Real quick!

27 Sep 12

Brief highlights:

Inherited project update: they built a garden, formed a garden committee, repaired the well and hand pump... it's actually been cool to see them erect this all with very little of my input or help!

I assisted in killing my first rat, my host sister helped/did most of it as I barely had the heart to.  He/she was driving me crazy the last four months but the bugger was kind of cute.  Just, not a suitable roommate ya know?

PC is coming up tomorrow to change out the white wooded window frames and door frame for red wooded ones as this type of wood is less tasty for termites.  PLUS I get a free PC ride which is such a huge bonus compared to public transport!!  Just coming in this time to submit a status report of the inherited garden project took EIGHT hours!  That's not that bad but you know, it's a small country!

I think we've seen the last of the rains.  Sneaky thing or things left without much of a warning.  We were so lucky this year, almost too much, with plentiful hearty rains.  As much of a pain they could be at times with the constant wetness/sogginess, mold and thick humidity, it was really  nice and they will be greatly missed.  I'm almost in disbelief, if we have seen the last of them, that we won't see them again for another 8-10 months!  Painful.  But 'cold season' is just around the corner.  After getting caught in a mild rain and soaked I found myself shivering pretty impressively for a formerly claimed AK girl.  Suppose I really am acclimating.  Still it's nice to feel cold sometimes you know?  Especially when it's a rare treat.

New environment volunteers arrive tomorrow.  A group of ten.  My group (20), the most recent education group (20), and this group are all very close to each other.  It's kind of nuts!  The training schedule got temporarily de-railed due to the joint training of my group in Senegal.  But Gambia PC training will find it's stride in due time, Inshallah.

My host father let me talk him into planting FIVE Leuceana trees in his corn field!  And that was inspired by him recruiting me to help him plant a Mango tree he had in a poly pot!  That was actually super awesome.  It was probably the most broken wolof I could have tried to speak but it worked.  Leuceana is a great ally cropping or live fencing tree species as it has nutritious leaves that give back to the soil as well as a root system that symbiotically lives with bacteria that help fix nitrogen further giving back to the soil.  And it has very light shade cover and a not invasive root system that corn or whatever can grow right amongst it.  As agfo (agroforestry) volunteers we try to support ally cropping or any tree planting as much as possible as it helps stabilize soil and in most cases can provide food to both livestock and humans, helps the water table and eventually with enough trees, can help bring more rains as you are increasing the amount of evapo-transpiration in an area.  They also can use trees of course for firewood  and structures, but we're trying to not promote that use as much.. Did I ever mention how much I love trees...? 

My host father then tells me, too late for this year now I think, that he wants to plant cashew trees!  I tried to get him to do this earlier but he didn't seem interested.  Not sure what has changed but he seems much more interested now!  I don't think I can do justice explaining what a victory it was for me, a foreign woman playing role of host daughter, to be asked by and work with a Gambian man playing the role of host father.  Even if I was Gambian it would be unlikely for my father to listen to me as a female.  So yes, super duper exciting!  He's a most excellent hard working thorough farmer and even better host father.  Peace Corps, it is not always easy; ok it's rarely easy, but I feel very lucky given my placement, family, and community.  Even with the rats and termites... pesky buggers. 

Hope everyone had enjoyable summers and are getting ready for "harvest season" aka fall (lower 48) and winter (ak).  May you stay warm, see beautiful fall leaf colors, amazing northern light displays if you are in an area to see that, and enjoy good company with family and friends around warm fires, delicious food and beverages.  Amin amin.

Bee Cause, IST, and pictures!

This will be mostly a picture post for a change since I actually had my camera this time!  These pictures were taken at our counterpart workshop at Bee Cause just outside of Banjul at a charitable trust organization promoting sustainable methods of bee keeping in The Gambia.  Earlier pictures are from village from the three month challenge capturing moving in, rainy season, etc.

Our IST counterpart workshop was held at Bee Cause since honey production not only can be sold for lots of money, but it promotes not timber forest products since bees like and need trees.  Honey harvesting here often involves using destructive practices like burning the hive.  This wastes valuable product as wax and smokes/ruins the honey.  Bee Cause offers trainings to interested individuals at a beautiful sanctuary landscaped with amazing examples of sustainable agroforestry practices which in turn promote happy and healthy bee populations. One note about beekeeping at the village level is that because this is such a communal culture, beekeepers tend to lose more resources than money earned as family and friends will insist on getting some honey since they are related and since that's the way the culture works here.  Village beekeeping has been attempted and has also failed.  The best you can hope to do is to find serious counterparts who are on top of their honey harvesting and selling before too many people can badger them about honey they should have.

So enough talk, enjoy the selected photos!

Bee Cause IST counterpart workshop.  Beekeeping, honey processing, wax melting, training, and finished tourist grade product featured above.

Roughly from top to bottom: one of my host grandmothers, my garden growing including sorel, okra, and garden beans, host brother and I enjoying a Ramadan lunch for the non-fasters, baby host brother after being drawn on by host sisters, and a village sunset which means so much more during Ramadan!

HCA, Health Mural Training, and IST pt 1.

8 Sep 12

HCA

I write a lot in village.  At the time the transcribed thoughts seem like profound insights and revelations that I’m eager to share with the rest of the world (twelve other viewers or so..).  But oddly every time I re-enter ‘civilization’ near the capital city when I have the opportunity to share them via this interweb thing- I tend to decide to spare viewers with my overly verbose village ramblings as they seem somehow less relevant than they do in village.

A lot of us it seems tend to stumble over how to best communicate or share this experience with family and friends back home as it is that we are having it a quite different life experience than it was we were having back home.  And no my wolof is still not getting so sweet to account for the poor English skills.  That lovely ability can be attributed to speaking to Gambians in wolof and Gambian English rekk (only) for the past three months.

Anyway a volunteer from a group that recently COS’d came up with a neat system she called HCA standing for Happy Crappy and Awkward to highlight slash assist with sharing stories from the past month or months as it may be.  Hopefully this person doesn’t mind me borrowing it this nifty trick!  HCA simply helps me think of and share three stories that were, as you could guess, happy, crappy, and awkward, providing a fairly even taste of the last few months or so:

Happy:  Visiting a very good friend south of the river and hiking ___ km to Baboon Island where they had cold bottles of Coke! And we had amazing packaged Indian food and bread, during Ramadan but you know, we had to eat as it was hot and far and we’re not really Muslim, just Gambian-ish leegi (now).  It was an incredibly exhausting day highlighting how malnourished we probably really are considering how tired the hike made us but was an amazing most wonderful adventure that involved getting lost and almost stumbling upon a boys circumcision camp, meeting a very nice Gambian man informing the both of us that all people are one and that color does not matter sensitizing us to both of our first “deep” conversation with a Gambian, a rescued Sisal shoot (good for live fencing), and amazing views of the river with glimpses of chimpanzees- and the cold Coke which is amazing after being in village and especially after such a long and hot walk!

Crappy:  Hmm- I’m tempted to say not ever being able to keep up with the termites taking over my house is pretty crappy but honestly it’s not as bad as creepy not nice men.  I’ve been very lucky here and honestly feel very safe but have my alert on high.  And, perhaps I won’t be able to explain this well but I have fallen for these people and this culture head over heels.  I’ve embraced my family and have taken them in as my own.  It feels very much like a family dynamic in my compound where my siblings can get annoying and my host parents do their bestest to keep me safe, healthy, and engaged.  And so in away I feel a kinship now for these people as I have a family here.  A host family sure but these are people that I live so closely and intimately with for so long that real relationships are bound to form.  Anyway I guess you could say that I tend to see or look for the best in people always and mostly am blown away by how amazing the people are here.  So when someone is actually like a creeper it disappoints me even more as I don’t just take it personally for myself but feel disappointed that they are re-inforcing the unfortunate stereotype most people think of in the West as dangerous people etc.  But I’ve been in this region for almost six months now (CRAZY!) and have honestly only personally encountered a couple not so sweet men.  This one instance was very mild where I was trying to catch a ride back up to my region in what we call setplas’s (a seven seater car) and the driver tapped my bum saying it was nice.  It sucked.  Because of everything I just said about believing in these people so much and then having this man puncture that balloon.  The perhaps most crappy part was that another man who I thought was a friend didn’t do anything to right the situation or to help at all.  I found a cheaper ride in a gelle which seats maybe 20 people or so in a squished and crowded car but the driver was much mo gena nice (nicer) and I made it home safe.  I don’t share that story to perpetuate that stereotype or to freak family and friends out.  So I hope that from that you take more that while that did happen and it made me feel crappy, it’s happened honestly one time in the span of six months and it wasn’t aggressive and I wasn’t in danger.  I was disrespected and felt little supported but the men there did help me, a stranger, were fair, and kind when that man was rude and disrespectful. 

Awkward: The first day or so of Ramadan I was working in my garden.  Almost all my Moringa trees have become victims to some kind of worm/moth larvae, and or spider mite so I was practicing physical control by squishing the buggers.  These leaves are highly nutritious and make a tasty albeit slightly slimy sauce packed full of nutrition that the women actually prepare fairly often.  Anyway I was trying to establish an intensive leaf bed where you plant several rows of trees within about a meter squared plot with about 5in spacing and keeping the trees clipped at waste height.  I have about one tree remaining from this attempt.  Anyhow I pruning them when there was still trees to prune and had just a few clippings of dark green healthy leaves.  I got excited to share some of the dark healthy green leaves with my family and came out before dusk to munch on some of them to one- get them excited/ show that you can eat the leaves plain, and two to hopefully share that with them by offering it to them since they try just about anything I offer- BUUUUT, believe it or not I was met with weird looks and polite dismissals to my invitation.  It could have been that the eating of raw leaves was too much for people that eat cooked leaves all the time- But more-so I think it is that I was offering them ‘food’ during Ramadan and that they were fasting and that I can’t believe I offered a strict Muslim family raw Moringa leaves during Ramadan where my host family is the prayer leader of the entire village!  Yup, that was awkward.

Health Mural Training

This was a really neat Peace Corps volunteer initiated two day training.  The Health/Environment group that came a little over a year before us has in their ranks two volunteers that attended design school.  A friend of theirs and volunteer leader for health (PCVL) applied for and received a grant to provide a two day training and paint and supplies for the twenty or so of us attendees with the agreement that if you come to the training, you complete two health murals in your community before this group departs (around Feb or Mar so they are giving us a deadline of December).  It is that I am an environment volunteer but I’m an environment volunteer that lives in a community who’s nearest health clinic is 10km down the road.  Personally I wanted to attend mostly to learn how to make more effective murals so that I can do it some environment murals in my community but contributing to the focus of health there I think would be appreciated as well.

A mural is actually a pretty incredible tool that can depict information regardless of ones literacy skills.  Without a training someone can create a mural and probably a pretty effective one at that.  Having the training led by design school graduates though gave us the tools information and know-how to help our communities design murals that “pop” by learning techniques of shading, lighting, color mixing, brush and paint care, face and people drawing, etc!

In Peace Corps we often hear about project sustainability.  This can only come when our communities feel an ownership over these projects.  This makes ones service a tad more tricky because now instead of me just finding a wall and painting a rad mural about using bed nets and feeling accomplished at that alone, I have to find health workers to work with, design the illustration together, gain community approval and approval from the chief, find interested people to aid in painting including local painters as we have many sign painters already, and pretty much stand in the background while giving the people in the village/community permission to shine and create something that can last maybe ten years further giving them the opportunity to be that famous artist for as long as the mural lasts and as long as they live there to brag about this or that thing that they designed and/or painted.  This is so important.  None of our work here matters much if it is just that, our work.  It may seem interesting that this is true for even a seemingly small project like a health mural.  But I left this training pretty inspired.

An inspiring project was done about ten years ago by a Peace Corps volunteer in The Gambia where this person held a training at x number of schools on some health subject and then held a mural design contest where the winning school got to share their mural at the ferry terminal where thousands of travers pass on a daily basis!  Now those long stretches of walls are empty but for maybe a good period of time there was a school designed mural there educating potentially thousands of Gambians to sleep under a bed net, wash hands with soap and water, eat healthy food, exclusively breast feed, etc etc. 

And now there are twenty or so of us trained in designing effective murals that don’t just disseminate information, but murals that pop off the wall with shading and effective color use!  Twenty of us working in our communities doing two murals a piece has the potential of empowering/educating 20,000 Gambians or more as many of us live in communities of 1,000 or more people (save for lil ‘ol me in my village of 230! or so, but easily surrounded by villages accounting for maybe a proximate population of 800).  And if even half of those people are touched and tell even one friend where it’s more likely in a community that is so communal that you would tell more than one friend, we’re talking of now educating upwards 60,000 or more people on simple things that can make profound differences.

A lot of volunteers may add world maps to schools but when you teach a world geography lesson and then involve the students in the map and painting etc etc, you can see how just that little extra touch can add so much more to their sense of ownership (Look see that country?! I painted that!  Or in an ideal world they may even say something like, “Hey see that country there?  That’s Mali, it’s in West Africa too like we are and I painted it!” Or “See that big country there? That’s Senegal and we live in that small country inside.”

This training alone helped add five beautiful murals to our Health PCVL’s health clinic which made such an incredible difference to the previously plain white walls.  Her counterpart was included and even painted some.  And the counterparts were involved in selecting which murals we painted which were all designed by our design artist volunteer trainers.  

IST, pt. 1

In service training.  Really I feel a better definition of what we are doing right now is phase 3 where in service training is additional training the volunteer seeks out to assist us on our projects in the future once we have a better idea of what those projects entail.

IST is 9-5 training mostly indoors.  It’s tiring and difficult to be super enthusiastic at all times when the trainings are from mostly administration AND when many of them are probably on things you’re not going to end up doing.  But I do think it’s important to hear about the broad spectrum of opportunities as you never know what it is your village may think it needs over what you think they need and what is more important is their assessment granted it’s within the volunteers ability to assist (not a paved road, hospital, or electricity as my chief stated..). 

For environment volunteers we’ve been learning more about gardening, pest control, live fencing, ally cropping, livestock management, cashew farming, community garden projects and trainings, grant writing and will learn about bee keeping and tree grafting if possible during pt. 2 at our counterpart workshop.

The counterpart workshop is a really neat opportunity to bring someone from village you hope/anticipate to work with and give them to opportunity to experience a training with you so that they can learn themselves, in their language (Inshallah) so that they can share with the community as well as I could.  If nothing else it’s a trip into town and a training and opportunity that these people may never get again.  If I have time to reflect on how that goes I will!

If not- for you avid readers and curious monkeys, my plan is thus:

Attend an HIV/AIDS Bike Trek training immediately after IST for four more days.

Go back home after that training to get back into the swing of village and start moving slowly forward with ‘for real’ peace corps service: aka start to talk to community members about projects, re-sensitizing my community about what I am there to do as a PCV (i.e., not there to give them a road really even though that would be nice).

Attend our regional meeting in the first week of October.

I’m helping to scout out two boys and two girls grades ten and higher to attend our camp GLOW which is scheduled for January.  The organizers of the camp need the recruits by this month.  This involves me going down to the school 10km away to work with the headmaster there to scout them out.  I need to be there anyway from time to time to oversee the inherited garden project coming together.

The actual Bike Trek is in Nov so I will attend that and then be as site as much as possible before probably coming in again around Thanksgiving for feasting and banking and updating this lovely thing as well as perhaps drafting my proposal for my graduate research.

December: Hopefully staying at site mostly (you can see maybe that things come up often enough to render this slightly difficult!)  This I hear is the cold season where it actually might get “chilly!” aka 50 degrees!

Jan: Camp GLOW for one week in early Nov.  Hopefully I can be at site mostly this month also.

And that’s pretty much all I know.  Been in West Africa for just over 6 months now and will have been in service four months on the 11 (Sept).  Potential future postings about random things like water and markets and women’s chores and men’s chores and gender and development, etc etc perhaps to come.  Please ask me if there’s something you’re burning to know that I keep leaving out!

Much love, hope, and peace- as cliché as it sounds, I really mean it!  Here’s to a brighter world.

A brief look at rainy season, Ramadan, and 3 month challenge

12 Aug 12

Three month challenge officially ended yesterday on the eleventh.  I think the longest I managed to stay at site was one month minus one night away.  That month alone was pretty challenging but I'm glad I stayed.  The time away from site was due to trainings, meetings, and work from a previous volunteers project that had to leave early.

There was a wedding in my compound in where I donated my hut to share with my siblings so that they would have a roof to spend the night under and as well as a bed.  I lost all personal space during this time, about three days, which was a bit much but was out of my offering.

Not even a couple days beforehand we had a naming ceremony in the neighboring compound which was actually quite fun.  I'll have to elaborate on what all goes into these events at a later date as for now this is a quick summary/review!  Mango milk is excellent though.

I got strep throat while in village which was rather scary as you always are worrying/wondering about malaria.  Even though we all are on prophylaxis there is no sure-fire prevention from malaria and when you live 8-10km off the road and 4-6hrs from the main city, one can get quite nervous while in village without a medical doctor or facility nearby.  The nearest would be down the road about 8-10km away.  I didn't realize though that we have the malaria medicine with us as well as a rapid test so fearing that should be less of a worry.  It might sound weird but it was nice to get so much overwhelm and freaking-out out of the way during that month.  I think/hope it will pave the way for a smoother service.

I took a rather long round about way to come into town as the ferry's were rendered "unsafe" as their engines have been known to cut out causing them to drift out to sea... so I crossed a bit out of the way at a smaller nicer ferry crossing near some friends from my group whom I visited on my way into town.

The project I inherited is starting a school garden using money from a West African Food Security Program sponsored by the World Food Program (WFP) I believe.  We have to spend the money by the end of this month and it took a good long week to sort out where the money was and purchasing the materials as well as paying for well repairs.  I think it really all went quite smoothly given the norm here but has been a bit much for me to stomach this early into service.  It's at least definitely turned me off from writing grants but I was already not akin to that anyway as I want to empower my community to help themselves and not just be resource of money for sponsoring projects that may or may not last very long...

Ramadan is also here.  This has been an incredible experience as well as very difficult.  I am not Muslim and did not fast but when your family is fasting it makes it slightly more tricky to eat and drink when you are around them all the time and feel guilty doing something that your entire community is not doing, regardless of your religious faith, because they are your community and as social beings it is natural to want to do what they are doing, if that makes sense.

Even though it's one of the hottest times of the year and is growing season meaning everyone is out in the fields working, the people still wake up at 4am to eat before sunrise and fast until sunset.  Breaking fast is nice and includes sweet hot tea with milk and sugar depending on how well off your family is, and bread with either butter, split yellow peas or beans as they call it, and or eggs and or a number of anything else, again depending on your family's wealth.  Dinner comes after "breaking fast" time around the normal time between 8:30-9:30.  Fasting for these people is not eating or drinking anything including water all day.  I can't do it.  I kind of tried but didn't last long.  I've eaten less during this time as I usually eat lunch with my family.  I don't know how they do it.  But it's almost over.  One more week!

I head back to site tomorrow to finish working on my baseline survey for my in service training which is at the beginning of next month (September).  Trainings will take me out of site again for about three weeks in September but after that I look forward to hopefully kicking back in my home village for a while.  It is not always easy up there but I find that I prefer it to the city here.  They are two completely different worlds.  It's hard to go from one to the other all the time which is why I'm more likely to stay at least in my region.

Apologies ahead of time for the various errors and poor sentence structure.  My English skills are taking a serious hit from all the Wollof and or Gambian English speaking I do.  It is that it is somehow more difficult to speak properly anymore, case in point.

Looking forward to hopefully hearing from people in a couple weeks when I make it back down!  I'm well and healthy and happy and will write more next time in more detail, Inshallah!

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.