My School's Sign

'What Boys Can Do Girls Can Do Better'

Oh Gambia, your heart's in the right place but...

So what exactly am I doing here? Well my official title is ‘teacher trainer’. I have been posted in a medium sized village in the middle of the country. It takes about 15 minutes to walk from one end of my village to the other (that's with a lot of greeting going on along the way). There is one school here and it is called a Basic Cycle School. It includes a nursery school (pre-K) and grades one through nine, oddly no kindergarten. If students wish to further their education after grade nine then they need to travel to another village and attend a Senior Secondary School (grades ten through twelve) of which there are only a handful. There is one class for each grade here and each one has approximately thirty to forty students in it.

Classrooms

(There was an art teacher here who painted all these murals.

They are really cool looking.)

All right, I’m just going to say it. Gambian schools are a mess. There are some really well intentioned people here and some very industrious ones as well but a lot of what goes on here is just ridiculous; the beginning of the school year for example. School officially begins in the beginning of September. Approximately fifty percent of the teachers and about seventy percent of the students show up around three weeks after that. Then they all sit around for a couple of days waiting for the Ramadan break to start and then they all take off for another two weeks. When everyone eventually finds their way back by early October classes begin although on paper they’ve been going on for a month now.

The inside of a typical classroom.

Okay! We’re all here now, let’s get started! Take out your notebook and copy the two pages worth of ‘notes’ that have been taken directly from the textbook (we’re talking paragraphs here) and are written on the chalkboard. You don’t speak English so all of these notes are complete gobbley gook? Be quiet and write them down before I get the stick out. Done? Good. Let’s ‘read’. I’m going to read a story line by line and you are going to repeat it back to me at a high volume. Now to be fair there is a teaching strategy called ‘echo reading’ in which students basically do this exact thing. It’s supposed to help with fluency and expression BUT it is just one of many strategies that a teacher should be using (look at me acting like an actual teacher, lol). When it’s the only strategy being used we call it memorizing, not reading. These kids’ memorization skills are pretty impressive since they’ve been trained to do this from day one of their school careers. It is not uncommon for me to show a kid who is in grade six a story they ‘read’ in grade two and for them to be able to repeat it to me while barely looking at the words. Unfortunately they can’t read the word ‘in’ when it’s isolated though. Time for math? Okay, let me write more ‘notes’ on the board that include the word ‘set’ about fifty times. When you’re done copying that I’ll bark questions at you and then bark praise (Very Good!) to the person who randomly guesses the correct answer. Then when you are in grade nine we’re going to give you nation wide test filled with obscure questions about obscure facts that you are unable to read. When you do poorly we are going to berate you and tell you that you are not working hard enough. We are trained teachers so clearly the problem lies with you. Yeah, so I’m here to try and turn some of these things around.
My Office

(Lol over the computer. Apparently the first time they plugged it into a generator it blew the whole thing. Peace Corps is always looking for IT volunteers by the way.)

#1: Gambian teachers have been taught in Gambian schools so their language skills are incredibly sketchy and their critical thinking skills are pretty much nil. They are great when it comes to practical things like planting the garden or getting the gigantic bags of rice from World Food Program from the road to the school but it gets dicey when we dive into the world of academics. This sounds bad and I really do enjoy these people but when it comes to working alongside them within the school it’s often like trying to teach a third grader how to be a be an effective instructor. It’s really tempting to just do everything yourself but that’s not going to create any lasting change so I’m going to have to really try to include them in the process. Needless to say that is easier said than done.
Problem #2: There are literally NO teaching materials here. Okay I take that back, the president has actually put quite a bit of money into education and is very supportive of it. ‘Quite a bit’ being a relative term considering the level of poverty here. The children have textbooks that are great, much better than the ridiculous tomes we used at my American school. Unfortunately the natural elements here are not conducive to books having a long life. Rain, heat and mud huts aren’t really ideal conditions for book preservation. On top of that, the books are soft covers. All of this equates to the books having a life of one to two years, tops. After that they completely fall apart and there are no replacements. The books were adopted a year and a half ago. When it comes to teaching materials it’s pretty much the textbook and chalk. There is a big push by the Ministry of Education for the creation of teaching aids by teachers but that’s kind of hard to do when the school is given very few, if any, markers, scissors, or paper. No seriously, the school where I am received ZERO supplies for the school year. Teachers’ salaries are also really low here (it’s a much lower status job than it is in America which I’m sure some of you will chuckle at that but I stand by my belief that teaching is a pretty good job back home) so there is no way anyone is paying for anything out of their own pocket.

Things that Gambian schools need:

Scissors: (The art teacher borrows my pair almost every day. I’d give them to him but then I’d have nothing to cut with.)

Markers: (You really can’t make many effective teaching aids without markers. I let everyone use mine and they are all duly impressed by the scented ones.)

Clear Packing Tape: (Who needs a laminating machine? I actually even used this in America when I didn’t want to wait for the week turn around to laminate something. The difference being that the classrooms here have windows without shutters/doors. If it’s not covered in some sort of plastic it’s not going to last more than a month.)
Books: (Other than the text books there are literally no books available to the children, neither in the schools nor in the community. Some of the headmasters (principals) have a smattering of donated books in their offices, because there’s nowhere else to house them, but they are often way too advanced for the students (I wouldn’t give the 9th grade students anything over a 4th grade level, at MOST. No, seriously, these kids can not read). One of the things that I will be working on while I’m here is developing libraries for the schools. At this point a ‘library’ will probably consist of a box of books in the classrooms that the children can read when they are finished with their work. Depending on what sort of support I can get I might be able to get actual library rooms set up in at least a couple schools. Sustainability is a big problem when it comes to libraries here because the Gambian teachers often let them languish once volunteers leave, something to do with a lack of ‘reading culture’, but I’m still motivated to try because when I read books with my kids at home they are riveted and they try really hard. And anyway there isn’t any developing of a country without literacy and that’s pretty much what I’m here for.)

Oreos :)

Problem #3: It’s a lot easier to write a bunch of things on the board and have your class silently write them down then it is to actually teach. And if you drill them enough they’ll have it memorized so you’ll get the added satisfaction of having ‘taught’ them something. Actual teaching involves planning, research and an investment of time and energy in creating activities (there I go acting like an actual teacher again). It can also go awry, just ask my fourth grade class about the ‘Frog’ game we attempted to play during a division lesson. Hmm, I wonder which method an underpaid, undereducated teacher is going to be more comfortable with? Slowly, slowly (‘domonding, domonding’ as we say in Mandinka. Hey, that’s one of the six things I know how to say!).

So there you have it, the Gambian school system in a nutshell.

Hope my people (Americans) are gearing up for a nice Thanksgiving. I’m having it with some Peace Corps volunteers near my site which should be nice even though I’m a little sad that I won’t be spending it at home. Alicia Silverstone just came out with this awesome looking book called ‘The Kind Life’ and when I come home it’s one of the top thirty things I’m doing/getting. This year I’m just going to have to settle for trying to concoct animal-free stuffing from the local bread, maggi , and an herb or two that I’ll pick up at the toubob shop.

My Village - Jappineh, it's so lovely.

The masses have spoken so here is a picture of me carrying my water. Well it’s really a picture of me standing in my backyard with an empty bucket on my head because there is no way I’m letting a Gambian see me take a picture of myself carrying water but it gives you the general idea.

I should have used the big bucket and really wowed you but I am nothing if not moral; well, most of the time that is. Which brings us to: How Karma Followed Me From the Land of Opportunity All the Way to the Land of ‘Hey Boss Lady, Take Me To America’. (Young male Gambians (in the city) have the unfortunate tendency to call non-African women ‘boss lady’. Apparently the tourists think it’s a hoot which is pretty appalling when you think about what it implies with the west’s history of slave trade in this part of the world.) The whole tourist thing is it’s own story which I’ll get to later though. So anyway, most of you know that I pride myself on ‘doing the right thing’ and I can get pretty high and mighty about it, truth be told. Well like anyone who makes a big deal out of anything I have my moments where I do the exact opposite of what I say I do. It all started the day that I was heading to the city for the weekend. With the state of transport in this country that is easier said than done. It began well, I got up nice and early, packed my bag carefully and headed out to the roadside to wait for a gely gely to pass by (crossing my fingers that one would have a seat left and stop as opposed to whipping by because it was packed to the gills as most are.). Well lo and behold I got one in about fifteen minutes and I was happily on my way to the market town of Soma where I would transfer to another gely and make the six plus hour trip to Kombo. As we pulled into the hectic carpark, where all the taxis and gelys convene, I realized with a sinking heart that I had forgotten my bank book at home. In America this would be no big deal. I’d turn my car around or hop on a bus going in the opposite direction, grab my things and be on my way. In the Gambia this meant getting on a return gely and then sitting in it for an hour and a half while I waited for it to fill up with passengers which took forever since no one travels in that direction at that time of the day. Gelys do not move unless they are completely filled with passengers. A vacant seat is lost income and wasted petrol so you are not going anywhere until EVERY seat is occupied. It is not uncommon to wait hours before getting on the road. All right, so my gely has finally filled up and we are heading back home. I should mention now that the only reason I was making the trek to the city in the first place was to get some cash. There are exactly three branches of the bank that Peace Corps uses to manage our living allowances in this country. It’s also one of the biggest and most modern so it’s not like it was a bad choice or anything. Two are in Kombo and one is on the other side of the country. Yup, if you live in my village and want to go to the bank you literally need to travel at least six hours to do so. I’m tempted to just keep all my cash in my house but since Gambians think Americans are all rich (and I guess a lot of us are relatively) we tend to be a target for thievery so I’ll sit on the gely once a month if it means that I’ll be able to buy jam and get on the internet occasionally (that’s pretty much what my living allowance will get me after rent, food and transportation but I’m not complaining, I really don’t need a lot more than a little bit of Google and some raspberry preserves once in awhile). Having my bank book (there’s no withdrawing without it) in hand I sit myself down on the roadside and wait for my third gely. Here’s where it gets tricky. No one is traveling in the late morning so a gely is even more difficult to get now. After being passed by multiple times and unceremoniously pushed aside by a bossy lady with a huge bucket of groundnuts that she was taking to Soma to sell, I finally got a seat. Now the usual procedure on these trips is that about half way to your destination the apparande begins to collect fares. He stands in the back and taps people on the shoulder while we all dutifully pass our money back. Gambians have a strange relationship with money. There generally is none and they seem sort of embarrassed whenever it makes an appearance. In the case of the gely, no one makes eye contact while passing the bills around, they act like they are passing a math test with a giant ‘D’ scrawled in red across it. Well that’s the way it usually goes but on this day the apparende remained silent, sitting in the back, making no gesture of payment collection. When we arrived in Soma everyone tumbled out of the vehicle and they started unloading the top of all the goods that people were transporting (no goats on this particular journey) which brings us to my moment of shame. With my twenty delasi clutched firmly in my hand I began to walk backwards, away from the gely. Yes that’s right, the ‘rich’ American was trying to cheat a Gambian gely driver out of an eighty cent fare. I had already paid 40 delasi to go essentially nowhere and I was about to pay another hundred to get to Kombo. I was down to my last two hundred and who knew what I would encounter on the next leg of my journey? An (inevitable) breakdown? An impromptu afternoon stop at the driver’s uncle’s sister’s brother’s house? An ever present pickpocket (although to be fair I haven’t run into one so far but they are a big problem here)? Someone was going to pay for my bad money management and it wasn’t going to be me if this guy wasn’t going to ask for his fare. Well of course the minute that I got about ten feet away from the vehicle the guy starts calling me to stop but he wasn’t looking directly at me and he was still dealing with the stuff up on top of the vehicle. So of course I pretended I didn’t know he was talking to me and kept walking (before you judge me too harshly remember that this story is all about karma and how I learned my lesson and am appropriately remorseful and humiliated). Well of course he keeps calling me and when I realize there is no way I’m getting away with this I adopt the ‘Oh, you’re talking to me?’ look and hand over my eighty cents, keeping my head down to avoid the dreaded eye contact. I honestly have no idea what I was thinking. This guy drives same route (that I take) everyday, probably knows a ton of people in my village, drives a broken down cab in ONE OF THE TEN POOREST COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD and I tried to rip him off. What is wrong with me? I have no idea. Well feeling insanely guilty I make my way to the carpark where I wait another two hours for a gely to Kombo. I get it and I get there with only one broken axle along the way which is pretty good considering that on my previous trip we had a total of five flat tires. (In case you haven’t noticed, one of the reasons I’m telling this story is to illustrate what it’s like to travel anywhere in this country).

All right, fast forward to the next day in Kombo. After getting all the cash I needed from the bank I headed to Serrakunda which is a really crowded market town akin to something you might see in a movie that is set in the middle-east, minus the bhirkas (it’s generally head wraps only although a veil has been known to make an appearance). So I’m shopping for this elusive hand dyed indigo fabric that is produced locally and I’m not having a lot of luck. There is a ton of fabric here but it’s all imported from neighboring countries and more recently from China. I’ve asked a couple of shopkeepers and they all seem a little confused but eager to help, nevertheless I strike out over and over. As is always the case a Gambian hears my plight and steps in offering to lead the way. Well my policy on this sort of thing is to generally go with it unless something feels particularly fishy. I have found Gambians to be overwhelmingly warm and welcoming and while one must proceed with caution I really do think that most of them have their heart in the right place. The PC security director would probably have a stroke if he read that but I can only go with my gut and that’s what it’s told me so far. I’ve had a lot of really nice experiences that I wouldn’t have had if my guard was up too high. So my new friend Lamin takes me around and after a few mistrials we find the fabric in question and he gets me a good price. He’s very chatty, find me a Gambian who’s not and I’ll give you twenty delasi which I think we’ve established would be quite the accomplishment, and insists that we get lunch before I head back. Well it’s pretty clear that I’ll be paying for said lunch but that’s okay, he found me the fabric and he’s been a pleasant shopping companion. True to form another random Gambian hears the lunch plan and starts to lead us through the market to a place where I can get the bean sandwich I want. We end up in this dark little cave of an eating establishment furnished with a couple of card tables, a couple of lawn chairs and a huge stand alone freezer. After much back and forth it becomes clear that not only does he not have my bean sandwich available, he doesn’t have anything that I would consume (vegan), so he ends up offering me a sandwich that consists of bread, three slices of tomato and a cut up cucumber, yum. He gives my friend Lamin a plate of sketchy looking rice but all is forgiven when he places two ice cold Cokes in front of us. Well the first rule in Gambian dining is ‘Establish a price before anything reaches your table’ but clearly I did not need to do that since everyone was so NICE. I mean he was being all grateful to Peace Corps for their contributions to the country, we were talking about geography and poring over the world map stuck to the wall, he was telling me all about his family. Um yeah. Of course when the plates were clean he asked for payment that was approximately five times what the meal was worth. When I gave him the ‘You’ve got to be kidding me look’ he got all crazy defensive and started ranting about not seeing color and taxes and whatnot. Oh boy. Well ‘Choose your battles’ is all I have to say about that. It was pretty clear where this whole thing was going if I was going to argue and that wasn’t someplace I was interested in being. I think I succeeded in shaming him a little bit by telling him that he was robbing me over and over as I walked out and I’m sure that kept him up at night (while he was gleefully counting the three hundred and seventy five delasi I gave him: that’s approximately half a month’s rent in Kombo! To keep things in perspective that’s only fifteen American dollars). So there you have it, I tried to cheat a gely driver out of 20 delasi and ended up getting cheated for 375 . In my own mixed up way I was actually relieved. I was plagued with guilt over the 20 until I got ripped off and then I immediately felt like everything had balanced out and I was on the right track again. Welcome to my conscience.

Hilarious things I’ve seen and/or heard

1) A fifteen year old ‘gangsta’ wearing pearls! As I’m pretty sure is true with youths around the world , a lot of teenage boys here are big fans of American pop culture, namely gangster rap (move over doctors, apparently bad taste doesn’t have any borders either). When I tell them I’m from California they all ask if I know 50 Cent, to which I answer ‘yes’ of course. On a side note CDs have not made it to The Gambia. The few people who are listening to music on boom boxes or in gelys are listening to cassette tapes. I have finally found a group of people who are slower to adopt new technology than myself, yay! Let’s ignore the fact that there is no technology to adopt. So anyway the boys love their bling which is kind of hard to pull off when you are living in a country as poor as this one. Nevertheless, in the markets you are apt to find some super cheap ‘gold’ chains along with an assortment of costume jewelry straight from China. Well the kid sitting next to me on the gely got most of it right. Baggy jeans? Check. White(ish) t-shirt? Check. Sneakers? Check. Bling? A strand of ultra white plastic pearls. It was too adorable for words.

2) The Science teacher at my school telling me that he wanted to ‘move his bowels’ and then we would chat. Okay I know I’m ten but I’m the kind of person who becomes uncomfortable when Europeans refer to the restroom as the ‘toilet’ so you can imagine my reaction to the above statement. Every time I think about it I start laughing; it’s been a week.

3) The Gambian Can Opener. So I’m standing there with a can of tomato paste and no can opener. I ask my friend Ebrima if he has one. He looks at me quizzically, gets a large knife, plunges it into the top of the can and starts sawing. Who needs all these new fangled gadgets anyway?

The culprit.

4) The donkey with an itchy rear end. First of all have you people heard a donkey bray? Oh my god it is horrible sounding! The poor things sound like they are dying. Peace Corps made a big point out of warning us about it in training because volunteers have been known panic, believing that the donkey in their backyard (if you live in The Gambia you are pretty much guaranteed a donkey in your backyard) is in distress. Well anyway I was sleeping peacefully on my foam mattress one night when I was jolted awake by something banging against my corrugate metal backyard fence. I figured it was an animal but I wasn’t sure and it’s a little unsettling to have something threatening to break down your fence at two o’clock in the morning in a West African village. Of course I did the sensible thing and just hoped it would go away but after about two hours of that I had to investigate. Well let me tell you, venturing out to see what is causing a ruckus in the middle of the night when you are living in rural Africa is not something one is eager to do but I had no choice, if that fence had come down I’d have bigger problems than witnessing some hoodoo-guru African tribal ceremony in the middle of the night. Well to my delight all that was waiting for me when I got back there was my adorable 18 year old neighbor Ebrima and a donkey that had been bitten a few too many times by the ever persistent mosquitoes. Ebrima was out there trying to shoo him away because he heard him from his house and thought that ‘Kaddy might be scared’. Oh Ebrima.

Well it’s official; I am now carrying water on my head. It took three months but I can no longer pretend that carrying it by hand is practical. It is still pretty heavy but it’s not unmanageable and it earns me the, ‘Aww look, she’s really trying’ credibility that is pretty important if I want these people to work with me. It’s only the medium sized bucket and I have hold on to it, but the bottom line is that I am now fetching water like a real Gambian; a Gambian who sloshes water all over themselves on their way back from the pump, but a real Gambian nonetheless. I’m not sure if I mentioned this earlier but this whole ‘fetching water’ thing is quite the task. It is primarily the women’s responsibility although single guys and kids do it too sometimes. The pump is a hotbed of activity and it is gossip central. There’s often drama and yelling (Gambian women thoroughly enjoy yelling at one another) but mostly it’s just a bunch of girls with REALLY strong personalities messing around since they don’t get to do that at home if their husbands are around. They make fun of each other, fight over whose next in line and splash water one another. The pump is where ALL your water comes from so conservation is a given. I can usually get away with only going once a day but if I’m doing laundry it’s a three trip situation, plus my regular daily trip. It makes me laugh to think of all the water conservation advertising and education we do in California after having this experience. Make people fetch their own water for a week, they’ll be taking five minute showers and planting drought resistant gardens in no time flat. Which brings me to:

Things that are easier in America:
1) Laundry. It’s hand washing all the way here. On laundry day you fill up three buckets and get out the powdered soap you bought at the outdoor market for a buck. One bucket is for washing and the other two are for rinsing. If you don’t rinse twice your clothes retain more funkiness than if you do (more being a key term here; your clothes are always somewhat funky as is everything you own, pretty much from the second you get off the plane). African fabric is MUCH easier to wash (and dry) than the fabric than my American (sweatshop manufactured) clothes are made of. I only brought one pair of jeans and while I wear them all the time I’m glad that I didn’t bring more because they take forever to get clean. Hence, mine are never really that clean. Most people here wear traditional African clothing but the teenage boys have a fondness for denim. That completely blows for their mother since denim is about ten times more difficult to wash than any other fabric worn here. In general Africans are able to look a lot fresher than Americans on most days. That’s not to say they don’t look rough, they do, poverty will do that to you but as a general rule they are very tidy looking. Probably because they do A LOT of laundry and they are washing themselves off five times a day before praying. There doesn’t seem to be much, ‘I can get away with wearing this one more day’ happening. If they wore it they wash it, end of story. Friday is a big prayer day and a lot of the men dress in white, head to toe. How they are not covered in the red dust that shrouds everything I possess remains a mystery to me.

2) Showers. I don’t mind the bucket bath (you are literally pouring water over yourself with a cup in your backyard) but I look forward to the day when I can get the conditioner out of my hair with both hands (and warm water!).

Another thing that I’m doing just like an actual Gambian is going to the rice fields with my host mom. Well okay, it was only three times but they were three significant times. I have a new respect for these women; I don’t know how they do it. They stand out there ALL DAY without fainting. I can go for about four hours but then I’m exhausted for the rest of the day. It gets ridiculously hot and you are stooped over either weeding or planting the entire time. The last time I went I totally cheated and sat down. They must think I’m really lazy but I know they appreciate the fact that I go in the first place so at worst it’s a wash and at best they just chalk it up to my Americaness.

Sitting down is absolutely the way to go by the way. The water is pretty high in the field in the morning, about mid –calf, so if you sit down you are basically of swimming in shallow water which keeps you from dying of heat exhaustion. Of course your work slows down about 75% when you do this but I figure I’m already screwing up the rice plants with my inexperienced technique so it’s just fewer plants that are being ravaged by my clumsiness. If you have anything of your own that you’d like me to justify feel free to let me know.

The topic of my rice field excursions brings me to:
Unexpected and somewhat confusing sexual behavior in The Gambia (bet you didn’t see that segue way coming):
So there’s an interesting phenomenon taking place here that is a direct result of the gender roles found in this country. I’m not sure if it’s an African thing or a Muslim thing (I’m leaning towards good old Islam though) but the roles of men and women are very clearly defined here. Men work the groundnut fields, chop the wood, tend to the livestock and spend a fair amount of time lounging about on bantabaas drinking Atya. Women do almost all of the domestic work including cooking, cleaning, tending to the children, in addition to working the rice fields, fetching water and pounding all of that rice and coos they are harvesting in a humungous mortar and pestle. A lot of volunteers complain that women do all the work while men just laze about but that really hasn’t been what I’ve observed so far. The women work hard but the men seem to do their fair share.
Traditionally men and women do not interact much. Marriage is definitely a contract and there isn’t a lot of talk about chemistry or soul mates or any of the other things we westerners value in our romantic relationships. Things are changing slowly and the younger generation definitely has a new dynamic but the majority of marriages here are very practical. That being the case, there isn’t a lot of snuggling up between husbands and wives beneath the African stars. Conversations between men and women are minimal for the most part and it is not uncommon for a married couple to spend 99% of their time apart. It is not acceptable to show any physical affection to the opposite sex in public, to the degree that holding hands would be greatly frowned upon. Well…all that pent up need for physical contact has got to be satisfied somehow so…(for those of you who know where I am going with this you are welcome to visit anytime, you’ll love it here)…members of the same gender are often hanging all over one another. Yup, it is totally acceptable (and common) for young men to hold hands and, wait for it…sit on each other’s laps. Homosexuality is not considered to be an option (the president threatened to behead anyone ‘convicted’ of a homosexual act and Islam says ‘No way Jose’) so that’s not part of the equation when it comes to this behavior. I mean clearly there are gay Gambians but it is not spoken of whatsoever. Girls touch each other a lot too, although not quite as much in my opinion. Since I’m not nearly as interested in this I didn’t pay it much mind until I went to the rice fields with them (I always make it back to my point eventually). The whole thing was fine until we took a break from planting to cool off in the water. Let’s just say that there was a lot of ‘frolicking’ going on and leave it at that. So anyway, good looking boys are often draped over one another which kind of makes up for the whole ‘fetch your own water and wash your sheets by hand’ situation.

Family portrait time!
Here is my immediate family:

On the left we have Aja Mary Sonko. She is my ‘mother’ and is pretty respected in the community. I would guess she’s in her early fifties although it’s kind of hard to tell with most Gambians. Under 30 they all look really young; over 30 they look really old because of the harsh living conditions. The ‘Aja’ part of her name is a title for someone who has travelled to Mecca. It’s a pretty big deal to do that here since it’s something everyone would like to do and yet no one has any money so I can’t imagine too many people actually make it there. I’m still unclear as to whether or not she has actually been. It turns out that if your sibling has been then you earn the title as well (I’m telling you, they share EVERYTHING) so I think that might be the case here but who knows? Certainly not me since my Mandinka is really terrible. I can only say about six things (literally) and ‘Please tell me about your experiences in Mecca’ isn’t one of them. She has ten children, all grown, all living in different places.
On the right we have Mauskeba, my ‘wife’ holding her new baby Lamin Seriph Dampha. I know it’s weird but she’s my ‘brother’s’ wife so that makes her mine too. I still call her my sister though because ‘wife’ is just too much. She’s fifteen and very Gambian. By ‘very Gambian’ I mean kind of bossy but very hospitable.

This is my 'grandmother' Fatou Sanneh:

She’s a piece of work. She has a lot of trouble walking so she is pretty much confined to a chair all day. She can get around with her crutches; it’s just a huge endeavor. Well sitting in a chair all day isn’t that interesting so she occupies her time by beckoning my 10 year old host sister, Kaddy Jallow, constantly (by ‘constantly I mean approximately every 10 minutes, literally.) I should say that a big part of this culture is a respect for your elders and there is an understanding that if you are younger than someone you are pretty much at their disposal for petty errands and tasks at any given time. For example you would be hard pressed to find the adult Gambian who would get their own glass out of a cabinet (Haha, look at me pretending that there are cabinets with glasses in them. What I meant to say was the plastic cup off of the floor). There are always a drove of children nearby who will come running when called. Except for Kaddy Jallow that is. I think she’s just had it. She responds to her name being called by her grandmother about two out of ten times. The other eight times are met with silence and that’s when the repeating of her name five thousand times occurs. It is really annoying, particularly since my name is also ‘Kaddy’ so I always think she’s talking to me. I am kind of glad there are no stairs here; I think my little sister might be tempted to send her tumbling down them. The kids often say that she is ‘a rude girl’ for not answering and I must agree that it is pretty bratty but I also feel for her because if I find it this annoying when it’s not even directed at me I can only imagine how she must feel. She’s a nice little girl but she’s definitely an independent spirit so the whole servitude thing isn’t really working for her.

Interesting things I’ve done since I’ve been here:

1) Traveled in a gely gely (bush taxi). I’m going to chalk this experience up to being a huge success because A) I got an actual seat instead of halfway sitting on someone’s lap, B) there was no unpleasant smell, C) no one groped anyone D) we didn’t tip over and die because the driver was going too fast on a rocky unpaved road. The opposite of all of these things are quite possible (some more likely than others) but I seem to have gotten a pass on my first journey, thank you Gambia. Here’s how it goes: The driver drives and the ‘apparende’ collects money, deals with baggage and alerts the driver when people want to get on and off (he bangs on the roof which I find a lot more satisfying than our little bell system, it’s very definite). The vehicle is almost always packed full (and when I say full I mean FULL) so it is not unusual for the apparende to jump in and out of the vehicle through the back door while it is in full motion (and by ‘full motion’ I mean racing down an unpaved highway that is covered in enormous potholes - often filled with water during rainy season - and covered in rocks) climbing up and down the ladder on the back to either make room in the vehicle or scope out the road. When you come to a stop he usually needs to hustle up there again to retrieve passengers’ bags and/or goats. Yup, they seriously put live sheep, goats and chickens up there. They go up quietly but they come down in a pretty bad mood as you can imagine. The whole experience is hilarious truth be told and it (usually) gets you where you need to go so all in all I’m for it.

2) Eating out of a ‘food bowl’ with my hand.

You know how I said that Gambians share EVERYTHING? Well this nowhere more clearly evidenced than at meal time. Gambians are not big on the idea of the individual plate. Instead they prefer that everyone eat out of one gigantic bowl. Lunch and dinner almost always consist of rice, some sort of sauce (they make this peanut sauce called ‘domoro that makes me want to live here forever), maybe a vegetable or two (onions and potatoes are popular) and if things are getting fancy some kind of meat (usually chicken or goat but never pork, being Muslim and all. On a side note, it’s pretty easy being vegan here and people are really accommodating – they think I’m insane – but they are accommodating nonetheless). The food is placed in a huge bowl (think giant metal salad bowl) on the ground outside and everyone sort of squats around it, scooping up their food with their right hand and eating it like that. It looks easy but it’s actually quite a skill. A lot of rice has ended up in my lap in the process of learning to do it correctly. I know that this probably sounds sort of gross but it’s actually quite civilized. There are a lot of rules about only eating out of your side of the bowl and leaving your ‘area’ tidy. Having said that, they give volunteers their own small bowl to eat out of, at least in the beginning. Right now I’m a lot more comfortable using my own bowl but get back to me in a year or so, I might have a designated space at the family dinner bowl. Stranger things have happened and I’m sure you’ll hear all about them at some point or another.

3) Coming to the conclusion that a pit latrine is actually preferable to some of the vile restroom facilities you will encounter in life (which totally includes those in America by the way).

Okay if you know me at all you know that this is not a topic I find acceptable for public discussion but…I’m in Africa now and all bets are off apparently. So the deal is that 98% of the ‘restrooms’ (such a ridiculous name under these circumstances) in this country are pit latrines. Yup, holes in the ground. Literally. The crazy part is that it only takes a couple of days of thinking ‘Really? This is really how it’s going to be?’ before it’s no big deal and you’re not even thinking about it (much). On the other hand - you’ll appreciate my pun in a moment :) - one thing that is kind of a big deal is that Gambians do not use toilet paper, they use water, and well yeah, their hand (left only and as a result if you ever extend your left hand to a Gambian –or any Muslim for that matter- they will be thoroughly grossed out. It’s right hand only around here. Same goes for the food bowl obviously.) So anyway, yeah, their hand. The only stores that sell toilet paper are ‘toubob’ shops (stores for white tourists) which means it’s extremely limited and really expensive. Hence I spent about thirty bucks in postage on sending moist towelettes to myself from America, I’m good for at least a year. Oh well, some things are worth it (thank you U.S. Postal Service).

Hope you are all well. Fon Naatoo (until later)!

Salaam Malikoom! You are now hearing from an official Peace Corps Volunteer! We had our swearing in ceremony (at the U.S. Ambassador’s home – swanky!) this morning which means training is over and it’s time to head to our sites on Monday. We need to do some shopping this weekend to furnish our new (to us but freshly painted!) mud huts. My shopping list includes a prayer mat (you use them to sit outside), a propane stove, fabric for curtains and clothes (in Africa you use the same thing for both) and a bamboo bed with a foam mattress. The pricing here is kind of confusing. I got the frame of my bed for 200 Delasi which is equal to $8. It’s a full and pretty nice in a ‘developing country’ sort of way. My mattress will be a piece of foam that is approximately two inches thick which will set me back about $40 (it would be about $10 in America). You can imagine what an actual mattress would cost if they were even available, which they are not. Overall the cost of living here is extremely low though. A cab ride is usually between twenty cents and a dollar and a bean sandwich (sounds gross but is totally delicious) is about thirty cents. The only time you spend a significant amount of money on food is when you break down and buy things at the ‘toubob’ (more on that later) shop where they sell European goods that have been imported for tourists. Sometimes you just have to have that ketchup and toothpaste though. So anyway we had our ceremony this morning and

now we’re all ready to go to site!

(Front row, left to right: Albian, Melissa, Katie Angell, Whitney, Mike, Me, Yee, Leah, Annie (trainer) Back row: Travis (trainer), Chris (trainer), Katie Hofstetter, Evelyn, Jim, Steve-O, Kane)

It’s tradition for the entire group to get matching fabric and have the tailor make an outfit out of it. Speaking of ceremonies, this is my third one in nine weeks, which by Gambian standards is a slow couple of months. The people of The Gambia love ceremonies and have them pretty regularly. My first one was our ‘naming ceremony’. Traditionally you do this for a new baby (not right away, they wait at least a week to make sure everything will be okay :I ) but they also do it for Peace Corps Volunteers since we are given names so that we will have an easier time integrating into our communities. It’s a big occasion and people come from all around to eat, drink, dance, drum and generally rejoice. Here we are at our naming ceremony:

(Left to right: Steve-O St. James, Me, Adam (our language and culture trainer), Katie Angell, Whitney Moore)

We look ridiculous but no one minded because our families dressed us up and thought we looked great. They were very happy and it really is a strong bonding experience to take a Gambian name. For one thing, they have a difficult time pronouncing non-African names. On top of that there is the relationship you develop when you share the same last name with someone. My Gambian name was ‘Kaddy Camera’, I was named after one of the wives in my training village. It’s very common to be named after people here and a ton of people share the same name. I can not begin to count the number of ‘Lamins’ and ‘Fatuus’ I have met. When I visited my permanent site I changed my last name to ‘Dampha’ because that is the family name there but I kept my first name because I liked the girl I was named after. These are my co-trainees, Steve-O, Whitney and Katie. The lady in the middle is Adam. She is our language and culture facilitator and she has taught us so much in the nine weeks we’ve been with her. The ceremony itself if’s a big production. People dress in their finery, many prayers are said and they even pretend to shave your head since that’s what they do for babies during their naming ceremonies. Food is made and dancing occurs, it’s all very celebratory!

Fon Naatoo! (Until later).

A Gambian Compound

Salaam Malikoom! Kori tanante (Hope you are well). Greetings from ‘The Smiling Coast’ (what West Africa is known as, which is fairly accurate yet kind of unfortunate since it sort of ignores the state of affairs here). Scoundrels or saints, the people of West Africa are typically a warm and inviting group. We were recently discussing strategies that could be used to maintain and improve our usage of the local languages and one suggestion was that if you live in a primarily English speaking household (which would only happen in the city -I’m using the term ‘city’ loosely here) you could venture out and adopt a family to hang out with. A person could easily walk down any road in The Gambia, step into a compound (more on that in a second), greet them, introduce themselves and explain that they would like to spend time with the family to improve their language. Every Gambian in the room nodded in agreement that the family would be delighted to have the person and would feel proud that they were chosen to help. From what I’ve seen so far I totally believe it. To clarify, this scenario is the exact of equivalent of walking down any street in American and knocking on a door. I’m not too sure that idea would fly in even the quaintest of small towns.

So what is this ‘compound’ business? It’s neither penitentiary-like nor is it cultish (the two words I instantly associate with the word ‘compound’ – shocking I know.), it’s simply the way the housing situation is set up here. The Gambia is made up of many villages and a few larger towns. In all of these places people primarily live in ‘family compounds’. A compound is an area of land (usually the size of an average sized residential lot in America, sometimes bigger) that is enclosed by a fence or cement wall. Inside are a collection of houses, usually row houses, sometimes individual mud huts, that belong to a specific family. In the middle there is usually a general seating area called a ‘bantabaa’ where people spend the majority of their free time because it’s usually way too hot to spend any time inside during the day and it would be very un-Gambian to do that anyway. (If you go inside for any extended amount of time Gambians either think you are really sick or really angry). There’s a cooking area that’s usually housed in a small brick structure (No one cooks inside their houses, it’s too hot, too dangerous and too messy since most cooking is done over a wood burning fire. Some people use portable propane stoves –like camping stoves - but that’s not nearly as common.) and sometimes there is an open well (although not always, most people get their water from the community pump out on the road).

The compound is usually occupied by an extended family including the father, his wife (or wives – Muslim law says you can have up to four and many men have at least two), their children and an assortment of grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces and pretty much anyone else who has some sort of familial tie to the family. It is a fascinating situation because while The Gambia is completely tied into lineage and it is totally family based, a lot of people do not actually live with their immediate family due to poverty, infant mortality rates and a lot of other factors that I’m not aware of yet. People move around in order to help family members with farm work, parents often give children to family members who have few if any of their own and wives leave their own family compounds to join their husband’s (father’s) compound when they marry (although they keep their own family name!). Most villages are made up of people who share one out of three or four last names. For example my Gambian name is ‘Kaddy Dampha’ (more on that in a little while) and at least a quarter of the people in my village share the last name ‘Dampha’. They all get really excited when you tell them your last name and start saying things like ‘You are my sister!’ or ‘You are my family!’. It’s really nice and explains why the concept of homelessness is pretty much lost on Gambians. If you are in a bad situation there are a whole lot of people who share your last name and will feel

compelled to help you out.

It’s sort of a catch-22 though. People will share EVERYTHING that they have with you and as a general rule are not terribly interested in (or familiar with) having personal possessions but the flip-side of that is that when someone does prosper they have a responsibility to distribute the wealth, thereby never really being able to get ahead. It’s a complicated system that is pretty hard to relate to as an American and it can be frustrating to watch but when all is said and done the Gambian culture is one of generosity. A person will never go hungry if their neighbor has food but they will almost certainly go broke if they get a good job. My perspective is based on what I’ve seen so far which is really not much but more than I would ever see as a tourist (thank you Peace Corps!). I’m curious as to how I’ll see it two years from now. Quite differently I would imagine.

Fon Naatoo! (Until later!)

A Bantabaa

Salaam Mailkoom! I hope everyone is enjoying their dog days of summer. We’re in the middle of the rainy season here so there are torrential downpours with impressive lightning storms every couple of days. (Being native to Southern California I have no concept of what serious lightening is. Recently I was standing on a porch in front a house that had a metal roof on it, all of the roofs here are all either thatched with straw or covered in corrugate metal, and a storm hit; they come and go really suddenly here. The next thing I knew there was a brilliant, hot flash right in front of me. I should have sensed the severity of it when all the Gambians ran inside their houses but I shrugged it off as something that just happens during storms in other, more exotic places. It took a girl from Iowa (where there’s lots of lightening and humidity apparently, who knew it was so exotic) to explain to me that lightening had struck right in front of us, literally a few feet away! One of my co-volunteers actually got a shock because her glasses acted as a conductor, good thing my shoes were dry (for once)). Besides being a harbinger of near death experiences rainy season also means that the landscape is lush and green (and filled with mangoes!) which is lovely (in the case of the mangoes, lovely and delicious). It’s a nice introduction to the country since the flip-side to ‘rainy’ season is, wait for it…’dry’ season! I anticipate much dust and dried up grass in my future (November – May). Less bugs though, and oh boy do those bugs love their rain. When they are feeling affectionate they literally bounce off of you. Back to the fascinating topic of weather, the afternoons are generally hot and sticky with temperatures in the high 90’s, or I guess I should say high 30's since we’re measuring in Celsius on this side of the pond. It gets a little challenging to function in the middle of the day but if you take it easy it’s alright. It’s actually not that much hotter than it is in the American South, the real difference being that there is no refuge from it.

Before I got my Peace Corps invitation I had never even heard of The Gambia so here’s a little info:
It’s the smallest country in Africa. There are areas in which the entire country spans only twenty-five miles north to south! Its most prominent feature is ‘The River Gambia’ that runs through approximately two-thirds of the country. There are 1.4 million people living here. For some perspective, Los Angeles County has a population of almost 10 million! 40% of the population is under the age of 15 which you would have no trouble believing if you visited my front porch on any given evening, I’m pretty sure that half the kids in this country are sitting there eagerly waiting to play ‘Crazy 8’s’ (more on that later). The Gambia is extremely poor. 80% of the people are farmers (the vast majority farm by hand!) and they export very little. Most of what they grow is consumed directly by the family or sold at local markets. Their major crops are groundnuts (yum!), rice, coos and corn. There are very few fresh fruits available (besides those delicious mangoes, but seriously do you need anything else when you have a perfect mango? The answer to that is ‘yes’ but you know, I’m extolling the virtues of Gambian mangoes here.) The country is about 98% Muslim and these are no lax ‘I’ll go to the mosque when it’s convenient’ Muslims. These are Quran memorizing, pray five times a day, marry up to four wives Muslims. We are currently observing Ramadan so almost everyone is fasting for a month. They rise before dawn to have breakfast and then go the day with absolutely no food or water. At sunset they ‘break fast’ and eat better than they do at any other time of the year. This goes on for a month. The truly hardcore abstain from water to the degree that they do not mindfully swallow their saliva. In order not to swallow you have to do the opposite, yup that’s right, they’re spitting. Gambians enjoy spitting as it is so you can imagine the spit fest that’s taking place in the name of Allah. Aside from that unfortunate detail the opportunity to watch whole communities come together to observe this ritual is pretty great. I do my best and certainly never eat or drink in front of them during the day but truth be told that jar of peanut butter has been cracked open more than once in the privacy of my hut while the sun shines brightly overhead.

Here are my digs:

The back door to my house!

My front yard! Goats!

The kitchen!

Gambians cook outside over a wood burning flame as a general rule.

My bedroom!

Fon naatoo! (Until later!)

Salaam Malikoom! That is how we greet each other in The Gambia. It means ‘Peace be with you’ and you say it about fifty thousand times a day (on average). The person you are talking to responds with a ‘Malikoom Salaam’ which essentially means ‘And upon you too’. This is followed by a series of questions about one’s ‘home people’, work and general well being. By the time you are finished with your greeting you have often walked several feet past the person! That is kind of The Gambia in a nutshell, extremely hospitable and not in any big rush. I’ve seen plenty of good things and a few not so good things but in the end if your taxi gets a flat on the road the next taxi will stop to help them fix it without question.
I’ve been here for almost two months and this is the first opportunity I’ve had to post which tells you a little about the electricity/internet situation; there is very little of either. What they do have is somewhat unpredictable so there are a lot of brown-outs and surges. Oh infrastructure, how I took you for granted. Actually it’s been fine in terms of personally adapting to it but I do hope that progress can be made because reliable power would give the people living here a lot more opportunity, something they have very little of at the present time. Solar seems like a good possibility because if there is one thing Africa has plenty of it’s sunshine; which brings me to the title of my inevitable Peace Corps memoir, ‘It’s Raining and I’m Sweating in the Shade’. No, literally. It can be pouring (which it often does, it being the rainy season and all) and I will be sitting under a tree sweating. It’s sort of confusing because you think you’re damp from the rain, but no, it’s sweat. Those are the times when you understand why Gambians aren’t in any big rush.
The last two months have been filled with a lot of firsts. I moved into my first mud hut. (It sort of looks like a regular house, the mud is plastered over.) I’ve eaten out of my first ‘food bowl’. (More on that in a minute) I’ve worn my first wrap skirt, ridden in my first bush taxi, pumped water for the first time and seen my first troupe of baboons in the wild (10 feet away!). I’ve watched West African villagers play pretty impressive football (soccer for us Americans) and then seen them set up an equally impressive ‘disco’ (gigantic speakers connected to a borrowed generator) under a mango tree where they danced until four in the morning. I now know that I love Wonjo juice (a red leaf that is pressed) and am not terribly fond of ‘noos’ (rice porridge that is served for breakfast every day, no seriously, EVERY DAY). I’ve become aware of the fact that refined white sugar is at the top of Gambian food pyramid and by ‘on the top’ I mean that they love it beyond all other consumable items. It goes in their tea, in their porridge, in their drinks and just about anywhere else they can sneak it in. These aren’t dainty teaspoons either, a cup here, a cup there, the bags that they buy are gone before you know it. I’m pretty sure that The Gambia is keeping Hawaii in business (I’m just kidding, I’m sure that sugar is big business in Africa). I’ve turned down a fair number of marriage proposals and I’m on the lookout for a good ‘husband’ (preferably a little boy or a very old man) to keep new ones at bay; Americans = Visas (The immigration document, not the credit card) in The Gambia. I’ve taught in a Gambian high school and I’ve learned that I need to speak a lot more slowly if I ever plan on doing that again.
I’ve seen a lot of really beautiful things (African children playing at the pump), a few pretty disturbing things (the butchering of goats) and plenty of things that I will never see anywhere else (my ‘sister’ walking down the road balancing a platter of fish on her head while ushering a donkey along the way). I have loved my time here so far and I’m really excited about moving to my permanent site (I’m in a training village at the moment) and getting to work. I’ll update as much as I can and I’d love to hear from you guys so make sure to comment (in English please, my Mandinka –the local language that I’m learning- is really bad).

Fon notoo! (That’s Manidinka for ‘Until later’)

Teaching in a Gambian Classroom!