Partway Thru Training in Bambuko - letter dated Oct. 24, 2006

Happy Koriteh!! Today our village, Bambako, celebrated the end of Ramadan, which means the end of fasting. This is a good thing. For the month of Raamdan, Muslins are forbidden to eat or drink anything between sunrise and sunset. As you can imagine, this makes for some pretty tired folks come 4:00 o'clock!. It's also weird walking around with a water bottle when no one else can drink. It makes one pretty self-conscious. That all ended today, with a village-wide celebrations- music, dancing, eating and praying. My host father gave me some of his choicest clothes to wear to the prayer service this morning. I'll put a picture up to show you on the internet, but these threads were sweet! Gambians know how to dress!! The get-up is basically matching pants and an ankle-length robe. The fabric is a very intricately detailed dark maroon, with pink and orange emblems and stitching on the trim. To top it all off, it's dotted with thousands of sequins, that catch the sun and make the robe seem to dance. I'm definitey going to get myself something like this!!

So, after the prayer, everyone walked around and drank ataya while sitting under the trees listening to music. Ataya is this ridiculously strong green tea that is brewed in a small pot (6oz.) and this 6 oz. of tea contains at LEAST 1 cup of sugar. To say that it is ridiculously sweet would be an understatement. You can almost feel your teeth rotting as you sip it. Anyway, it was a very fun, relaxing day and everyone was in great spirits, dancing and eating. Before sunset, all the children in the villag e run around and collect "Saliboo", which is very similar to our trick or treat. The children are given either candy or money, and if you have neither, you say a quick prayer: "Alla in na maa be hor jaare la>" Surprisingly, the kids seemed to prefer the candy or money.

Let's see, it's been over 2 1/2 weeks since I wrote you last, so there is much to tell. After that initial, "Oh my God what the hell am I doing here" shock wore off, things started to go pretty well in the village. My language started improving such that I could function around my family. I also made a couple friends in the village. Between their broken English and my poor Mandinka, we generally manage just fine. They've been a huge resource, telling me the Mandinka words for anything I want to know, gong out into the bush and talking about the numerous trees and a number of tree and plant species, showing me the finer points of the Gambian culture, being my tourgides around the area, and even offering to get me a Bambian wife if I'll get them a white wife. It's all been a lot of fun, very diffenent and always interesting. Unfortunately, things in the health department have not been quite as rosy. Luckily the "rear-end ailment I wrote about last time only lasted about 4 or 5 days. I was healthy and feeling good for about 2 days. when my right ear started to throb. The pain got much worse over the course of a day, and it became very painful just to chew. I biked 5 km. to Kwinell (where there is a small PC office) and procured some ear drops to cure my ear infection. The ear drops were great fun as I had to contract my neck sideways during language classes to keep them from dripping out of my ear.

Now, let me try to paint a picture of how awesome it was conversing with the locals; Mandinkas are NOTORIOUS mumblers, and I'm pretty sure everyone in Bambako has spent years in front of the mirror practicing speaking as quickly and quietly as they can with the least lip movement humanly possible, just to make their lanuage all the more difficult. Throw into the mix an American white guy whose idea of hard to understand is a Jewish woman from Long Island, and then take one ear out of commission due to the ear infection and you begin to get an idea of how hard tht first week was. Amazingly enough, either despite the bad ear, or perhaps because of it, I picked up and retained a good bit of lanuage during those 10 days in the village, and started to understand some of the mumbles. While the focus of village time is obviously language learning, we spent a couple evenings walking around with our instructer learning tree and crop identification, complete with the Mandinka names for all. We also prepared, weeded and dug our garden beds, but the PC was late with our seed delivery so they sat unused for a week.

We also took our fist "gele-gele" trip in the Gambia to to the market in Soma on Thursday. A gele-gele is basically a completely run-down, stripped, and often badly damaged van that has been jerry-rigged to uncomfortably fit between 24 - 26 unsuspecting people. These vehicles then careen down the pothole-holed road, often times tipped over at 30 degree angles (the first time it happened I swore we would tip over) but the drivers know their vehicles and the road VERY well and somehow managed to get us there and back without any mishaps.

Come Sunday, my ear was starting to feel better and I began to hear in stereo again, a huge relief. On Monday, we set out on our bikes for Tendabu Camp - about 10 km. from Bambako. Tendaba Camp is a tourist "safari camp" located on the River Gambia, complete with running water, electricity, and ... a SWIMMING POOL. I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited to have all those amentities; there is just no respite from the heat here, and a swiming pool during the day and fans at night sounded like a dream come true. Our bike ride from Bambako was fun, but, being in the middle of the day, also ridiculously hot.

Ben, Nick and I were the first to arrive, and followed the signs to the reception area, which also turned out to be the bar. It took our combined mental prowess about .2 seconds to realize that, "yes, that WAS a refrigerator behind the bar, and YES. those were beers in that fridge. We immediately ordered 3 of the long-necked green beauties, and savored all 12 ounces of refridgerated goodness. After our beers, we located our rooms, put on swimsuits and headed straight for the pool. It was like heaven on earth!! The cool waters took all my cares away. It felt lilke I was back in Florida, just getting home from a ride to the Forest and back.

The week at Tendaba was great, we had pretty decent, albeit oily, food, the classes were interestig and the star gazing from the dock at night was worldclass (especially being that I got to see a whole new half of the sky!!) There was only one problem...I got sick AGAIN. I felt fine the first couple of days, and was loving the pool, the bird walks and going to the garden and learning about the grafting, composting, organic fertilizers and pesticides, how to grow vegetables and fruits in the rainy vs. dry season, and so much more. However, by evening of the second or third day, I started feeling very dizzy, achy all over, and was having blurry vision. I make it through our fist language test with cold sweats and shivers from the fan, and then went straight to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night just SOAKED from head to toe and my temperature was 102.6 degress. Fun times. The fever and symptons were controlled pretty well by ibuprofen until 4:00 PM or so which meant I made it to most sessions. After 4 PM, I would usually just crash and sleep for a couple of hours before I was awakened by the sensation of being afloat in my own sweat. This would usualy prompt a quick shower, then I would crawl back to my wet bed and try to sleep again. My fever lasted all week, at one point, it made it up to 103.3 degrees. There was a nurse on hand, so I had good care, but she just kept telling me to take the vitamin I, since it was controlling the fever pretty well. My roommate, Ben, also got deathly ill towards the end of the week, on Friday and he ad I ended up staying an extra night at Tenada so we could do nothing but rest and try to get better. Ben had it much worse than I, however. He had diarrhea and was vomiting and his fever shot above 104.

On Sunday morning I was taken back to my village, while Ben was taken to the PC medical office in Svekunda. Despite the niceties of Tendaba, it was good to be back in Bambako, surrounded by the people, the culture and the language. I felt like I had lost a lot of language while at Tendaba, - probably cuz I sweated it out too - so getting back to speaking Mandinka was a good change. I still feel pretty weak, so I took it easy all day, just hanging out and chatting with my host family and friends. Lugging 80 lbs. of water back from the well was enough of a workout for me that day. I passed on dinner that night and tried to get to sleep early, but it somehow became very humid and hot in my house. I was sweating profusely just lying in bed, unabe to sleep. During this 3 hour period of sleeplessness I made up my mind on a couple of matters. The first was that air conditioning truly is a gift from God himself, never to be taken for granted, EVER. The second was that I'm going to build myself a solar power setup strong enough that I can power a fan every night while I sleep, no matter wat the cost (we just had a course on solar power at Tendaba,) and I think with a good dry-cell battery and an efficiant fan, I can make it work).

Around 10 PM I was fading in and out of sleep when I heard a very loud diesel engine on the road. I quickly realized that this noise was too loud to be on the road, it had to be right by our compound. Just then, I heard a familiar voice shouting in Mandinka at my family, and then in English, at me. It was John, the PC driver. It turned out that another volunteer had wreaked his bike pretty badly - he went over his handlebars onto his head - and they needed someone with medical training to check him out, clean his wounds and monitor him throughout the night before he went to to PC medical office in Serekenda the next day, or if merited, make the call to send him to the med office that night. So, I grabbed a few things and hopped in the back of the Land Cruiser to head back to Tendaba, of all places. There is a unmanned "medical office" there with supplies and other necessties for exactly this purpose. The injured volunteer was up front and since it was dark, I couldn't see anything. John decided that it would be best for all concerned if he drove the Land Criser like Mario Adnretti at Indy, which given the condition of the road meant that I could barely breathe between the massive jolts, bumps, and catching air - let alone hold a conversation. I kept thinking about how they stressed safe and cautious and gentle driving in the EMT course, especially when you had a patient on board. This was exactly the opposte. We arrived in Tendaba in one piece and in good time, and none of us were worse for the wear.

Upon arrival, I got my first good look at the other volunteer - he was cut up pretty badly, so we took him into the PC med office. He had a couple deep lacerations around his left eye and under his nose, multiple abrasions on his left cheek and neck, and 2 puncture wounds on his upper and lower lip. He had abrasions on his shoulders, both arms, hands and legs. All the bleeding had been controlled, I examined him for signs of a head injury, but other than lightheadedness, he checked out. I cleaned and dressind his wounds, and gave hime some Ibuprofen for th e pain. By this time it was past midnight so the patient just got ready for bed while I talked to the PC med office. I gave them a rundown of his injuries and said it would be best to get him there in the morning, since nighttime driving is a pretty sketchy affair around here. On an interesting note, the nurse told me to make sure I ordered a beer or drink if I wanted one and that medical would pay for it!!! Being that I was still feeling sick, I declined. I passed the night in fan-cooled bliss, waking up every few hours to check on my patient. All was well and in the morning, after re-dressig his wounds and eating OMELETTES!!! for breaksfast, I was driven back to my village and my patient was taken to the med office in Svekenda. So, my first use of the EMT training went very well. I felt totally confident and comfortable and even got a couple of good meals and a fan-cooled sleep to boot.

Being back in the village has been really nice. I'm starting to feel at home here, and I've made quite a few friends, especially Bakary - who works as a carpenter in Bambako. His Mandinka is excellent and his English is preety good too, so he and I get along great, talking about the differences between America and Gambia. Tomorrow, Thursday, I leave Bambako again to visit a current 2nd year volunteer at her site to see what life as a volunteer is really like. After 3 days, all the trainess meet in Bansang for some technical fieldtrips in the eastern part of the country. Should be a lot of fun.


Now for the really good news: While we were at Tendaba, they told us all of us where our volunteer sites are going to be! This is the first time that they've told voluteers so early in the training, usually we would't find out until week 8 or so. I will be in JALI for the next two years!! Here is what I think I know about Jali. It's a small village (500 people I think) on the South Bank, in the western third of the country. Geographically speaking, I'm not too far from the bigger cities on the coast, about 60km as the bird flies. Logistically, however, I'm the second most isolated volunteer. The most isolated volunteer, incidentally, will be closest neighbor and he is about 15km up the trail. When we talk about most isolated volunteer, it means distance from the road. In Gambia, there are essentially 2 roads, the North Bank road and the much sketchier South Bank road. As it stands, Jali is 25km. from the South Bank road - which means lots of biking for me! All this isolation is for a very good reason: Jali basically abutts Kiang West National Park, which is one of the largest protected areas in the country and has the biggest and most diverse animal population of all Gambia's parks. Some of the animals in Kiang are: baboons, colobus monkeys, bushbucks, roans, sitatungas (sp?), leopards, hyenas, manakes, dolphins, crocodiles, and over 300 species of birds!! The rest of the area around Jali is forested and supposedly there are great trails for wildlife viewing and biking. It sounds like there is an endless variety of projects I can tackle in Jali and the surrounding villages, from beekeeping to agroforestry -----? to solar power workshops. And, to top everythinkg off, the top medical research facility in the country, the MRC, is only 8 km. away!! It's run by 2 doctors from the UK and a doc from Bangldesh. I've been told they are really nice, and since I'll be working there - I'll have internet access! I also know that the docs like to invite PCVs over for homecooked meals, and sometimes it's possible to score a place in one of the guest houses for a night (these have A/C, runing water, etc.) I'm also only a 6 hour gele-gele ride from the ocean, so I'll be hitting that up from time to time.

Basiclly the site sounds absolutely perfect for me: medical and environment job opportunities, close to Nat'l Park, lots of biking and a good sized village, relatively close to the beach, and possible access to internet and running water. I am very excited. Now, if only I could become fluent in Mandinka in the next 6 weeks........