All Vol

26 Jun 12

The All Volunteer conference is what brought me into town.  All volunteers, or just about, came in from all over the country to lead panels on projects, discuss country wide initiatives as camp GLOW for girls and boys working towards empowering women, working with boys as partners towards that (MAP or men as partners) and educating on life skills, gender and equality, health, HIV/AIDS, etc.  There is also an HIV bike trek happening here in Nov where volunteers sign up to do a bike trek visiting several different schools to provide education and awareness about HIV and AIDS. 

There was a really neat panel on how to re-use empty water or soda bottles as a light source in classrooms that use tin roofing.  Several of the schools here do not have electricity and thus rely on natural light but that natural light is limited from coming in only through the sides of the classroom.  Empty water or soda bottles, especially water bottles with the bended bubbly sides, can be filled with water and a cap full of bleach and fitted into a cut hole in the roof offering the same amount of light as a 55w light bulb.

This brings in a lot of light to classrooms free of charge and takes a source of liter off the street.  But litter, for the most part, really is used here to exhaustion if a purpose is obviously known.  I gave a talk on ideas I've seen from around the world on how to use the stuff that doesn't get used like the candy and cookie wrappers which can be folded in a way or around bamboo or thick grass to weave colorful anythings.

There are some health volunteers that are doing a mural trek as well, going from region to region to help come to interested volunteer sites to do health murals educating on issues as hand washing, sleeping under a mosquito net, how to make ORS, oral re- salts, which is important for anyone suffering from diarrhea which can be a cause of death here, especially amongst infants, how to make Neem cream, etc.

Serving in a small country as The Gambia allows for us to do camps and treks like this fairly easily which allows us to really share our work with each other as well as with a good proportion of the country as much as possible. 

It was a neat conference in the sense that it was volunteer led.  It's always refreshing and inspiring to hear from passionate volunteers that have success stories to share.

But now it's time to trek back up to site and try to finish my three month challenge, even though by coming here it's already pretty much been breached.  I'm making my own personal two month challenge! 

The new education volunteers come in on Thursday and swear in Aug 31st.  I'll probably be back then to meet and support the new group and stay until Sept 12 for my IST. 

The Bush

Same day

I wanted to break these posts up as this is a months’ worth of updates!  My house is at the edge of the village.  From my one small window on that side I can see three neighboring villages where one speaks a language I do not know, called Pular by the Fula people.  I can say peace only, good morning, and thank you.  Just like I can say I hope there is no trouble and how are the home people, yes, no, and thank you in Mandinka.  Everyone all over speaks a little bit of everything.  It’s actually an incredibly impressive feat that would tickle any linguists interest.  I hope to pick up more of the other two to interact with the neighboring villages better as they are within my range but am going to focus on improving my Wolof first!

Between me and those villages though is the bush.  It’s a different landscape for sure than say the boreal forest in Fairbanks.  But it also is beautiful, even though it’s not green, and lush.  There is a patch of Baobab trees, some Dimba trees (Dimba is the local name for Bush Mango and is nothing like a Mango), Neem trees (the incredibly invasive weed tree that can squeeze out trees that it grows nearby with its toxic roots but can serve as a mild pesticide or mosquito repellent because of those same toxins that are found in the leaves), and a patch of mangos in the Fula village.  The ground is dry and yellow and barren now.  After the rains come most of it will be worked to produce rice and coos (millet).  I hear that the lands turn green.  I visited a friends village that got just a little bit more rain than ours has and it was beautifully picturesque with the roaming livestock and green pastures.  Not green like Ireland, but more green than yellow which was a nice treat for the eyes.

But I experience most of the environment from my ten or so km bike ride to the main road.  My road, is kind of a road, but is very un-road like.  I fight sand as one might fight slippery ice as my bike sinks and swerves through the rough sand traps.

Towards the end of my trek I pass what reminds me of what the surface of the moon might look like, or mars.  I don’t dread the distance or the sand as much as I dread the toubab shouts.  The high pitched and incredible intensity and excitement of the kids as they run screaming towards you yelling what isn’t met to be derogatory but is hard for it not to feel that way as they are essentially yelling “white person!” never fails to make the heart sink to the stomach.

Toddu ma! I am not called that!  So now, after teaching most of them what my name is, I get a lot of shouts that sound more like Loki or Lucky, which is close to my name, but reminds me of Lucky our kitty from home and makes me smile. 

The pure and rich incredibly overwhelming excitement they have for seeing a white person has mystified me.  I mean I get that we look foreign and stand out, but never figured that would render the reaction it gets. 

But then I had a realization the other day after thinking about what they must see or know all tourists to do and that they must see us as children from our culture must see Santa Clause.  Because what people mostly know here from tourists is that they give money, clothes, maybe cars, wells, electricity from solar panels, etc and etc.  Shoot I’d scream too if I believed in Santa Clause to deliver me from clothes barely holding themselves together, clean water, money, and a most definitely better life. 

But that’s what we get to do as PCVs.  To correct that stereotype and give a clearer representation of who we are, namely that we are all individuals and that one doesn’t necessarily explain the other.

But back to the bush.  It’s a beautiful ride and incredible scenery dressed with exotically colorful birds.  I’ve heard there are Hyena’s here and didn’t believe it until I learned the word for them, mbuuki.  If there’s a word for them they must be here.  While the bike ride through it brings some unwanted attention, it’s a ride that I try to soak in, even though I make it often, as I know that they are sights rarely taken in by foreigners.

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.

Flashforward

Just a quick look at what's to come:

Tomorrow, May 11 (one month in The Gambia) is swear in.  After swear in we become official/real Peace Corps Volunteers and get to finally be called PCV (a long sought after title after being 'the trainees' for two months).

The next couple days following involves shopping for stuff for home and readying ourselves for settling in as much as possible.

Monday May 14 we move in to our permanent sites.  From here until early September we will be setting up home, integrating into the community, and just "settling in" for phase two and our three month challenge.

As I'm in the Central River Region, or CRR, I have a meeting with all CRR volunteers in early June.  I aspire to bike with my site mate (8 km from me or so) the roughly 100 km to our meeting spot (perhaps depending on the heat).

June 22-23 is the All Volunteer conference required for all volunteers throughout The Gambia in all sectors, allowing us to all come together and share projects and ideas and what has gone well or what hasn't gone well.

After the All vol we can really dedicate to what's left of our three month challenge where we challenge ourselves to be in village as much as possible until IST (in-service training).

Sep 5-12 is our IST which will be in The Gambia (yay! There was talk of having us go back to Senegal, not that I or we have anything against Senegal but we all really like The Gambia and traveling back and forth to and from Thies is a pain).

IST will be a bit of a reunion as well as more specified technical training related to our project potential ideas during.  After IST we are ready to or 'allowed' to hit the ground running or walking or whatever with our project ideas. 

We are pretty much training free after this point where there will be opportunities to attend or lead or assist in other trainings for other groups during our two years.  We will probably have a re-connect for our group after a year or so but other than that we don't have official training until our close of service (COS) conference which will occur three months prior to our departure.

At this time volunteers decide if they want to extend or if they are ready to go.  A lot finish their service after their two years.  The last agfo/health group that just COS'd has about four people that extended.  One girl here is leaving in June after serving in TG for four years!

If one decides to extend, PC pays airfare to ones home of record (HOR) for a four week stay.  And if you continue extending you get the paid way home once a year there after.

It is very early in my service but I have definitely considered extending.  At the very least it helps me to feel less pressure so that I can really pace myself with projects and not try to cram everything into a small period of time rendering a bunch of potentially failed projects.  I feel like throwing this out there now so friends and family are aware of the possibility as it can be hard on loved ones who expect you home in two years to hear last minute that you are going to stay in your country of service for one more year (but I'd get to come home to visit!).

Anyway that's all I know about the future.  The gaps are up to my community and myself as to how we'll 'plow' forward (pun intended!).  Until next post!

Rolling in the hay

7 May 12

Just some random thoughts, points, and tidbits:

*There is no electricity in my village (or bread, thank the gods!) and I don’t feel comfortable nor see it necessary to bring my computer to site, therefore blog posts will start to trickle to being posted one time per month, internet service permitting.

*Sleeping on hay is actually really comfortable, at least much more supportive than the spongy mattresses, but too messy to perhaps justify buying.

*I think I’ll probably maybe not be as jumpy about bugs after PC service, but I also might still be.

*I love love love my permanent family.  They are a legit family.  There is so much love, the food is very tasty, and they are wonderful!  I predict leaving to already be a painful goodbye.

*PST is almost over!  Time moves at such an odd pace in PC in general but perhaps especially during PST where it seems to move fast and slow all at once.  But I may say the same when I’m a PCV (May 11).

*I love that I don’t have to fake liking the food that my family cooks at my permanent site; I legitimately like the food that they cook.

*I actually love not having electricity at home.  Passing the time is done together sitting outside and looking at the stars.  I’m so fascinated by the night sky or content in just looking up that my family asked there is a sky in Alaska.  If only I had the words to describe.

*There is a lot of solar power used here.  It’s interesting that somehow people can seem to afford that versus electricity in one of the poorest countries in the world.

*The water table is continuing to lower and if the rains don’t come again this year, we are in trouble.

*Trying to think of something positive to end on: the culture here sure is different from my own, but the power of community is impressive, powerful, and something we can certainly learn from in our very independent Western world.
8 May 12
*My address should now say (hopefully if I passed the language test) PCV instead of PCT and will be my mailing address for the duration of my service here.  Please write me, if you'd like as recieving mail is so much fun!  And please send me your mailing address if you have't already if you would like to be included in my outgoing letters!
*Insala or Inshala is arabic and means, as I understand it, god willing.  I have adopted this saying and use it a lot so you'll probably see it in posts if you haven't already!
*Allhumdullilai is another one meaning, I'm thanking God.

Burning ring of fire

6 May 12

I wake up from the perpetual slow dripping of perspiration soaking my clothes, my sheets, and my pillow.  I don’t have a fever, on the contrary I’m quite well for PCV health in W. Africa (OK, almost PCV), but it’s 5 p.m. and the heat can barely be avoided, especially inside, but I’m not comfortable yet to join the women in being topless outside.

I’d shower (or bucket bath) but if I want the clean feeling to last I need to wait until the sun is on its final descent below the horizon.

Last night, that seemingly infinite ball of gas that centers our solar system and ensures the heat of the dessert, was positioned away enough from the Earth that there was no shadow from this rock to that of the moon, illuminating the night sky so brilliantly, just south of the vast Sahara dessert. 

“They’re like the army, stopping the dessert, the Sahel and Sahara, the trees, tell them that.”

“Sumu garab yi mungi ñöwee, nit yi toga fii.”

“Ok what did you say?”

“When the trees come, the people will sit here.”

Sigh. We laugh and I agree, “that’s better than when the trees come the people will leave!” We laugh some more under the shade of a most invasive species of tree originally from India and having come here somehow, perhaps by trade, that goes by the English name of Neem tree.  Invasive as it is, if it wasn’t here, there would be substantially fewer trees (perhaps) than there are, and perhaps no shade tree in our compound at all.  One reason why it’s so invasive is that it gives off a toxin that kills other trees as well as insects.  The leaves therefore provide a great natural insecticide in compost or fodder, and can be used to create Neem cream for a natural mosquito repellent.

I’ve been extremely fortunate on this site visit having some incredible meeting and conversation opportunities with people in the village. 

They are all very excited, as am I, to work together, insala, to turn this village (unsafe to say actual name on this public blog) into, hopefully, a more sustainable or at least productive one.

You were expecting what?

4 May 12

I try not to have too many expectations, in general, but especially in PC.  Occasionally thought my mind will go into auto-pilot or defense mode to fill in the gaps with something it knows.  So when I heard about a meeting and a borehole and a school, I foolishly pictured meeting up in a classroom about the borehole.  Silly Sam.

From my current position under the kind shade of this, what I think is a Mango tree without any mangos, for the reasons that they’ve either all been harvested or this tree is a master of disguise and trickery, after wicking cotton for the last hour or so amongst a crowd of women where song and dance intermittently break up the sitting, where I’ve even graced them with my “skills” to break the ice of being a newcomer here, I find it foolish and amateur to have expected anything other than the above painted picture for The Gambia.

I was beginning to lose hope in the meeting or accept that the song and dance was the meeting when some very nice trucks pulled in.  There really was a meeting, and it was about the borehole, and it was kind of near the school.

Japan has been working with a number of villages to provide them with solar powered water pumps.  My village has been using theirs for a number of months now but had the official ribbon cutting ceremony today.  It was an all-day event where lunch was served and my ears were beginning to ring by sitting too near to the metal bowls being drummed by the women for dancing (Wolof’s LOVE to dance!). 

The Gambian men that have been working with the Japanese spoke a lot of words in Wolof about how the water should be used and shouldn’t be used.  I hoped to goodness they were going to put on a skit to emphasize their points because one) Gambians love skits, and two) I’m not sure they take in much other than skits.  And they did a skit!  But even so, after re-emphasizing that this potable water is for drinking and washing and cooking only, I didn’t hear any alternatives for where to get the water for other things like the horses and laundry etc.  Without telling us where to get that water (I suppose the open wells) I’m even likely to not listen as the taps are much closer and easier to get to.  But I’ll try to be a good example, as best I can.

Towards the end of this meeting (on day two in the village I might add) I started to be ushered to the front, after struggling and hesitating I’m finally in the middle where I’m expected to explain who I am and why I’m there.  Thank Gawd there was someone there that could translate for me!  Otherwise I would have sounded like a four year old.  It was actually a great opportunity and venue to meet lots of people and introduce myself to make the important connections etc.

They try to emphasize this from the get go, but it really is important, to carry an attitude of an open mind and just really and truly be willing to go with the flow.  The Wolof’s and I really are truly a great fit, thus far.  I’m very excited for my future home and future projects, whatever they decide to be.