The Gambia or Bust!

Small Girls Moving Goats

The Who’s Who of who’s wearing a shirt and who’s not.

Who’s wearing a shirt?

· Women who do not have children
· Girls over the age of about seven (except in the rice field. I swear, the rice field resembles Showtime at one o’clock in the morning sometimes.)
· About half of the boys and most of the men at any given time.

Who’s not wearing a shirt?

· Women with children. Once a woman has a child she is no longer required to wear a shirt in her compound. No woman would ever walk around outside the compound without a shirt on but in her compound the shirts drop. She will however pull her breast all the way out and leave it there to feed her baby anywhere she goes. You should see the looks of disbelief I get when I explain that public breast-feeding is controversial in the States. Apparently once you have a child no one cares whether or not you wear a shirt (in your compound) any longer. People whose children have long ago been weaned walk around their compounds shirtless and continue to do so into old age. Actually I think the ‘no shirt’ thing is falling out of favor a little bit since it really is only the older generation who does it regularly. At first it was a little uncomfortable but like with most things you get used to it and then you hardly even notice. Well I guess you notice but it’s not a big deal. It would however be scandalous for a non-African woman to take her shirt off in front of others, child or no child, so I guess I’m out of luck. Darn.

· Young boys who think it’s too hot, sometimes. (My brother insisted that his 8 year old nephew put on a shirt while riding his bike because ‘the air is disturbing to the skin’. What?)

· Young men whom I suspect are trying to impress the ladies. It’s working. You should see the shape they are in from all that farm work.

Boys in Jappineh
There are a few bikes in the village;
this kid is riding one of the better ones.

A guaranteed way to make you feel like a greedy consumerist who perpetuates inequality:

Have a conversation with your ten year old neighbor that involves explaining how it is not unusual for each person in a family in the U.S. to own their own vehicle. The idea that a family (extended) would own a vehicle is impressive, the concept that individuals own them borders on insulting. It is not often that I feel real guilt over the unequal distribution of wealth in the world, chalk this up to one of those times.

The Dangerous Lives of Gambians.

‘They are poor but they’re happy’. I’m guilty of saying this and in my defense the Gambians have been known to say it as well. And it’s true; sort of. They never miss an opportunity to greet someone, they are quick with a smile and a laugh, they’ll offer you their bed, no questions asked; everything is fine until it’s not. What happens when they get sick or an accident occurs? Not much. You go to bed and pray that you get better. There are hospitals and clinics throughout the country (we even have a clinic in our village) but the staff is generally far from competent (trained in Gambian schools you know) and the medicine is less than plentiful, to say the least. A small tube of antibiotic cream that you would pick up at Target for $3.99 is a valued commodity here. (This is a mixed blessing since they hand out malaria drugs like candy and generally patients are not tested. You feel fluish? Take this battery of Coloxium and don’t worry about a follow up, you’ll be fine. I don’t know that having access to a lot of medicine under these conditions would actually help them). There are also traditional healers called ‘marabouts’ who do a fair amount of business here. I have a little more confidence in the traditional healers because I’m pretty sure that if you truly believe something will cure you then it often will. And no, I’m not going to tell that to someone suffering from malaria induced seizures, but in a lot of cases I still think it can happen. Having said that, a lot of these ‘marabouts’ are quacks and I get the impression people here are of that opinion as well. I’ve known about this medical situation all along but only recently (probably when I got emotionally attached) did it really sink in that if you have cancer you are going to die (barring a successful visit to the marabout). If you fall out of a tree and suffer from internal bleeding you are going to die (where’d that marabout go?). If you are in a serious car accident you are going to die (not even I think you can psyche yourself out of a crushed lung). I’m both grateful and appalled by the fact that if I develop cancer or fall out of a tree or, god forbid, get into a serious car accident I will be rushed out of here to a place that can care for its people. That is a shocking reality. It goes without saying that every one of these peoples’ lives is as valuable as mine and it’s simply circumstance that allows me to be treated and them to go without. Death isn’t an everyday (or every week) thing here like it is in some developing countries so it’s easy to think ‘this isn’t so bad’. What is bad is that the fourth grade teacher at my school needed to go to the city for a week because it had been forty days since his wife, who was in her twenties, passed away and according to Islamic tradition that is the time when you visit the bereaved and give charity. What is bad is that my favorite education office employee Lamin couldn’t make a meeting because his family was burying his sister that day. What is bad is that I am not surprised anymore when a twelve year old tells me that he is living with his uncle because his father is dead.

I’m so glad that I’m an education volunteer and not a health volunteer. Teaching people to read doesn’t have to cost anything. You can’t treat someone’s malaria for free. And what do people say when villagers inevitably come to them with malnourished babies? You can give people all the nutritional advice you want but if you aren’t placing food in the food bowl how much good does it do? I don’t see a lot of illness here, but honestly I don’t look too hard for it either since I’m a firm believer of only focusing on what you can handle. The world is full of miserable places and in my opinion this isn’t one of them, but it’s close and it wouldn’t take much (conflict in Senegal moving north) to make it into one. A lot of Gambians feel like it already meets the criteria and who am I to argue? If I get sick I’m going home, they already are home.

So what exactly is a ‘Marabout’?

Unbeknownst to me I was posted in a village that has a renowned traditional healer doing business out of it. Well it did have a renowned traditional healer. He’s dead now and his sons have taken over, but no one seems to think that’s cause to stop seeking treatment here. And treatment is sought. On the day that I accidentally stumbled into the marbout’s compound on one of my ‘meet and greet’ strolls I found the son of one of the new marabouts who quickly produced a rather thick photo album with pictures of patients old and new in it. Apparently people come from all over West Africa to see these guys, there were even a few pictures of European patients in it (that is surprising when you take into account that there is no electricity or indoor plumbing.) Now I knew something was up before I saw the album because when I entered the compound there were several people sitting on the ground rocking back and forth, some crying, some not, and frankly that’s not a very Gambian thing to do. (How funny that I was more surprised to see that here than I would be in America.) At first I thought I had just walked into a reaction to some terrible event but then I saw that it was more than one person who was doing it so I realized that it was some sort of hospital. Welcome to the The Gambia’s biggest psychiatric facility, Njii Kunda.

A Patient of the Marabout

It’s a strange feeling when someone proudly shows you an album full of pictures in which people are chained up. Always quick to judge, I was initially horrified. ‘Those people are in chains! This is barbaric! Do people know about this?’ Well yes, people do know about it and I have yet to meet a citizen in this village who has anything negative to say about the marabouts. Now I know some of you are thinking, ‘Of course they aren’t going to say anything negative. These guys are marabouts. They’ll put a curse on any naysayers that will make their children dumb and their donkeys lame. Well yeah, maybe, but all in all I get the feeling that people think the marabouts treat their patients well and help a lot of people. And yeah, those chains are big (and rusty) but those words describe a lot of things in this country. New ‘technology’ (Velcro and nylon) isn’t something accessible to the Gambians. Is chaining someone up any different than strapping them down when they become destructive? And destructive they are. It’s expensive to take your family member to the marabout, typically a couple thousand delasi and some livestock. You aren’t going to do it unless the situation has become unmanageable in one way or another. Violent outbursts usually fall into the ‘unmanageable’ category. So what does a marabout do? Well from what I can gather there are two main types of medicine given. The first is that they write things in Arabic, soak the paper in water and then the patient either drinks the tea that is made from the water or bathes in it. The second is that they collect leaves, bark, etc. from the bush and make tonics. I’m sure there’s a lot of praying over the person and I think that there is some kind of counseling as well. Marabouts need to be trained and they spend years reading the Quoron and studying under older practitioners. There’s no belief that these people have supernatural powers or anything like that but people do speak of ‘strong’ marabouts so there are definitely different levels of competency. Like most traditional things, marabouts are highly revered by the older generation and less so by the younger one. At this point if a problem is serious enough to seek medical attention for I’d say it’s a fifty-fifty proposition over whether to visit the clinic or the marabout. It’s becoming popular to lean toward the western way of doing things but when it comes down to it if someone is ill they may very well go the traditional route, ‘just in case’. I know quite a bit about what goes on at Njii Kunda because I talk to a lot of the patients. It is common for a family member to bring the patient to the village to stay with the marabout and then leave them here for months on end. Sometimes that’s how long they need treatment but most of the time I think it’s really just an issue of not having the fare to leave. I meet plenty of young men hanging out on the main road who say they are waiting on their ‘guys’ to come for them. For some reason a lot of people who visit the marabout speak English, which is why I’m talking to them so often. I’d say that about eighty-five percent of my village speaks exclusively Mandinka, about ten percent speak very broken English and five percent speak excellent English because they are teachers or did particularly well in school. Out of the patients at Njii Kunda I’d say that fifty percent speak pretty decent English. I guess that reflects the fact that educated people are the ones who are going to be able to afford to pay for travel and treatment. Whatever the reason, it’s pretty funny because I’ve stood out on the road more than a few times chatting away for a good ten minutes before realizing that the person had basically lost their mind. But aren’t those always the best people to talk to anyway?