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?

‘Boo has a stranger!’
(Exclaimed by my twelve year old neighbor Lamin Makalo, not pictured. That's Ousman up there.

He's usually impossible but he settled down for this pic.)

Gambians love ‘strangers’. A stranger is anyone who is not native to the village. When I ask about their hospitality to outsiders I usually get some version of ‘We’re all strangers at one point or another so we should treat them as we would like to be treated’. And it’s true, Gambians are very transitory due to extended family ties and poverty. They often travel to far away villages for work and stay with distant relatives for indefinite periods of time. When I say they ‘love’ strangers I am not exaggerating either. It is not unheard of for a Gambian to invite someone that they do not know to stay in their home and share their bed! Their bed people! This can go on for weeks, months, even years. There are worse ways to treat your fellow man I suppose.

Boo’s stranger Charlie:

I crossed paths with Charlie at my friend Alieu’s house. Alieu sells fish in Soma, the market town about twenty minutes away from me that has an internet connection and electricity between the hours of 9 a.m to 1 p.m and 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. This means I can get a cold Coke there AND check my mail so it’s pretty much my favorite place in the world at the moment.

Soma

When I went to Alieu’s house I saw that Charlie was limping. Apparently he was kicked by a donkey! That’s the problem with being a puppy, no common sense. Everyone knows to steer clear of the donkeys. Well Charlie’s leg was broken as a result and it’s not like people rush their dogs to the vet when something like that happens here.

Charlie at Home (Alieu is in the organge shirt and this is his family.)

The vet works on cows, horses and donkeys primarily. He’d probably be pretty confused if you brought a dog or cat in. People here have a very lackadaisical attitude about their dogs and cats. Dogs are tolerated because they can be useful for hunting small game in the bush, tracking and retrieving. When I say ‘tolerated’ I mean they let them hang around but they take very little to no care of them. They pretty much just wander around the village, their ears being ravaged by flys, the females having litter after litter of puppies of which maybe two percent survive. I guess some people feed them scraps from the food bowl but I’ve never actually seen it. Dogs are considered pests to some degree though so when they wander into compounds people chase them out and it is not unusual for kids to throw rocks at them. My kids know better after seeing my horrified reaction but I’m sure when I’m not around stones are still being thrown. To be fair these dogs are bordering on being wild so it is kind of dangerous to have them around, hence the stones. I just hope that with my influence someone somewhere will see a dog and think, ‘I’m going to flap my arms around and yell ‘Acha’ (That’s what we say to anything we want to move – kids, sheep, etc.) instead of throwing that rock.

Charlie Taking a Nap Next to Fatou

There are far fewer cats around than dogs which I think is strange since cats are much more self sufficient and useful when it comes to eating pests (you should hear the rats in my ceiling, they are so loud!). I’ve seen a total of two cats in my village, ever. That’s probably because the Gambians kill them as they are generally deathly afraid of them. Grown men jump back when they see that I am carrying my tiny kitten; men who spend their weekend hunting crocodiles in the river. Seriously. I have no idea what that's about. I grill them but they never give me a substantial reason. They don't think they are evil or anything like that though. The cats that I do see look a lot less sorry than the dogs. They are on the thin side but that’s about it. See, self-sufficient.

Charlie and Binta Playing on the Mat

So I took Charlie home and he has been spent the last week here. The veterinarian in my village offered to give him antibiotic shots to prevent or fight any infection but that’s pretty much all he can do at this point since the injury is over a week old. The vet said it felt like a simple fracture and Charlie is putting a little more weight on it now so hopefully it will heal on its own with no permanent damage. It’s been nice having him around since I really miss having a dog but I’m ready to take him back to Alieu because a) between Boo and Charlie it’s like the Tooth and Claw Brigade have moved in. I am constantly being bitten and/or scratched and I don’t have a spray bottle to fend them off with. B) Charlie doesn’t reserve his biting just for me, he goes after Boo constantly. It wouldn’t take much for him to accidentally kill her so I’m pulling him off of her thirty times a day. Of course she refuses to just stay up on the bed where she’s safe. My family will be sorry to see Charlie go which is unbelievably cute give how Gambians feel about dogs in general.

They constantly (CONSTANTLY) ask me what the animals are doing and where they are (probably because those questions are among the six things I understand when they talk to me and I can actually answer them correctly for the most part!). My mom is Charlie’s biggest fan which is even more surprising. She even let him sit on the mat! (That’s a big deal.) I know they find the whole pet thing mysterious but everyone is very good-natured about it which is just another example of how ‘live-and-let-live’ these people are (up to a point and concerning certain things, i.e. Don’t try to tell them that a girl should be able to make her own choices about marriage instead of being given away at fourteen for the right price though).

Fo Wati Do! (Until next time!)

My little sister Kaddy Jallow and my neighbor

Bakabiro enjoying a book.

Thanks mom!

Things I didn’t expect to happen:

I feel sort of conflicted about encouraging Gambian children to read. :/

That is a little bit of a problem since one of my goals in coming here is to promote literacy. Now I know this sounds insane and that reading opens the world up to a person and that there is no developing a country without literacy but the fact is that reading for pleasure is not in tune with what makes Gambian culture, well…Gambian culture. I had an inkling that this was going to be the case but it only became really apparent last week when my sixteen year old neighbor Ebrima borrowed a book from me. At first I was delighted; Ebrima is a great kid who lives across the road. His family owns a small shop (bitik) and when he’s not in school or in the bush collecting firewood it’s his responsibility to watch the shop for his brother who is the head of the compound. These shops are the size of closets so it’s a one-person job. There are a lot of these shops throughout the village and they’re all pretty much identical. They sell batteries, cigarettes, bread, tea (very popular) sugar, oil and other incidentals.

A typical bitik

It is customary for shopkeepers to sit out in front of the shops on benches and wait for customers. And sit they do, for hours…and hours, doing absolutely nothing except for greeting passerby and selling to the occasional customer. Well that’s all fine and well for the old man who has been watching his shop for the last thirty years and is perfectly content doing so but it kills me to see a teenager who is first in his class sit there endlessly doing virtually nothing. (Yes I know that is not very culturally sensitive and who knows what’s going on inside that head of his but I stand by the opinion that he’s pretty much just zoning out for hours on end.)

Ebrima!

(Is it just me or does he look like a mannequin here?)

So one day when he was sitting out there I asked him if he’d like to borrow a book. Well at first he was confused. His textbooks? I wanted him to read his textbooks? Okay Kaddy, although I’ve got them all pretty much memorized. No Ebrima, a different book, one you haven’t seen before, a book with a story in it. That was met with an enthusiastic ‘Yes!’ so I hurried into my house and selected a Grade 3 book about a dog who takes a bus to his old neighborhood after his family moves. Well Ebrima may be first in his Grade 8 class but that book was exactly at his level, anything more would have been lost on him. And so we read. Ebrima delving into ‘Boss Dog’, me ‘Rebecca’ (which I was rather pleased with by the way). Now Ebrima’s a conscientious kid so he would look up when people greeted him to return the greeting and/or promptly assist them in the shop but it wasn’t immediate, it took a few seconds, because he was enjoying that ‘Boss Dog’ book quite a bit. And therein lies the problem. It is not very Gambian (particularly in the villages) to be engaged in something that would keep you from communicating with another person; ever. I’m not implying that Gambians just sit around all day and chat (although some certainly do) but their work is all manual labor so they are easily approached while doing it. No one is sitting at a computer or reading a report that they need to concentrate on. (This is a little annoying at school since people will just walk into a classroom and the kids need to wait while a five minute greeting takes place between the guest and the teacher.) Their leisure time is no more solitary. They’re not exactly watching TV and could you wait ten minutes until the commercial please? In their down time they are sitting around brewing atya (the popular tea) or lounging about on the bantaba. So there Ebrima and I sat enjoying our books, yet with every new person that passed by who had a mildly quizzical look on their face as to why they weren’t being responded to as enthusiastically as they had been last time they came around, my guilt grew. I was the reason Ebrima was focused more on a fictional German Shepard who boards the uptown because he’s homesick than on the woman who is married to his father’s second wife’s son who tended to him when he had malaria a year and a half ago. Apparently this is what happens when you are dealing with a group of people that speak an unwritten language. They aren’t used to reading and more importantly they aren’t used to other people reading. There are all of these social mores that come into play when someone is reading that we are totally unaware of since we are a culture that reads. Like for instance, it’s considered rude to have an extremely loud conversation (occasional shouting included!) approximately three feet away from the Peace Corps volunteer who is trying valiantly to get through a simple picture book with your ten year old daughter. It is equally rude to start tuning an unbelievably scratchy shortwave radio a stone’s throw (more of a toss really) away. I like these people a lot and I know it’s unintentional. They just have no concept of what it means to sit down and enjoy a book. I’ve heard from a lot of volunteers that the kids have no interest in having stories read out loud to them which is unfortunate. I’ve had fairly good luck personally but I’ve also always made sure to keep the kids really engaged (hand movements, sound effects, etc..) because there is no way they are going to sit there and just enjoy the pictures (forget the words, none of them speak English). My uneasiness isn’t keeping me from making books for the kids or reading with them or doing any of the other things that I do daily to encourage literacy because I think the pros outweigh the cons but it does make me think a little bit more about what ‘development’ means for the people who are subject to it.

I visited the library at the school in Soma (the market town that has internet and cold Coke, otherwise Mecca) and it was great. Clean (and by that I mean there were no termite mounds on the shelves and the books weren’t coated in thick red dust), lots of books, even a ‘librarian’ (we use that term loosely here)! As I was leaving I walked with these three little kids, one of whom had a library book clutched firmly in his hand. When I asked to see his book he proudly showed it to me…it was entirely in German with no pictures and appeared to be some sort of historical account for scholars. Hmm.

So guess what was in my bed last night. No seriously, guess. It’s probably the most disgusting thing you can fathom. Maggots. There were maggots on my mattress. Now I don’t have a lot of experience with maggots but these seemed a little more complex than your average ‘taco-got-shoved-behind-toaster’ variety. They had a sort of translucent body with a dark center and they would play dead when you brushed against them with a broom/newspaper/anything within reach at one o’clock in the morning. Why do I have maggots in my bed? Well I’m pretty sure it has something to do with her:

Boo (chewing my cell phone charger)

Meet ‘Boo’. She’s named that because the generic name for cat in Mandinka is ‘Moose’ so I was going to go with ‘Caribou’ but that’s kind of hard for Gambians to say so…Boo it is. I should clarify that I had absolutely no intention of getting a pet during my time here. Tell that to a tiny little kitten meowing relentlessly at two o’clock in the morning in a neighboring compound because she is hungry and being kicked around like an insect on someone’s shoe. Of course when the American goes out to investigate what in the world is going on, they all look at me like, ‘Well?’ My choices seemed limited to a) go back inside and pretend I didn’t hear anything while my sense of decency trickled away into the night or b) rescue the poor thing and buy a twenty cent package of powdered milk to quiet her down. Well the above is a picture of her on my bag so I’ll let you come to your own conclusions on how that little scenario played out. She’s pretty adorable and it is nice having her around but I do stand by my initial opinion that it is distracting to have a pet and it takes away from the amount of time I spend with my village and family. I think that will change as she gets older though, so I don’t regret my decision (like I really had a choice). She’s already graduated from being hand fed with a medicine dropper and crying constantly to eating out of a dish and purring the majority of the time so things are moving in the right direction.

What does all of this have to do with maggots? Well they don’t sell cans of Purina cat food out in the bush so I’ve had to experiment some with what to feed her. She’s too small to hunt for her own food at this point but I do want her to start doing that somewhere down the line since I’m not sure what will happen with her after I leave. They sell this powdered milk in the ‘bitiks’ (tiny little hole-in-the-wall shops within the village) which has been her staple thus far. When that didn’t seem to fill her up as much as it should (read: incessant crying) I started going to a Fulla compound and getting her some fresh milk. The Gambia is populated with five major African tribes: Mandinka, Fulla, Wollof, Pullar and Serahouli. Each tribe has their own language and customs yet they coexist peacefully for the most part. When I say ‘tribe’ it makes me think of pictures in National Geographic in which people are walking around in loincloths with gigantic plugs through their earlobes. It’s not like that at all. Technology wise these people are living like it’s 1852 (except for the cellphones – more on that later) but they have a lot of similarities to Westerners in their day to day activities and a lot of their attitudes.


Here’s my third grade report on The Gambia:


Clothing:

Me with Lamin the Mauratainian shopkeeper (3rd from left)

and a couple of customers.

My neighbors

About 50% of the men wear ‘traditional’ clothing which basically look like pajamas. It’s usually the older men who wear traditional clothing the majority of the time. Younger men fluctuate daily between traditional wear and western wear. On special occasions and Fridays (big prayer day) most people dress traditionally. A lot of the younger men have begun to wear western clothes almost exclusively. Most of it is ‘urban fashion’, i.e. baggy jeans, logo shirts, baseball caps and beanies (hip hop has a huge influence here). They have these piles of western clothes laid out on tarps on the ground at the market which they call the ‘dead toubob pile’ because ‘the only reason a toubob would get rid of stuff this great is if he were dead’.

The opening of our health center

The girls dress much more traditionally. In my village they ALL wear ankle length wrap skirts and matching shirts. Well the skirts start out with matching shirts but since they are doing pretty intensive domestic work throughout the majority of their day they usually trade those in for random printed t-shirts and when I say random I mean RANDOM, think Flaming Lips concert shirts from 1996. Next time you toss an old shirt into a donation pile keep in mind that it could quite possibly end up in a rural African village and be worn by a fourteen-old girl who is the third wife of a guy who lives in Sweden who supports his family by transporting corrugate metal to Africa and has a baby on the way (a fairly common scenario here).

Everyday wear

Well that’s how they dress at all times except ‘program’ nights. ‘Programs’ are held regularly and they are basically makeshift dance clubs. DJs will bring in a generator and these enormous speakers, along with a PA system and CD player. They will fence off an area and then charge people roughly forty cents to come in and dance. This starts at about eleven and night and usually finishes up at about four in the morning. The music is so loud that it literally sounds like the speakers are pushed up against my window and turned to full blast. So anyway on program nights the girls trade in their traditional clothes for fairly trashy 80’s wear! There are a lot of really tight pants and skimpy tops involved. Big belts too and for some reason they enjoy leaving the tags on some of these items. I think it’s supposed to signify that it’s new but I’m not completely sure. I should point out that these girls are all in amazing shape from the daily physical labor they do, so no matter how tacky an item may be, it all looks really good on them. There’s a reason African American girls have a reputation for being able to fill out a pair of jeans and their sisters across the Atlantic are no exception.
Wait…wasn’t I talking about maggots? How did I get onto how Gambian girls look in their stretch jeans? Oh yeah, Fullas and milk. Okay, so anyway yeah, no one’s wearing a loin cloth or anything like that around here. The majority of my village are Mandinkas and they primarily farm for a living. Most of what they grown are sustenance crops (they eat most of what they grow instead of selling/exporting it). There are also a few Fulla compounds on the outskirts of the village. Fullas farm too but their primary source of income stems from cattle. Families can own anywhere from a couple of cows to large herd so they spend most of their time tending to them.

A village cow

(Gambians think it's crazy that I take pictures of cows and donkeys. I made the mistake of letting them see me do it once and now they get all excited when they see me approaching a herd. 'Natloo!(picture!), Nataloo!, Nataloo! can be heard far and wide.)

On the ‘tending’ note let me share an example of why I say the men, or at least the boys, are no slouches when it comes to the amount of work they do compared with the girls. During the ‘dry season’ (October – March) there is NO rain ( hence ‘dry’) and there are certainly no natural bodies of water to be found anywhere (except for the river which is pretty far from most settlements/villages). Well the cows need to drink so it’s the boys job to fetch water for them. Um okay, I'm going to stop whining about fetching my measly five buckets of water on laundry day. These boys fetch twenty, TWENTY! , 20-liter containers of water a day for the cows to drink! I can’t even pick one of those up after it has been filled with water. That container is like a shopping basket filled with ten, 2-liters bottles of soda!

The Fullas rarely slaughter their cattle for meat , they are too poor and that would be too indulgent. Instead they sell the milk the cattle produce and trade the animals themselves as a form of currency. I haven’t seen a lot of attention being paid to animal husbandry so I’m not sure how involved they are in the breeding process but calves are born occasionally which increases the family’s wealth. With limited options in the cat food arena, I’m grateful to have some Fullas around who will give me a little bit of milk once in awhile. (Yes I know you are not supposed to give cats cow’s milk but my options are pretty limited here so I’m doing the best I can.) Well Boo seemed to enjoy the milk and it seemed to fill her up more than the powdered variety but guess what happens to milk when you don’t have a refrigerator? It gets pretty chunky pretty fast. Gambians consume two types of milk: ‘fresh’ milk and ‘sour’ milk. Fresh milk is just that, straight from the cow. Sour milk is fresh milk about twenty-four hours after it has left the cow and is a totally valid food choice here. They usually mix into their porridge. It must be an acquired taste though because Boo isn’t having any of it, or maybe I just have to make some porridge for her, she is a Gambian cat after all. Now that she’s getting bigger a milk only diet isn’t cutting it so I have reverted back to the powdered milk (getting that fresh milk from the Fullas was a big production; long walk, lots of greeting, gifts of appreciation since they refused payment for it) and have introduced smoked fish. A main staple of the Gambian diet is fish (the country’s biggest geographical feature is a nice river full of them) and like the milk, it comes in two varieties, fresh and smoked.

Smoked fish

Smoked is very popular because of the whole ‘no refrigerator’ thing. They grind it up and add it to most of their dishes. I should probably point out here that my cat eats better than most Gambians which is something I’m not particularly proud of but I feel sort stuck between a rock and hard place about it. I’ve taken responsibility for the cat and I have the resources to feed her well and keep her healthy. I don’t have the resources to feed the country well and keep it healthy, so I’m doing what is within my ability. People aren’t starving here, there is generally a nice amount of food in the food bowl but it can be somewhat nutritionally wanting (a bunch of white rice and not a whole lot else). My cat on the other hand has been getting approximately one smoked fish a day. All right I’m done justifying my western value system, let’s talk about maggots! One day I got a ‘not-so-smoked’ batch of smoked fish and I think that was the source of my bunk mates. When I went to investigate the bag of fish, your run of the mill, white rice resembling wigglers were in there (eww) and I suspect the things on my mattress were ‘Stage 2’ of the life cycle process. The bag went down the latrine, the guests got swept out and I haven’t seen a trace of them since. So there you have it, how the horrifying discovery of maggots on one’s bed can lead to a discussion on West African fashion and tribal economic systems.

Fo Wati Doo! (Until next time!)

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.