The Village

 20 Jun 12

Gregory David Roberts describes it best in Shantaram (a phenomenal read) when he writes “A man can make his way in the city with his heart and soul crushed within a clenched fist; but to live in a village, he has to unfurl his heart and his soul in his eyes.”  Gregory, or Lin as he was in the story, was an escaped felon who fled to India and spent six months in a friends village and having the opportunity to stay in the village he knew that he couldn’t because the truth in his eyes and heart was that he was a criminal.  And that lie of trying to pretend he wasn’t or the truth that he was, was bound to be exposed in those bright orbs situated just above the nose and below the brows that people in villages can read better than they can read words in a book.

I think to experience a village, if even for a day and if even just by glimpse, is bound to change someone’s life forever.  Let alone staying a night, or living there for two years.  None of us are same people that left those months ago to begin our Peace Corps journey.  And how could we be?  Some of us are in villages where the people haven’t been eating (mine has been eating).  This means for some that the volunteers don’t eat either.  Depending on if they cook for themselves or not.  I only had to watch my four year old brother starve one night when the goats ate the dinner, and it is not easy to observe, not to be a part of.  And it is a harsh reality of a majority of the world.

Guilt I think is the bane of most of our existence as PCVs.  The secret is that we place it on ourselves more than anything or anyone else.  “I’m not interacting with my community enough, I should be trying to speak their language more, I should be meeting more people, I shouldn’t eat this awesome and tasty food when they aren’t eating anything, I should I should I shouldn’t I should…”

But the other truth is that in order to be an effective and successful volunteer, we have to take care of ourselves first.  It’s a hard truth to realize while living in such a tight community where people think in terms of the village and community rather than thinking of themselves only, as whatever fate befalls them, befalls some aspect of the community as well, and visa versa.

The first two weeks were difficult.  It’s always a little bit awkward adjusting to any new place for the first time, especially when you don’t speak the language, well. And while each day has it’s several highs and lows, for the most part, as I become more and more integrated, village life is getting better and better.  I leave about once a week for some of the day to make the 20 some km round trip to the luumo or large market in the closest town.  Until quite recently I had an awesome site mate that I could go to the luumo with who had electricity and access to the internet.  But for personal reasons she is having to end her service early leaving me to face the crowded chaotic market day solo.  But the having to do it solo has been good.  I’ve made some friends with vegetable and mango sellers that they always throw in an extra pepper or mango simply because I can greet them and speak some of their language. 

I’m finding it to be true that people that have absolutely nothing are more likely to give absolutely everything verses someone who has everything.  That latter person tends to hold on to their things tight unwilling to give up anything or if they do they do it rather reluctantly.  I fall into that latter description.  It’s a horrible force of habit for me to not give up my things willing and freely.  The people here, with their incredible generosity make me feel like the queen of materialism. 

But there’s another head to that coin.  A lot of the time I think people just want something from a Westerner for the simple fact that it’s from a Westerner.  This includes medicines.  I don’t want them to get used to relying on me or my things so I hold back for those reasons.  But that still doesn’t change that even in my own element back in the States, I was much less willing to give as the people here are and I can say that I probably had much more I could have given than they do.

Moving on: my village is about 2-300 strong in number.  There is a school that educates children grades 1-9 that serves at least the two villages that sandwich the school.  The grade has more to do with the level than the age of the child.  A grade 3 classroom for instance can have children aged 8-18.  An older student is more likely to be a boy than a girl.  Young women, depending on their tribe and village, can be married or having children by as early as 13.  My village seems to be a bit more progressive which is common amongst my people, the Wolof’s.  Boys are starting to more commonly be circumcised in a health clinic opposed to the bush where women may not be circumcised at all, at least amongst the Wolof’s, and women are waiting until maybe 19 or 20 to marry.  One of my host sisters told me the other day that she doesn’t want to marry now (she’s 20) and that when she does, she only wants 2-4 children.  That’s huge where it’s more common to have at least ten children.

Back to the school: the headmaster is almost just as interested in trees as I am and has more polypots (small temporary nursing sacks for trees) of mangos than I do.  He’s also growing cassava, cashew, and other vegetables.  He’s my prospective counterpart for the moment where our prospective projects will include a polypot demo which will involve the community and school to start a large school or village nursery of several locally important Native species, important alley cropping species and live fencing species that can also act as a good windbreak.  Alley cropping is the introduction of typically nitrogen fixing trees that can be interplanted amongst crops in farms or gardens that contribute to soil stability reducing erosion, offer some shade, nutrients, and depending on the tree, can provide crops themselves as the Pigeon Pea tree that produces edible beans.  Lueceana is another good alley cropping species here and is also good for live fencing and could also act as a wind break which is important for helping to prevent seed dispersal, etc.  More good live fencing species include, for those interested, Winter thorn, Egyptian thorn, Sisal which is not a tree but resembles an Agave plant, etc .  These might go into some orchards or wood lots.  Another potential project, if the people get the local fence(s) built, will be to start/help people with Cashew orchards.  One cashew tree can earn a family more money than sixty mango trees.  For instance, one lg bag, about one lg handful, goes for 50 Dalasi where one Mango goes for 1 Dalasi.

Anyway another reason why the school headmaster makes a good temporary if not permanent counterpart is that he speaks very good English as students here are taught in English as it’s the country’s official language.  That makes communication much much easier!

The village has an SMC, school meeting committee, which reminds me of a PTA.  Members of the community meet on Sundays to discuss issues with the school and children and education.  There is also a PPM, a participatory parenting monitoring group.  This meets less often where the idea is to have parents as partners to help improve their child’s education.  I think I’ve said this in an earlier post, but one of the reasons why they put a volunteer in this village is because they wanted to improve the literacy of their children.  The adults were or are embarrassed with how illiterate they are and want a different outcome for the next generations.  My village is on it! Nungi ci kawan!

As on it as they are, and even with the faded murals of how important trees are for our community, it doesn’t stop the sound of chainsaws buzzing hauntingly above all the other more harmonious and peaceful village sounds. 

I’ve wanted hanging shelves from day one and started to ask more and more for how to get them.  I don’t really think there’s a word for shelf as they aren’t used in the mud huts.  After drawing pictures and flapping myself silly with hand gestures, I was instructed to follow the sound of the chainsaws.

It kind of felt like a gang of us as my younger brother and sister, two older sisters, and community rep/cousin which is also called a sister, and friend, all decided to come with me into the bush to ask the chainsaw men about my shelves. 

Just about everyone knows the toubab that lives in my village, all over the country really I get people that call me by name rather than toubab.  You get famous here pretty quickly.  Even though I have never met the sewer’s before, they all knew me and everything anyone has said about me which is bound to spread through the village and neighboring ones faster than a brush fire.  They were excited to see me and humorously curious about what I could possibly want with my rally of friends and family behind me.  It kind of felt like a scene from Ferngully but in the African bush, without ferns, “Bushgully,” and they were the bad guys I was here to stop.

But I am here to observe only now.  And the trees were felled anyway.  So I asked in my broken Wolof and English for four cuttings to use as shelves.  Somehow, after several hours of waiting and translations, I got four of some of the freshest and finest African mahogany shelves $7 US can buy.  They were quite heavy and so were kindly loaded onto a donkey cart to be delivered to my door that very night.  You can’t get better service than that!  So yes, I too benefited from the deforestation.  Hopefully we’ll add more trees and then some to make up for the difference. 

The people cut the wood into rough uneven sections and slates to use as a bed surface.  I see random pieces of the fine wood used as stumps to sit upon, or just carelessly discarded in the village without a known use or function.

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Before the rain comes, while there’s always much work for the women, there’s not a ton of work being done.  Mostly people find a comfortable shady spot to wait out the heat and talk or nap.  Attaya, I must have mentioned, is green tea (from China) that is brewed with more sugar than tea and shared with all within reach and is a common social pass time.  I resign from drinking much of it as it’s really ridiculously sweet, but a sip once in a while is nice. 

Kids run around, play marbles, push wheels with wires or sticks, make propellers out of some thick dry grass type thing, wrestle, play hand slapping games like patty cake but not patty cake, etc.

The women have their infants wrapped around their backs allowing them to still work.  Baby’s will be in that position as women haul huge laundry basins of water on their head, pound rice or coos, or millet, doing laundry, etc.  The women here are quite strong, both physically and emotionally.  Early on I tried to tell them that they were strong and in the heart also but people don’t speak like that here, so I pretty much just got a lot of laughter.  I don’t know that they will ever realize or understand how impressed and in awed I am by them and the lives they leave.  There would be no Gambia without them.  Another thing I’m sure I’ve said before but seems worth mentioning again. 

The clothes they wash by hand are probably cleaner than even the best washing machine washed clothes could ever be.  The food they prepare using the most simple and basic of ingredients, much of which from the land or ground from their hard labor, is better tasting than most restaurants have to offer in the states.  Also better for you.  Given that, that doesn’t mean I don’t miss and crave American food.  But ironically, I find that American like food is starting to make me more sick now than Gambian food.  How the tables do turn.

Overall my village is wonderful.  I couldn’t be more lucky or excited about my placement.  I feel that the people barely need me but am excited to help motivate those that maybe just need a little push to get the balls rolling for them.  I’m happy and hopeful, and as earlier stated, forever changed.