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!