember dropping one ball in the outfield, and out of all the times I was at bat only didn’t touch base once. That evening all the volunteers still in the transit house were invited to a RPCVs house who was staying in the Gambia now and throwing a small shin-dig. All night though my eye was bothering me and I couldn’t stop rubbing it. By the time we were heading back to Fajara I had to completely close my left eye. I woke up in the middle of the night and it was terrible, I could barely open my eye, it was tearing up all night and the least bit of light sent me running. By morning I could barely see out of it except for a white cloud, which scared me to death. The health unit made me an appointment but it was Sunday by then and the eye clinic wouldn’t open till Monday. Never get sick on a weekend. I spent the whole day like a vampire huddled in a dark room watching movies on my laptop and trying to hold off a nervous break down. I held it off till about 4 o’ clock that Monday morning.

So there I was, hunched outside the health unit at 6am. I guess I passed out because I woke up around 9, past my appointment mind you and curious why I wasn’t woken sleeping on the tile porch of the health unit. The nurse cleaned my eye out and patched it up, commence pirate jokes, though be careful because I may cast ye to de depths of Davey Jones locker, arrrrrrr. The eye doctors was a huge waiting room of about a hundred people… all mind you staring at me, because though I may not have been the only one in an eye patch, I definitely was the only toubab with an eye patch and clothes that looked like they had been slept in a few nights… which they had. Physical appearance is very important here, especially when you travel or go to a public place; people will dress up and flaunt their beautiful dresses and halftons; and I would have looked like a bum in downtown Philly let alone in a doctors office. This is also about the point where I realized in my nervous break down at 4 in the morning I had chose two pairs of different sandals. One pair of crocs and on the other a cheap bitik sandal which actually now that I’m thinking about it wasn’t even mine. Diagnosis a few hours later was a corneal abrasion in the left eye. I would have to remain looking like Moshe Dayon for a day then would be stuck in the capital for another three days. Nothing will make you go crazier mind you than staying in a COMPLETELY EMPTY Peace Corps transit house for three days squinting the whole time. It sucked, but all things heal in time and by Thursday I was released to go up to Soma with a Peace Corps vehicle and teach a Life Skills Training Course to the new Peace Corps Trainees. It went super well and the new group, like usual, is a great group of people; but any group who are able to help me engage the entire bus in singing STYX classics are alright in my book.

Tabaski came a week later by the time I made it back to village. Tabaski is a Islamic holiday which juxtaposes the fasts of Ramadan repentance; during Tabaski you kill as many Rams as you can afford and pray for a year of peace while giving charity to those in need. Children will go around and ask for Salibo, a sort of trick or treat in my village where you can give either a prayer, candy, or money… though let me tell you do they get pissed when you give them a prayer. How messed up is that? Maybe it’s my bad luck but even older woman decided I was free game to ask for Salibo also. That morning I was also invited to the naming ceremony of one of a teacher at the schools compound. Nothing gets your stomach ready for a big breakfast like helping a few boys your age kill a baby goat and skin it. I ended up passing on the goat and ate a few pancatoes on the way back to my compound. Five hours later I would help my compound kill our ram (I’m posting a video online). Thankfully this ram didn’t cry as much as the baby, actually it sort of just exhaled and said screw it with out so much as a yelp. I guess it would be ridiculous to think that it realized in some way it’s body was being sacrificed as a ceremony to honor God but from the looks of it it had. “Demba come over here and try this”, my host brother said as another was squeezing out the fecal matter from the intestines “Be careful, if there’s a hole it will squirt shit on you” He hands me a still smoking piece of meat, “Try it, it’s the liver I think.” “Well OK!”, I said sarcastically but Judging by the still smoking plate I figured it had been cooked well so why not. “Oh my god this is gross”, I thought as I think I put on an Oscar winning performance of sheer joy. “This was cooked well right Elbou?”, “Well it was put over a fire for a bit”, “Elbou, I think it’s still bleeding.” “Could be.” I think I’m going to hurl.

That’s the part that sort of put me over the edge. I had been feeling pretty terrible for the past few days before Tabaski, and I will spare you the details on the variations of my bowel movements but lets just say by that afternoon I was diagnosed over the phone with Dysentery. “Dysentery!?!? Are you serious? I thought you could only get that disease playing Oregon Trail on the computer. You know, Charlie broke his leg, Sally has got Dysentery, you must caulk the wagon or attempt to ford the river.”, I protested. “Well you just got it. Take your anti-biotics till the bottle is finished and we’ll see you the next time you’re in the capital”. Oye vey. Thankfully though as soon as I started taking the medication I felt much better; and that brings us to the present. Alright so I’m going to give it a break for now before my hands get carpel tunnel. Once again I send my highest greetings to all of you, I miss you all, and mother as far as you need to be concerned I made this entire entry up.

Haunted Peanut Factories and Rock Music

2008-11-21T10:37:00.002Z

After taking a break from a little house marathon on my laptop in the hospital I’ve decided to write a thing or two for the blog. Which by the way if you’re ever in the situation of watching a house marathon in a hospital in a west Africa village, do be careful not to find yourself saying sarcastic, asinine statements to patients in Mandinka. Sarcasm really doesn’t translate well here (nor do dead baby and black jokes for that matter mind you), which is a real shame. What should be smart, ironic, musings, really just turns into them thinking you’re a huge ass. Being dark, mysterious, and sarcastic isn’t advantageous here I guess. Oh well, House is still my hero.

So let us go back a few weeks in time to where I left off in my last entry. The days went by and I took a lot of time for myself to get readjusted; maybe far more than I should have, but that can be debated. I visited friends sites, found things to do in the capital, and did anything really to readjust healthily to African life positively. I went up to Kerewan, a village on the north bank to visit a friend and ended up meeting the head governor of the entire region… and then subsequently deleting all the pictures off his camera. He had wanted Tara to help him delete some pictures for awhile now, Tara though was busy like usual so I said I wouldn’t mind helping him. “Sir, you are sure you want to delete all you pictures?” “Yes, they tell me I need to make space on my memory card.” “Alright sir, so you go to menu here, then go to delete, then delete all and click OK. Again are you sure you want to delete all your pictures?” “Yes.” “Well here you go, have a nice day”. As we begin to walk away he asks, “You didn’t delete all my pictures did you?”… sigh. “Just keep walking”, Tara declares. I truly hope he was making a joke but I really couldn’t tell.

In Kerewan I also got a chance to sit in on a meeting of the entire area council. Typical government bureaucracy, I’m so glad the integrity of western democracy has translated well here. On another note I got an opportunity to be a radio DJ for a two hour long session at prime time Friday night on a station that broadcast to the entire region. My alias, DJ Warrior, blasted some American classics from STYX to Journey, then rocked everything from Matishyahu to Sublime. I think the song that put the show over the edge was the lovely addition of “Baby Got Back”, I was pretty much crossing my fingers with every caller that we weren’t getting taken off the AIR. Thankfully in the Gambia the local FCC hasn’t learned to sue yet. It was probably two of the greatest hours since my time here and I really wish you all could have heard it. I did commentary on all the artists and even did a little on air beat box session. I was pretty much the Miles Davis of Kerewan for two hours, end point.

Dawn on the 31st of October came quickly and I had previously decided to go up country with a few of the girls from my group to a site in Kaur where they were throwing a Halloween party. It sounded the creepiest thing I could do for Halloween in west Africa: spending the night along the banks of up country Gambia river next to a spooky abandoned peanut factory. You may not think peanuts are frightening but tell that to that kid in your 6th grade lunch hour with a peanut allergy and nothing but PP&Js in site. The factory was full of rusted equipment and ladders, mixed with African undergrowth over modern industrialism. The night was beautiful under a crescent moon and fog.

Back home I got back into the grove of site and once again began the old fun of finding procrastinations to not have to actually look over my Mandinka note cards. Old habits die slow. Well one of these days I will! So I found myself instead of studying the copious amounts of Mandinka vocab words in my hut glued to my laptop watching the sequel to the vampire action film with the hot chick in leather, Underworld. Lightning and thunder flashes on the screen, werewolves growl, and I see a shadow dart past my peripherals. Probably my cat, which by the way has recently grown testicles, obviously I about saying it was a man from the start but I can still be persuaded to think it went to Serrakunda to get a sex change. As you, my intelligent readers, I’m sure can elude from my rant, the shadow in the corner of my eye was not my cat. “Oh shit, is that humungous rat back from 6 months ago, or maybe it’s one of those flying locusts, or worst of all, a butterfly *shutters*”, I thought. Turns out the increase in global warming or the switching of the earth magnetic centers or what ever other junk sent a lone bat into a small crack in my hut. Vampire films and a bat in my house, oh sweet irony. It left eventually; in the mean time I finished my movie, which had added bat immersion factor.

The day after was “National Clean the Gambia Day”. So in light of this I decided to go to the Alkala of my village and ask to declare a day where our own village could do a big clean up project, as “National Clean the Gambia Day” was really only considered a holiday for the capital. The Alkala doesn’t speak any English and as my typical translators were busy I was forced to actually use my local language skills. Amazingly it turned out super well! My idea was taken into consideration and Sunday was proclaimed village clean up day. We talked for awhile and then I left with a smile on my face, the glow of a small but important victory. Peace Corps all about the little things you’ll find. The Alkala although being incredibly old is really a clear speaker; he spoke slow and enunciated and we actually had a great conversation. I should really hang out with him more often. Well that afternoon I had to travel but when I returned I found, although not the whole village, my quarter of it very clean. I’m considering it a win. On my trip though I noticed some duchebag in typical Gambian fashion throw his plastic bag out the window of the car. “You do realize it’s National Clean the Gambia Day right?”, I said darkly “uhhhhh, what?”… asshole. Thankfully his friend figured it out and ridiculed him for it too.

The next weekend the new crew of health volunteers came in and the usual suspects came in to go to the traditional ‘meet the newbies’ bar night. Like usual it was another group of amazing people, and I can wait for them to all, cross your fingers, make it through training and do a lot of great work. I’m going to be teaching the Life Skills session it turns out in a few weeks, which should be interesting; and everyone’s hoping for at least one more Julbrew party before they phase it out. So I wish to all of them the best of luck and pray that I was able to at least convey a few small words of wisdom and encouragement for their journey, like stories about being careful to not show the women at the pump your testicles etc (see previously written blog entries for the story). It’s not the easiest of roads but man is it amazing to look back on everything since I’ve come here, but then it’s scary as shit looking ahead at how much further I have to go. Ariel Sharon once said as prime minister of Israel that while he was in his fields planting with his father he would be frustrated by home much work he had to do. His father would lift his head up and remind him how far they’d come and how much they had already accomplished. Looking back on how much we’ve done, he said, gave him all the motivation he needed to keep going. It’s easier to look back than it is forward some times the Gambian way of living for today makes it easier. Seems like forever and yesterday at the same time I was writing a blog about the airport in DC and my first thoughts of Africa. I encourage all of you to go back and read some of the old entries… I mean if it’s late and you’re bored sick of surfing the Internet and downloading porn.

Like usual most days in the afternoon I “go for train” as they say here, aka me playing football at the field by the school with the boys. This day though I was invited to play a game with the teachers vs. a local club called Black Star F.C. A friend of mine comes up to me, “Demba how is the work? How is the afternoon?” “Just fine thank you” I replied. “You are not a teacher, you shouldn’t be captaining the teacher’s team” he said half jokingly half accusatory. “I do teach at the school, a life skills class every Tuesday thru Thursdays and help with the drama club!” He shakes my hand and says simply, “I went to the marabou (the village “medicine man” if you will), and he said that if I touched hands with you this day you would be cursed for the game and not play well”. “Uhhhhhhh, thanks. Luckily I’m a toubab and thus immune to such superstitions (and yet not immune to Jewish guilt for some reason)” I replied, and the game began. Not that I’m saying it has anything to do with this because I still think it’s absolutely ridiculous, but the day before I had banged up my knee pretty bad, so by no leap of logic I obviously played like shit! Really I should never have played but if you know me you know I can never turn down a football game. Thus I probably injured it worse and as much as it pains me to say, indeed the marabou’s prediction came true. I still figure I have the shield of the chosen people on my side or something though. It’s kind of a downer but after that game and the successive pain medications taken and knee wrapping I’ve decided to take at least a week or so off from football, my PCMO will be relieved.

Walking back from the hospital a few days ago I had an epiphany. I will build a hammock! It’s always the talk of conversation in Peace Corps, “Man a hammock would be great, to bad they don’t make them locally” or “Found a cheap hammock online a few days ago and ordered it. Should be here in about 4 months, I can’t wait”. Well I really can’t wait, for anything for that matter. Alex and I had even put a friendly wager on the thing for the first to actually build one; I considered myself pretty handy so it was just about waiting for that day I was bored enough to actually go find the material. So like Noah built his ark I shall build the grandest hammock in all the land. My epiphany turned into a calling once I returned to my compound to find my host wife holding a large sheet of discarded rice bags and asked me if I could do anything with it. “Uhhhhh are you serious, of course I’ll take it.” Two hours later I had persuaded the local tailor to help me sew it onto two small logs as ends and bought two 10ft pieces of rope for D20 at the local corner shop. Strung it up on the front porch and in no time was reading a book by the dwindling twilight. Paradise. Now all I needed was a margarita.

This upcoming weekend before the huge all volunteer meeting, Tara, Travis, and I have decided to be the first of our group to brave the Fula scars up in the village of Wassu. It’s an old Gambian PC tradition based off of the local practice of facial scaring. Most PCV guys end up getting it on their shoulders and girls these days like to tramp stamp it or get it on their neck or shoulder blades. What it entails is going halfway up the country to a historic area in the Gambia (the stone circles), paying a lady whose been cutting PCVs for years 150 dalasi or so to make 2 or 3 cuts on your body with a razor blade, then shoving peanut ash (which mind you still probably contains the blood of all those PCVs) in the wound to dye it blue. Mom, I’m sorry, but I have to show Jared up. No way in hell my brother gets a cooler ‘tat’ than I do. Wow I pray to god she doesn’t mess up. Next blog entry I’ll have photos and details as long as I don’t wus out; but considering I’m the one having to keep the other two from wusing out I think I’ll have to go through with it. Wish me luck.

Dakar, America, and back again by popular demand

2008-11-02T11:36:00.001Z

So I’m back. It’s been awhile since my last post and in between my trip to Dakar, the three weeks I spent back in the land of roads and television and my recent lack of motivation to update this blog, I’ve lost a lot of time. Now I guess is as good a time as any to update you all.

To save on expenses my flight back home was booked out of Dakar, Senegal and for many weeks I heard the plethora of horror stories involved in the trip from Banjul to there. Bad roads, tourist prices, which are pretty much highway robbery in the third world, border police and customs, and to make the cesspool of hassle worse it seems no one in all of Senegal speaks a decent amount of English or Mandinka, which only accentuates situations that would normally be easily alleviated. So you can see how I was more than relieved to hear that a few of the guys from my group were excited to accompany me there and check out Dakar for a few days. The trip had it’s issues: forgotten passports, west African border police with superiority complexes, overwhelmingly annoying car park children, bad roads in a tight car, and French gravely lost in translation; the journey though was well worth it.

Dakar is a bustling African metropolis that’s littered with elegant French, Lebanese, and Asian cuisine, a breath taking coastline, and a bustling music scene. This city on the tip of the Dakar peninsula has the very best western luxury has to offer with a distinctly African flavor. The city completely juxtaposes the surrounding towns on the way north from the Gambia which still maintain the village feel and look that is typical of the region; in some ways it seems there’s very little outflow of money from the city. After living in the Gambia for eight months though we dove into the city life without hesitation, pigging out at ice cream shops and eating at those expensive French restaurants that boast about their fine dining but give you a plate that has more flair than sustenance. I mean hell I could go to IHOP and stuff my self for five bucks, but here I’m paying my right arm to dabble a little ‘jinee sequa’ on my palette. Regardless though we ate in three days what we hadn’t eaten in weeks, and loved every minute of it. The atmosphere is amazingly friendly to tourists compared greatly to our experiences in the Gambia. It seemed even with the hustle and bustle of the big city, if even slightly, Dakar was able to maintain that relaxed and refreshing feel typical of West Africa.

Sadly, you can only eat for so many hours before it becomes less enjoyable, so we decided to set off towards one of the peninsula’s greatest treasures; an island wildlife refuge off the coast called Isle de Madeline. The island, because of it’s status as a wildlife refuge, is completely uninhabited and trips to and from the island must be taken by a small motor boat. We spent the day there swimming in a blue lagoon eating watermelon and climbing black rock cliffs for views of the city on the mainland. It was epically breathtaking and could only be rivaled, maybe, by the stunning beauty of the Greek isles. A must see while in Dakar, though I recommend spending the night camping there and coming back in the morning. It would not only save you on an expensive hotel room in the city for a night but also be a nice break from city life.

Why is this starting to sound like a travel documentary, I assume you all read this blog to be entertained by the ridiculous trouble I get myself into on a daily basis and like always fortunately I am able to again acquiesce your requests. Before hopping on the rickety boat over to the island we were all stuck in the midsts of trying to negotiate not having to pay to take a tour guide with us to the island. My first argument was justly with the fact that we would be paying for a person to explain the intricacies of the island to us… in French, as no one spoke English this was ridiculous. I’m sure you are asking of course how we were able to negotiate in the first place and I will say “negotiating” is a broad term as it was more part interpretive dance mixed with broken French and Gambian Wolof with a hint of Mandinka thrown in thanks to a few local Cassamance natives. My second argument was then of course the fact that I was to proud and all knowing of a zoologist to have to be taken on a freshman exploration of island ecosystems; and secondly was too ADD to sit through another arduous tale of French colonialism in west Africa. Of course though our efforts turned out to be futile and in accordance with Senegalese Parks Authority law we were forced to be escorted by the guide and still be given an explanation of the island in what to me only sounds like gibberish…. I ended up just walking off for the private Robinson Caruso tour of the island, aka me wondering aimlessly in search of shade, geckos and a flat rock to skip… but back to the shore. After the payment for our passes to the island were secured we waited for the boat to be brought in when a movement from behind an old beached canoe caught my eye. Around the stern came a red striped monkey of which it’s species name had completely escaped me *makes small pout towards charismatic mega-fauna*. I thought, “hmmmm, let me befriend this small creature and using my two decades worth of experience watching national geographic documentaries and that one semester of Animal Behavior Junior year I got a B+ in should be sufficient enough to win this less than intimidating monkey’s trust”… sigh, will I ever learn? So here was my plan, go in very submissively as to not be seen as a threat, crouching and inching near it slowly avoiding eye contact but showing a strong posture to not be perceived as fearful, which in my defense I’m sure might have worked if not for the fact that this monkey was tied to that boat and would soon precede to defend his small amount of territory aggressively. It was going alright at first, he came up and smelled me several times and would nibble on my thigh then walk away. The park ranger walking by then proceeded to antagonize said monkey by swatting at it with a stick. Said monkey then lunged at said thigh and firmly sank its fangs into, by the grace of god, the thick wallet in my pocket that was thankfully filled with enormously oversized west African currencies. Then surprisingly calmly I stood up and walked the few steps out of range of the monkeys lease. In conclusion I am an idiot, but an idiot who lives to see another rabies free day. :-D

The rest of the trip went by relaxed and refreshing and entailed three nights at a recommended hotel happy hour bar drinking giant mugs of local brews and hitting on, at the time, ravishingly hot French women and a goddess of a bartender. We hit up an array of, in retrospect way to expensive, foreign restaurants ranging from Korean to French to Lebanese. We relaxed in quiet little coffee shops down town and may or may not have rented 5-dollar motorcycles for a few hours… and the next thing I knew I was struck frozen staring strait at the sheer ridiculousness of the Starbucks in JFK. There I was, America.

Getting picked up by my brother’s overly unnecessary Ford F-150 Supercab truck and driving over the Ohio river to the beautiful site of the Cincinnati skyline was more than shocking, and that first time I stepped back into a grocery store definitely had me puzzled for which of the gazillion types of bread I should end up buying; but other than that it seemed I got in the groove of American life rather quickly, or at least the part that involves watching TV and surfing the internet until 3 in the morning then trying to get up in time to make McDonalds breakfast menu… I’d like to say I took part in the brightest sides of American culture. Nothing beats actually recent episodes of South Park and the Daily Show, or the fact that the internet is actually half decent in my house. I voted, ate in hopes of gaining at least 20 pounds (cheesesteaks, hot dogs and pancakes mostly), and tried really, really hard to find the motivation to help my mom out around the house; but it seemed the pace of life I was so use to for the past 8 months in the Gambia didn’t really translate well to the states. Sadly it’s just not as socially acceptable in middle class suburbia to sit under a tree all day, drink tea, and shout “TOUBAB!” as white people pass by. I got a chance to go to an amusement park and ride roller coasters that I am sure would put most of my friends in village into a coma, if not on the ride then at the site of the food prices when they got off.

I ate some extra McDonalds and a decent slice of New York pizza in JFK as I awaited the journey back to Africa. The flights were long and mostly uncomfortable with my mind racing of readjusting back into things, but thankfully a couple bad airline movies, liquor, and a good conversation with a rock climber from South Africa kept my mind off of things. I flew back into Dakar around 4 in the morning and it took a good dose of will power to keep my self awake and alert to avoid taxi driver harassment outside the terminal until I could check in at 9 or so. In the long 5 hours of slapping my self and trying not to look stupid half falling asleep with my eyes open I met a very interesting character. For the purposes of this blog we will just call him, ‘Spazy McGee’ though later I would find out his real name was Stephan. Spazy was a late 20 or so French speaker from southern Belgium and had to be on some high dosage of speed and or had just injected adrenaline strait into his veins in the bathroom because this man looked as though he was a 5 foot 6 4th grader suffering from a complex assortment of both ADHD and touretts. “Bonjour!” he exclaimed, “I’m sorry sir I do not speak French, do you speak English?”. He signed what I could only assume was, “are you on the flight to The Gambia and I really need to take a piss can you watch my shit because I don’t trust the several other people on the other side of the terminal who happen to be black.” I shook my head yes. On his return I assumed that that would be the end of our unimaginably uncomprehendable ability to have a conversation; but I had strongly underestimated Spazy McGee’s willingness to try and/or do anything but have to sit there snapping his head back and forth like he just got out of the jungle chased by rebels. So there we went, most of which I just shook my head in agreement; because though I had no idea what he was saying in French and odd sign language I found it refreshingly amusing to try and translate. This went on for the next few hours with a mix of attempts at conversation and minutes of silence till it got to the point where we obviously were on completely different pages in translating each others questions. I broke off into conversation for a few minutes with a nice Malian fisherman living in Seattle who spoke English very well and who I tried to greet in Sarahule. All I really ended up catching from Spazy’s rant was that he was going to The Gambia for a few days, something about him not liking Dakar taxi drivers (but who does), his mom sending him money to live in Dakar longer and him heading back to Belgium; oh and a little on the history of southern Belgium but during most of which were memories of the amazingly unsatisfying and dinky Belgium Waffle I had ate in the Brussels airport 8 months prior (see third blog entry or so). The next thing I knew I was waiting to get on the airplane and chowing down a sandwich and soda that cost me 4000 freaking cefa. Stephan, if you ever learn English and come across this blog I’d like to both apologize and thank you for keeping me awake and entertained with the conversation.

There I am, passing out then jerking awake a second later then back asleep in the terminal waiting to board, meanwhile the morning sun is blaring in my face as if to mock me, “Welcome back to Africa”. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in days and this journey hasn’t been exactly the most pleasant of cross Atlantic flights. The clock ticks down, and I’m thinking, When are they going to let us on the freaking plane? Finally the doors open and people push to get in line to get on the shuttle that will take us to yet another line to board the dinkiest of propeller planes which may or may not also serve in Senegal’s air force occasionally. Why now I ask you, the reader, is it necessary to push and shove, scream and yell, in order to be the first one on a plane which you have already been granted an assigned seat? Then after all this effort put forth to be the first on the plane would it be crucial to scream and get really offended when someone accidentally, out of his lack of sleep for the past few days and long flight sits in your seat, having dyslexiclly misread the seat number? Why? The last, and I mean THE LAST, thing I really felt like doing at that time is dealing with some bitch of a lady who just has to yell at me for accidentally sitting in the wrong seat, I mean seriously what is wrong with you when you have to push and shove to get on an airplane? Oh don’t worry, it gets better, stick with me here.

After the ordeal and finally having to wait till the plane is near take off to get back to my seat through the crowds of people in the isles I decided that I really should do everything humanly possible to pass out, short of smashing my head into the window, for the 50 minutes of sheer terror I only assume will be the flight. It must have been calm because I only woke up in short spurts of jerking awakenings, I must have looked like I was crazy or deathly sick, especially to the couple who had followed me on all my flights from JFK; who by some act of god seemed to be completely fine and lucid. What drugs were they on, and did they get them from Spazy? The plane lands, after many prayers from me, and I’m reminded why Senegalese Airlines brags about their 80% satisfaction rate on billboards. I’ve returned to my temporary home in the Gambia again and this time during the day, so I was able to see the landing onto the thin strip of tarmac in the middle of the bog as opposed to the darkness of the previous trip. I’m instantly relieved as I step down onto solid ground and hop in the shuttle. I feel safe here in the Gambia, now I can use my language ability to negotiate things again vs. in Dakar where I’m just a tourist; and Peace Corps rightfully receives respect here as well as being a household name I can drop. But my little adventure home was not over yet. Man, I really had to take a piss, maybe I can just walk off real quick to the bathroom before customs. It’s a tiny gas station like bathroom and I go into a stall and do my business… relief… then I’m greeted by a middle aged woman who looks to be cleaning the bathroom, and with my passport and paper work in hand she graciously asks to hold it for me as I wash my hands. I finish washing and she refuses to give me my passport back instead asking if, ‘I have anything for her’. “uhhhh nope, nothing, why what did you do for me that deserved payment other than a kind gesture between human beings?” I take my passport and papers and sensing a second wind head off to customs. I feel much more awake than I had, my short 30 minute power nap had obviously done wonders. My paper work had been rushed which said wonders on how much I really gave a shit now for these formalities and I was asked to go back and to please re-fill out the information fully this time. With a sneer I did, and in the end the officer just filled out his own information. “Where are you staying?” “Jiboro”, he looked up again in surprise as he obviously figured I would be staying at a hotel in the tourist region like most travelers. I ask him in Mandinka if he’d ever been there… he’s not impressed and says again in English, “What is your business in Jiboro?” “I’m a Peace Corps volunteer, but I traffic drugs and weapons to pass the time”. Great, I get the one guy who has no idea what Peace Corps is. He begins to quiz me, he obviously doesn’t believe, even with the presented work visa, that I really live in a little border village “Which Jiboro do you live in?”. Which really was a good question because some people don’t know that it’s actually broken up into two villages, New and Old Jiboro. I told him. “Alright sir, you can go” “Why thank you”.

I dodge the many “airport workers” who attempt to help me with my bag and respond merely with, “I’m completely capable enough to hold them thank you, It builds character” (something I’m sure I have too much of). Crossing my fingers I collect my bags on a cart and head to the X-Ray machine for my bags. The man at the end of the conveyer belt thankfully knows Peace Corps very well, as we get to talking cordially I find out he had a PCV in his village as a child. He has me open my bag for him and explain what I was doing with a fog horn, “I want to prank my host brothers, is that a crime?” “Nope you’re good, but I will have to charge you for bringing two laptops into the country, it’s our policy.” GOTCHA! …sigh. “Well sir thankfully one’s not technically mine but my late father’s and the other is strictly for use on saving malnourished Gambian children; but I completely understand, let me just make a quick call to Peace Corps office to sort this out” “No, no, that’s ok, this was just a warning anyways but next time you come back into the country I will have to charge you” “Don’t worry sir there will not be a next time” “Why is that?” “Well the next time I plan on going back to America will most likely be at the end of my service, and if I ever make it back here I will sure as hell not be bringing two laptops. Have a great day though sir.” Surprisingly, at this point I’m still very positive and feeling oddly awake, he was just doing his job anyways. I did end up checking up on the legitimacy of the “two laptop charge” and turns out it is actually valid. Some Gambians come in from Europe with several laptops to sell back in West Africa and who could blame them.

After clearing customs and the security check I proceeded outside to walk, what I thought was a few 100 meters, to the airport junction with the main road where you can catch a bush taxi for about 10 dalasis to either of the major town north or south. I walk out side am instantly confronted by about a dozen taxi drivers each trying to give me the, “Set Price” of the taxi ride to one of the nearer towns; 400 dalasi, about 20 dollars, pretty much high-way robbery when if you’re able to make it to the junction it’ll only cost you 50 cents. Now you should realize that I only brought one travel bag to the US but ended up coming back with two 50 pound bags, mostly containing gifts for my host family. And the plan was to just walk to that junction, which I would soon find out is a several miles. It also may help to visualize the environment at the time. It’s noon, in west Africa, clear day except for the sun which is taking up half the sky, during THE hottest month of the year, October, right after the rains have ended but before the cool winds of December have blown in, so it’s still humid as hell. There’s no trees for shade, no casually floating cumulous clouds to block the sun, it’s me, two 50 pound bags, my backpack, walking down the airport road which is in the middle of a wetland. But don’t worry, I wouldn’t have to walk the journey alone, I was soon accompanied by those taxi drivers, who feeling slighted at me saying I’d rather walk the little bit than pay that ridiculous standard price, decide to follow. But this was not a “little” bit at all and the taxi drivers had more than enough time in their schedule to follow, and berate me, the entire way. Since I had told them that I live here, and wouldn’t dare pay that tourist price (in Mandinka) they responded with, “Don’t you understand I have a family to feed, why can’t you just pay the 400 dalasi’s and we’ll take you to Birkama” “Don’t get this confused. Me walking away is not a bargaining technique, I legitimately don’t want a taxi, now if you could leave me alone that’d be greatly appreciated.” “You can’t just walk out of the airport, you HAVE to buy a taxi, this is my living and I know you have the money white man!” “Seriously, bro, I’m not negotiating and I really don’t have the money, Peace Corps doesn’t pay me much, just leave me alone and let me do this death walk on my own. Now if you’d be willing for 50 dalasi to take me to the junction that’d be appreciated, but if not please give me a fucking break.” But they continued to walk with me, watch, and suck up my suffering like vampire bats to a pool of blood. “Alright, bro, leave me the fuck alone, this is really not helping. And by what logic do you actually think that I’m just going to say, ‘you know what, that sounds great, I will just pay the money and go?’ You obviously gravely underestimate the extreme levels of pride I have. I would rather take all day to walk this road, sleep the night here, then walk the rest of the way to my village in the morning than to give you one butut. Eat shit.” This cursing back and forth continued, a few drivers even pulled up in there cars to watch and one offered me 100 dalasis to the junction to ease my pain; but, by the grace of the almighty, two eastern European gentleman in an old land rover passed, stopped about 100 meters up and backed up to my rescue. The door opens and he tells them to leave me alone in Mandinka, “Peace Corps right?” THANK YOU!

I hop in and they explain how the taxi drivers have a history there of not being in the least bit helpful to PCVs who really can’t pay the 400 dalasis out of the airport. I later found out that it’s more than 5k to walk that road and that most Gambians just wait at the terminal for someone to have left a car there or picked up by a family member. A few days later at the peace corps office I would ask about the laptop debacle and about the taxis and both the security officer and the country director said, “Why didn’t you just call, we would have just came and picked you up.” …sigh. I ended up walking at least a quarter of the way and will never forget the kindness of those two strangers. It didn’t take long at the junction to catch a big van and a kid going to school even helped me carry my bags to where the van was. The apprentice in the gilly only ended up charging me 25 dalasi for what really is at least 40 dalasis worth of baggage but I handed him the 50 I had in my pocket and thanked him.

Birkama was a mess, something big was going on because a large crowd was gathered in the streets, it was loud and I even thought I saw smoke in the distance. What happened? I didn’t hear anything coming in and I had already texted my boss to tell him I had got in. He hadn’t said anything. Thankfully the situation was not near the car park and I went on with the day thinking nothing of it. I texted a friend later that afternoon and the response I got was, “Whats up! Glad to hear you’re back! Oh yea there was a big riot in Birkama, some Fula kid from Guinea got beat nearly to death for not having paperwork and running from the police. They actually texted all the volunteers to tell them not to go through that way for a few days, you didn’t get the message, heard they fired tear gas even?!?” … no, I did not get the message, thanks. (I think I have to say now that I or the United States Government have absolutely NO political opinion on the situation what so ever and to be quite honest I have no idea what really happened anyways, I am only stating that something happened, I wasn’t suppose to go through the town that day, but not knowing I ended up going through and being fine. I mention the event merely for purposes of my story and again have no opinion what so ever on the matter.)

At the car park I’m greeted by a few familiar faces, “INDOKE!! A be nyadi?” “KOTOKE!”, pay for my ticket, and begin to sweat my balls off in the van as I still have my cotton long sleeve shirt on from the plane and the death walk out of the airport. I pass familiar villages, I really was seeing The Gambia again with slightly more rested eyes and a full belly; it really changes your point of view dramatically let me tell you. Everything was so much greener and the sky seemed a deep, deep shade of blue and the smells of Africa brought everything back; then, in the middle of that little dirt road to my village… our van broke down. Welcome back Demba ;). You know what though, this is going to sound strange, but it was actually really nice. I joked with driver about how terrible of a vehicle he owns and I just sat, in some random ladies compound, drank some water, and chatted. Some times you forget how quintessential a conversation can be. I never understood it before Peace Corps. We sat, and chatted, and 3 hours later we got the van running again with a push start from some local kids. Pure, sublime, Gambia. Then, finally, my miny odyssey was done. I had made it to my village, only about 27 hours later.

By the time we made it to my place it was just me and the driver left and we pulled right up to my hut. I lengthily greeted my host family and butchered my Mandinka really bad (I still haven’t recovered, I really need to study one of these days). Open my door and I find out a few of the people from my training group had broke in while I was gone and graffitied the walls blue with messages like, “WELCOME HOME! Hope you enjoyed your 711 and ice cream in America!” it oozed of fresh sarcasm. I’m greeted by my cat, who thankfully is not pregnant yet. I look in my back yard and my jaw drops. My walls had fallen down and I wouldn’t be able to use the bathroom until I rallied about a dozen boys to help fix it for a few hours, did I mention Jarjukunda is amazing. It’s great to be back, at least now I don’t have to feel super guilty all day for eating good food, instead I get to suffer and feel much better :-P. I went back to the capital the next morning, it was tough to go strait to village off the plane, and in retrospect was probably a terrible idea. And so America came, and America went, and I found myself again in my little border village drinking sweet tea under the mango tree and talking about the weather. I love and miss you all.

Achieving Normality, musings during Ramadan

2008-10-02T01:38:00.005Z

Things have been slow for the past month and I find myself again apologizing for not being able to update my blog. Life here in an African village has, in the scariest way possible, become normal. Things that would have, and probably should now, be freaking me out seem extremely normal to me. Around my training group this has been the majority of the conversation, this completely oddity at the fact that nothing really is odd any more. First coming to the Gambia everything was new and exciting, and throughout trainings challenges we were continually assaulted by this new way of living. With that was that thrill of adventure and anticipation of the unknown that with pissing us off a little also fueled our advancement; even getting to a new site, meeting new people, chatting and spending hours psychoanalyzing our village and friends for potential counterparts and hard workers presented a test. Now though I’ve become a part of the family here in my village. Everyone knows my name, work has been dull even with the influx of patients due to the rainy season I am still awaiting the shipment of our lab and computers from Holland to start the majority of my work, and though school is in session most parents won’t send their kids back to school until after Ramadan. My family here no longer celebrates my arrival from weekend trips to the capital. Typically my comings and goings if even for a day trip would warrant sobs of, “We will miss you very much” to songs on my return with chants of, “DEMBA NAATA! DEMBA NAATA! DEMBA FELEE!” *Demba has come, Demba has come!*. Original this saddened me, that maybe they just grew tired of my silly jokes and magic tricks, but after further evaluation I found quite the opposite; that this was proof of my village integration. I was no longer the stranger to which celebrations were necessary but now a member of the family. Though I am still swarmed by the 10 small children that live in my compound every return it is humbling in a way to have been absorbed into this village.

All this though, as I mentioned previously, has presented a problem for some of the members of my training class. Some things that happen on a regular basis in village should still be weird to me. Shouldn’t they? When I see odd nostalgias of west African culture my mind reminds me I should be weirded out by them as an American… but I’m not. The Gambia has it seems become a home away from home and as the nostalgia of living in an African village has warn off coming to grasps with the normality of everything though seems incredibly easy is actually incredibly difficult. It’s odd how the best people for Peace Corps service are actually the worst. Most PCVs are restless travelers who seek daily new adventures and sceneries and the mere mention of settling in one place for any brief moment in time brings nightmares. Yet a two year service, in one village, in one job, with one family is probably the most difficult thing for this personality scheme. Even though it takes a person like that to make the plunge into Peace Corps service it seems most volunteers soon become subdued and calmed by the quite family life and are forced to fight and focus their own free spirits.

Again, enough of my rantings. With the arrival of two Dutch medical students from the University of Utrecht work has been much less stressing. I have two people to assist in health talks, more recently one on HIV and Aids, age mates to chat with and shoot the shit on western life, and the chance to learn so very odd card games from the Netherlands that involve farming and pigs. Plus it’s always great to look sweet speaking the local language and being the typical badass I am on a regular basis… or maybe just ass, that’s still debatable. Though the summer was tough in the food department the month of September was actually surprisingly pleasant with some extremely gracious care packages from family and friends back home. The month of Ramadan is a month of fasting during the day light hours so I cooked for myself most of the time, I am too proud of a Jew it seems to fast this year, I do particularly enjoy the opportunities I receive when I tell people that I am not fasting until Yom Kippur and that no, not all white people are Christian. I could take this opportunity to reflect on the beauty of the holiday of Ramadan but this was already the topic of several of my recent letters home and so I will leave you to them and wikipedia until next year.

The new group of trainees for the Education sector were sworn in recently and I again found myself on national television sporting a borrowed blue button down shirt and the intimidating Oakley’s I jacked from my brother before leaving… thanks bro. My host wife in the compound was particularly jealous as she said, “I’ve lived in the Gambia (pronounced Khambia) for 24 years and you come here for 8 months and have already been on the tele’ three times!” With the new swear in came once again another addition of the drunken debauchery that is the Julbrew party (read same titled blog entry from several months ago for more details). Though this time it seems it was subdued quite a bit even with the addition of a new “Julbrew Strong” lager added to the assortment of free booze (a new addition which had twice as much alcohol content as the regular Julbrew). The party started, 3 hours went by, and then all the beers were cut off. Either things got a tad out of hand, which I don’t believe at all as most people had their shirts on in comparison to last time and if polled most Julbrew veterans would have rated it anywhere from “completely tame-quite lame”. Or maybe it was the overall consumption of exorbitant amounts of booze, which I also don’t believe was the case as last Julbrew’s party lasted long into the night as apposed to this ones… plus I wasn’t remotely intoxicated yet so this couldn’t be the case. Rumor was (as the rumors fly in the peace corps community) that Julbrew had gone under new ownership and thus would be phasing out the amount of parties, which if so would warrant a long amount of sighing and possibly even tears from this tragedy among a community of young volunteers who lived for these epic parties of rejuvenation from village life. But instead I at least have decided to place the blame on the large amount of American Undergrad students studying abroad here and the young MRC (medical research center) workers, however hot some of those British girls were, who unturned crashed the party; crashing the party it just so happens, successively coincided with the cutting off of the booze. Damn red coats and frat boys! ARG!

Back at the home front a series of powerful storms has laid siege to my back yard. I wake up to find that the bamboo that protects my bare ass every morning from the entire village seeing me had fallen down in the storm almost destroying most of my Maringa trees; and, as is just my luck, found myself really having to use the bathroom. In opening my door to investigate the area my cat darted out of the door cracked open but I had no time to chase her. Immediately I grabbed my gear and walked briskly to the hospital and attempting to avoid the entire village who today wanted to have long morning greetings and chats with me. 100 meters away, I round the corner of the hospital compound and let out a sigh of relief to the porcelain throne that awaited me. To my amazement though the clinic staff was running all over the place apparently attempting to figure out some situation of which I could care less about. I greeted briskly, placed my stuff in the addmisions cubical and ran to the bathroom door. “Demba wait, you can’t use that. The rain all this morning didn’t allow the water pump generators to fully charge so the water has been turned off” … fuck. I ran inside in hopes there would still be enough water to flush but in witnessing an already used and unflushed spectacle I ran to each of the hospital wards in search of a clean toilet. After this proved unsuccessful I ran to the one “indoor” pit latrine we have at the hospital which did not need water… it was locked. Sometimes drastic measures need to be taken so that a grown man does not shit his own pants as I hope some of my audience can relate. Picking the only decent looking toilet left in the hospital I decided to just go and pray the water would come on soon to flush it. This being I’m sure not the last of an endless supply of poop stories.

After a recent attack by a former Peace Corps Country Director in Camaroon criticizing the effectiveness of the Peace Corps program I find it extremely necessary to stress how much good work peace corps volunteers are doing in this country. I hope to later put in a segment of comments from colleagues working as PCVs here with me, who are by far more poignant and insightful in such matters of debate than I, to discuss the ex-directors letter in a later blog. Though I did find most of his observations on the peace corps true and observant, none of them by any means concluded that the peace corps as a government program was unnecessary, if anything it stressed the importance of more data collection into effectiveness before any more budget cuts. I will repeat though that you be guided to some of my colleagues websites who have unlike me read his entire paper and come from educational backgrounds that are more apt in responding to such documents, unlike an over opinionated zoologist and part time jester. To diverge though I’ll update you a bit more on my local work projects: I went to the capital to escape village life for a few days a week ago and to talk with a friend of mine, located in a village east of me, about a program we just started to brainstorm. It would bring a new and more logic/critical thinking based class to the local school systems. I hope to base it off of something like the odyssey of the mind programs put on in America which focused on using the imagination and creative thinking to solve problems and Alex would like to add a bit more small business logic and skills to the program all of which are more than necessary in the lower education of the Gambia today. This included with some self esteem and team building exercised I think make it an after school activity that’s true importance is immeasurable. It’s something that I am really excited about and hope to update you all on later onto it’s progress.

I truly wish I could update you all on recent developments as I have a few really great stories to tell; but, ironically, these tales turned out to be a little too amazing to put in this blog for several reasons that I dare not go into, though I will briefly say involve border police late at night. Maybe one day when a movie is made on my stories, with me played by a young Harrison Ford mixed with a tad less wimpy Zack Braff, I will be able to fully reenact the tale. Until then I will continue to eagerly await my arrival back in the states for a few weeks and will bid you all adios until my next blog entry which I promise will be less lectury and more exciting as it will involve my trip to Dakar and inevitable culture shock with returning home and back to the Gambia. I will leave you then with a recent account of ridiculous t-shirts I’ve caught Gambians in my village wearing: “Mecca Casino, pimp’n” because not only am I sure the center capital of the Muslim faith indeed has a casino but it would inevitably have to be “pimp’n”. Shit… as I was typing this I just missed for the second time the chance to witness a delivery in our maternity ward! I walked in and she had already given birth. At least I got to say Mazel Tov. Maybe next time, I have no better chance to witness a baby delivery than working in a clinic in the fertility capital of the world, sub-Saharan Africa. I love you all, word to my homies, Metallica rules, Alhumdileligh.

Don't Mess With Texas

2008-08-07T12:07:00.002Z

It’s been awhile since my last entry and for this I apologize. I’d also like to extend my deepest thanks to those who have sent the care packages which have, sometimes literally, kept me alive the past month as food is definitely becoming a problem for me. On that account I will again offer an apology for my lack of promptness in returning letters, there are no excuses, but please be patient, they will come.

Now that the necessities have been taken care of let me quickly update you on what I have been up to. Since getting back from Fajara for two long weeks of IST (inter service training) we were all completely drained. Most of the time going to the office and staying at the stodge are relaxing and refreshing… staying there for two weeks on the other hand turned the place into “Real World: Fajara edition”. To much silly drama then is usually necessary, but our group is close and we made it through unscathed. My birthday was mostly uneventful; we were taken out to eat at a Chinese restaurant in town by the country director Mike. He was recently quoted in the global peace corps magazine asking Condoleezza Rice about the upcoming food crisis in the region and it’s effect on the Corps. After dinner a few of us decided to crash a UN housewarming party: free booze, nice home, women with European accents, how could we refuse.

Coming back to village was difficult after actually eating well in the capital for two strait weeks but it was nice to see everyone. It’s weird and very humbling to realize you have a little nook in the world where, whether you’ve been gone for two days or two months, every one in the village, “missed you long time” and greets like you’ve been gone far too long. I was also greeted by a package that came on mail run the day after I arrived. There was no address and no name, the old box that looked like it had been reused several times, had a message that read, “Cincinnati, HELLZ YEA!”. I was confused, it could only have been sent through someone in the Peace Corps who knows the mail run system. I opened it slowly, maybe it had trace amounts of anthrax, or maybe it was the Cincinnati riots in a to-go bag or worse, Marge Shot, God help us. To my surprise though I found some Cincinnati loving in the form of seven cans of Skyline Chili, I cried a single man tear of joy. Somewhere in the Gambia, I had a guardian angel.

The Annual Jiboro Kuta and Jiboro Koto football tournament has started and that has been the talk of the town. I’m playing for a local club in my compound with a few boys I know from the town team. The team’s called ‘Babylon’, don’t worry I’ve already relished the irony. In training for the tournament I was invited to practice with a professional team in Birkama, a 30 minute bush taxi ride from me. They want me to come back and I would more than love to play with them but it’s difficult to get up there that often for practice, good group of guys though.

The rains have been pouring almost every other day lately and the place is littered with green. I’ve been helping my host family and team weed their farms. Work wise I’ve put on a Nyme cream presentation (which I’m proud to say I did at least partially in Mandinka even with the copious amounts of translators at my disposal). Nyme cream if you’re not familiar was developed by a Mauritanian PCV which uses leaves from the nyme tree along with water, oil, and soap, to create a natural mosquito repellent. The women’s groups at the skill center were amazingly supportive. Almost 40 of the older women came to learn and I was even given a proposal by the local Christian Children’s fund chapter to come and teach it again.

Recently I’ve been taking things a day at a time. Relaxing and taking time to hang out with my host family and neighbors. This ended in me getting punched in the eye; so I’ve come to the conclusion I should just go about my own damn business. In retrospect always remember that when horsing around with host sisters never, by any means, trust their “extensive” karate training. Needless to say it was lacking in the depth perception department and now, for the second time in my peace corps service, I have a black eye… in the other eye this time to even things out. The day after I thus decided maybe today would be a good day to take a little bike ride. The new bikes came in and I had been aching to muddy this shiny new thing up a bit. Up till recently I believed my closest site mate was Katie, 10k up the main road from me but it turns out I have an even closer site mate only 4k away and another one 5k from her, problem is they are along what I previously considered a, “treacherous” bush roads in the middle of nowhere which occasionally and often unknowingly likes to veer across the southern border with Senegal. In spite of this fact I decided today was the day I would set sail on the wings of fortune, go forth onto a new adventure, and attempt to locate my nearest site mate’s villages. “Dr. Livingston I presume?” After making it 4k to the village I then quickly bent north too my other site mate because frankly, with the few conversations we had had, I felt she was an utter bitch, and thus went onward on my heroic quest through the green forests of southern Gambia. I’m really lucky my region is amazingly beautiful and the muddy road and quaint little villages and rice fields along the way only heightened the experience. I made it there and back that afternoon and it seemed for that moment the riggers of village life faded just a little.

That night, in celebration of my recent victory in learning the back roads of the Gambia I decided to use the rest of the juice in my laptop to watch a bootleg copy of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Being enthralled with watching Indy kick serious Nazi ass with merely his whip and cunning wit I didn’t catch word till the morning that the Alkala’s (the chief/mayor of sorts) brother had died in the night… probably around the time when the “grail cult dudes with fezzes” had been chasing Dr. Jones through Venice. I did later wonder why when I went to lock my door at the end of the night my compound was strangely empty. I’ve been to way to many funerals since being here, more recently one of the TB patients at our clinic, a very nice man I had watched a few football games with, who passed right before IST. It doesn’t feel like they get any easier either. Thankfully though, my life is never with out a pinch of humor. The Imam, the religious leader of the area, gave what I could only assume was an immensely inspirational speech in a prophetic tone that is almost unheard of in the public speaking class I teach at the school. I only picked up a few sentences, something about “when it’s your time there’s no medicine the white doctors can give you that will save you”, added references to the Quran’s goodness and saving grace, and I thought something on the subject of begging and immorality. Then in the corner of my eye I noticed a familiar symbol. The flag of the great state of Texas was being displayed prominently on the shirt of an avid listener with the words, “Don’t MESS with Texas” splayed across the front. I couldn’t help but let out a short snicker through piercing stares. I’ve described Gambian funerals before so I won’t go into details again but later as we all sat in the cemetery praying over the loss of this man, a loud “Ribbit, Ribbit!” “Ribbit, Ribbit!” emanated from my pocket. The croaking was the ring tone for the two consecutive texts I so aptly received in the middle of the ceremony and an embarrassed grin streaked across my face.

I guess the last event recently occurring in my life has been the absolutely random arrival of an older American woman who was a peace corps volunteer 20 years ago in the village of Bakau. She had made arrangements during her service to have a young girl transported to Shriner’s Burn Center in Boston for the severe burns she had suffered in a house fire. Now she says she is doing fine and living in America but 20 years later the woman wanted to return to the Gambia to see her family with the retired American volunteer. Her village just happened to be about 1 and a half kilometers north of me. I was just sitting at my desk, minding my own business when she came, the nursing staff at the peace corps office had given my name as the closest volunteer to the girls village. I gave an impromptu tour of our hospitals facilities and the village when she informed me that her son would be coming in a week or so to “hang out” in village and would probably be stopping by to hang out with me. Flash to present day. The woman has returned home to America and now I’m left with a young California hippy in his freshman year of college loitering the streets of my village. Being a freshman is a forgivable sin, but by no means is being from California forgivable. Not to mention being a guitar playing hippy… sigh. I guess if I wanted to run away from hippies though the peace corps was a dreadful idea. Honestly I don’t see this mysterious kid very often and in the end I doubt he considers himself a hippy, I occasionally spot here him coming from the “toubab alarms”; dozens of children chanting, “TOUBAB! TOUBAB! TOUBAB!”, alerting me of his presence. I can’t help but think of challenging him to a duel at noon in the center of town. There’s only room for one white man in this village!

Linguistic Anecdotes

2008-08-07T12:04:00.001Z

One of the most remarkable things about living in west Africa is it’s diverse languages. There are many, over a dozen including several dialects, in the small country of The Gambia; they are all highly unique having evolved through centuries of culture and traditions, originating from diverse regions on the continent only to find a modern home along the Gambia river today. It amazes me on a daily basis the amount of linguistic acuity the people here have of multiple distinct languages. To top it off these are languages that for thousands of years has never been written down, and yet many of the people here, with out the aid of books, are able to comprehend several of these languages proficiently merely by spoken word. Histories and cultural tradition have been handed down orally for generation. I have decided because of this to give my own, relatively short, reflection on a few of these ethnic groups I’m exposed to here.

Let me start by trying to help you grasp the multitude of ethnic groups that have, for my peace corps service at least, become my family away from home. As you well know I, like most Peace Corps volunteers around the world, have been granted a local Gambian name. This is probably for two reasons, one, to facilitate a family like acceptance into the local community, and two, because it’s pretty much like trying to get a brick wall to do the hokey pokey that a Gambian will be able to pronounce, “Steven Snyderman” correctly. Thus I was so appropriately dubbed, “Demba Barrow”. The Borrows, of the ‘man na si’ lineage to be specific, (literally translated to, “the Borrows that never sit” a reflection of their history as hard workers or ADHD was secretly rampant in the family) who have always been of the Mandinka tribe. My ‘tooma’ or namesake, Demba (which I like to always mention means ‘warrior’) on the other hand was a punk little kid who spoke Mandinka but was actually of Sarahule origin, a tribe known for being smart and wealthy businessmen, yes I know, the Sarahule-Jewish irony is uncanny. As I moved to my permanent village I took on the Surname of my gracious hosts the Jarju’s (pronounced “Ja-ju”). Thus I’m currently known as Demba “warrior” Jarju… even says so on my “official” hospital name tag.

Jarju is a very common surname of the Jola tribe. The Gambian Jarju’s come from three distinct lineages, but the family of with I live go under the Jarju ‘mam bori qura ning bunyango’ line; ‘man bori’ meaning “the Jarju’s who don’t run”, which I can only assume means we are just way to smart to have to run anywhere, and thus send small children to run for us, and ‘qura ning bunyango’ refers to both the metal anvil base and pliers respectively used by blacksmiths, in lieu of the family’s history as metalworkers. Though my family here is Jola a majority of the modern Jolas have assimilated into Mandinkas. Jolas were the first to truly settle the lower Gambian river but when the Mandinkas of the powerful Mali empire traveled west they brought most of their culture with them, to the victors go the spoils, which is why the majority of the Gambia now speaks Mandinka. The village along the border where I live though was founded by Fula cow-herdsman in attempts to find better grazing land. Like most of the modern Gambia everyone is family, I’d like to reiterate it’s a very, very small country. Thus I like to think of myself as an assimilated Jola who speaks Mandinka living in a traditionally Fula village with a Sarahule namesake. Alright let’s speed things up a bit, frankly I’m a terrible teacher of history and rather than to let you all fall asleep reading lets just move on. How’s that for the worst literary transition ever, English teachers around the world cringe.

Fula.
The language to be politically correct is known as “Pulaar” and the people who speak it are known as Fula. They are a minority in the Gambia as well as pretty much every country in sub-Saharan Africa from Senegal to Mozambique. The Fula people are known to be highly nomadic and one of the few ethnic groups in west Africa to domesticate and care for cattle; because of this they’ve picked up a few undeserved stereotypes for being cow stealers and people will commonly joke by reminding you to tie up your cattle at night so the Fula’s don’t steal them. Also the Fula people have, like the Sarahule developed a clever knowledge of business and to this day are the sole owners of, I’m sure others would attest, almost 95% of all Gambian village shops or bitiks as they are called locally. Fulas are known to be incredibly smart and most are fluent in several local languages; as a requirement of nomadic life I’m sure, picking up languages has had to come easier for them.

Each of these languages are incredibly distinct, so to more clearly display my point I will take the words for “yes” and “no” in each as a constant. Yes, in the language of Pulaar is pronounced, “Eh”, and so I have amply christened it “the language of the Fonz”, ehhhhhhhhhhh *snap fingers in air*… I may have unintentionally dated my parents. No, then in Pulaar is “Ala”, and yes it bares a striking resemblance to the Arabic word for God, though Pulaar was already hundreds of centuries old by the time Islam graced it’s borders. The language seems to roll off the tongue smoothly and I’ve always found it quite easy to hear spoken even with a typical west African bluntness. More commonly the Fulas are known for a specific type of traditional scaring done either right below the eyes or along the temples which signifies the pinnacle of beauty. Peace Corps volunteers like to get it done as a sort of tour of service tattoo but usually on the shoulders or legs.

Wolof.
Wolof, or ‘olof as it’s said more commonly is considered the business language. This is because the Wolof’s originated in Senegal and is the most spoken language next to French in Senegal today. Due to the shared border and many shared cultures with the Gambia and Senegal when doing business it is almost always in Wolof. All this “business” on the other hand takes place in the capital where the majority of the Wolof people live. Due in turn to this fact, wolof is also the official language of Gambian television. Though Wolofs are by no means the majority in the country, they are the majority of TV owners. Let me diverge a bit. Gambian television maybe the most hilarious thing you ever watch on screen, not because of their extensive comedic talent but more along the same ways watching your high school’s rendition of the news recorded via handheld. I mean this by no offence, but when the weather reports include, “So today there will be clouds flying above the country, and our temperature will be hot.” It makes you think a little. At least they don’t lie like American weather channels. What’s even better are the commercials. The Wolof language, if I had to place it, most closely resembles Klingon and if you aren’t a star trek fan then the best way I can describe it is sounding like a person choking to death on chicken bone. So when you have the luxury of listening to this, let’s use the word unique, language spoken by a rather hefty older Wolof woman trying to sell you canned food on the TV, you should thank god that there is very little milk in the country to be bought that you could have been drinking and then spewed out your nose.

I will say that peace corps volunteers here usually end up learning a variety of languages. Most are trained in Mandinka, Wolof, or Pulaar but occasionally I’ve met some PCVs who are able to have the opportunity to learn Jola and Sarahule and more; because of this we’ve started a fun little rivalry between our ethnic groups. The Wolof volunteers will ask the Fula volunteers where they put their cows when they stole them the night before, the Fulas will scrutinize the Mandinkas for being so damn inept at language, then in turn the Mandinkas, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, love to give the Wolofs a hard time about their less than sweet sounding language… at least in peace corps circles. Eugene, or “data” as Alex and I like to call him (you know the wacky Asian kid from the Goonies that has all the cool gadgets), a Wolof volunteer living in north bank is usually our daily joke mate as we were all in the same training class. Alex and I have started poking fun of the wolof morning greeting that sound something like, “SUPA SEPI SEAAA!” and we proclaim this when ever we see him with company. Eugene, bless him, just shakes his head. In the end he has the last laugh as Wolof is probably the most useful of all the languages.

As I said I would use the words “Yes” and “No” as a constant for the eclectic nature of these languages I will proceed. Yes, in Wolof is: “Wow”. No joke, you couldn’t write it better yourself. It honestly never gets old to hear people walking around the street saying “wow” this or “wow” that, you’d think Serakunda market was just the best damn place since Disney world. The word for no, on the other hand is only slightly less amusing: “de-det”. I’ll end this section by giving you the most offensive thing you can say to a Wolof, which I learned only two well because at the time I felt it was amusing to say to annoying children, it went something like, “I will circumcise you ten times over if you don’t leave me alone”. The children then proceeded, though I was only told through translation, to threaten to beat me to death. This is probably a great time to state the Wolofs are known for their proficiency in wrestling. Truth be told every year there is a tournament of the strongest Wolof fighters, and iron men from around the world come to compete in one of the oldest and most difficult wrestling matches in the world next to ancient Greece.

Jola.
This is probably the only ethnically Gambian culture and language found in the country today. The Jola people never migrated from far away lands or expand through military conquest; they were the first inhabitants of the banks of the river Gambia long, long ago. The president himself a “Dr.” (insert copious amounts of titles here) Yaya Jammeh is a Jola. Jolas are mostly found now a days along the lower river region of the Gambia and are known for some pretty unique rituals. One includes a combination of High School disco party and sub-sequential gang bang held every few years. They’re also known for some very unique culinary dishes which most people find highly palatable… I though will in this case humbly disagree. Sadly I haven’t had the opportunity to learn much more about Jola culture but I do very much hope to in the future. It’s hard though when assimilation has forced a good number of them to find niches in Mandinka communities (even their words for yes and no are the same in Mandinka) though like all minorities there is a good group of them that has stayed very true to their cultural heritage and traditions; which is why these same people really shun their children from speaking other languages in the home as a pretty good defense against assimilation. I have learned several useful phrases in Jola: the general greetings which always come in handy and are a necessity if you proclaim your last name as Jarju, and of course “penuggi” which means, I will beat you…my only defense against annoying Jola children.

Mandinka.
If I’m familiar with any language here it’s my roughly basic yet highly utilitarian comprehension of the Mandinka language. The true ethnically Mandinka trace their lineage to the ancient Mali empire. Which is why even today if you study Bumari, a major Malian language, sounds like another dialect of modern Mandinka; sort of like Spanish is to Portuguese if Spain was Mali and Lisbon, Banjul. Mandinkas, due to the very powerful, influential and in turn imperialistic Mali empire around the time of Timbuktu, can be found from the tip of west Africa in Dakar all the way across sub-Saharan Africa to the Jungles of Uganda.

There is one place in the Mandinka language that sometimes my friends in village get confused when I speak. Often I am fronted with openly comical inquiries such as, “let me borrow your bike” or “when will you take a Gambian wife” and not to exclude the, “Take me back to America”s and “America is pretty much paradise isn’t it?” of which I will always respond with, “Ha!”. This presents a particular problem, because the word for yes in Mandinka is coincidentally, “ha”. So I have more than often had to clarify that I was actually just laughing and not agreeing with the said statement. No, then is “hani” but a useful early concept to learn was that of strongly agreeing or disagreeing with something by adding a, “de” (pronounced: day) to the end of yes and no. So, “Ha-de!” or “Hani-de!”. One other very interesting little snidbit is the word “Baa”. “Baa” works in the same sort of way you can use the word “fuck” in so many diverse ways (I refer you all to one particular George Carlin routine) except Baa is by no means derogatory word. Baa can mean almost a dozen different things which includes but is not limited too these few examples: to go at, mother, river, goat, the sea, a form of large or big, great river, father, termites, man, and a common local surname. It gets so ridiculous that there is a completely grammatically correct sentence you can say though few rarely do that goes something like, “N ka taa Baa baalu baa, baa baa baa Baa aning Baa”… yadda yadda yadda I forget how it was first told to me but roughly translated to going to the big river with your goats and your father.

You can find these linguistically confusions everywhere, I remember keenly when I was learning Hebrew accidentally telling a girl she should perform cunnilingus on me when honestly trying to talk common and completely innuendoless American smack talk on the soccer field, “your going down” in this case was unfortunately taken literally. Sadly I would be humbled by these types of common confusions following me to west Africa. I’ll start with “understanding”. This concept is difficult in Mandinka I’ve found as I must look like a complete idiot on a regular basis as I repeatedly use the phrase, “M ma moy”, I did not hear you; but to the natural Mandinka speaker they would translate that to, he didn’t understand, he didn’t hear, while I always mean it literally, I did not hear you. This is because in Mandinka when you talk about speaking a language you talk about hearing it, not understanding it. Hearing here is understanding; but to a westerner the concept of hearing something does not necessarily have any precedence on if you’ve understood it. So now being here a while I know that if I want to say I didn’t hear you with out looking tremendously inept at the local language I must say, “e ko nyadi?”, You said how? (how in this case meaning what)

It doesn’t stop there because if someone in the community tells you to do something “teriyaki” they are not asking you to head to the nearest Chinese restaurant but telling you to do something, “quickly”; and be careful when you call something un-healthy because locally that’s known as calling it crazy. Be careful always when being clear you are discussing farming and not sleeping. Just the other day a woman called me lazy because, exhausted after a long morning of weeding in the family garden, I had been walking home and asked by a passing woman, “E taata minto?” Where are you coming from? And I responded with, “M be nung sinoo.” I was sleeping. The word for farming being “senoo” (pronounced seh + no) and the one for sleep, “sinoo” (pronounced sea + no). As far as the woman was concerned I had slept till one in the afternoon. These same misconceptions can be taken for the words: Pepper and Love (Kaanoo and Kanoo), and a Crow and the word for Don’t (Kaanaa and Kana). Where lengthening the last syllable could mean the difference between telling a child to throw a bird or telling him not to throw things. This goes with stating how much you like peppers or accidentally saying how much you’d like a little loving. “Fing” means something is black, but “Feng” means a thing. Not to mention the word for to forget and to say something is beautiful are almost impossible for a foreigner to differentiate properly. To this day when I’m saying I forgot something I have to pretty much scream the first syllable to the point where it’s not even worth me using the word and I get around it by negating “to remember”. On that fact no one really uses the word “bad” they just say it’s “not good”… then again few people ever utter the word please either.

These though are not the worst confusions you can make, I’ve found that the last thing you ever want to do is to talk about your water bottle, firstly, because this is a stereotype of white people, always carrying their water bottles, and secondly and more importantly you may confuse that word for water bottle, “Jeakabo” with, “Jukabo” roughly meaning your anus. Not exactly dinnertime conversation. I’ll end with this, when in The Gambia never ask someone to take a hike in the woods with you, the bush is only used for hunting, cashew picking, circumcisions, and fighting and it will probably be assumed you want to do the latter of the two.

Though I joke, language is known in many circles as the new endangered species, as spoken languages on a yearly basis fades into oblivion along with the thick culture that it protected. They’re lost to assimilation, religious conversion, and modernization; history is written by the victor it is said after all. In some cases no fault can really be placed. Certainly some words had no place in an ancient world; words for airplanes and bicycles, modern medicines and electronics, it gets to the point where it becomes easier to slowly use English words if you in the least bit want to be excepted in a modern world and grant your children the same advantages in education as others are given. It is because of this that I hope all of you, in your own way, seek out and explore these lesser known languages and the cultures they reflect. Traditionally these cultures have been known for a long line of story telling as histories were passed down through the generations orally. Unfortunately because of this twenty years from now they may not be there to be appreciated and the protectors of their histories long laid to rest.

Back to the Land

2008-07-07T14:40:00.005Z

As you all well know west Africa lives and breaths the game of soccer, their “football”. The European Championship has been going on for the last few weeks; that with The Gambia’s uninspired attempt to qualify for the 2010 world cup in South Africa has made this place glued to the TV. Each compound reserving all the generator fuel they can and left over car batteries to power their Televisions for the length of the game. Crouched around the screen in a packed hut, everyone’s skin glistening from the liters of water we’re sweating out to watch the game in this sauna. De Rossi takes the ball for Italy, time’s running out for the Italians with only 10 minutes in the game to go when, *Snap* African music begins to play and text flashes on the screen proclaiming, “Back to land”. The next 20 minutes involve an infomercial where President Jammeh is mock planting rice in the fields in a complete Nike warm-up suit, Nike hat, and Nike shoes (when the president of a small west African country got sponsored by Nike I have no fucking clue). President Jammeh’s no Michael Jordan. He inspects the cassava and picks ground nuts from the field now back again with his traditional white African gown and royal scepter. “Back to the land.” Flashes another time on the screen, like a juvenile reminder to the people who base their lives around the planting and harvest season that maybe, if they’re not busy or anything, go back to the fields. As if they weren’t required by their own growling stomachs to do just that. Regardless of the necessity for the infomercial I couldn’t help but scream, “BACK TO THE FREAKING GAME!”… but it was too late, by the time the game came on the referee was blowing the final whistle and a lengthy sigh enveloped the room.

Now it’s become a sort of inside joke with a few of the guys and I. After our typical Gambian greetings and proverbial nicknames they will exclaim, “BACK TO THE LAND DEMBA!!”, “You to sir! Back to the land!” I will reply. Actually indirectly I listened to the message and in my own boredom have constructed a garden (or in Mandinka, ‘naako’) in my bathroom. My bathroom isn’t very big. It has a cement walkway to a typical cement pit latrine in the back. It’s surrounded by a termite infested bamboo fence which is about 6 feet tall. There is also a fence between a small dirt plot and the pit latrine making ample space to plant a few vegetables or trees. The other day, having used every inch of space in my backyard/bathroom, planted several rows of sweet corn… thank you Wal-Mart for the seeds. I figured that since my watermelon and cantaloupe will have to wait till the dry season to be planted, I might as well plant the most American vegetable I could think of.

Time passed by as I’m updating this entry, my Toubabenou “Corn” has sprouted only a few of the seeds and I fear if I’m lucky I’ll get a 50% yield; and yes the Mandinka word for corn bares a striking resemblance to the word for white man. The rains have been coming harder and more frequently and the rats seem to be taking shelter in the space between my rice bag ceiling and the corrugate roof. That evening the lighting even frightened the little bastard enough to puke on my ceiling so that now I have the delightful aroma of vomit when I walk into my house. I’ve tried to find where exactly the smell originated but I figure even if I find it I’m not going to be able to clean it. Fortune it seems comes in pairs. The next evening I started to feel terribly sick. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, “no, no, Steven couldn’t possibly go into yet another repulsive story about getting sick in the peace corps”… but yet I will anyways ;). Being a veteran by now of getting sick in my house I once again feeling the onset prepared my bucket, towel, toilet paper, and even set my iPod to a delightful playlist entitled, “Music to spew to”; A little AC/DC, some Metallica, then to add a tad more melancholy to the occasion a little bit of Chopin. So there I am, rain crashing down on my tin roof, the sound of children outside screaming and playing in the rain, and me, pretty much doing a handstand over my bucket and putting the turkey vulture’s adaptation of projectile vomit to shame. A short interlude presented it self as I gasped for air and sighed in relief. My cat strolls by to check out the situation as I continue to catch my breath on my bed. She comes closer circling the bucket of fresh stomach sludge. I think to myself, “Don’t do it.” She circles again pondering. Don’t do it. She picks her body up placing her front paws on the rim of the bucket and sniffs the contents curiously. Don’t you dare, her paws slip as she falls to the floor. At the risk of a zoology major anthropomorphizing his pet… smart cat.

The explosions from my stomach lasted until 4 in the morning when I was able to keep down enough water to take a few Tylenol and knock myself out. I spent the next day relaxing and avoiding my typical schedule of working at the hospital or visiting the school. Come the evening I was feeling well enough to watch the Euro 08 final with Germany and Spain. After it was over and Spain’s victory put a smile on my face I sat outside to get some fresh air when once again… out of no where…I was forced to defend America. “YOU AMERICANS ARE ALWAYS FIGHTING AND CAUSEING WAR! I’m a Gambian, I am only about peace but you Americans just want to kill and make guns.”, my neighbor proclaims and I hesitate at first not wanting to go into it, I merely shake my head. “You made the Atomic Bomb, RPG, Missiles, the Ak-47” he exclaimed. At this point I had to interject, “You do realize that The Ak-47 was invented by a Russian scientist, and that the explosive gun powder from most of these weapons was invented in Asia? Not to mention that a weapon of any kind is completely harmless unless someone picks it up and pulls the trigger. Which is a decision arrogantly made by too many Africans” I even went off into a rant about if Gambians weren’t so fucking peaceful and stood up for once for what they believed in instead of wallowing in their countries own pity party of excepting handouts for all their problems maybe you’d be better off. Perhaps I went to far but he forced me to snap back anything that came to mind. The last thing I feel like dealing with after the night I had puking my guts up was to have to, once again, defend American ideology against blatant stereotyping and exacerbation. It’s exhausting and in a way so typical. Everyone has a right to an opinion, lord knows I have more than enough, but there has to be a better forum and decorum to it then attacking me for no reason on my front porch. Every day my job becomes less and less a humanitarian mission and more and more a cultural exchange duty. Most of the people here haven’t left their village let alone their tiny country and all they know of foreigners is what they see in the tourist district or from what they’ve seen on television and movies. So who can blame them for thinking that we are all John Waynes and Bruce Willis’s, gun toting, adrenaline pumped, fighters with an attitude. What stops them from taking it a step further that all the Chinese people they see are just super fucking good martial artists. What is here is there they say and I’ve met plenty a kid in northeast Ohio who had never left the state and yet still couldn’t tell me where Toledo was. This world we live in.

The Rain Cometh

2008-07-05T13:07:00.003Z

A few days passed and it accumulated gradually. I’d be awoken through the night to the gentle pattering of rain on my tin roof. I had planted a few Maringa and pigeon pea trees the day before and it was a pleasant surprise to know that I wouldn’t have to make the trips to the pump to water them. That went on for several nights until the humidity reached a pinnacle. Dark storm clouds crouch in the distance waiting to pounce and the air grows thicker until suddenly, like a collapsing dam the water is released. For the next few months at least, the encroaching desert will be pushed back; the rains making a final stand to hold on to it’s remaining woodland. Geographically The Gambia may even be the last strong hold of green against the Sahel’s steady advance southward, but even now the rains can only fight it back for a few months. Walking around it finally feels like Africa as the jungle creeps in day by day. The rain washes the dust from the mango trees which glow with new brilliance. The underbrush will begin to sprout soon and the shrubs will be reborn for another season. After the first week of real showers came a week of drought, turns out the first storm was just a tease. In the early morning of the 21^st of June however a tropical storm came which devastated a lot of the village. A storm like, typical of south Florida, would be shaken off with well built homes; but here mud bricks and the rotten wood that holds the corrugate roofing together, breaks at the hands of the wind. The village south of me was hit much harder losing ten homes to the storm, our village only lost a few roofs and had a few trees downed. I lost the wall to my pit latrine and instead of showing my bare ass to the world decided to make my own toilet out of a bucket and plastic bag until I fixed the wall.

With the rebirth that comes from the rain will also bring it’s antithesis. As the sweet nectar of life pours down I help the elder of the compound fill in pools of water with degraded mud bricks. Those ponds will soon turn into breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and as their numbers grow, so do the infections of malaria in the village. This microbe has been fighting off the anti malarial drugs for decades and becomes more resistant every season. Malaria sadly shadows the even more abundant cases of both bacterial infection and diarrheal diseases which affect and kill tens of thousands of people every year, specifically children who are more prone to infection and dehydration; deaths which could be exponentially decreased with simple education on rehydration and prevention. These grass roots programs though are rarely fully funded due to the romanticism placed upon the AIDS and Malarial campaigns (not to say that those are not important); but in reality more children die of diarreal diseases and bacterial infection every year than do of AIDS. My friend the other day said it well when she explained that here they give out malaria medication like it’s candy. The rains for now though just bring a calming renewal to this place which desperately needs water after long dry season that grows longer every year. For now though it’s pretty cool to be awoken in the middle of the night thinking the Senegalese are invading, the thunder and lighting resembling mortar shells to some one half asleep as the rain pounds on my roof… why Senegal would want to invade Gambia who knows, maybe they need the peanuts. We did tie them in soccer the other day, they’re probably pissed.

The days have been pretty slow lately, I’ve found myself more comfortable getting lost in a few good books or my computer than practicing my Mandinka which I should be doing. They’ve been good books though! I’m reading Michael Crichton’s “Sphere” now, I’m halfway through “The DaVinci Code” and excited to start “The Sex Lives of Cannibals”. Just finished reading “The Kite Runner” which was great to read living in a Muslim country but HELLA depressing living in the peace corps. I’ve been trapping myself inconsequently in my hut lately in the afternoons after work. When I get bored with reading I start drawing cave art on my walls with charcoal by candle light. My art work includes a rather eccentric fighter jet flying across my room shooting Russian MIGs down, men standing around a bonfire with the words, “Man make fire, much rejoicing” written above, a manatee grazing on sea grass, and my personal favorite my own rendition of the famous adobe cave art depicting woolly mammoths and men with spears. Essentially I’m living in a cave. I’ve ended up duplicating the doodles I drew in Jr. High when I should have been paying attention in my intro to Latin class.

Obviously this lifestyle, though completely typical to the three month challenge, is not exactly mentally healthy. In realization of this I decided to make it a point to get out of my compound for something other than work, soccer, and cell phone credit. The opportunity coincidentally presented itself mere hours after my epiphany. It came in the form a traditional cultural ceremony called a “Zimba”, which is the wolof counterpart of the Mandinka “Kankuran”. It’s a dancing and musical performance put on for the village as a fundraiser. I don’t remember if I ever explained what a Kankuran is but I should start there. These creatures are traditional costumes which are worn by young men in times of circumcision and other important ceremonies. The costumes are composed of branches, shrubs, and animal skin and are made to induce the strongest feeling of oddity and fear. As the young men don the costume they lose their name and become only the spirit of the Kankuran. Women and children run in fear and cringe at the word. … one more fact that adds to the fear would have to be the duel machetes that they wield running around at full speed. The job of the Kankuran is to ward off evil spirits from the child having the circumcision etc and a “traditional” Kankuran will take this job very seriously. While now a days they’re mostly just used for cultural performances and dancing like at the Zimba; but still the last people on earth you want to be taken over by a protective spirit is a testosterone ridden teenager on a spiritual mission with a hankering for trouble. A month ago Amanda (one of the two other people who were in training village with me) had a Kankuran in her village. The Kankuran proceeded to hunt down a woman, break down her corrugate door, and then cut her to death with his machetes. Needless to say Amanda in all her right took a few days off in the capital to come to grips with the situation. Thankfully though Zimbas are not Kankurans and merely for dancing and performing. A Wolof spin-off of a traditional Mandinka practice.

I get out of the house, walk down the sandy path still damp with the rain from the night before strait to the Zimba event taking place at the Nursery school. It was well worth the 5 dalasi entry fee… 25 cents American. Traditional drummers play a powerful west African beat and a “jester” type of character sits in the center of the open performance area surrounded by dozens of children. He grunts odd animal noises and makes the kids laugh by lifting up his shirt and shaking his bum… butt jokes work in all cultures. Then comes the first of three Zimbas dressed in animal skins and gems. An older boy with a football build who paced around the performance area staring down the children who scurried through their pockets with fear looking for their tickets. One younger boy was caught with out a ticket later and dragged by the masked creature to the center; he wasn’t beaten, he didn’t have to be, the dread alone of being touched by the Zimba was enough of a punishment. The second Zimba appeared, a teenager not dressed in skin but in drag and began to put on a fast paced Gambian dance as another Zimba in animal skin came out from the back to join. It was pretty homo-erotic for a country which has recently sworn to hang any practicing homosexual. The Zimbas would occasionally walk around the crowd and stare down the older people until they gave them money, I of course was, as expected, racially profiled and picked on far more than the others for cash. The leader of the event yelled, “Toubab, clap and come dance” to me in Mandinka (assuming I didn’t speak the language), I responded in my typical defensive fashion and was pulled up by one of my soccer players to dance in front of the whole crowd. Miraculously I actually pulled off an inspired performance in front of the hundred some villagers. I’ve never been one to be afraid of being the center of attention. The official performance began and others would drag their friends to the center to dance and make fools of each other. It was great to get out of the hut and remember why I was here. Zimba went on again the day after… but I passed, my isolationism may turn into a problem if I make it a habit.

Hanging on the beach in Fajara

2008-06-14T12:35:00.002Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jntiqmh3O4c
On the beach hanging out for the day, just wanted to make you guys a bit jealous.

Roots

2008-06-01T15:05:00.003Z

If you knew, or didn’t, the famed book “Roots” about the slave trade took place in the Gambia. Every few years they have a festival and African Americans and hippies from all over the world come to find their roots. I took my rare trip up to the official capital of Banjul to see the opening ceremonies which were taking place in July 22^nd Stadium, right next to the presidential palace. I really like the feel you get walking the streets of Banjul, it has a gritty wild west feel with a distinct West African backdrop. I couldn’t help but feel like I was in a movie lot and that as soon as I turned the corner Steven Spielberg would be there on a directors chair yelling “cut!”.

The parade was very nice, the best part was me getting to walk on ACTUAL GRASS! You take it for granted in America but if you’ve been to west Africa you’d know. Delegations from all the neighboring west African countries walked with their traditional costumes across the stadium. Individual groups walked also, two were pretty hilarious: The “Bumpster Rehabilitation Project” acronym: BRP (if you’ve read my previous blog on Bumpsters you will find that funny, and the “United Gun Shot Hunting Society” with a sign that read “We are number one!”… TIA that’s all I have to say. So yes, thank you UGSHS for raping and pillaging your countries only gem, leaving it with few forests and less than spectacular wildlife. Golden tailed fence lizards aren’t exactly bringing in the tourists.

As the roots festival went on they began to introduce the president, RET COL Alh. Dr. Yahya Abdul-Aziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh. His escort car came first. A brand spanking new Nissan Titan with the added accessory of a 50 caliber duel barrel riffle secured to the bed (I recommend that edition). After the Titan came Jammeh’s vehicle, and extra large stretch hummer and the president waved out the top and threw cookies and t-shirts to the crowd. He usually carries a scepter but he must have left it at home today. Katie and Jennie actually got to shake his hand which was awesome.

After all this excitement we had to use the bathroom. By some strange coincidence we were escorted into the presidential palace and were sat down in the fully air-conditioned waiting room, very nice. This is the same waiting room that dignitaries from around the world sit in. Everyone from the British prime minister to the president of Taiwan… to Steven Snyderman sat here. We smoozed with the guards drank their water and shat in their toilets, it was great! It’s amazing how much racism and celebrity you can get from merely being a white person in west Africa. It’s both utterly disgusting and hilarious at the same time. Getting back to Fajara was a pain in the ass, as it had already gotten dark we were subjected to the obstacles of once again being white in the middle of the night in a bad neighborhood, trying to hail a cab back to the stodge. We had to pay a little extra but the 5 of us crammed into a 4 person taxi. The driver had told us that if we were stopped by the police and were caught in an over crammed taxi, we would be responsible for the bribe money (a hundred or so dalasis). So off we speed down the Banjul highway and what do you know but a military check point greets us at the end of the road. Our hearts pump, I can see it now turning into a typical movie: being taken into custody, forced to give a cavity search, jail time haha. The smallest of us, Jenni, hid under Shayla and I acting like I had a headache placed my arm over her to cover the rest of her torso. We greeted the guard as we stopped, “Salaam Alekium officer, how is the evening?” We were giddly smiling, obviously up to no good, but the officer was preoccupied with a side conversation that he just waved us on… sigh. We broke into laughter and continued our way back rocking out to Akon (the Gambians love him).

On a side note, I found the festival slightly hypocritical. Only in Africa would they spend a ton of money and time bringing people from all over the world to celebrate the end of slavery and the afflictions that were brought on the black people; but here’s the kicker: the Gambia’s northern ally, Mauritania, only recently (2 years ago) abolished slavery and still today hosts indentured black servants in Arab compounds. So yes, curse those American bastards who enslaved our people, how f-ing dare they! But our neighbors to the north can feel free to continue to oppress the black people, it’s ok, because of course, they’re our Muslim brothers… sigh. The racism of Arab Africans to Black Africans (though both practice Islam) I could debate was worse and without a doubt longer lasting than the plight of the black people in America; but that's just one man's opinion and one man's alone. Welcome to Africa yall.

Danger: beware of falling mangos

2008-05-29T10:39:00.001Z

It’s strange how eclectic life can be sometimes. Some days you’re on top of the world, nothing can stop you, you might as well put on some tights, and a cape and start fighting crime. Others though it’s like everything is out to get you. A few days ago I had the latter. I was dealing with the typical chanting of toubabo as I passed small groups of children by the school. The schools here sometimes more closely resemble an African depiction of “Lord of the Flies” than any form of learning institution. I told one of the teachers that once to give him a hard time… he didn’t get it. The same teacher that a month ago tried to explain to me that he doesn’t like speaking Mandinka to me because, “Your people come here, especially your women, and learn Mandinka very fast. So I will not speak modern Mandinka to you but my grandfathers Mandinka, or my grandfather’s grandfather’s Mandinka.” His tone ensued that women have no right to be smarter than men, I then told them that there wasn’t a word for it in the local language, but there was in English: Bigotry. I continued to walk past the school to the hospital for work and by some blessed coincidence stopped and greeted my friend Mustafa on the side of the road. Having completed an abridged greeting I began to walk under the shelter of another one of the copious mango trees. Clunk! Mere centimeters from my face fell a ripe softball sized mango. I laughed, mostly out of relief that I would if lucky, have received at least a concussion.

To children the mangos are part game part precious treasure. At the very sound of a mongo falling to the ground dozens of children instinctively flinch. If they are anywhere within fifty meters of it they’ll sprint, scrambling and scraping for a chance at the prize. It will end with the essential duality of competition, crying from scrapes, bites, and being mangoless or the triumphant glow of victory and quite literally the sweetness of it. This doesn’t happy everywhere mind you, in areas like mine where Mangos are more plentiful and the kids behaved they are very gracious, up country though it can be a street fight. I saw once visiting a friend of mine up country a kid fight with all his heart to get a mango, his scrawny frame enduring ample cuts and bruises; and when the dust settled and he held the trophy in his hand… he handed it to me, but I didn’t have the heart to accept it. I told him, “thank you very much but I’m full to the tip, you eat it”. I lied. So the mango that almost took my life fell in front of me, I like mangos but by no means need to eat them everyday as some people around here. A girl around 8 years old was sitting only ten feet from me off the path passing the time. Her eyes lit up at the sound of the mango’s impact so I gave it to her. Later I would be recounting the sheer horror of the near death experience to the Gambian hospital staff, and right after the “Clunk!” they injected, “So did you eat the mango?!?

On a side note the other day I had an interesting conversation with some men about the American presidential election. For some odd reason the entire country is fascinated about it and most of them keep more up to date on it than I do. I may just let them vote for me. The majority of them as you would have guessed are Obama fans and when the topic of Hilary came up this is what my host brother had to say, “Hillary can’t be president because there are many bad boys in America who want their freedom, and she is very slow. Obama will win, he is the man I support. He is very fast in brain too. He’s a young man, young men are much more capable of ruling than old men.” –Abdoulie A. Jarju.

I painted my house a few days ago. Well really just the doors and windows, a deep shade of blue, I’m going for the Mediterranean look it reminds me of Greece. I was painting, singing to the radio and attempting to guard my door from several very stubborn children who don’t understand the phrase, “don’t touch, wet paint.” While I was playing defensive linesmen to my house a few of my football players invited me to the bush to go hunting with them the next morning so they could show me some of the wildlife. I had been before but they needed the escape. Once again we had no luck hunting… especially considering we didn’t even have the dogs this time and were going to attempt to kill the squirrels with large sticks and our own wit. We walked all the way south past the village and walked past a border post. There we found a baboon, someone’s pet, tied up to a tree. Don’t worry I got pictures of it preening my hair, good times. The guy yelled at me and wanted me to pay him for the pictures but I told him in Mandinka I didn’t have any money and that it was impolite to give me a hard time about it. He thought I was British, so in English I told him to piss off.

An African Exorcism

2008-05-29T10:15:00.002Z

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Is all I said later to a friend who had asked. I will attempt to do this story justice but I fear I won’t be able to truly recount it; I feel though, having bore witness to the oddity I must at least attempt to. It was the quarterfinal game of my village’s regional football tournament. I’ve told you about the splendid ridiculousness of the group stage victory and the team was nervous to move on to the knock-out stage. The game started quickly as we were rushed onto our gilly and moved through some rare forested bush roads. It was a more open game then I’m used to with ball possession going back and forth, neither team holding it for very long. Their team was bigger than us, and from what I heard far more experienced, as the corrupt footballing system again allowed our opponents to take on far to many first division players (none of which remotely lived in their team’s village). Regardless though for the first half we were holding our own, with the exception of our flanks. A shitty foul was given in our penalty box and amidst sighing fans a goal was scored. Two counter attack goals by the opposition would follow shortly after and moral crashed. It was excruciating to watch and I know the rest of the coaching staff could have done without having to be there through second half.

As the whistle blew for half time most of the team was brought to tears, walking off the field like they had just watched their puppy be beaten to death. There they sat, balling there eyes out, most said nothing, completely drained not from their fitness but the situation; the others were cursing the crowd controllers, Army soldiers equipped with AK-47s and egos. We had to break up one fight and calm one of the guards who was fairly pissed off by some off color sideline comments. It seemed every man in the village that had come to watch the game, just had to put their two cents in. I shoed away the spectators from the bench as best as I could, not that I had a great inspirational speech planed, but that was not the way to go about things. The last thing the team needed was to be yelled at by elders calling them brainless. I kept it positive and told them the things they were doing well, I told them to forget the first half and just play the game, not to get frustrated and never give up. I did end up getting hokey and saying nothing’s impossible and that I truly believed without a doubt in my mind that they would come back; thankfully I have a doctorate in bullshiting.

The second half began and ended, drawn out like a small town actor’s flamboyant death scene. The team had shown a valiant effort though regardless; but a few atrocious calls and a red card later we were walking to the gilly home. Grown men balled and players were brought to their knees. It was beautiful in a way, to see people so passionate about a game; but here in Africa, it was never just a game. We piled into the vehicles, people asked me what I thought happened and I would explain our absence of ball possession, vulnerability on the flanks, and our lack of positional awareness, but I would conclude with a simple, “You practice how you play.” It was true, though I had taught them a lot their discipline and maturity on the practice field was less than admirable. None the less they could have won the game with a little better luck.

It was a pretty ride back with the sun setting through the woods. I stuck my head out the window of the front seat to take in the cool breeze, a short relief from the muggy vehicle. Brush fires were burning to our left clearing the forest floor of debris and leaving it only in cinders. The smell outside reminded me of summer campfires and late night stories. Without warning I heard arguing in the back and the pounding of feet on the metal roof. Looking out to my right I saw one of my players running off into the bush at full sprint. The car stopped and a group of us began chasing after him jumping over bushes and plowing over freshly grown saplings. We ran further into the wilds as the van drifted from view only to bring large trees above and a thick layer of ash below. Gray dust rose with every step and only black craters remained. We wouldn’t find him until later, curled in the large buttresses of a mahogany tree. We walked farther through the brush and intercepted the gilly past a clearing. Driving further down the road my goal keeper began convulsing violently and five players had to hold him down. We stopped the car again and I ran in the back and pulled out a mat to lay him on. With the little water we had left we washed him down. One of the older men began whispering something in his ear, he then started to blow in both his ears and his mouth until he calmed down. We got back in the gilly for only a few minutes before it began again with two of my players now becoming violent and cursing with out remorse. Stopping again I had to hold one of them with both hands locked around his torso as we brought them to the side of the road. They began trembling again and the older man repeated the breathing ritual. One of them in the shuddering called out my name and exclaimed, “Meng bi coos woli bi cas!” old Mandinka for: what is here is there.

I’d love to leave it that creepy but at that point I believed this one was putting on an act. That proverb he used I say on a regular basis in village; I use it as a deterrent against answering the question in Mandinka on a regular basis, “which is sweeter, America or Gambia?” The kids rag on me all the time that I actually know that proverb and repeat it whenever they see me, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that when he saw me helping the other boys hold him down he would repeat that. Either way they were able to calm him down a little. My goalie wasn’t doing as well. He had begun convulsing harder and it took twice as many guys to hold him down. He started screaming curses and gibberish, I know enough of the local languages to know it wasn’t sensical speech. A large group of men picked him up and began walking him to the nearest village and I hopped back in the truck to drive ahead and fill up some water at the pump. The pump water came out murky brown and I was forced to filter out the sediment with an old t-shirt. Once the flat bed truck of supporters and the men caring the player had reached the village a few minutes later, they were immediately directed to the marabou’s compound, the village “medicine man”. They laid him down and he began foaming profusely from the mouth, his eyes clouded over and became red as he continued to what looked like seizure, but less erratic. It wasn’t full body shaking as much as twitching waves of muscles as if something was moving through him. The Marabou began saying prayers and rubbing what smelled like fresh limes over each part of his body. He then sprinkled some sort of powder with it. Yelling and arguing by the older men in Mandinka began and it was two fast and loud for me to follow… something about a “key”.

Stabilizing him the Marabou rushed us back to the vehicle and told us to hurry back to the village. The sun was setting in the trees as we raced back through the bush road narrowly avoiding large branches and pot holes. The roof passengers had ditched at the beginning as it was getting too dangerous even for them to hang on, so they decided to walk the 5k home. We drove further and further into the encroaching darkness of the sinking sun until it vanished completely, the two troubled players moaning eerily in the background. Not exactly sure how the heap of junk made it back but we did. The car chase reminded me of that scene in Jurassic Park where the T-Rex is chasing the jeep and I kept looking back into the shadows for the dinosaur’s silhouette. As we reached our village we took a sharp turn away from town that caught me off guard. We zipped onto a constricted side street narrowly avoiding a drainage ditch on the right; then we took another left strait into the bush. I had passed by this place that morning on a walk but never knew this rickety earthen compound on the outskirts of town had been our Marabou’s. The two troubled boys were taken inside one by one as most of the passengers waited outside. Would it be rude if I walked in and wanted to watch? Would they push me out? I have to go in there and see for my own irrepressible curiosity. I dared.

I walked into the dank but homely hut, the only light coming from a jerry-rigged flashlight affixed to the ceiling. I walked further into the back room lit only by a single candle on the floor, the boys being held down on a mat by the bed. Oddly Latin salsa music was emanating somewhere in the darkness until the dancing flame of the candle exposed the radio in the corner. The ritual began much the same as before and ended unclimatically with the player’s bodies relaxing as they passed out on the ground. I was half expecting to hear, “THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELLS YOU!!!” but disappointingly no.

They awoke delirious as we asked them the day, where they were, and random people in the room’s names. It was over. We walked backed to the center of town and I to my hut. A few of the players tried to explain to me that this was African magic, that this is why football in Africa will never go anywhere. They went on to say that essentially in Africa you’re subject to spell attacks by opposing team’s “witches” and marabous. A few of my players even told me that they couldn’t see the ball at times in the game, and that they felt like something was stopping them from playing their best. Was it all an act, if so why? Was this just an excuse for an embarrassing loss, that maybe by embellishing this magic it took the pressure off of the players? In the end I’ll never know for sure. Maybe it was just a mental defense against dealing with the reality of losing the critical game. A lot of people here are incredibly superstitious and the mind is a powerful thing. Maybe in the end, magic does exist? Who’s to say? As for the business with the key, I later found out that the day before our team had done some magic with the marabou to protect us from dark curses during the game. Out of absentmindedness or being too busy one of the other coaches had supposedly neglected to pick up a lock and key from the Marabou that morning; a key that with a certain further ritual would safeguard the defensive spells completion. I’m still trying to figure out what really happened but as for now I believe I witnessed my first exorcism…until next game, welcome to Africa.

Additional asinine adventures in Africa

2008-05-16T14:14:00.001Z

I had another run in with the diverse assortment of animal species that live in my hut again. It was late at night after a meeting with the football team on how they need to get their act together. It didn’t end till 12pm and I was exhausted and feeling a cold coming on. Entering into my house I immediately stripped down to my sleeping clothes… aka the clothes G-d blessed me with. Don’t judge, it’s fucking hot here and a man’s got to sleep. So anyways, I sit down on my bed in nothing but my skippies and a dollar sized tanish scorpion runs right across my foot and into my embarrassingly large collection of shoes. I’m the beast-master and all but it was late and I’m not going to lie it scared the ba-jesus out of me. The first thing I did was yell at Dano, my cat, who didn’t exactly live up to her “hunter” namesake. Lazy bitch. I proceeded to then strategically hunt down and kill the intruder that so rudely disturbed my much needed beauty sleep. I cornered the monster in between my trunk and a large Listerine bottle. With the scorpion’s stinger ready to strike Dano decided to step into action and prove her valor. As to keep my kitten’s confidence up I pushed her away so she wouldn’t get her ass kicked. There I was poised and ready to strike, my weapon the back end of a plastic broom handle, and with a single focused blow slayed the monster in my hut. Dano jumped in to drag off the carcass before I could stop her and I spent 10 minutes chasing her down and disposing the carcass. Maybe when she gets bigger I’ll let her take on one of her own. As any of my stories would not be complete with out a touch of irony, coincidentally the name and official mascot of the Gambian National Football team is the Scorpions.

The other day the hospital received a very hefty donation of about 20 computers and monitors so that I could teach IT skills. I was taken aback by how quick we received them as I assumed I’d be waiting for months to even get one. I set an entire day aside to check them all and see how many I could use. One by one I went through all of them. Some made strange beeps then never turned on, other’s gave dramatic dying noises like a wounded animal. In the end only three ended up working, and of those three only one was in a useable condition that I could actually attempt to fix well enough to run a typing program. Yet all three… unfortunately… were in Dutch, a language that could easily be mistaken for Volgon; back to the drawing boards on the computer front.

On a worse note, I was toubabed in my own compound the other night. It was late and I wasn’t having the best day of my life, so I broke out my laptop and decided to watch an old episode of Scrubs with my family (if you’ve read early blogs about the problems associated with showing American television to Gambians, disregard it as my compound is a million times more exposed to western society than back in training village). There we sat, enjoying the humor of Zack Braff, my host mother even thought it was me (I was doubly flattered), and watched “the Todd” indiscreetly expose his ‘Banana Hammocks’. A young boy around 10 years or so walked into my host brothers house as we were enjoying the show and decided this was the optimal time to proclaim, “Toubab!”… yes, there is a white person in the room. It absolutely baffles me the nerve of these kids some times. What exactly was going through his mind, that he decided it was necessary to announce there’s a white person here, in the middle our compound, while we were intently watching a show. What confuses me even more is why the families here see nothing wrong with it. In America lets say, if a child were to be delivering a newspaper to my house in Cincinnati, while I was entertaining a black friend of mine; then he was to walk in and announce, “Black person! There’s a black person here!”. That child would be in an amount of trouble deeper than if he had called his sister a two cent Caucasian hussy. He would then be grounded for life and if it was me would feel guilty for a good amount of time after the punishment was over. If a child was walking around in front of other company screaming, “Blacky!” every time he passed an African American, the parents would be more than shamed by their child’s actions. Here though it seems they are completely ok with that behavior, more over in some areas literally train their children to say it. Just the other day I walked past a man (who after I had asked him how the home people are in Mandinka he morbidly responded with they are all dead) by the school his entire family chanted “Demba Toubabo, Demba Toubabo” at me. That not only tells me they actually knew my name, but that they also preferred to be perpetually ignorant. It baffles me.

So before I conclude another Iliad of a blog entry I’d like to end with one last story. After my football teams victory the kids wanted to raise some money for the transportation fees etc. and they all decided to throw a huge dance party at the school and charge 25 dalasis to enter. Doing the math in my head it was going to take 40 people to pay off the DJ who was charging us 1,000 dalasis for the event. It was a mess of sound and speakers packed into an office sized cubical classroom… a medical problem waiting to happen. I had fun the entire evening trying to teach the guys my age how we dance in clubs in America: aka I put a little crunk into a dance party which far more resembled a Jr. High dance than a club. Muslims schmuslims, dancing takes two. Regardless of the fact that the team actually ended up losing money on the event I woke up with my ears still ringing and a little disoriented from another night of lucid mephlaquine dreaming (the malaria medication… not to be confused with methanphenimines please, mother I don’t do drugs so don’t you dare think your kid ran off to the peace corps and started toking it up). Anyways in the confused mess of bringing myself back from the dream world there was an acute lapse in my thinking paradigm and I managed to put on a unique pair of pants. I walked the 30 meters to the pump to fetch water like any other day, greeting the dozen ladies who normally presence the pump for a chat while waiting to collect water. I sat down, continued my greetings, and waiting a few, what are now bewildering, moments to which I realized I had selected my favorite pair of genes that day. The pair that my mother pleaded I didn’t take to Africa as a cavernous rip was located right below my zipper… but they were my favorite pants, and I just assumed I’d be wearing underwear on a regular basis. That morning though, I had not, in a mess of daze and confusion, and exposed my testicles to the entirety of the pump. In retrospect I think I handled it very smoothly by not jumping at the realization of the situation; and not noticing anyone having remotely reacted to the spectacle I can only pray that by the grace of G-d my lanky legs had obscured my parts from view. Recently I was able to fix my jeans with the help of the sewing machine at the skill center, my favorite pair of jeans lives again. Just another day in the life of Steven in Africa.

What’s these gillys and bumpsters Steven keeps talking about anyways?

2008-05-16T14:12:00.000Z

So I’ve mentioned a lot the “gilly gilly” bus service that runs throughout west Africa but I don’t think I’ve every truly explained it. I have a few good stories from the last week (one of them being my last blog entry which was too big to put in this one) but I’ll go into them later. Let me start to attempt to explain the experience that is a gilly ride. What is a gilly? A gilly or gilly gilly, is usually an old decrepit 20 passenger van that they pack far more than 20 people into. No hubcaps, no bumpers, muffler dragging across the pothole ridden roads. I got in one one time which even had the added amenity of a see through floor like that of a glass bottom boat, except instead of beautiful array of coral reef life you get the pleasure to bear witness to a dirt road and a cloud of dust below your feet. An endless abyss to which if any item is dropped on the floor will surely fall victim to a dusty tomb of dirt and sand, never to be seen again. What’s even better is the “bling” which is placed on the van by the driver. Most carry tacky window drapes across the tops with pictures of famous religious leaders stuck to the windows and remnants of American and western influence. The best of these are the cars with random American paraphernalia on them such as large stickers of “Rambo” and the “A-team”, some of the PCVs have an on going joke on the fleet of “Creed” gillys that flash a large sticker across the front praising the band which if you don’t know is not only typical American rock but have been associated with strong Christian undertones… doubly ironic. Most gillys also include painted saying such as, “Peace to all”, “I’m a lover not a fighter”, and my personal favorites, “American gangsta’”.

So how do you catch one of these gillys? In major cities like Birkama, Soma, Basse, and anywhere in the Capital there are car parks where you can buy a ticket or find cars going to your area. In village though or out walking around on one of the two main Gambian roads (all other roads are merely bush roads) you can flag one down and hop on. If you can though try and get to a car park because in some places at certain time of the day a million gillys may pass by but they’ll all be full. A few words of advice though for riding on these moving hunks of metal. 1. Don’t be offended by pushing, shoving, people coughing all over you, babies crying and/or the occasional biting roster. If you’re claustrophobic you may be better off walking. 2. Be aware they will try and give you the white man fare so always ask around for the local rates. 3. Know the territory, some places have frequent gillys but others you may be able to get one in the morning but good luck trying to get back in the afternoon. 4. You will get dusty so if you’re a man don’t wear nice clothes. If you’re a woman on the other hand you may be better off sacrificing your African apparel and dressing up for the occasion, as that’s what the locals do and you can avoid heavy pestering by doing so (or so I’ve heard). 5. Do use the bathroom before hand, especially on longer rides stopping may be sporadic and if you have to release the entire contents of your colon do to the well water you drank the other day; pray you’re wearing thick pants. 6. On top of this the road conditions are not even close to decent and your seat will be vibrating like a bed in a cheap honeymoon motel; while the ride may feel like you’re on Disney’s Magic Kingdom’s “Star Tours” I insist you do not by anything at the gift shop. Instead of C3PO you’ll have a less than courteous, short tempered driver. Due to some of the obscene road conditions in some areas it makes more sense to just ride a bike part of the way (if you have a place to stash it) vs. getting a gilly. From my site for instance I ride my bike part of the way and pass a good amount of gillys; as they struggle through a midfield of potholes and concrete gorges I wave to the irritated passengers. Also take into consideration road conditions during the rainy season and plan accordingly 7. Most gillys also hire a small boy or two to collect fares. They are usually punk kids and it’s fun to watch them act cool, attempt badly to spit game to girls, and hang off the back of the gillys… then fall off into the middle of the road. Don’t even attempt to carry on a conversation with them, all the conversations will end with trying to get you to take them to America or nothing remotely interesting. 8. Also be careful when giving them large bill dominations that need change. Most of the time it’s just a hassle, and in smaller gillys this may be impossible, so try and carry exact change. Also I had an incident once where a kid posed as a gilly apprentice and tried to run off with my change; don’t though be alarmed if they do run off to find change, they will come back most of the time, mine was just an isolated incident.

What’s a bumpster you ask? Bumpsters are sadly an intricate part of Gambian life. It may be the easiest way for a young Gambian man to make money to some extent “legitimately”. Bumpsters are the blue collar boys of the Gambian sex-tourism industry. You can always find them on the beach and in the tourist neighborhoods and they later become a plague on the smaller villages as the tourist season slows down and they return home. Identifying characteristics: sleeveless net shirts and wife beaters with bright colors or country flags, rasta haircuts/hats and/or accents, 70s basketball shorts, and like most Gambian boys will also be sporting a wide assortment of g-unit/50 cent attire. Will be seen doing pushups, sit-ups, running on the beach, and doing stretches that attempt to show off their muscles. Will also be seen holding hands with unbelievably old and unattractive European women. Like the small boys on the gillys most conversations you have with them will be an utter waste of time and scientists have proven that for every hour you spend with a bumpster your IQ will decrease 2.3%. Unlike the small boys, most of the time they are not to be trusted, these are boys who make a living suckling off ancestral European titties, drinking, wasting their lives away smoking hash, and listening to bad reggae music with random laser sound effects (it’s like someone got their first soundboard and wanted to use all the buttons in random places). I have thought for long periods of time though of what would encourage these kids to choose such a life; but realistically who could blame them. To them it’s not a bad gig at all, I’m not supporting it but put yourself in their shoes. You get to sleep with many exotic (although repulsive, still exotic) women, relax all day on the beach, listen to your favorite music, have conversations and exchange knowledge with people from all over the world, learn new languages, and now have a window to reach a Gambian boys true mecca… the west. America and Europe to them is paradise and thousands have died trying to get there: on overcrowded passenger ships trying to sneak onto European soil, to diseases passed through sexual promiscuity in Africa and to malnutrition. I’d like to make it clear though that I do not judge the bumpsters, but rather make sure I take adequate measures to avoid dealing with them. It should also be stated that there are, although very rare, female “bumpsters” but they aren’t characterized with that word as you know. TIA. If I could only find a strong argument against theirs to urge them on the negative effects of such a life, but most won’t hear it.

Where the game isn't just a game

2008-05-16T14:09:00.001Z

It was Thursday on the first of May. I awoke in a pool of sweat like usual, shivering from the cool Atlantic breeze coming in through the window of the stodge (the peace corps frat house). I hadn’t planed on breaking three month challenge by staying the night in the capital but with Dan leaving and everyone in town to take a break from village life time got the best of us, and by the time we realized it I wasn’t going to be able to catch a gilly back to site. I went back to the office to check some last minute e-mails then took a taxi to Westfield to hail a gilly gilly to site. It was game day. And as the newly elected coach of the village’s football team they were counting on me to I guess pull some sort of miracle win for them from the sidelines. Half the village still thinks I’m English or German and thus an expert in football, ironically if they only knew how much the entire country of America loathed soccer and saw it as a “child’s” sport. Luckily for them though I am the rare American who has obsessed over the beautiful game my entire life.

The afternoon arrived quickly and the entire football team came for an inspirational game day speech from their coach… and yes I gave them the ‘ol “win one for the gipper/mighty ducks speech”. An empty “15” passenger van arrived shortly after and we crowded the entire team into it along with coaches, substitutes, reserves, and a few supporters who climbed on to the roof. Now it was transformed into a 30 passenger van, TIA. It was a half an hour ride along a sandy bush road to get to the game and we must have prayed 6 times before we got there. Before we left we prayed, along with stopping at every village on the way to say a little prayer, not to mention when we got there I was told to give a candle to a random woman and tell her to pray for our team (a common tradition in the area I’m told). We arrived into a wall of sound and energy, so immense it practically swept me off my feet. This wasn’t a 70,000 capacity Stanford Bridge or Anfield stadium in England but a bumpy field in west Africa with tree limbs for goal posts and it had me mistaken. The team and I were escorted through a maze of rice bag fencing and metal partitions amidst a large number of puzzled stares aimed solely in my direction. Frankly I think the administration of the football league here thought my village was cheating somehow having a foreign coach. The football commission in the area is incredibly anal about cheating and with full right. Corruption isn’t exactly alien to west Africa and in this major tournament it was common place to have first division national footballers come back to their cousin’s uncle’s brother’s village, claim to have lineage there, and play for the team. In Gambia though that’s fairly easy considering anyone can easily trace their family trees throughout the entire country. It’s become such a problem that the Football commission literally has to match each player to a photo to make sure that they are in fact from that village and/or have lived there for at least 6 months (which is why I’m thus coaching and not playing).

The match was coming up fast and we barely had time to do a full warm up and stretch. We were pushed off towards the field, our captain running out first into a herd of screaming fans. Even university football games in American don’t get this much crowd support. At the very least for a soccer match played on a sandy field with the lines merely the referee’s shoe indentations dragged across the ground. The whistle blew, the game began. The drum beats in the background were thunderous vibrated your very soul. Supporters gathered in groups to dance and sing as they screamed profanities at the referees and opposing team. This is how the game should be played; with passion and grace, pulse and pace. Logistically the first half was a disaster going a goal down early in the game ending the half down two to nothing. We barely touched the ball and I was on the sidelines trying very hard not to throw chairs and benches at the ref and my own players. Coming into half time though I urged the other coaches to be calm and remain supportive. If the kids needed anything it was to see our composure. Something had to be done, I told the team to catch their breath and I switched our formation from a standard 4-4-2 to a 3-5-2. We needed to start controlling the ball and the pace of the game, and considering every game in this tournament was a must win the sacrifice of a defender was well worth the support of a larger midfield. The second half started and from the first minute it was apparent a new team had entered the game. The opposition seemed to have felt very content with their 2 goal lead and gave up even with a few of their key players being injured in the early minutes. We took control of the game, having the majority of the ball possession and attacking chances and slowly came back. One goal came in the ‘75th minute, and as the final seconds wound down the emotions were high. You could feel the goal coming before it ever happened, a perfect pass through the defense to a sprinting attacker. He shot, and the goal was blocked by innate reflexes, only to be deflected into the path of our other striker. The crowd rushed the field like a summer storm and cheers erupted like thunder. The game ended as a draw but our team surely took the better result coming back from two goals down. I shook the hands of the opposing coaches and refs and the team celebrated by breaking out warm sodas from a cooler. Thankfully there was no ice… I had a nice shirt on.

We crowded back into the vans and headed back to the village chanting, the driver literally holding his hand on the horn the entire way. Coming back into town the atmosphere was overwhelming and overpowering. It was a raucous clash of boisterous chanting and screaming. A loud mess of spirit and rhythm like nothing I could ever imagine. These kids could have been war heroes coming home from a long and perilous campaign in a distant land. Their faces tan with distinct patches of dirt, their bodies riddled with growing bruises and dried blood, but their voices loud and clear. We drove through the entire village in song, children hanging on to the site of the van and the girls singing and dancing. Ending our parade of chaotic children we did another couple victory laps through my compound, barely fitting between the walls of mud brick houses and the low branches of a mango tree. This is how the game should be played: on a shitty field, with tattered shoes, degraded uniforms, and a pure heart. If only our lives could be lived as simply.

In recent news my football team played their second game in the group stage of the regional dry season tournament. We won 1-0 and advanced to the quarter-final round by a perfectly executed free kick. We won even with two of my players randomly collapsing on the field due to “Black Magic”. (… sigh). No joke 20 minutes into the match my goalie just falls over complaining of pulsing pain in the back of the head, but he’s able to get up and grit through the rest of the game a few minutes later. Then at the end of the first half my left defender keels over to the ground screaming in agony, yet he wasn’t near anyone to make any sort of collision. He began tossing and turning in the sand exclaiming that his body was “extremely hot” as if his very blood stream was circulating molten lava; as well as abdominal pain that he said felt like an anvil. I rationally attempted to have the situation explained to me but was told that I “wouldn’t understand… this is a black man’s curse, African sorcery.” They went on to tell me that the opposing team must have paid a ‘Maraboo’, a Gambian shaman if you will, to cast a spell upon our team so that it’s players would begin to burn up and not be able to play. My defender began to stand up all of a sudden, drunkenly stating he was fine but he was obviously delirious. Attempting to reduce the already rapidly spreading hysteria among my team I urged a few of the older men to keep him down or take him somewhere else. We walked back to the locker room and I gave my usual inspiring halftime speech over the gut wrenching cries of my cursed outside defender. The game ended and both players seemed to miraculously feel better. Whether that was because of the coursing adrenaline from the win or the curse wearing off, who knows. As a scientist I’d love to discredit the entire event medically, but a piece of me still thinks it’s pretty fun to believe in magic. What would life be like after all without the romantic lure of the supernatural, that enchanting thirst to explore the unexplained. *X-Files theme plays in background*

The Rat, The Hunter, and the Hurl

2008-04-30T12:39:00.003Z

I’ve heard many a horror story of the first days on your own in country; I disregarded them haphazardly though as for weaker men. Looking back on it though, it probably was one of the scariest days in my life; and the weeks that would follow would test not only my patience but my mental fortitude… to the limits of my dedication. I know what it’s going to take to stick out these two years and do a decent job (which is the key, because if you’ve met some of the volunteers these days you’ll see they’re here in body… but not in heart); the problem is trying to put away all the hurdles we’ve all brought with us, our good friends at home (some of which still haven’t wrote me… I know who you are), our family (who at times I’ve felt I’ve abandoned at the most crucial moment), and the ever popular “what if” factor. I pray though, for both my loved ones back home and myself that I can find the strength and heart that brought me here to Africa, to accomplish my goal as a PCV. Ew this has turned into a journal entry more than some good stories I wanted to tell. So anyways back to my story (I really need to stop running off onto tangents, I can see Shari and Sugs screaming at my lack of any written focus).

I was the first to be dropped off that day in my group. I had woke up late and as usual was not ready to depart for site. Rushing to hurry up and gather my things, which included a rather large wicker shelving unit I had purchased by the beach, Peter our driver was encouraging me to move faster. We hadn’t ate breakfast that morning as we were now peace corps volunteers, and thus fully capable of finding our own food… damnit. Peter stopped the car at a stoplight and we screamed out the window at a young girl selling pancatoes, who literally had to throw about 15 of these balls into the car when the light turned green. As usual the road from Katie’s site to mine was atrocious and it’s a good thing I don’t get car sick. To demonstrate the extent of the roads disrepair I visited Katie the other day by bike and passed several cars on the road; it’s sad when it’s significantly faster to just ride your mountain bike than attempt to take a taxi. Due to my lack in haste this morning we were in a rush and after greeting my host family we pretty much tossed my things onto the porch. In turn I was forced to take the before mentioned trip to Katie’s site to retrieve my forgotten things. The next thing I know the old peace corps land rover was driving off in a cloud of dust… and so it began.

I thought I would come home to see some repairs made on my house, mainly my rice bag ceiling, but no worries. If there was anything I had absolutely no right to complain about it was my house; which by Gambian mud-hut compound standards was a freaking mansion. I was still in need of a bed but would have to wait till my next pay check to afford it. Currently I barely had enough to pay for the gilly-gilly ride back to the bank to even get paid. I began unpacking my things and trying to take this whole thing in, which as you can imagine was fairly overwhelming. The next thing I know I here a scampering of claws across my tin roof and then the indentation of a rat in my rice bag ceiling… the same ceiling that is barely hanging to the wall on tiny nails. I feared the worst, that the weak ceiling would give way, the rat fall down directly onto my bed, and me have to fight it to the death. Sadly though in many ways the actual result was far far worse. I proceeded to poke the bulge with a broom but the rodent did not move. Instead it pissed itself, and I watched a stream of golden liquid leak through the bags and directly onto my mattress. Welcome to West Africa Steven. Just perfect.

The next morning I awoke to breakfast with the family and received a spur of the moment invitation from my teenage host brother to go hunting with a few of his buddies in the bush. I just couldn’t pass that up. I threw on my shoes and off we went. Relatively few people in the Gambia actually own a gun so I wasn’t surprised to find out we were going squirrel hunting with the family dogs. The way it works is that the boys take a leisurely stroll in the woods (a mosaic of palms, termite mounds and mango trees) collecting cashew nuts until one of the dogs spot a squirrel. In which case we all start sprinting through the bush trying not to impale ourselves on branches or run into a bull. Most of the time (from my obviously extensive experience in hunting here) the dogs don’t catch the squirrels but run them into a termite mound. The boys would then light a fire on the mound in attempts to smoke the squirrel out. Needless to say that day we came back empty handed in the squirrel department, though collected a backpack full of cashews which we later roasted and ate with fresh oranges. All that was missing was naked women fanning me and feeding me grapes… maybe one day.

I stayed up late that night drinking ley with the family and listening to American rock and r&b songs on my Ipod. Ley is made like attaya but with milk. I think it was the milk but the next morning I awoke at day break to the wonderful feeling of intense nausea. From 6:12am to around 11:30am, I continuously emptied the entire contents of my digestive system. Don’t worry, I plan on describing it to you. As the thought earlier in the night of myself butt naked crouching over my pit latrine for 4 hours was to much to bare, I took my bathing bucket and put a plastic bag over it so as I could throw up if I had to from the comfort of my rat piss stained mattress. Ironically my throw-up closely resembled a few of the rice porridge breakfasts I had had weeks before; the balls of white rice still fully visible at the bottom of the plastic bag. As I threw up I could feel the undigested rice spheres pass through my esophagus. Alright I’m sure you’ve had enough. Nothing can quite describe the feeling of being ill in a foreign land where you barely speak the language. In the end though I was strangely not in bad spirits but on the contrary the day I was stuck inside my hut sick all day, was a welcome relief to the stresses of introducing yourself to an African village. It was nice to just sit and read, and I should be allowed if for not just one day to be anti-social, as if I am anything it’s the antithesis of xenophobic. My counterpart and neighbor, bless his heart, thought I had malaria, thankfully though I think I just came down with a short but potent case of food poisoning. In conclusion, God bless the man who invented Pepto-Bismol. Coincidentally all that hurling in the end caused me to burst a few blood vessels in my right eye, it looks wicked badass, though I think the children now believe I’m Satan. In turn I’ve been forced to wear sunglasses all day long, I look like a white Stevie Wonder.

Feeling better the next morning I went to a meeting of the elders in the community and the local chapter of a well known NGO: Christian Children’s Fund, which I am convinced films its late night infomercials in the Gambia. The meeting took place on west African time… aka it’s suppose to start at 9 but doesn’t begin until noon while the sun is directly over head. The meeting was also in Mandinka spoke at speeds which I am sure crossed over the sound barrier and were thus actually in light form. After understanding barely a quarter of the conversation I managed to cut out early giving the excuse I had a “meeting with the principal of the school”. I did actually meet with the principal that day, but not until later that afternoon. The meeting went very well though with the principal, whose English was far faster and meticulous than I could understand. A very good man though I think. We talked about the schools needs and he is allowing me to teach a “life skills” course at the school, where I hope to teach self-esteem building, team work, individuality, and public speaking; as well as help fine tune the library, which now is more like a dark closet with a pile of books in the center. Doey-decimal system here I come.

Since I got here I’ve been playing football (soccer) with the boys every afternoon. They’re super good by American standards but definitely play a different style of football. It’s very flashy but not as fast passing and thought out as the western game. A few days ago though I started teaching proper stretching techniques to the team after running. That progressed into leading a little bit of the training workouts so I put a little American Football flavor to it, up-downs, pushups, and suicide runs. Maybe a few Indian runs when I get the time too, they’re going to despise me but will be better players because of it. The next day I even gave a pretty much dead on “inspirational sports movie speech”: “win one for the gipper”, “soccer is 80% mental”, “soccer isn’t in the shoes, it’s in the heart”. THANK GOD we’re not in American or that speech would have been doubly tacky and unoriginal. Here though it came off as one of the most inspirational game day speeches to ever grace this village and it took all the constancy I possessed to contain my laughter.

Well due to the lengthiness of this entry I’ve decided to cut the stories short for now. I’ll conclude though with the introduction of a new member of my hut. I’ve named him Dango Nino (which means rat hunter in Mandinka) and he’s a 2 month old kitten who was born around the time I came to the Gambia. He’s white with black speckles over it’s body, a black tail and very cute. Shy yes but I hope that’s just because he’s still a kitten and has only been in my house a few days. I’ve never owned a cat before so didn’t know how the whole “Litter-box” thing works, in America, let alone here in the Gambia. So I Macgyver’ed myself a large flat box and filled it with sand. The kitten hasn’t pissed on my floor yet. Though I’m sure I’ll find a turd filled shoe one day. Also In recent news to be brief, the elders of the community have made me the official coach of the town’s football team, we have a tournament tomorrow, wish us luck.

Also it'd be wrong of me if I did not express how sad we all are to lose Dan from our PC team. You will be missed, we'll see ya again I'm sure. Take care of yourself and don't forget to stop by a Skyline Chili on you layover in the 'nati.

The Oath and Drunken Debauchery (Swear in and the Party)

2008-04-19T17:27:00.004Z

The day has finally come as my training group cleans to go to our swearing in ceremony at the U.S. ambassadors place. Nerves are high and we all cram into the peace corps van decked out in African attire. A weird vibe was in the air and the streets were crowded with school children. It turns out the president of Guinea-Bassau was in town to meet with Yaya Jammeh (the Gambian President), so all the roads were closed and we were forced to take a sandy back street. This is the first time an entire training class has wore only African outfits and the stares from the people on the streets were looks of pure confusion. Toubab? Arab? Albino Gambians? You get mad street cred here though if you wear African clothing. Getting to the coast the Ambassador’s residence should be on MTV Cribs, it is so so beautiful. Over looking the beach and Atlantic Ocean the view is breathtaking, and for the first time in a long time I was able to enjoy ACTUAL GRASS under my feet. I went out of my way to go to the bathroom there; after shitting in a pit latrine for the past 2 months a beautiful porcelain thrown is like heaven. Though we have toilets here in the captial, this was a super nice one. With real soap and a TV in the waiting room! We took tons of pictures (though I won’t be able to post them until next time I’m in the capital because I forgot my cord).

The program began as any Gambian events do, with prayer. Babucarr my LCF (language and cultural facilitator) said an Islamic prayer, Ruco went up and said a Christian prayer, and I went up… on national tv… and said the shahechianu and oseh shalom. Then the big moment came that I was so nervous for at the start, my singing of the national anthem. I go up to the podium, start singing, and pretty much butcher every high note like something out of a comedy movie. Parts I didn’t even sing because I had started to high. I felt like I was going to die, cameras in my face, all of the Gambia watching, The ambassador, 100 staring peace corps volunteers, the peace corps director from DC... needless to say it was a disaster. The most embarrassing moment of my life, in retrospect I’d like to think some great wisdom came from an experience like that, at the very least it put my feet back on the ground, lord knows I need that. But the show went on, and I tried to smile. The head of the Peace Corps in DC said a nice speech, taking stories from his experience in the first year the peace corps was started, he had gone to India. Our skit went like a charm and everyone got a huge kick out of our singing and my Gambian drum beat played on an old water canister. I was going to go sit down by the beach for a little bit and let everything just float past me when I ran into a few of the other volunteers. I told them how I was pretty distraught over the entire national anthem debacle. It turns out though, by some miracle, there had been a problem in the microphone right at the beginning and with everyone else singing the national anthem along with me they could barely hear me; and if they could they couldn’t distinguish me from the others…sigh… thank god! After talking to some people and realizing absolutely no one could even hear me through the speakers I felt a million times better. Even though I’m going to take a lot of flak for the end of our skit where I was suppose to say thank you in all the Gambian PC languages, “Ali abaraka (mandinka), Jerejeff, ning uhhhhhhhh, uhhhhhhhhh, uhhhhhh, oh yea! Jarama! (pulaar)” The blunder got a laugh though so it was worth it.

The food I was told wasn’t as good as previous years but to us it was still an orgasm in our mouths and we scarfed down like we had been starving for the past two months… well we sort of had. Earlier in the ceremony we had said an oath, the same used by those going into the armed forces, to defend and protect the united states of America from enemies both foreign and domestic. Later they gave us a piece of paper with that same oath on it and our social security numbers and we were asked to sign it. Dan signed his name as “tits-magee”. I found it funny.

Tits-magee and the rest of the bunch then took a PC car back to GPI to get ready for the Julbrew party. If you didn’t read my last post let me explain what a Julbrew party is again. To make it brief there’s only one brewery in the Gambia, and considering their main consumer of their product is peace corps volunteers (we pretty much keep their brewery in buisness) so they throw us about 4 parties a year all the booze you can drink. Mix that with recently graduated 20 something year olds living in a foreign country and the mental rigors of being at site (loneliness, isolation, and horniness) makes for a complete mess of drunken debauchery. Partial nudity, drunkenness, bad pickup-lines and tasteless toasts, screaming in 5 different languages, ass slapping, boys kissing girls, hot girls kissing girls, pissing in the bushes, people then passing out in those same bushes, the interrogations of the new trainees and grind dancing to old 90s songs. It was great. I need to get this shit on film, I could make enough money to buy a motorbike. I love this country. Thankfully we got our own private deck to have our party inside the brewery and far away from the scornful looks of devout Gambians. The best part of the evening was the volunteers who were outing themselves as Jews to me all evening, “I’m so glad you had the courage to say those prayers, I’m also Jewish” even non Jews were glad I did it. Supposedly I’m suppose to hang out with a few of them tonight for Passover but I don’t know if that’s going to happen.

The pinnacle of the party was a large group picture of all the guys with our shirts off (supposedly a Julbrew party tradition, but I think it was just a strange excuse to be homo-erotic and/or have a large amount of black-mail material for eventual peace corps drama). After that the party was pretty much beaten till it was dead, I decided it would probably be smart to start thinking of how in the world I was going to finagle myself a taxi drunk in the middle of west Africa then get back to GPI. Most of the party was trying to move outside the brewery to a Gambian club but that had bad idea written all over it. So tits-magee aka Rambo (since no one knows you here sometimes people like to be funny and just tell all the villagers their name is “Rambo” or “Mr. T” or “The Rock”), Olivia, Katie, and a few others decided to all get a cab back together. We got back without any trouble, though a few of our group members decided they love to live on the wild side and stayed out till the morning. That morning we awoke to realize that we were now peace corps volunteers, in all our glory, and thus, had to find our own damn breakfast… sigh.

I’m not sure when the next time I’ll be able to post a blog entry but definitely in 2 weeks or so when I’m able to come back to the capital to get paid. Tomorrow starts 3 month challenge, a requirement to remain in your village for 3 months and get to know people. I think it’s more of a “recommendation” than a “rule” but we’ll see how it goes. My mental sanity will always come first but more importantly being able to stay in contact with all of you, my family in friends. With everything that’s happened I really want to keep in contact with you all. A new adventure begins tomorrow, I hear it’s scary as hell to watch that peace corps vehicle drive away into the dust; but I am ready for anything. I have a few minor goals I hope to accomplish in the next few months up to the rainy season. Prepare my garden in the back yard to farm a few good fruits: watermelon, cantaloupe etc. Secondly I’ve bought some blue paint and have decided to paint my house Mediterranean style (blue windows and doors on a white mud brick house). On top of that I hope to start putting the data from the hospital into a computer, maybe teach a little English and IT, play lots of soccer, and read a few good books. To all my more frequent readers I hope you are enjoying my posts, and feel free to send me e-mails or letters with your comments, I know my grammar is f-ed though so don’t bother commenting on that. Stay tuned in two weeks to the next exciting installment :-P. Next post will be a good one too with my first weeks of three month challenge, grant it I survive it to tell the tale. Keep pimpin’ yo (remember I’m an expert on ebonics here so don’t be a hater, let me live this up!). Snyderman out.

The Badass Factor, w/ just a hint of narcissism

2008-04-17T23:34:00.001Z

Through the brilliant collage of emotion that was training it seems we have come full circle but have grown. We’ve found ourselves again in GPI waiting to swear in as volunteers. GPI is the same and this small strip of sandy Kairaba Avenue hasn’t changed but something is different. A feeling maybe, a soft sense of confidence; of what before was an unsettling anxiety has now turned into a silent optimism and familiarity. I’m still the same person that I came to the Gambia as: the strong willed, passionate, smartass I always was but now there is something more that I can’t quite touch on. It’s like I had so much space inside me, so much potential and I’ve finally started to fill all that room in. Tomorrow we swear in, take an oath to our country and ourselves… then party are asses off.

Yesterday we found out that everyone of the 15 health and community development volunteers has passed and will swear in, I personally was worried, but we made it. Every volunteer from Basse to Serrakunda has come to the Stodge for swear in. Have I explained the stodge yet? Well the stodge is something only found in Peace Corps the Gambia and not found in other Peace Corps countries. It’s literally a PCV frat house where people can stay for 60 some Dalasis a night while they are in the capital doing work. It is the site of many nights of drunken debauchery and making bad decisions. There’s TV where we watch all the DVD’s of tv shows sent from home and movies, a library of books that are passed through the PC grapevine, and two floors of rooms full of bunk beds and mosquito nets. Toilet paper is worth it’s weight in gold there and the bathrooms for some reason have an extra toilet for washing who knows what called a bidet. Damn French. After a few nights in the stodge due to the influx in PCVs in the capital we’ve been moved back to GPI till we go back to site. It’s very nostalgic as I described earlier and it sucks to think we had 2 more people in our group then. But life goes on slowly slowly, thus is the Gambian way.

Being here now with a knowledge of local languages it’s effect on the way people treat you is more than noticeable. Even though I still know my knowledge of Mandinka is far from fluent, when people hear me tell them in their native language I’ve only been here 2 months they think I’m a genius. It’s a big moral booster. And the respect that you gain by merely being able to do a full Gambian greeting is immeasurable. Language is so so important and I pray that on my own I can still advance my Mandinka. Plus it’s a huge help in haggling. They’ll give you their daughters hand in marriage for less than a butut. Our haggling skills had to come in handy today as we were giving our swearing in allowance to buy things for our huts. Beds, mattresses, gas burners for cooking, and paint to do a little decorating, I’m going to do my walls Pollack style.

It’s important to make your house your home here. Some days here the world may seem to collapse upon you and your home has to be your refuge and your escape. So yes for those of you who know me you know exactly how my house will end up looking (pictures to come), maps everywhere with soccer and animal posters on the walls. In the peace corps during your first few months in service we have what they call the “3 Month Challenge”. Technically I’m not allowed to leave my site for 3 months, but due to certain circumstances I really find it necessary to keep in touch with my family via e-mail, if not for my family for my own sanity. Honestly though I am super excited for 3 month challenge, painting my house, and getting to know my village. Wish me luck.

At swear in we’re going to be required to put on a skit for the director. That skit we’ve decided to contain a spoken word dancing and drum melody. It’s going to be interesting. An amazing part of it though is a beautiful poem/spoken word that another guy in our group wrote in training village that will start off the presentation. It paints a picture of life here in the Gambia is incredibly powerful and needs no introduction:

When the sun goes down in Africa
The Song of Gambia begins to sing.
And I ask myself, “With Bald Eagle’s Wings,
What harmonies can I bring?
What melodies can I sing?
If anything…”
“Domanding Domanding,” I’m told.
But here, our drums beat fast.
And will those same syncopations
Create relations like they did in our past?
And will they last?
We’ve learned that every chord progression
Consists of chord changes.
So we should never diminish, not even half-diminish
Any major or minor exchanges.
Though in all our arrangements we try to add the sustainable fourth,
We can’t forget the source, that sweet Gambian melody that came before.
With each note that we play and each word that we say,
We want our showmanship to display.
But hey…today…today…
I know in my soul, with the rhythm of our flow,
There’ll be no lyrical stuttering
No mandinka muttering
Just the smooth groove of the Peace Corps band,
Lending a helping hand,
Sweet as Tendaba bread and buttering
Uttering words unfathomable to some, but commonplace to us
Because playing the songs of the world is not a should, but a must.
-Alex Choy

Site Visit and Miny Toubabia

2008-04-12T17:17:00.000Z

The day had finally arrived, I was driving to the site where I would work for the next two years. Alex and Katie were dropped off before me with the look of shear fear in their eyes as the peace corps SUV drove off in a cloud of dust. Driving down to my site I was nervous but actually more excited than anything else, for some reason I had a feeling that I was meant to go to this particular village, though even know I haven’t found out why. We had trouble finding my compound so we first stopped at the health clinic where I was going to do some of my work, to ask for directions. This wasn’t any normal clinic though, as soon as we stepped into the gated hospital we could tell this was different. Walking though the buildings, the men’s ward, women’s ward, children’s ward, maternity ward, and even a dentistry unit being built I realized this was nicer than some inner city clinics! The entire place was pimped out with large solar panels, powering the entire facility with electricity, and what more, to my amazement, the glory of a flush toilet (with TP for that matter)! The first time I sat down with my counterpart and the Dutch women who headed the clinic they uncapped an ice cold bottle of coke for me. “American’s love their Coke”, she said, and I was in to much sheer happiness to tell her I was a Pepsi fan. This place was not like Kiang at all, and may very well be the only green area of the Gambia, with an abundance of fruit like something out of a movie. Mango trees everywhere, Baobabs, and to what I’d find out later would be an Orange tree in my back yard… yes… that’s right… fresh, squeezed orange juice. I was in heaven. If that wasn’t enough we then got to witness my house; my compound is rather large and from the outside it’s like any African housing, shops very close as well as easy access to a pump. Opening the door to my house though (though it’s still mud brick and a tin roof I’ve upgraded my residence from hut to house, though some would still consider it a hut I guess) it was a freaking mansion. Easily more than 3 times the size of my dorm room of which I lived comfortably in for 4 years. The house was brand new with green floors and even the nice rice bag ceiling to protect me from falling woody debris from the supports.

Did I mention my backyard had an orange tree??? And plenty of room for Maringa planting (there I said it, so all you Ag-fo’s can leave me alone), as well as my Wal-Mart watermelon and cantaloupe… is it racist to plant watermelon in the Gambia??? Just curious. Ironically it grows super well here, as well as other warm soil plants. The people here are all very nice especially my host family and counter part who have been more than amazing! Not to mention the hospital has been so kind to me in my first days here. They’ve lent me a bed to sleep on till I buy some things in Kombo. The people overall in the village go out of their way to be kind, but maybe it’s that I’m new and I have come from the Bronx. It’s also nice to know that several compounds in the village get Senegalese satellite television and watch all the live football games… oh yes. You should see it, it’s really odd to see African tin roof compounds with satellite dishes and color tvs. This place is so perfect that I’m severely nervous of the terrible secret this village must hold. Maybe they sacrifice people every month or have secret Nazi youth meetings, what ever it is I’ll get to the bottom of it. I played soccer with the kids for the first time too the other day. I was nervous if I played shitty the first day they’d never let me play with them again. They have some big tournaments in the rainy season playing other villages and I really hope to get on the team. The men here are much better than those in Kiang where I was the local Pele, now I’m just a toubab who can play, but I guess they assume I’d be good just cause white guys from England come all the time and are pretty good. The entire American soccer community’s positive perception rests souly on my shoulders.

On the last day before I had to head out to Kombo for swear in the most proud moment since I’ve been here occurred. We were negotiating payment of rent, food, and laundry and my counterparts brother went into a long speech where he explained that they went through the long peace corps volunteer application to bring me here and that they felt it was their responsibility to take care of me; that I was part of the family, part of this community, and I shouldn’t worry about those things. It made me feel such a sense of responsibility that I have to this community to leave it better than I found it, and to give all the time, experience, and passion I process. It’s kind of daunting now that I think about it. Either way I definitely plan on sneaking a few bags of rice, jimbo, and oil, whenever I can to help pay my way. My next post I hope to talk about swear in, which is going to be the sickest party this side of the Atlantic. Every peace corps volunteer in county’s coming to the capital for it. I love you all, keep reading, writing, and calling. Oh and on a side note, I just found out Amanda’s puppy is still alive… though it’s probably better off dead than to be an animal in west Africa.

Fire in the Sky, the last days of Kaiaf

2008-04-12T17:10:00.002Z

Training village has finally come to an end and we have all departed for our site visits. I’m currently in the woman’s ward of a decked out solar hospital in my permanent site, random I know, but I’ll go into that later. I’m sure you’re probably wondering by the title of this post what happened so I’ll go strait into the story. A long time a go, in a distant land there lived a knight and a dragon or something….

So the last week in training village went rather smoothly actually. The whole group got together in Medina (the wolof village between Kaiaf and Serra Samba) to visit a baker who could make pizza, they were really huge calzones though. Language was still a struggle but I made some amazing advances in that department the last two weeks. My LCF (language and cultural facilitator) says I should do fine on the test if I don’t stress but I’m still worried. God willing the next post will be talking about finally being able to swear in having passed the language test, but right now I’m pretty nervous. Looking back on it though if any of you came and visited me here you’d probably think I was fluent, but I’m honestly not even remotely close. *cross your fingers for me or I’ll probably be home in a few weeks lol* In the last post I mentioned about swear in how the head director of all the peace corps, aka the head honcho, is coming to The Gambia; and that our entire ceremony will be taking place on live Gambia TV (which sounds amazing but if you actually knew the viewing population of the one Gambian tv station you’d laugh). Regardless I am being asked to say a Hebrew prayer for the Jewish volunteers in the Gambia, which I’m pretty sure is only me but I guess I’m enough of a Jew for the whole country. If only you could witness the Jew-fro I’m currently sporting in all it’s glory. I’m going to get my ass lynched. Not to mention I am going to be singing the national anthem on television and have decided to do the Whitney Hueston super bowl version.

I’m rambling again and I apologize, back to Kaiaf. The real excitement happened the last 4 days in village. We were too leave on Wendesday and that past weekend we had all gone to Soma to buy fabric to have our African garb made for swear in. That Sunday Katie got into a huge fight with her host family over payment of her laundry or something, and earlier that day Amanda had got a puppy (4 days later may he rest in peace). So come Monday morning we were all pretty riled up. That afternoon I got on my soccer gear to head to the field like usual and to my shear amazement witnessed a grotesque spectacle that only the horrors of a late night movie could compare to. A large semi-truck full of generators, computers, school supplies, and cricket sets; and hanging on to the back end of the truck a large fat British chap, shirtless, his belly “homer simpson” style hanging over his belt line as he shouted directions on removing a large generator from the truck. The entire village had come to watch… it was a mob. I ironically sat in the background looking from a prospective I would have never thought, that of the local who working for the peace corps knows the importance of sustainability in a community. After being able to make fun of the toubab in Mandinka I left to go home and bathe. It had already turned dark and I was taking off my shirt to bathe when I heard a huge explosion in the distance towards the school. The day before we had joked about how we should call in an air strike (possible napalm) for this village and put it out of it’s misery and I feared our wish had come true. What made me more un-easy was the story I was told a few days ago.

It turns out 3 years ago there had been an armed robbery in Kaiaf by escaped Cassamance rebels from Senegal. They had shot three men and killed a Mauritanian fellow. Why they would rob a broke little shop in Kaiaf I have no idea… the criminals here aren’t exactly the smartest bunch of guys. Another explosion went off directly overhead but this time I spotted the culprit. A large fire works display was being shot off at the school in all it’s brilliance. I threw back on my shirt and ran to the school. It was evening prayer time in the Arab world and my host mother, bless her heart, was completely ignoring the explosions overhead, focused in prayer… that’s faith. A few of the kids I’ve played soccer with in the village ran up to me with the look of terror on their face, “Demba!! What is this!?!? Why is the sky exploding?!? Can this hurt us!?!”. The kids had never seen fire works in their life and who could blame them. Not only was this white man from the UK sending off fireworks shirtless during prayer time but I was soon to find out had no idea how the people were going to use any of these electronics. At the school I got a chance to talk to him. Turns out he was from Sheffield and had once been homeless; coming across some money though had decided to organize a gathering of materials to send to Africa. I tried to tactfully ask why in the world he’d choose Kaiaf to give his things too and he explained how they were his “sister city”. I started to ask him a few questions on how he had planned to teach them how to set up the generator and computer lab, or if he had sponsored an IT teacher to come in and teach the students. He responded with quote, “Well if you could find someone to come here and show ‘em how to do it that’d be a load off our backs.”… sigh. I really don’t blame the man at all, what he did was extraordinarily kind and generous, and lord knows most Amercians won’t lift a hand for the remote let alone Africans. The problem still remains though, that one of the largest problems here in Africa is the lack of sustainability of projects and in turn the reliability of handouts from the western world.

I think in the end both sides our needed. Without donations from westerners wanting a tax break and a healthy conscience there would be no supplies to even teach these people valuble skills. On the other hand without sustainable programs of NGO’s and organizations like the peace corps; oh who am I kidding now other programs are like the peace corps, even NGOs aren’t on the frontlines like us… we’re f-ing badasses ;), nothing would get done and people would rely on handouts. Back to the story, yep there’s more. It was already dark and I had promised my host family a bumping party for my departure. I bought ingredients for pancatoes and the family started cooking. Amanda and Katie brought jolly juice, a type of powdered “gator aid-like” mixture that we’re sure causes cancer and/or can be used as a pesticide. They also brought attaya, a sugar packed green tea, an ESSTENTIAL for any Gambian event. This is where I decided to break out all the stops, I borrowed Bakary’s boombox and started playing some tupac from my iPod and once everyone was there finally showed my family the laptop. We watched an episode of scrubs which like any American show was WAY to raunchy for an African village. The best part was when “The Todd” pranced around in a banana hammock and my host sister’s mouth about dropped to the floor. All in all a successful evening. Two days later we were saying good by, and though I will miss my host family, who was amazing (and I thank them infinitely for giving me the one meal I like everyday) I think we could all agree that it was very easy for me not to tear up that I was leaving the Bronx for good. Hoping in the Peace Corps SUVs we headed off to site visit.

If you were curious to what was going to happen with the computers, the day before I left I set up the generator and made sure the computers were working. A few word of wisdom to anyone who donates a computer, make sure to take off your personal files before donating or people like me will get hours of entertainment reading all your files. Also, another reason I was so nervous about people donating computers and me having to be there to show them how is this very fact: the power voltage here in the Gambia is different from that in the USA, so a common situation is that a school here will get a large donation of computers, hook up the generators, and fry everyone of them in a matter of seconds. Thanks for the donation, I guess it’s the thought that counts. If the school is lucky though they have someone who knows a bit about electronics set up the system and make sure to change the voltage. Thankfully though newer computers compensate for voltage automatically, so it won’t be a problem in a few years. I was able to get a hold of an IT PCV in Birkama whose going to contact his friend in Soma and hopefully if he’s not busy he’ll be able to take a few of those 15 dalasi gilly rides to Kaiaf and teach some IT.

Where the streets have no name

2008-03-25T12:44:00.002Z

5 weeks into training village (I found an internet cafe in Soma, look on a map if you want to know where it is):

My site mates and I have come to the realization after visiting some of the other training villages: Serra samba (a Woloff village), Fulakunda (a Fula village where they’re learning Pular), and the other Mandinka Villages, Bombako, Bumary, and Worokong, we’ve learned that Kaiaf is literally the Bronx of the Gambia. One of those places no one really wants to live in but the kids that live there, including us in a way, are damn proud of. PETA would have a field day here, and Rumpke for that matter. The children are misbehaved and there are some areas that look like something strait out of a save the children commercial. The school though is very nice and some of the people. Well other than the children who call us Toubab even though they know our name, and the adults who ridicule us on a regular basis just to get to be funny… honestly it’s pathetic.

For the first time in my life I am actually an expert on Ebonics and the irony is killing me. We taught the kids to say phrases such as, “fo shizle my nizzle” and, “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” I seriously need to video tape this, it’s freggin hilarious. It’s doubly hilarious when we’re rocking out to Jay-Z on the boombox and we get yelled at to put back on Bob Marley. My favorite part of the whole iPod introduction though had to be the 12 Muslim kids rocking out to “Adon Olam” and Matishyahu with me, little do they know lol. They about freaked when I started showing the kids some of the videos on my iPod. First off let me say that the Gambia is 95% Muslim and porn is illegal. Thus not thinking I showed them a Rihanna music video “Umbrella” which in America is on basic cable or on MTV but in the Gambia, to these 10-13 year old boys was pretty much the closest thing to hard core porn they’d ever seen and I quickly after realizing this turned it off.

As I type this portion of the post I’m in Tendeba Camp again. It’s nice to come here and see everyone after two weeks in the Bronx. I gained the weight back that I lost in the first two weeks so I’m really happy about that. I’ve added like a million things to my wish list especially now that we all know our sites now… well that’s a story.

So we all grab our gear bright and early Monday morning to catch the peace corps vehicle to Tendeba and my host father hands me a bag of baobab cookies to munch on. As soon as we get to Tendeba I splurge and buy a 25 dalasi Fanta (if you’ve done the conversion don’t laugh they pay us Gambian pay), then walk to our first technical class on Community Needs Assessments. We have our second language tests later in the day and everyone was nervously studying there Mandinka, Pulaar, and Wolof. I decided though to jump in the pool. Going back to my room I realize that my doorknob has turned into a nest for wasps to the point that there is no way I can open the door with out getting stung. Knowing this I still go to open the door, luckly I’m able to get in and get my bathing suit, but as I’m locking the door behind me to go to the pool I get stung right on the pinky. Ow. About 20 minutes after that I come late to my language review due to the incident and go over some Mandinka before the test. I’m doing really well, and was very confident and ready for the test, but with the adrenaline still pumping from the wasp sting I get nervous. I could understand everything my tester was saying to me but was really to clouded in my head to remember how to respond. I’m praying I do well in it. After testing and after dinner we were pulled away one by one to be given our big site assignments which were all surprising but good. Surprising in the fact that we all thought our group would be sent up country to the Upper River Division but in actuality got sent all over the country, and only a third of our group ended up being sent to URR (but I’ll go into that later). So here’s the juicy part, leaving the meeting nervous/excited about my site and eager to tell everyone I walk to the bar where a soccer games playing (you know me and soccer), it’s Lille vs. Paris Saint Germain. Then not paying attention I make a sharp movement to my right where some friends are sitting, only to find a hard wooden pole jumping out at me, yea it jumped out at me. The only thing I really remember after that is stumbling away from the Bar sober as a horse (can you be sober as a horse? Oh never mind.) but delirious all the same with a head ache, and putting my hand to my right eyebrow, full of blood. After I figure out what’s going on I walk away from the salty mangrove coast of the River Gambia and to the bar packed full of PCTs celebrating their sites and St. Patty’s day. I guess it looked worse than it felt because they dragged me to the nurse. I didn’t really sleep that night, thinking about the site and the throbbing pain of my forehead. In the morning I had a huge lump on my eyebrow and a nice black and blue mark.

Alright so my site, I finally have been placed with a site just for me, but sadly due to some security issues with the area I am not permitted to discuss the location of mine or my peers sites. Though if you know the Gambia, had a map, and read carefully I’m sure you could figure it out. If you would really like to know it would be ok for me to tell you in a personal letter or e-mail so ask. I’m excited for it, it’s a great site and I think I’ll be able to keep up with the blogs. Our training class got broke up into what we’ve classified as 3 separate zones of the Gambia, we have 15 people left in our group with Tim and Nikki ETing. Five were sent up country (where we thought we were all going) up to URR, 5 were put in northern region and then 5 in the southern/lower river. It turns out more than a third of our group is getting electricity (I think it’s like 6 of us)… I though am not and will be content with my dark hut and pit latrine. We have thus labeled them all “Pansy Peace Corps” and are lumped in with though lame Caribbean PCVs who live in island resorts with internet, AC, and running water. Things I can tell you about my site, that I’ve learned from my site description (my next post will be after site visit prior to swearing in), are that I will have a hut very similar to that from training village, a tin roof, two bedroom mud brick house. I have a pump supposedly 20 meters from my house where I can get water but I’m not sure if they mean 20 from my hut or my village. My site is pretty out there and at the same time the nearest volunteer is only 10 kilometers (Katie actually who I’ve mentioned as one of the two girls who lived in Kaiaf training village with me). My site has a medical center where I think the PC wants me to do the majority of my work, it’s going to be tough to see on a daily basis but I’m sure I’ll find a niche. Also there is a school which will have plenty of opportunities for me to do some type of health education and maybe even athletic coaching. As a secondary project they’ve even placed me “close” to 3 different ecotourism centers which I really hope to do some work in. There are some other really cool facts about my site but I can’t disclose them on the blog so send me a letter I don’t have any of your addresses.

So I received my results from my language exam. I got a Novice High level in Mandinka… we need Intermediate mid to swear in as peace corps volunteers. Though I’m positive they would never send us home, but we would definitely miss swearing in and have to spend two weeks in Kombo doing language, it would amazingly suck. On another note though at Tendaba we took part in a long lasting Peace Corps The Gambia tradition of the “Marathon/Death March”. It’s a 25k walk through Kiang West National Park, full of mangroves, valleys, monkeys, and bush pigs. Though to me it was more of a leisurely walk than a “Death March” it was extremely beautiful. I can’t help but think what the Gambia was like before desertification and human expansion spoiled the wildlife. The highlight of the death march had to be the part where we had to swim through a rice patty. Literally so deep we could not touch the bottom (at times) holding our packs over our heads. The water was actually scaringly warm and though I know the river this far up is still salty and thus doesn’t carry any diseases, the rice patties on the other hand may be fresh water… in which case Schistosomiasis may be present but I doubt any of us would get it.

Well I guess I’ll end this post here, I just found out there’s internet in Soma so I hope to post these entries on the 25^th of March when I’m there to teach a life skills class to boy scouts. On an interesting note I’ve been asked to sing the national at swearing in… which is being broadcast live on Gambia TV (wow)! As well as say a Hebrew prayer, as there will be an Islamic prayer, and some peace corps people are doing a Christian prayer so they volunteered me to do something Jewish lol. Not that I have a problem with that at all, other than the fact that I think I will have just put a giant target on my back for the two years I stay in the Gambia that I’m a Jew. Please e-mail me if you have any prayer suggestions, I’m thinking about just doing the Sahekianu. Once again please continue to write, as I’ve only received one letter so far (not that I have time to respond) but still it’s fregging depressing… thanks bree, your letter’s in the mail. Oh by the way weird question: does anyone know the legalities of taking a monkey skull out of the country? I found a wicked sweet one.

Demba Barrow what is your name?

2008-03-25T12:41:00.000Z

3 weeks into training village:

It is extremely difficult for me now to cram the past few weeks into a single journal entry considering I feel like I’ve experienced a life time of events, but I will try. I went through times when I was so close to coming home, times when I felt sick to my stomach, times when I felt so strong and confident, and times when I was reminded how small and how beautiful the world truly is… and yet I still have many months to go. I’ll start though with the two weeks into my posting at the training village of Kiaf in the lower river division of the Gambia; where are main protagonist (me obviously) is minding his own business in the village: “Toubabo! Toubabo!” *white man! white man!* “N to mu MANKE toubabo le! N to mu Demba le ti.” *my name is Demba, NOT white man* “Give me your ball!” “I’m not giving you my ball kid, get a job.” “Demba, Demba, what is your name?” “I just told you my freggin’ name. Do you not greet? Salaam Alekium.” “Alekium salaam”… “That’s better, Summolu lay? *How are the home people*” “I be je *they are there*”

I’ve been in my training village of Kiaf for two weeks now, though it seems like I’ve been here for at least a year. I walk down the rugged sand streets like something out of a “Save the Children” commercial. Children, most of home I don’t remember let alone ever meeting, scream my name; either my American name followed by the last name “Gerrard” because the only Steven any of them know play’s for Liverpool, a English football club, and it doesn’t help that I play with the older guys on a daily basis. Or I am called by my Gambian name, Demba, which is suppose to mean warrior but also the first disciple of the prophet Muhammad… who was rich and did a lot of good things or something. My surname was then taken from my host family, Barrow. My host father Kay ba and my host mother Penda… both very nice, I carry on full conversations with my host father even though he doesn’t speak a lick of English, he just nods and smiles… he’s a great listener and I can talk about anything lol. “Yea so I had explosive diarrhea this morning it sucked, you know what I’m talking about, it’s some mean shit” *he nods, even though he has no idea what I’m talking about… I find it quite humorous*. Really my host sister, Mariamma, whose like 12 speaks the best English, but my namesake, an extremely cute 10 year old boy named Demba Toure speaks a little bit. The “Official” language of the Gambia is English but really I think only 10-15% of people speak it fluently. I wake up everyday at 6 something to the call to prayer (the speaker is RIGHT next to my house), and the malaria medication must be getting to me because this morning I swear I heard the man say after random Arabic prayers, “… brought to you by Nabisco.” Or maybe that’s just the hunger talking. I feel like I’ve lost a lot of weight already, foods really been the biggest issue though I do feel good as we’ve all been put on *very manly* pre-natal vitamins. I love the breakfasts which consist of a porridge mixed with a really amazing peanut butter sauce and enough sugar to make anyone diabetic; but that’s about it. Lunch is rice with an extremely spicy sauce then dinner is the same with some fish heads mixed in with it, it’s sort of like those surprise toys you get in cereal boxes except not giving you the same smiling effect. A few days ago I was actually given three whole fish in my bowl with their eyes poked out. This actually is a big honor to be given this much meat considering most of their meals really don’t involve that much protein… but I just couldn’t bring my self to eat it. I know this all sounds really depressing but to be quite honest I’m feeling really positive and having a great time, some days are incredibly hard but other days I feel like I was born to be here for at least this short two year tour. I should start from the beginning though…

We drove for two hours to reach my assigned training village, not because the Gambia is so expansive but merely because the “roads” had more pot marks than my face in high school. It literally is just as fast to ride a mountain bike across the country than it is to take a car with out 4WD. I was in the middle of an absolute nervous break down. Here I was, in the middle of bum-shit Africa, about to start a 30 month journey into the unknown. I was utterly petrified and to be frank, I think that thus proved my sanity. I hadn’t eaten for days and the diarrhea was still taking it’s toll on me though getting better. We stopped at the other villages to drop the rest of the people off, they smiled and little children helped grab there things. Finally Kiaf was in view, and to our luck, we were informed that we shouldn’t be concerned if people aren’t to happy to see us as a funeral had just taken place. Amanda, Katie, our LCH (language instructor) Babucarr and I nervously stepped out of the rusty old Land Rover. We were SWARMED by more children then I’ve ever seen in my life, and told to sit down in front of a steaming kettle of Attaya, a local tea which takes hours to brew and is meant to be savored with good company. It’s about 5 parts sugar, 4 parts caffeine and 1 part tea, with a little mint occasional… extremely addicting. As the car drove away it was all too overwhelming. In the days to come I would pretty much accept that I was going to just ET (early termination), at one point I was even given a chance to call home and talk to my mom, but I couldn’t get through… thank god because I’m pretty sure I would have convinced myself to come home. Three days later though it was like something clicked in my head, and to this day I can’t even remember the thinking paradigm that brought me to this point… but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that at some point I just got it, everything clicked, I let go of the fears, of the lack of communication with my host family, of my location, and just accepted it. Now I think we’re all doing really well and positive towards the future and I couldn’t even imagine ETing. Though we still go through hard days we get through them, and we keep going, and most of the time it is good. The foods a problem, but I just supplement it with crazy amounts of peanut butter and bread and I pray that I don’t lose any more weight.

I’m sure a lot of you are wondering what my place looks like in training village, I’m going to post pictures so I’ll be brief. I live in a cozy “two room” house with a tin roof and concrete floor. The first room is empty but Amanda, Katie, and I like to chill there to get away from village life. My backyard is the same length as the two rooms of my house but is pretty much a concrete walkway over sand to a bamboo walled pit latrine and bathing area. Honestly… it’s not as bad as it sounds/looks. I take a warm bucket bath everyday under a beautiful starlit African sky with the sounds of the Islamic call to prayer in the background and the occasional donkey copulation; then I fall asleep under a mosquito net to the glow of candle light, it’s actually very romantic. My baths are warm because I get water from the well everyday at noon and by the end of the day it’s bubbling hot. The family compound I live in is actually very small which makes it quiet and quite nice.

After about two weeks of initial shock in village life we were all transported to Tendaba Camp for some technical training over a few days. Tendaba camp is a tourist “Safari” camp on the south bank of the river Gambia. I am hesitant to call anything “safari” here as there is hardly any safari animal life to see other than a large migrating bird population and copious amounts of insects. Though I think few people fly to Africa to witness the wonderful plethora of invertebrate creepy crawlers. It was great to see everyone, and even grab a grossly overpriced cold beer and a fanta which will cost you about 50 dalasi. That’s about 2 and some American dollars, but realize that when you’re only making 28 bucks a month that’s a lot, and when you can get it for 10 dalasi in Soma and other up country villages. During technical training we received our first language exam of which I scored a Novice Mid level in Mandinka; that I believe was really a sympathy grade as I’m honestly doing pretty much the crappiest Mandinka speaker in our group. On a more technical basis we had more health training in both bed net dipping, breast feeding, and making insect repellent from nyme tree leaves. The worst of all the training had to be our personal health lecture. During that hour we were required to show we were competent enough to make a microscope slide with our very own blood to be tested for malaria. We had no idea walking into this lecture we’d soon be stabbing ourselves with small needles then milking our fingers to get enough blood to fill a slide. Supposedly we were suppose to quickly prick our fingers, I though didn’t stab my self hard enough the first time and was forced to slowly press a sharp needle into my finger to draw more blood. Only in peace corps. If that wasn’t torture enough our physical pain would be manifest mentally as we would be exposed to a slide show presentation of the nastiest west African microbes, worms, and diseases… speechless. For about an hour everyone in the room was questioning whether our mosquito bites were indeed just mosquito bites or a blood sucking, capillary tunneling, bug.

All in all Tendeba was a nice refreshing breeze on our village life, the view of the river is beautiful and the expansive mangrove shoreline is stunning. I got to see my first mudskipper, a fish native only to west Africa that spends most of it’s life above water and looks like a modified tadpole with two bulbous fish eyes on the top of it’s head. Also for the first time we’ve all really been separated from the tourists that come hear for bird watching and an escape from the just trials of suburban English life. We notice the behavioral in sensitivities that they do on a regular basis with out realizing it, it’s pretty funny and you’d be AMAZED how much better of a reception you’ll get talking to a Gambian if you greet them in their native tongue or even at the very least a pleasant Salaam Alekium. I guess I call it a post for now as this is getting pretty wordy. I wish I could have added some more funny stories of village life but most of them aren’t as funny if you don’t have the context or have lived in west Africa. Also I really wanted to attempt to convey the emotional roller coaster that was our first weeks living in village. I do promise many more stories to come and once again please do not worry or take offence to not hearing from me sooner *even though the next time I’ll be able to post this is probably going to be mid april*. Fo naa too (till later).

Video by the rotunda at GPI and Disclaimer to Dan's family

2008-02-12T22:08:00.000Z

This is a video we took on Ruco’s sweet camera that converts strait to youtube mode. It’s us outside our rooms in the rotunda of the Gambian Pastoral Institute where we were for the first week. I hope to make a video with my own camera of my training village hut and post it back up here in 65 days. Call if ya want to talk (but USE A PHONE CARD, because it’s going to be expensive). Also I feel I have to write another message:

*DISCLAIMER: To all of Dan’s friends and family who have received this blog website, realize all bad language and gross stories are of my own personal opinion and have no correlation to Dan what so ever. He is a stand up guy, just realize that language and graphic stories will not be filtered in the following blogs.*

Here's a pic of our group

2008-02-12T19:26:00.000Z

The Runs are Not Much Fun

2008-02-12T19:20:00.000Z

*Disclaimer: The following post contains reference to bodily functions and could be perceived as unpleasant to most readers. Also please take into consideration high amounts of dark humor and sarcasm were used in light of the current mood*

I’m sitting here now on the tile floor of my room at the Gambian Pastoral Institute as mosquitoes tare me apart. The sounds of never ending car honking and crickets seep through the window. My roommate Tim and the others have just finished dinner, another helping of extra chewy bread and rice, and have gone to lay out by the rotunda. We leave Wednesday for the start of what I’ve been calling, “Peace Corps Boot-camp”. This several month training takes place in alternation between Tendaba and my training village where I will be learning the language of Mandinka. In my small village will be only two other trainees: Katie and Amanda, but I’ll get to see the rest during the day at Tendaba. I sadly most likely won’t be able to post another post on this website until my return from training around mid April when I will be sworn (god willing we all maintain good health and pass our tests) as a Peace Corps volunteer. Because of this lack of internet access I won’t be able to return your messages but leave me some and I’ll try and respond to all of them when I can. I’m thinking if I ever get free time I may mail an entry to Eric to post for me but we’ll see. If you would like to get a hold of me I purchased a cell phone here, I can’t call out internationally but you can call in. I have e-mailed my Brother, Mom, and Shari that number if you’d like it. Not quite sure how well it’s going to work, or how and when you’ll be able to get through, but stay patient, keep trying, and I’ll get the call eventually (I just hope I’ll be able to answer it). I sit now waiting for it to ring.

Well now that we’ve gotten some technicalities out of the way let me tell you how I’m doing. I’d like to start off though with a quote from last night which made me laugh, *Travis commenting on the leftovers from Olivia’s food* “Olivia how can you do that.” “Do what? I wasn’t that hungry” “Don’t you realize there are children starving in Afri… in… well here.” Things have been down lately in our group of trainees I’ve noticed, it seems like every day I hear the doubts and homesickness of different people. I’ve begun even questioning it myself. It seems like days go by and we’re extremely stoked for what’s too come and then there are days when all we can do is think about quitting… and it’s only been a week. Two years just seems like an exponentially impossible task, but I’ve decided to take it day by day. As the title suggest I have come down with a pretty nasty case of diarrhea, I think I’ve gone almost 8 times today and I feel drained and pale. It seems some of the others have come down with it too. I don’t even believe it’s from a parasite but just the stress and introduction of a new diet. Today we got a big medical lesson on how to self treat ourselves for dysentery, malaria, and other diseases. We have a little book (“Where there is no doctor”) which tells us the prescription and dosage to treat most things. Along with the book we have a shit-ton of pills for all the different maladies along with thermometers and mosquito nets.

Speaking of mosquito’s I moved outside to the rotunda to hang with, Zack, Travis, Dan, Tim, Tara, and Harinder… they all say hi by the way, but yea the mosquitoes are eating me alive, and I have a coat and long pants on too (they head strait for the neck). It’s so amazing how one second (a few seconds ago) I can feeling like utter shit and then go outside and feel so much better. The people here it seems all have a tendency of make us laugh just when we need it, I think we all hold each other together and it’s going to be very hard without most of them at the training village. Tim’s singing and playing on his guitar (He’s freaking amazing) and Harinder (a PCV of two years who we’ll be replacing) is telling jokes about kids playing Frisbee with machetes. I’d like to apologize for my rambling, but this may be the last post for a bit so I’ve decided to make it a little meaty. We got a security training fieldtrip where were taken to an open taxi station too watch people pickpocket in front of us… those kids are damn good.

So I just realized you can chew the Pepto-Bismol instead of sucking on it as Travis and Dan laugh at me for it, damn this shit’s nasty. I’m really glad I wrote this post, somewhere between the cold tile floor and the guitar I’ve found a small optimism; but that’s Africa for you, it seems it just kills you some days and eats you away and others it rekindles a fire and light inside all of us that keeps you going. There’s going to be some bad days, and some good days in the weeks of training to come, but I’ll take it a day at a time. Humor’s seeming to be my greatest strength lately so I’ll keep going, at the very least to keep the other’s laughing.

*Tonight (Feb 11th) we lost one of our group members and I just wanted to write something about it*
Nikki, have a safe trip home, don’t fall asleep in Dakar that place is a shit-hole (not that I know, I’m just assuming). You better send us a few care packages and come and visit (+ work on your Mandinka when you’re bored). Take care of yourself, we will all miss you very much and I hope that when ever you feel uninspired you remember the passion you had to take the leap of faith too Africa, because it was that leap that was something special.

DC, the Blue Screen of Death, Liberia and The Gambia: Pretty much nothing like Ohio

2008-02-08T19:00:00.000Z

In Dulles I got to check some e-mail before we left for the Belgium capital. Ruco let me borrow his gift card to use the internet… worst decision EVER! But anyway we’ll get back to that later… Oh and I met Marceo Balboa in the Dulles airpost... a blessing upon our trip.

Belguim, pretty much has absolutely nothing to offer the world. We touched down early in Brussels at around 6:35am only to have three of our volunteers padded down. Really though the flight was quite nice, I got very lucky. First off they gave all the Peace Corps volunteers aisle seats so that we would have a comfortable flight, we were spread out over the entire plane. I got the window-side aisle and the passenger intending to take up that window seat never showed, so I got the whole row to my self which was actually super amazing after the Dulles computer debacle. While I’m on the subject I guess I should explain what happened.

So Ruco helped get me on the internet to check my e-mail one last time. Minutes into checking my e-mail I catch the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death” virus, the one where your computer shuts down every ten minutes to the blue screen. So I was extremely pissed off that I was going to have to lug around a useless laptop through The Gambia. Thankfully though in Belgium it seems to have worked for a little bit of time in the Airport but maybe that’s just a fluke, hopefully not.

So when you think Belgium what comes to mind? Waffles… well I tried these so called “famous” waffles myself. I went up to the counter and first asked, “Do you guys take the great American dollar?” She laughed and proceeded to explain the “Euro supremacy”. Then I went for the kill, “alright so can I get one of your world famous waffles?” She handed me the most pathetic thing I have ever seen next to Anna Nicole Smith. It was about the size of my palm and wrapped in plastic. “This is the amazing Belgium waffle!?!?” “uhhhhhhh yes” “Look can you just tell me where the nearest IHOP is” *she looked confused*. A nice gentleman then came up and told me that yea he was very unimpressed too since this was his first time in country. I took it back to my group and we proceeded to poke fun at this waffle and all took turns taking pictures with it (I’ll post them when I can). We must have laughed at the patheticness of this waffle for 10 minutes, then, not wanting my 3 euros to go to waste decided to eat it. Actually, it was really good lol. I guess their waffles are more along the lines of a breakfast pastry or Danish than what we know as an “American waffle”. It’s really sugary but good.

OK off topic but the bathrooms in Belgium are rather pathetic also. People are insanely private and every stall is a concreted out room. That whole “foot tapping” incident on capitol hill would have never happened in Belgium. America has left it’s stamp on Belgium society though… just as graffiti in the stalls such as, “Korn” and “Snoop Dogg rules”. There were others though, “but plug” (notice the lack of the second t, stupid Belgium) and “Everton FC is awesome”

What I tell you now you might not believe, because in my wildest dreams I really had no desire to ever go to this particular West African country (which has been made famous by the movie “Blood Diamond”, well that area anyways). When we got on the plane to flight to what we thought would be Dakar, Senegal then a short jump to Banjul turned out to be a flight to the southern edge of west Africa to an old American country known as Liberia. That’s right, turns out one of the Brussels Airways planes died down there and they need spare parts quick, so we flew strait to Monrovia. Flying in through the clouds we were immediately stunned by the lush jungle, dirt roads, and crashing waves of the Liberian coast. Landing you could see the mountains in the background… but no landing strip. The runway turned out to be only paved thing in miles, and the “air control tower” had a thatch roof, and realize we were in the main airport. You could see a large number of troops mobilizing into a jumbo jet to go who knows, and a ground staff that was comprised mostly of teenage boys and girls it seemed. We ended up being stranded, there, in that hot sweaty airplane, in Liberia, for three hours; and to make things worse there was a group of giggling Irish high schoolers right behind my seat who I wanted to punch. Thankfully though after a lot of arguing we were able to get the parts off, refuel and start our trip back up to Banjul.

The airport was hectic but we all thankfully got our bags, as soon as we pulled away from the Airport in our rickety old van we saw them turn the power out at the national airport and the crew leave to their homes via flashlight. We were in Africa, in one of the poorest countries in the world. The poverty in some areas is overwhelming immediately (once you leave the tourist section where rich European women come to have secret African husbands). Signs on the road read, “Thank President Jammeh for his cure for HIV/Aids” and “Africacell, only 1 cent a minute”. We were all incredibly nervous, our minds raced with uneasiness and anxiety for what we had got ourselves into. Though thankfully I fell right asleep.

Trainings started, we received Rabies shots today and interviewed with our program leaders for projects we’d be interested in and our “tolerance level”. Every minute I stay here though I think my anxiety fades more and more, and a passion and excitement takes over… thank god, because we all I think were MORE than nervous the last few days. I believe there is niche for me here, and there is definitely something great my training class can offer to the corps. My class will be replacing another crew which has been here the two years, and they are counting on us all to pass language and cultural training, and that alone sometimes keeps you going. When you know that if you give up, another volunteers 2 year program may end up dissolving. Well I have to go, I hope to post this tonight when we go to Peace Corps HQ. We’ll all be purchasing cells at the end of training I think and will be able to receive calls from the US on them (it’s to expensive for us to call there). It doesn’t work all the time but sometimes you can get through for a few minutes or awhile depending. I love you all… Jared quit raiding my room for stuff Jared!

Day Fula

2008-02-06T02:17:00.000Z

Day two of staging has ended. The people I will be in training with are all incredible, even after only knowing them for 48 hours I feel so confident that no matter the entirety of the shit we will be getting into, we’ll be able to get through it all. I seem to always be so blessed with these great groups of people when I’m on trips. Most of the group is around my age of 23, we have no elderly volunteers (so I don’t have to room with grandpa thank god! Actually the conversation of elderly volunteers came up and I think it was said great, “Can’t trust them driving a car, so send them out to West Africa, they’ll be fine”. We do have a married couple who are our age and very nice. We were talking about risk factors today and the husband quickly spoke up, “STDs!”… the wife immediately followed with, “How the hell do you plan on getting an STD?”. It pretty funny.

Last night we all got dinner at some Thai restaurant; for some reason all these people insist on experiencing new and exciting ethnic food, regardless of my persuasions to enjoy good old American food while you still can. Needless to say I really don’t like Thai, I thought it was utter shit lol, but the conversation was great. We were planning our expedition to Timbuktu, and our “Gambian Junk Yard Wars” competition to build the best boat. The greatest part about it, is if your boat sinks… you fall into the Gambia River and immediately exposed to Schistosomiasis, it’s the risk factor that makes the competition exciting. There’s a reason why I hear Gambians don’t swim in the water, Crocs, Hippos (which kill more people in Africa than snakes and crocs), and Schisto (which we were explained with one phrase, “Trust me, you just don’t want to get it”).

So anyways after all the conversations we’ve had we’re all openly scared shitless I think; but with that deeply confident, maybe it’s a fear of the unknown. As one of my group members mentioned, “It’s like taking a blind leap of faith off a cliff and hoping the drop isn’t to deep”. With all the anxiety though we really do have an amazing training class that I think is going to bring a very new and uniquely strong spirit to The Gambia. Tomorrow we wake up extremely early to get our Yellow Fever shots and start taking are Malaria meds (which I hear give you some wicked hallucinations and scary vivid dreams). After that we shit around the airport till our flight at 5:30 to Brussels, then we’re actually off to Dakar where we’ve been instructed definitely not get off the plane, and then we hop off to Banjul. 98 PCVs are already in country. During Training I’ve been told we’ll have a lot access to phone and internet, but once we’re sworn in that will be very limited.

Tonight the 17 of us went out to eat at this truly inspiring Italian restaurant down the street (ironically right next to the Thai restaurant and to right the really great Mexican restaurant we ate for lunch). Just talking and laughing with them for some reason I just can’t stop smiling, as nervous as I am. Tomorrow begins the big adventure of traveling to the Gambia and I pray all our luggage gets there. Goodnight all.

Pre-Orientation

2008-02-04T18:21:00.000Z

So I’m here in the Hilton now waiting to leave for Orientation. This hotel is WAY TOO NICE, it's like teasing me with amenities. The shower head looks like something on a nuclear submarine. Mom left, after putting her best efforts into significantly embarrassing me. I’m literally checking into the hotel trying to be professional and she’s taking pictures of me!!! The Ethiopian attendant just smiled for the camera, bless heart. Mom then proceeded to leave hidden messages all around the room saying, “I love you”, “I’m so proud” etc. left everywhere: under the phone, near my stuff, in the bathroom. Thankfully my roommate hasn’t got here yet and I believe I have located all of them (I love you mom thanks for coming down, and thanks Shari for going to IHOP 3 times with us J) This weekend was really fun, first off thank you Eric for showing all my friends around DC, and thank you guys who drove all the way down here to see me, I love you all. It was also great to see all of you family and friends. Downtown Alexandria is actually really beautiful, it has a real ‘old town’ New Orleans feel I think. That night we all took the metro down to GW to see the town. We also checked out the zoo Sunday.

Well I’m sorry to cut this short but I’m going to leave for orientation soon but I want to update you all on a basic time line for the next few weeks. Orientation (staging as we call it) will be here at the Hilton. Wednesday we’ll all wake up and get the first round of shots then go to meet our United flight to Brussels around 5:30. We’ll get to Brussels around 7:30 (Belgium time) and have a layover for 4 hours where I plan on eating a Belgium waffle and hoping it doesn’t suck. Then it’s off to Banjul, The Gambia on Air Brussels, we should get there around 6 in the afternoon. For the first week I’ll be staying at the Gambia Pastoral Institute just outside of Banjul. I’ll be staying with a roommate from our program. On the 12^th we move up country out east to Tendaba Camp, a rustic tourist camp, located near the training village; though sometime while at the training village I will be assigned a host family where I will stay in my own “room/house” until signing in. This single room dwelling is constructed with local materials. I will take part in a “community-based Training” (CBT) “activities that are centered on formalized language learning, the host family experience, and assigned technical and cultural exercises emphasizing community involvement.” There I’ll be with 3-4 other volunteers doing intensive cultural immersion. I’ll more details about what I’ll be doing at each location after orientation.

I hope to put another post up after orientation right before I leave for Brussels but if not, thank you all for your warm wishes and please do not feel discouraged if I’m not able to contact you often, realize the mail can come anywhere from 1 to 2 times a month and I won’t know the internet availability I will have until I get there. Take care all.