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