Lean Living in the Lowlands of The Gambia

Leaving The Gambia...

2008-11-28T13:17:00.003Z

So we leave The Gambia tomorrow for Dakar to catch our 3am flight to JFK. This alone is mind-blowing and rather unsettling, being that I've lived here for the past 2 years - the longest I've been in one place since High School.

Unfortunately, tomorrow is Set Settal (Clean the Nation Day) in The Gambia, which means that no transport is allowed to run between 9am and 1pm. This is rather problematic, since we now have to cross the River Gambia via a ferry and reach the Senegalese border before 9am so we can make it to Dakar on time. Only 2 ferries will cross the river tomorrow. The first ferry crosses at 7am, and the crossing takes an hour and 20 minutes, meaning that we'll arrive on the North Bank at 8:20, giving us 40 minutes to reach the border. Not possible.

Our boss is letting us borrow his car (which has diplomatic plates and can therefore travel even during Set Settal) and a Peace Corps driver has volunteered to drive us from the PC hostel, cross the ferry, and to the border, providing that we pay for gas, oil, and the cost of the ferry, etc. So as long we catch one of the 2 ferries, we'll be fine. However, there's likely to be a huge line, so we're leaving the Peace Corps hostel at 4am tomorrow morn to make sure we get on the first ferry. If we miss that first ferry and can't catch the second one, we won't be able to make it to the border in time before 9am, and will have to wait til 1pm to start our journey - which is risky because the trip to Dakar sometimes takes more than 12 hours...

I absolutely cannot miss that flight - I paid for the damn thing twice!! Good thing we all have safe travel Jujus...

Happy Thanksgiving!!

2007-11-26T21:30:00.000Z

So in the end I decided not to remain in South Africa, obviously. Although I have to admit it was a pretty attractive option at the time.

I made it back to the Gambia in one piece, despite a little detour on the way home to Cape Verde due to the Dakar airport being closed from a "strike." It must not have been much of a strike, because the airport re-opened after about 2 hours, and we were back on our way to Dakar.

Unfortunately for me, I was passed out during the announcement that we would be bypassing Dakar. I woke up at about 2am or so, and looked up at the screen to see the plane icon out in the middle of the Atlantic, and freaked out because I thought I had failed to get off at Dakar and was now on my way back to the US!!

As the title of the entry suggests, I'm back down in Kombo now, celebrating a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend!! We kicked everything off on Wednesday night with a belated karaoke birthday party, and continued the fun at a massive grilling party at Rodney's on Thursday. Our goal was to grill 60 full chickens in one day for the Thanksgiving Dinner that we were to have at the Ambassador's Residence. It was a pretty ridiculous affair - the grill was really HOT and really SMOKEY, and we had to quarter all the chickens, so all told Beth, Nick, and I grilled up 240 pieces! But we managed to finish the last one with about 10 minutes to spare! The other crew baked 20 pumpkin pies.

The actual Thanksgiving dinner was fantastic. All the Embassy staff and Peace Corps were invited to the Ambassador's Residence, which is a gorgeous mansion that sits on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic. The food was fantastic, and to top the whole night off, we had the prettiest sunset I've seen in the Gambia (see above). Perfect.

Friday we had a ceremony to celebrate Peace Corps' 40th Anniversary in the Gambia. It was a really well done affair, with some great speeches that were both inspirational and touching. It was nice to be appreciated, and to be reminded that we are actually doing good work here, and making a difference in people's lives. It's easy to forget that sometimes...

That night we had a party at the Julbrew factory (with unlimited free beer - Thanks Mr. Mauss!!) to celebrate the occasion. And we wound everything down with the All Volunteer meeting on Saturday. It was a great, American style holiday weekend. Exactly what we all needed. Wish I could have been there with you all, but this wasn't a bad substitute. I'll miss you at Christmas.

-Rob

Not Coming Back.

2007-11-11T13:59:00.000Z

Y'ello!!

Just wanted to let you all know that I will not be returning to The Gambia, as I have decided to remain here in South Africa and 'volunteer' to be on safari for the next year...

Granted, after spending the past year in the Gambia, any halfway decent place would seem like paradise in comparison, but still, I'm completely blown away by the beauty here. The variety of landscapes and terrain is unbelievable; rolling hills, jagged mountains, beautifully sculpted beaches and bays, sprawling grasslands, and pretty much everything in between. It's like a smaller, African version of the US, just with more beauty packed into a smaller area.

We're now at the safari place just outside Kruger in the northeast corner of the country. It's our second day and we've been on two game drives and one bush walk. The lodge itself is beautiful - unbelievably nice, and I can't think of anything further removed from my hut in village. Not sure how I'm going to be able to go back after this... The animal viewing has been absolutely ridiculous. Dad and I were thinking we'd be looking through binoculars at animals a couple hundred yards away; but literally 20 minutes into our first drive yesterday evening we spot a full-grown male leopard squatting under a tree maybe 20 feet away. And as we watch, he leaps up to chase an impala he had been stalking. Crazy. And a bit later we turn the corner and come face to face with a bull elephant in the middle of the path. It is surreal to be that close to something so big. The animals don't seem to care that we're literally in their face - supposedly the ranger can tell when the animal is irritated, and then we leave. But we've seen giraffes, cape buffaloes, kudus, nyalas, impalas, bushbucks, waterbucks, wildebeast, a hippo, etc etc. No lions yet, but we've got lots more time. The bush environment and flora is very similar to the Gambia, makes you realize what it could be like there if people hadn't killed all the animals...

Cape Town was equally impressive - it might be the first big city I actually could see myself living in. It had the small city feel to it, mainly because most of the people (ie poor blacks) live outside the main city in basically shantytowns, but it means the downtown is small and walkable (and i'm sure expensive as hell). If you can brave the freezing water, the beaches are gorgeous, and the backdrop - with Table Mountain essentially rising out of the ocean - is phenomenal. And the whole Cape peninsula is filled with amazing scenery. As you drive along the coast, it seems every turn opens into another white sand beach strewn with granite boulders and backed by verdant hills. We ate very well - the food in Cape Town was amazing - tons of variety, and I'm trying to make up for the past year of white rice and oil. Weather was perfect too - exactly what I needed - nice and cool, breezy, dry - nice jeans and fleece weather. I had forgotten how nice it was to have to dress warmly and be cold. Oh, and we managaed to survive Dad having to drive on the left side of the road for 5 days - we had some close calls, but nothing too scary.

Hopefully that's enough to convince you to leave your jobs and homes to come here... if you need more encouragement, just let me know. I'll be waiting for you at the airport.

Peace,
Rob

Letter to Maggie

2007-08-08T21:24:00.000Z

This letter from Rob was written in mid-June and arrived nearly one month later in Hawaii...

Greetings from your long-lost brother!! My writing (or lack thereof) has been incredibly appalling as of late. It's funny; they say that you'll have all this free time to read and write letters in the Peace Corps, but I've found I'm just as busy here as I was back in the US. Granted, it’s most likely a function of my wanting to be busy, but still… To be honest, if I didn’t keep myself constantly busy, I would probably lose my mind over here. Besides work, there’s not a whole lot to do for entertainment, so I’ve been pouring myself into my work- not only to keep busy, but because I find it very interesting and satisfying. I also think there’s a lot of potential to improve the lives of the people here- if only you can get them to stop drinking ataya and do something…

Life here has been overall very good; I’ve got a great host family, my village is in a good location with some motivated people and interesting surroundings, I’ve made some really good friends among the Peace Corps volunteers in country, and I’ve learned a TON. In terms of self-awareness and realization of my strengths and weaknesses and personality alone, my experience here has been invaluable. This is not to say I like everything I’ve seen in myself, if anything, I almost feel like I’ve become a less compassionate person – or at least I’ve come to understand the realities of life in most of the world. Life here in the Gambia has given me true perspective, and now the dreamer/optimist in me has been partially replaced by the realist. As you’ve pointed out numerous times, I suppose I stand to gain quite a bit by this change – we’ll see..

I wish I could give you a brief, broad-sweeping picture of my life here, but that would be impossible. The best I can hope for is that you’re reading the blog, which should give you a general idea of what I’ve been up to. To really get a feel for the Gambia, and Africa in general, you’ll have to come visit, which I really hope you’ll do. I think you’d really enjoy learning a whole new way of life, and being truly immersed in a different culture.

The rainy season officially started on the 13th of June with a light shower at night, accompanied by one of the most amazing lightning storms I’ve ever seen: chain lightning arcing across the ground-sky interface, encompassing my whole field of vision. For a brief second, it became almost daylight, then total darkness. Very cool. I stood out in the rain until well past midnight, watching the display, only to come inside my house to find my new thatch roof leaking – right over my bed. Luckily it was only a light rain, so I didn’t get too wet, but I’ll need to do some repair work before the real rains come. Unfortunately, the rains brought the humidity with them, so not only is it 105-110 degrees during the day, but the air is almost dripping with moisture. I am literally covered in my own sweat from when I wake up till sunset. Granted, I’ve discovered my tolerance for heat is rather lacking, (my body is much better adapted to cold weather – I belong in the mountains), but it really fucking sucks on some days. When the rains finally do become consistent, it’ll cool down – or so they say – but the past month has been pretty heinous. Suffice it to say that you do NOT want to come here from April to October. I have dreams of cold beer, mountain streams, powder days at Alta, wool hats, and the crisp air of fall… I can’t even bring myself to look at the Powder Magazine I have in my house. I think my next destination in the journey of life will be Alaska, New Zealand, Greenland, or Antarctica. And now that this wonderful thing called Global Warming is screwing everything up, I think the lowest latitude location I would even consider buying land at lies somewhere around Montana! Okay, the heat isn’t all that bad here, I can go swimming in the river on really hot days, and taking 2-3 bucket baths a day helps a lot, but some days it’s all I can think about.

The drama in my personal life thus far is enough to fill a small book, but I’ll give you a quick rundown, since it’s pretty entertaining and rather amusing. It all started after Christmas when Sharon and I began seriously dating. Now, this was my first mistake: serious relationships and Peace Corps service in West Africa go together about as well as a hangover and a 6 hour bush taxi ride. Being that there isn’t really a good place to meet up in Kombo, and the fact that I was officially on 3 month challenge, (not allowed to leave site) we wanted to meet up in our respective villages. Now, in this culture, it’s highly inappropriate for a man and a woman to sleep in the same house together if they are not married. Naturally, this was going to present a problem when she came to visit. So, I decided to tell my village that she was my wife. Unfortunately, I had already told the village a month prior that I wasn’t married, and in fact, did not want a wife for the time being. However, the cultural expectation here is that a man of my age would have a wife, so for me to come back from Kombo one day and tell my family that I was married, wasn’t a problem at all. The whole thing started out as a one small lie, but it kept growing and growing: they asked about the ceremony, where it was, (I said it was in a church in Fajara – praying that there was really a church there!) what we ate, and all about how we met, even going so far as to tell them that both our parents approved the marriage. Keep in mind that all this effort was just to have her come visit me in village. When she finally did come, several weeks later, it was absurd. There was lots of screaming, dancing, drumming on pots and pans, and a never-ending string of people coming to see the Toubab’s wife! All we wanted was to be left alone, but that would have been culturally inappropriate, so we walked through the whole village, greeting all the compounds. And whenever we were in the house hanging out, a small boy or girl would invariably come by, or my family would ask us to come out and chat. After about 5 days, she left and returned back to site. This spawned another endless series of questions that continues to this day: “where is your wife?” “where’s your baby?” “is your wife pregnant yet?” And when I would say no, they would look at me with a very confused expression and ask “why not?” I told them we weren’t ready yet, and they just shook their heads in disbelief.

Now, this would present nothing more than a minor annoyance in my daily life if we hadn’t broken up about 3 weeks ago. I have to make up stories about why she’s not here with me. This could be something I could easily deal with, but I’ve kinda started dating another Peace Corps volunteer… As you can imagine, if she came to visit and my whole village was asking where my wife was, it probably wouldn’t go over too well with her, not to mention the cultural taboos that I would be breaking! I seriously thought about telling my village that she died, but then I’d have to go into mourning and all that, not to mention that she’s coming next month for mail run. Problematic either way. I finally settled on the divorce option – my village already thinks I’m crazy, so they’ll chalk up my rapid marriage and divorce as just another crazy Toubab thing. Nonetheless, I was still very nervous about telling yet another lie, especially to the headmaster and teachers at the school, who are educated and worldly enough to know something was up. So, 2 days ago, I very nervously told the headmaster the whole story – that she wasn’t my wife, and why I had lied to everyone (in the interest of cultural sensitivity). He took the news amazingly well, and suggested I should simply say that we were too busy to see each other. Hesitatingly, I then told him about my desire to possibly have another girl come visit. He laughed, said he understood, then we discussed all sorts of stories I could weave about why we were divorced!! He suggested saying either our parents or the Peace Corps didn’t approve of the marriage, saying it was just too difficult to be together here. I’m going to Kombo in a couple weeks, and when I come back I’ll tell my family that we divorced. I’m not sure what excuse to use yet, but I have lots of time. And then, when and if Beth decides to visit, I’ll simply say that she is only my friend. Something I should have done if the first place. I no longer care what the village thinks of my actions- part of why I’m here is to educate Gambians about American culture, and dating is part of that. Ah, drama, can’t even escape it in a small village in West Africa.

Despite the oppressive heat and drama, life continues to go well. I’ve been helping Lamin, my host father, to prepare his fields for planting when the real rains finally come. I brought back a bunch of fruit tree seedlings from Kombo to plant in my garden, backyard, and around the compound, so we’ve been busy digging transplant holes, constructing tree guards for the seedlings, and transplanting all of the trees. The only fruit trees my family has are mangos, which all fruit at the same time, producing a bunch of mangos for a month, then nothing for the rest of the year. I’ve planted a jackfruit, 3 avocados, 2 Indian blackberry, 1 almond, and 4 citrus trees. Once they are all producing fruit, my family should be able to eat fruit year round. Another project I have planned for the rainy season is to work with Lamin and a few other farmers to introduce the “three sisters” method of agriculture that the Native Americans have been practicing for thousands of years. Instead of planting only rows of corn in a field, one plants a climbing pole bean next to the corn stalks, which then climb up the corn stalks, and provides much needed nitrogen to the corn; then you plant squash between the rows of corn, which spreads across the ground with its long vines, blocking out weeds and retaining soil moisture. Thus, the symbiotic relationship benefits all three crops, and the farmer will not only have increased yield for each crop, but will produce 3 times as much food on the same amount of land. Alright, that’s enough geeking out over work for one letter- you can see the other projects for yourself when you come!

Okay, I’m running out of room… remember, as long as you can sit back and say, with great satisfaction, “life is good!” then you are happy, and in the end that’s all that matters. Your happiness will be sure to rub off on other people, and in your own small way, make their lives that much better.

2007-07-17T22:28:00.000Z

Sunday, May 20th, 2007 (arrived June 22nd)
The first of the rains arrived today! Albeit, a very light, short rain, but nonetheless, the rainy season has arrived! Unfortunately, the rains also brought the humidity – sweat is dripping down my body as I simply sit at the desk. The Gambians don’t seem to mind however. I’m pretty sure they have genetic tolerances to heat that those of us from European descent do not. The rain is early this year – which promises to be a good thing for the farmers, as the rainy season’s been getting shorter over the past few decades. It remains to be seen however, whether or not this is just a freak incident, or if more will follow. Typically, the rains don’t start until the 2nd or 3rd of June, and don’t really get cracking until mid’June, when the planting usually takes place.

As I’m sure you’ve realized by now from our conversations, life here is an unending roller coaster of emotions: one hour you’re having a great time, the next: you’re hating everything about this God-forsaken semi-desert strip of sand along a muddy river. I expected these ups and downs to phase out as I settled in to life here, but I’ve come to realize there isn’t ever going to be any true “settling in”. This is due, mostly, to my own choosing – I’ve found I don’t really enjoy simply sitting around “chatting”, especially on the backless wooden benches everyone sits on here. (I’ve been meaning to ask other volunteers how they sit on those things, as they absolutely kill my lower back if I have to sit for more than 15 – 20 minutes). Consequently, I don’t really fit into the culture here – I’m either always working, riding my bike to other villages for work, fiddling with my garden and tree nursery (Page 2) or reading. As I said, this is by my choice mainly, and I’m fully comfortable with my lifestyle, it’s just not what I had pictured the romanticized “living among the locals”, life to be like. This is not to say I don’t interact with people – on the contrary – I can’t ESCAPE them, but my leisure time I view as my own, and it’s spent doing my own thing. I think people in my community have come to understand me, however, and I no longer have 20 little pairs of eyes watching me whenever I work in my garden – thank God.
( From Page 3 of letter)
Actually, now that I’ve managed to unload all that on you (and as a result, probably worry you to death1), I feel much better. The temperature has also dropped a little bit (maybe it will rain again and I’ve found that my moods are inversely related to the temperature. High temperatures equal angry, depressed Rob, cool temperatures equal happy Rob. Never fails. I still haven’t a clue as to what I want to do after Peace Corps is over – there has been no magical inspirational moment yet, and I’ve stopped holding my breath for it. What I do know is that I will NEVER, under any circumstances, live in a hot climate. I simply cannot stand the heat – especially at night. I think my body is naturally hotter than most people’s, as it seems to bother me more than most. Other than friends and family, cold is what I miss most. I now no longer think twice about walking around the compound with my shirt off. My staple dress is a pair of flip-flops (now that my Charo” are out of commission) and one of the 2 pairs of nylon Columbia shorts I got from you Dad. Nothing else. My clothes are constantly dirt covered and culturally inappropriate, but I REFUSE to wear anything else – too DAMN HOT!!!

Whenever I think of something that I might like to do after Peace Corps is over, I write it down on a piece of paper for later perusing. So far I have: going back to school for a Master’s or PhD, maybe in environmental issues, maybe in alternative energy, ie solar power, etc, the Earth Institute at Columbia University: going back to Alta Lodge: getting an around the world plane ticket: a biking/climbing trip across Africa or Asia: med school: some sort of skiing adventure during the winter followed by the summer working in Antarica (to make up for my missed winter) : and who knows what else…..
(Page 4 of letter
I finished TaiPan last night, (the semi-sequel to Shogun) what a good read! It kept me up too late many nights and helped me get through the brutal 3 – 5:00 PM sweat fest that inevitably comes every day. The BBC on my short wave has also been an invaluable companion; especially while I’m cooking breakfast or working in the garden, or filling polypots. I’m stuck in a remote village in West Africa and I am more knowledgeable in world affairs than when I had the Internet, TV, radio, and newspapers.

Speaking of breakfast – mango season is in full swing! I eat at least 3 a day, and they are constantly falling to the ground with dull thuds, sparking a race between goat, sheep and child as to who can reach it first. I think 15 must fall every day in our compound alone! Due to all the mango eating, the last thing I want in the morning is a sugary bowl of oatmeal (and because I’d been eating it every day for 5 months) so I’ve been cooking eggs every morning that I buy from the poultry project at the school. The eggs are never more than a day old, the tomatoes are from my garden, and the onions and amaranth ( like a tropical spinach) are from local gardens. It makes quite the tasty breakfast – with a cup of tea, of course.
(Page 5 of letter)
My work and projects continue to go exceptionally well, and I am ever thankful that I have so much to do – it makes the days much more enjoyable, and they pass quickly. Time here passes differently than at home, the days go by slowly ( sorry for the sloppy writing, my cat is rubbing itself on my pen). But the weeks and months seem to fly by: it’s hard to believe I have almost been here 8 months! Tree nurseries and tree planting have been my main focus of work – specifically with the tree nursery competition at area schools. We’ve planted 1000 trees at the Jali school alone, and I’m working closely with 2 other schools in my area. I also helped start a nursery for livestock fodder-producing trees at ITC – the livestock center in Keneba, and have my own personal tree nursery for fruit trees and other popular species to plant in compounds. Lamin and I are going to plant cashews around the perimeter of peanut and coos field to act as a windbreak (protecting the soil from wind erosion) and to produce the nuts, which he can then sell – for considerably more than peanuts. We’re also doing the same around the compound. In the middle, interplanted with the crops we’re going to plant Acacia albida, which is an excellent tree for soil enrichment, in that it drops its leaves right before the rains and they act as fertilizer (since it’s a nitrogen – fixing tree). The pods also are fantastic for livestock fodder – which adds more fertilizer since the animals sit and wait under the tree for the pods to fall, all the while depositing manure under the tree. We’re e also going to graft a few different mango varieties onto his trees so their mango season can be extended, and I’m going to transplant 2 avocados and a jackfruit into the compound as well. Assuming all goes well, they should have fresh fruit for half the year!
(Page 6 of letter)
I’ve laid the necessary political and paper groundwork for the village to start a woodlot in an abandoned field near the village, so the women won’t have to walk 5 km. To get firewood. The Department of Forestry is going to supply the fencing materials and seedlings, and we already got the seeds to be planted. Not it’s up to the community to do the work they said they would….

I’m still trying to write a grant seeking funding to install wells in the women’s garden in Jali. Why the garden was ever built without wells is beyond my comprehension, but it
is essentially a useless, fenced in area now. Unfortunately , the man I’m writing the grant with, is never in village, so the work hasn’t progressed very much.

I spend a considerable amount of time at the school in Jali, working in the nursery and discussing other possible projects. We secured funding to expand the poultry project there to 100 laying hens, which will provide even more money for the school. We’re also going to plant a mango, cashew and citrus orchard in the school‘s abandoned field to generate even more income. Luckily, the headmaster at the school is an incredibly motivated, forward thinking man and without him all these projects would fail. It’s very refreshing to meet such a Gambian – most simply aren’t educated enough or don’t see the point of working to improve the community.

I’ve also got seven live-fencing projects established which will be out planted during the rains. The idea is essentially to plant a large number of closely spaced thorny bushes around the area to be fenced, eliminating the need to cut down trees for fencing. We’re trying a couple different species to see which will work best.
(Page 7 of letter)
My garden, despite a myriad number of setbacks is coming along rather well. I harvested a bunch of cucumbers in April and the tomatoes are now finally ready. Granted, the amount of work I put into it, in NO WAY was reproduced in harvest amounts, but I’ve enjoyed the work immensely. I’ve begun work on my rainy season nursery and will have butternut squash, tomato, pumpkin, okra, bitter tomatoes, eggplant, watermelon, cassava, green pepper, and zucchini. Well, at least that’s the plan. I’m hoping all the termites, ants, lizards and birds that have wreaked havoc on my garden have plenty other things to eat when the rains come, and will therefore leave my poor garden alone! I’ve also got mango, mandarin oranges, pomegranate, jackfruit, pigeon pea, moringa, and Indian blackberry trees planted for food and fruit production. Within 3 – 5 years my family should be living it up!
Monday, May 21
So, my mood has completely reversed since yesterday, ha ha, and life is good again! Today was a lot cooler, probably putting me in a better mood as opposed to the stickiness of yesterday. This morning I had a nice ride to Tankular to visit the Chief of Kiang West to get his signature for our village’s wood lot project. It’s actually a pretty scenic bike ride through the forest, takes about 40 min. (15 km) and I had the pleasure of watching as an immense wart hog trampled through the undergrowth upon my arrival. Which reminds me – yesterday morning I went to the forest to cut poles to make a new garden door (termites ate my old one). Along the way, I spooked a HUGE troop of baboons that were hanging out along the path. It was like watching a stampede of monkeys – the speed with which they hurtle along the ground is amazing! There must have been at least 200+ baboons in the trees and a couple of the big ones stared me down until I was about 100 feet away. (Page 8 of letter)
Tuesday May 22nd, 2007 – 8:30 AM
Well, the mail run truck is probably going to show up in the next couple of hours, so I want to finish this letter before they come. Your letters are usually filled with a bunch of questions about life here, so I’ll try to answer them now.

My village is, as far as I can tell, 100% Muslim and yes, I’ve had many people ask me to convert to the Muslim faith – every day almost, I am asked to come to the mosque and pray. They don’t have the same ideas of religious tolerance here – in their eyes, if one isn’t Muslim, then they’re wrong.

The moringa tree does produce edible leaves that are very nutritious, and can be dried and pounded into powder form to be sprinkled on top of food. In fact, Nick and I plan to work with the National Nutrition Agency to promote the use of moringa leaves in this area. The seeds also have uses in traditional medicine.

Peanuts are planted every year – and it used to be a huge export crop from the Gambia, but the global price of peanuts crashed some 20 years ago, leading to the poverty the Gambia now faces. It’s still exported but the farmers no longer get much money for it.
(Page 9 of letter
They do use a few spices in their cooking, mainly salt, MSG, pepper, onions and oil. The sauce and rice combination is very similar to Indian food; it just doesn’t taste nearly as good. I don’t think they can afford any other spices really. They are definitely open to other tastes, on the few times I’ve given them part of my breakfast, they’re enjoyed it, but I still think they prefer their own cooking. There are some fat Gambians, - but they’re almost always, well off - you can tell by their clothes, or the fact that they’re driving a vehicle. Obviously, the Gambians are in real trouble if they ever become sedentary, because their diet is very unhealthy – all the salt, MSG and oil.

My family definitely thinks yoga is a bit strange – they usually watch me while I do it, so I’ve started to close my curtain to block out the stares.

Jali’s size. I really don’t know because I get very conflicting answers, 1000 – 3000, but I think 3000 is way too high. There are about 60 family compounds, and 5 male surnames: predominantly Drammeh (me) Samatee, Diba, Dafee, and Dabo are also somewhat popular. Men marry between 25-30, usually, women 13 – 18 in village, older in Kombo.

I’m not sure what they teach in the schools, I don’t usually spend much time in the classrooms at school, but I do know that little knowledge is retained, due to their teaching methods, which involve writing a long paragraph on the board and having the students copy it down. It’s in English, usually, so many don’t understand what they’re even writing. (Page 10)

My garden produced about 20 cucumbers, and the tomatoes are now finally ready – I pick 5 – 6 a day to eat. The pumpkins are growing nicely, and they should be ready soon. I harvested my moringa trees a couple times and Bintou, (one of Rob’s two mother’s) made a tasty green sauce with it. The green ? sauce is my favorite, and can be made with any leafy green: moringa, baobab, or amaranth, and is mixed with pounded peanut, onion, hot pepper, MSG, and palm oil. But, yeah, the garden harvest was pretty sad.

The Gambians don’t eat vegetables in the same way we do – they are all pounded and mixed together to form a sauce, so there’s never the enjoyment of tasting the different flavors and textures. Onion is the most common, by far, followed by sorrel leaves, amaranth leaves, okra, tomatoes, baobab leaves, pumpkin, etc. They don’t use many vegetables however, mostly oil, rice and peanuts and fish (if we’re lucky). Hopefully the fishing rod will come today and we can start eating lots of good fish!!! The fish in village gets trucked in every day all the way from Kombo, and while tasty, is small and very bony.

It sounds like things are going very well back at home: bridge, golf, and fishing – Dad, congrats on winning the tournament!! That’s really impressive to have won at all 3 clubs. Thanks for all your notes of encouragement – they help a lot, especially when I’m feeling down. I’m glad you have had a lot of time to spend with the family – it’s definitely what I miss the most – and I can’t wait for you all to come visit!!

Note from Barb ----Rob’s address is:
Rob Tidmore, PCV
US Peace Corps
PO Box 582
Banjul, The Gambia
West Africa
The PC truck delivers the mail the 4th Friday of every month. Letters are best to receive, they arrive in country in around 10 days and will be held for the truck. . An air mail letter costs about $1.00. He can get e mail, but please limit it to personal correspondence, because he has a limited amount of time he can use the computer when he is in Banjul. The e mail address is robtidmore@alum.bucknell.edu

Best Weekend Ever!

2007-06-07T02:00:00.001Z

I head back to village tomorrow after what were six incredible days of good living in Kombo.

The trip down to Kombo started off rather rough Friday morning, with a 4:20am wake up from the school's night watchman who had come to inform me that the gele-gele was early, and if I wanted to catch it, I had better hurry to the pick-up. It took me about 5 minutes to even realize what was going on, and that this man actually did have a reason to be waking me up at such an ungodly hour.

The early departure paid off with an early arrival in Kombo, giving me plenty of time to buy yet another pair of sandals to replace the THREE pairs that I had broken in the past three weeks. Needless to say, my feet are a bit sore now, and I still haven't found a decent pair of sandals here. Nick and I started off our weekend with style - beers in hand before noon, followed an afternoon lounging in hammocks at the beach. Friday
night we had drinks at Fausto's beautiful apartment (complete with marble tiles, granite counter tops, leather couches, plasma TV, surround sound, and nice artwork - almost as nice as my hut), and then went out bar hopping and dancing till 5:30am.

After the 'morning fog' was chased away by a couple cups of coffee, we walked to the beach to meet up with another friend, Tom, who had recently purchased a sailboat despite his lack of sailing knowledge. He offered to let us take it out before he himself had even set sail on it, and even gave us a ride to the marina in his sweet, old, canvas top Land Rover Discovery. Now, keep in mind that our typical transportation involves taking 3 different cramped, hot geles to get to the same spot, and you get an idea of how nice this was. After Tom introduced us to the harbor master, he wished us luck and drove back to spend time with his visiting friends, but not before going to buy us gas for the outboard. Unbelievably nice guy. We spent about half an hour getting the boat all ready to set sail while waiting for Fausto to arrive with the beer and fishing rods. While rigging the boat, we ran into three other toubabs in the marina, and ended up chatting with them over lunch.

Catching Up...

2007-05-01T00:18:00.000Z

Well, IST (that's In Service Training) is officially over, and as usual, it was about half useful. The highlight was definitely getting to go out and harvest honey. We didn't use a smoker (as a little experiment) so the air all around us was filled with swarming bees, it was rather eerie. It sounded like they were all inside the suit (which they weren't of course, but it took a bit of getting used to). We had another good session on fruit tree grafting where we learned the tongue and groove method (for mango, avocado, cola, etc) and the T-budding method (for citrus). Introducing grafted varieties in the villages has the potential to extend the fruiting season by several months, which would dramatically improve nutrition. Alex, Matt, Cam, and I are trying out a bunch of really interesting trees and plants at site. I'm taking Indian Blackberry, Avocado, and Almond seedlings back to site with me, as well as 2 ducks (for a small-scale breeding program that I want to introduce to my family) and a cat (more of a rat and lizard killing machine to rid my garden of the pests). Should make for a very interesting gele ride back to site. I have no idea how I'm going to transport all of it! I collected some good seeds as well to take back and plant - improved cassava, almond, Acacia albida, some new beans, pigeon peas, acacia nilotica, mesquite, and a bunch of others. I'm excited to get back and get everything planted, should keep me entertained for a couple months at least!

Preserving My Sanity with Work

2007-04-27T01:17:00.000Z

I've been really, really busy in village, which is a good thing. I think, honestly, that it's the only thing that keeps me sane. If I had time to sit and think, I would start to wax sentimental and dwell on all the things I'm missing here - friends, family, good food, skiing, cool weather, interesting conversations, etc. You get the basic idea. Fortunately, I LOVE my work. I am absolutely fascinated by all the different uses for trees, and the myriad advantages that trees bring to the people and the surrounding environment. It's also very fulfilling to think that the trees I plant, and the changes they make to the local environment and the benefit to the villagers will be around for hundreds of years (assuming no bush fires kill them, that is)... I don't know how well I've described my work on the blog, so I'll give you a basic summary here. I'm officially an AgroForestry volunteer, which essentially involves incorporating trees and bushes into agriculture and animal husbandry practices to make the whole process more sustainable and provide better crop yields with minimal damage to the surrounding environment. Sorry, that was quite the unintended mouthful. Basically I work with farmers to plant trees in their fields and in the village to protect the soil from erosion, provide essential nutrients to the soil, to help alleviate malnourishment, and to generate income for what would otherwise be subsistence farmers.

My projects are extremely varied, and provide a good mix of good old-fashioned, gettin' your hands-dirty manual labor, advisory roles, education of the local people, and working with bigger NGOs. I've been incredibly fortunate to have such an abundance of work at my site. It seems the vast majority of volunteers struggle with finding projects to work on. Whether my good fortune is a function of my location or simply my burning desire to work as hard as possible, is yet unknown. I get real pleasure just gazing over my massive garden, and watching the plants and trees grow and thrive, despite all the challenges they face. To be honest, the West African Sahel (the semi-desert area of Africa south of the Sahara) is a hell of place to be practicing any sort of intensive agricultural practices. The soil is completely degraded (it's little more than sand), the area receives about 3 months of rain, the pests are voracious and impossible to kill with organic practices, and things are only getting worse with increasing deforestation and overpopulation pressures.

Daily Life in Jali

2007-03-27T04:34:00.000Z

Dear Mom & Dad, Feb 25th, 2007 (arrived March 2nd)

Well, hopefully by now, you’ve received all 52 pages of that last monstrosity. Not entirely sure what came over me, but as you have seen I got a little carried away in my retelling. Who knows, maybe I’ll have to make a book about this experience when I get back- put together from the many pages of letters I think you’re going to receive over the next 2 years.

So, now almost 7 weeks have gone by since I finished training, and it feels like I just got here. I wonder if time will always pass this quickly, or if this is just a function of my recent arrival and attempts at adjusting to Jali. Things continue to go very well, although this does vary considerably from one hour to another. I’m really enjoying my freedom here, I can essentially do whatever I want, but as you know, in my case this involves working- a lot. I’ve got more projects then I know what to do with, and every day it seems I agree to help one more person build a Mud stove or start a dry season garden. Speaking of which, my garden is essentially finished, all I need to do is transplant my nursery when the time comes, and sow the rest of the bed after I return from my visit to Sharon.

My house now is about completed, I still have some shelving to build and some maps to hang, and a desk I want to build, but you won’t even recognize it from the first set of pictures, when you come to visit. I’ve painted it, put up curtains and door-hangings, I’ve constructed a nice little kitchen area, and my backyard is looking really good- Lots of growing going on out there. Just so you know, the packages you sent have been great- the maps were wonderful + beautiful, the yoga book, while cheesy, is actually really good and I practice Yoga every day (I run on the others). The hummus is delicious, and the protein powder makes a nice edition to my oatmeal in the mornings. All the vitamins, toothpaste, and Burtis Bees and batteries you sent were great too. I have yet to receive the package with the battery charger and towel, but I’m assuming that will come next mail run.

We’ll have to discuss your visit somewhere over the next couple months. I’m excited to end 3 months-challenge, so I can start exploring African-Gambia doesn’t have much to offer in terms of sightseeing, or hiking, or really, anything for that matter, we can talk about it over the phone, but if you two want, we can spend a couple days in Gambia, and then travel to another much more interesting piece of Africa. Anyway, that’s a ways from now, so we can discuss it then.
In the meantime, I have to figure out who will water my garden while I’m gone for only 3 days, to visit Sharon. (I’m not supposed to spend the night outside of site- but if they think they can treat me like a child in tat respect, then I’ll just have to sneak around their backs like a child would do). I think of you two a lot, every day, and I can’t help wondering what you are doing, or what you are eating for dinner. Ahh, good food. Can’t wait for my garden to be ready. Tell everyone I said hello, and apologize for my lack of corresponding to anyone other than you, but until I get caught up with my writing to you, I won’t be sending any other letters out-52 pages is plenty I think. Enough chit- chat, time to get back to my long narration…. Actually , I think I’ll run you through a typical day for me in Jali first.

7:15 to 7:30 AM- Wake up to the sounds of donkeys braying, rooster crowing, goats and sheet making whatever God awful noise it is they make and women pounding rice or coos. I’ve tried on occasion to sleep in, but noise or guilt always rouses me before 8 AM. Morning here during the cool season are really pleasant and cool. The sun rises around 7:10 AM and doesn’t truly become “hot” until around 9:30 AM.

7:45 to 9:00 AM- Greet my family and then go for a run/do push-ups and sit-ups or do yoga. If I’m doing yoga, there are usually one curious pair of eyes peeking in wondering what the hell I’m doing. Sometimes Binki, my one armed aunt brings cassava or sweet potato from her garden for a morning snack.

9:00 to 10:00 AM- After the morning exercise I sweep my home and take a bucket bath, loving the cold, refreshing water. Then I listen to BBC on the shortwave and cook breakfast and drink my tea or coffee or “African Bush Tea” made from the leaves of the siisiila naamo ( mosquito grass) with some other goodness thrown in to vary it a bit.

10:00 to 10:30 AM-Water my nursery bed, seed boxes, backyard garden, papaya tree and main garden. After watering I consolidate and empty all my bidongs ( essentially old 5 gallon plastic vegetable oil containers with a lid and a handle) into my bath bucket or drinking water bucket so they are ready to be re-filled.

10:30 to 11:00 AM- Pump water and carry it back to my house. Currently, I need 6 bidongs a day for drinking, bathing and watering my garden which means 3 trips to the pump ( I carry one in each hand to balance)- its about 200 yards away, and I can just make it to my doorstep before my fingers give out. Right now, I’m only using a third of my garden’s available space. I’ve planned 1 and a half small beds and have my compost pit for water. I’m waiting to plant the rest until after I visit Sharon. I don’t want my host mothers to have to carry all that water. I’m estimating that I’m going to need to pump and carry between 14 and 16 bidongs a day when my garden reaches full capacity- that’s 70 to 80 gallons of water. I ‘m hoping that my family will help a bit, of course, since they’ll be eating the food too, but who knows. I think, however, that its fairly safe to say I won’t be needing to do any pushups soon.

11:00 to 3:00 PM-I’ll usually do any number of projects during this time, but I try to do my physical work now, as it gets really damn hot around 2:30. On days I go to the bush, I’ll leave around 9AM and come back around 2:30 PM.

3:00 to 3:30 PM –Lunch- almost always rice but sometimes coos ( not cous-cous) with some sort of sauce- peanut sauce, green leaf sauce or onion oil sauce. It tastes really good, but is usually lacking protein.

3:30 to 6:00 PM- Again, usually work on a number of projects: writing, fixing up the house, going for a “stroll” through the village, visiting the school, making a mud stove, etc.

6:30 to 7:00 PM-Water my garden again, and if needed, fetch more water. Sweep house again- it loves to collect dust, and grass seeds fall all the time. Sunset at 7ish.
7:00 to 9:30 PM- Bathe and enjoy the now-cool air, eat a pre-dinner snack-usually a can of sardine ( which have become my protein staple- and they’re delicious) and an orange or grapefruit from Nick’s family’s orchard in Janneh Kunda.

7:30 to 8:00 PM- Hang out with my family on the bantaba, look at the stars, chat, read.

8:30 PM- Dinner, always rice with a sauce.

8:30 to 10:00 PM Hang out with family more, chat, read, etc.

10:00 PM- Go inside my house, write in journal, read, or sleep –usually asleep by 11:00 PM.

Nick and I had decided long before, that we would go to the beach immediately after dropping off our things at the PC transit house. Sharon had arrived that morning, and it was absolutely wonderful to see her again. After laughing quietly to ourselves at the throng of people sprawled out in front of the TV, the three of us set off for the beach. The waves were terrible for bodysurfing, but the water felt absolutely amazing after the long journey. That night we each had a double order of Cassava and beans from a small restaurant around the corner from the PC house and COLD beer. Delicious. Over the next few days the three of us avoided the Stodge (PC transit house)as much as possible. The atmosphere there is rather strange. The TV is on 24 hours a day and the majority of people simply plunk themselves down in front of it and spend the day on one of the couches. I also had the feeling that some of the other volunteers didn’t think we should be there, since we were supposed to be on “3 month challenge.” Anyway, it worked out well. Sharon and I stayed at a friend’s place in Kombo, and Nick stayed at a nice house his Caradian friends were housesitting.

It is definitely one of the strangest Christmases I’ve ever had, and despite all the tacky, but fun, decorations at the Stodge, it did not feel like Christmas whatsoever. That being said, we all had a really great time. A bunch of us AgFo volunteers went out to dinner on Christmas Eve to a tourist bar renowned in Peace Corps circles for their good steaks and cheap beer. The steaks were indeed delicious, and the beer was plentiful and cold, but it was no match for Prime Rib and Yorkshire Pudding. Ahh well, I’ll be eating my fill of that in 2 years or so. Sharon and I had a wonderful time together, played a lot of cards, went for walks on the beach and had a really nice Christmas dinner at our friend’s apartment. The time flew by, and before we knew it, we had to say goodbye again and go back to our sites, on opposite sides of the river.

Seeing Nick’s garden in his backyard really inspired me, so I immediately set to work building my own garden set up. Unfortunately, my backyard is about a quarter the size of Nick’s, so I had to search for other opportunities. Initially, I dug a bed in the small fenced-in garden abutting my house. The soil here is extremely compacted, hard as a rock, and it took a lot of work just to dig the one bed. Because the soil is so hard, and water retention such an important asset to a garden, a technique called “double –digging” is used to improve plants and penetration and the beds water retaining abilities. This involves digging down approximately 12 inches to the bottom of the topsoil, and setting it aside for later use in the compost. Then the topsoil is placed back in the bed, so the soil sits below the surface of the surrounding earth. Unfortunately, due to poor planning on my part, I realized that the bed would receive almost no sunlight, due to its proximity to two mango trees. Unabashed, I decided to use the bed as a nursery from which my ever-expanding hypothetical garden would be launched. Now all I needed was a suitable, fenced-in area in which to put it.

Locating such an area turned out to be rather difficult. Jali is littered with the skeletal remains of what once must have been a substantial number of gardens. Old dilapidated fences can be found all over the village, protecting what are now barren patches of land with a few scattered grasses. Unfortunately, all the fences were just that, dilapidated, and couldn’t possibly keep out the roaming herds of hungry sheep and goats. Initally, I thought of fixing up the fence that encircles my family’s “kajkajo” ( essentially a mini field for growing cassava and corn during the rainy season). However, once I began to actually begin the repair process, I quickly realized that it would be 3 months before I had the fence in a condition that would allow me to plant my garden. After a number of discussions with Lamin and Fatoumata , it was decided that Fatoumata and I would fence off one corner of the field that still had a decent outer fence. This meant that we only had to build two sides of the fence. Now, I use “only “ her rather subjectively, because, as you are to find out, it took a LOT of work to make that fence.

Monday Feb. 19th, 2007
So, as you can see, I got a little ambitious once again with my letter writing, and am unable to finish my narration in time for mail run, which comes tomorrow. The fact is, I’ve been INCREDIBLY busy- I know almost every other volunteer will shake their heads in disbelief ( as they already have several times), but I ‘ve gotten a ridiculous number of projects I’m working on. This is not a bad thing, mind you, I find that staying busy makes like much more enjoyable here- it gives me a purpose and a drive. This is not something to be taken lightly, its very easy to get caught up in feeling of hopelessness or be overwhelmed by how much needs to be done here- especially when you are plunked down in a foreign village and are told to find your own work.

I have also decided to abandon the narrative at this point, for several reasons. 1. I’ve been too busy to keep it up. 2. I’ve been writing the daily happenings in my journal.
3. Perhaps, most importantly, now that I’ve somewhat adjusted to village life, and have settled in for the “3 month challenge” pretty much the same things happen every day. I live in a small African village 25 km from the main road, and not a lot goes on out here that would really interest you all enough to keep a narrative going. Instead, I’ll just highlight the more interesting bits, and give you a general overview of what I’ve been up to. Hopefully, this will also take the burden off of Mom’s typing.

Of all the projects I’m working on, the garden is by far the most time-consuming, requiring a minimum of 3 hours of work every day. I got a little carried away--- at the start I wasn’t planning on having such an extensive garden. However, when my host father, Lamin, marked out a rather large area for the garden, I couldn’t resist the thought of all the veggies I would be eating and enthusiastically agreed. The area is about 30 ft. x 25 ft., and as I mentioned earlier, had a fence on 2 sides, so I had to build the other two. It was initially going to be a joint project between Fatoumata and me , but once she realized that I was fully capable of doing the work ( yes the whole stigma that Toubabs cannot do manual labor still persists to this day, even though I’ve shown them many times that I know what I’m doing) it quickly became my project, as Fatoumata busied herself with other work. To be honest, I didn’t mind, it gave me the opportunity to have a project of my own and gave me a little peace and quiet. I would turn the shortwave on the BBC and build fence all day.

Being that Jali doesn’t have anything remotely resembling a hardware store , I had to build the fence from materials in the bush. The first step was to get fence posts. Over the course of 2 days I cut about 60 eight ft. fence posts from “wooro” trees, ( yes, the same on whose leaves make good emergency TP), and carried them back from the bush on my head ( just like the Gambians). I had a very sore neck for a couple days afterward since my neck is not used to carrying all that weight, but I had to try it. It certainly is easier that carrying them in your arms if you have to walk a long way. Trust me, I tried that, first, and my arms gave out after a kilometer. Once I had all my fence posts, I dug the post-holes with a metal rock bar and my hands, and sunk the posts so there was about one foot between each pole. That took another couple days. I headed back into the bush to cart “tomboo “ branches to use for cross pieces. They are very straight, very long, flexible, and very strong and excellent cross bars. In order to tie the cross pieces to the fence posts I needed to make a bunch of rope. Lamin and I went back to the bush and found a number of “farm” shrubs that Gambians use to make rope. We cut the long central branch at the base, stripped off the extra branches and leaves, then split it in two from the top. Once it was split, we were able to pull off the outer bark. Once we had enough long strips of the bark, we tied them in balls and brought them back to soak in water overnight. The next day, Lamin and I tied up the fence- 2 crosspieces on top, 2 on bottom, so that the woo or gap between the 2 crosspieces on top and bottom, through which to run semi thorny branches called “barumbaram” : The barumbaram turned out to be rather difficult to find, and somewhat difficult to carry from the bush, so after several trips, I switched to harvesting mosquito grass-“ suusuula naamo.” It’s made for much easier harvesting and carrying, but because it didn’t have any thorns, I had to use a lot more of it to make an impenetrable barriers. The harvesting and threading of the branches took 2 or 3 days, and there was once more step yet. Lamin informed me that I needed to surround the outside of the fence with “tomborng “ a very thorny, very difficult bush, to prevent goats from damaging the fence. I spent another 2 days, harvesting tomborong and very carefully carrying it back on my head- and not once did I escape harvesting tomborong without some sort of injury. The thorns are both curved and straight and make handling very difficult.

The fence alone took 8 days to build, and then I had to plan out where to site the beds and compost pits to make the best use of the space. Then I spent another week digging all the beds, and setting aside the dirt to use in compost. I also collected about 4 fifty kilograms rice bags or cow manure that I pounded into powder with a large mortar and pestle, to spread over the beds as fertilizer. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Now that everything is ready, and all the beds are planted I have the pleasure of working the damn thing- morning and evening. Between the 6 beds, the compost pit, the trees and nursery in my backyard, plus bathing water and drinking water, I need to pump and haul 14 bidongs a day. Bidongs are 5 gallon containers for carrying oil. That’s 70 gallons every day! It’s exhausting, and eats up three hours every day, plus all the maintenance I have to do: building shade structures, fixing the plants from the nursery, and replanting. It’s becoming a little taxing, but when I start eating some of the goodness I’ve planted, it’ll be worth it. Here’s what I have to look forward to: Roma tomatoes, carrots, red onions, lettuce, big-slicing tomatoes, green peppers, sugar snap peas, eggplant, okra, pumpkin, cucumber, green beans, sorrel leaves, maringa leaves ( basically like a ridiculously vitamin, mineral, and protein packed into mini-spinach leaf), melons, fresh beans, basil and garlic. Needless to say, my food bowl is going to be rocking here soon!!

I’m working on a orchard project at the Jali Lower Basic school. The Headmaster and I are setting up a mango orchard, cashew orchard and citrus orchard that will be started from one large tree nursery near the existing garden. This also sets us up nicely for the county-wide tree nursery completion for schools that aims to encourage the growth and care of seedlings that can later be transplanted in the community to try to re-forest the surrounding area, generate income for the schools, and teach the children about the environment. I’m also working with 3 other schools in the surrounding area on their nurseries for the competition. I’m basically supervising the competition for this region. I’ve also started work on a grant to be used for the womens’ garden in Jali. This is currently a semi-fenced-in space that is only used in the rainy season since there’s no access to water. I’m seeking funding to dig 9 wells and re-fence the area so women can garden in the dry season, when many people don’t have work. I’m also looking for funding to fence a proposed fruit orchard nearer the village. This spot already has wells, but needs a fence. So, like I said, busy, but happy.

I’d love to write more but it’s midnight and I’m exhausted. Unfortunately, mail run comes tomorrow, so you’ll have to wait another stinking month to get the next letter. I’ll make the next one more personal- and I’ll tell you all about Sharon’s upcoming visit to Jali- AS MY WIFE! I think I already told you I had to tell everyone she is my wife so I wouldn’t run into trouble having her here- but now it’s becoming this huge event. The arrival of Aliyn’s wife!! It should prove to be VERY interesting…details to come…

Oh, its also starting to heat up too – the afternoon sun is ridiculous now, very, very hot. Time to invest in a solar-powered fan!! I think about you both all the time, and have contemplated calling it quits many times- sometimes it seems like a waste of time being here, but other times I’d rather not be anywhere else. Definitely a roller coaster ride of emotions, luckily mostly on the positive side. “Anger management” is a big issue- its hard sometimes to not let everything get to you- I understand now why parents beat their children here so much. They basically are someone my age with a family of one, two, or three wives, 7 children, no money and no work. They’re pretty damn stressed out. Even I want to kick the kids sometimes ( though I restrain myself). Anyway, LIFE IS GOOD.

Love you both very, very much!!! Can’t wait to have you over here! Get ready for an eye-opener.

ROB

P.S. Tell everyone I say Hi- especially Maggie, Chris, Stacy, Joe and the kids. I will get around to writing them here someday.

P.P.S. – I got a letter postmarked Jan. 10th and one marked Nov. 17 on the same day when I was in Kombo and Sharon just got a package from October 2005!!! A bit unreliable I’d say! Love you!

(Typing credit must be given to Aunt Paula Severe

2007-03-25T13:32:00.000Z

Thanksgiving in the Gambia – Letter #4 December 20, 2006 (Part Two)

We had our Swearing-In ceremony on Friday, 2 days before we were scheduled to leave for our sites. The ceremony was to be held at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence, which sits overlooking the beach just south of where we swam everyday. In preparation for the ceremony, all of the guys in our group had been growing mustaches for swearing-in - it has been a PC tradition since the current Ambassador (who himself sports a fine mustache) arrived in country. There was a whole array of mustache styles on display for the big day. Some of us, namely Peter, had grown an impressively large mustache, and had spent the past week trimming the rest of his facial hair into different outrageous styles. He had the “Civil War general” for a few days; which morphed into the “Captain Morgan,” and for Swearing-In, he had just the ridiculously outsized, “Barbershop Quartet” mustache. I myself experimented with a goatee for a couple hours, before deciding to go for the “White trash, ex-professional wrestler/ bounty hunter” look. (All the styles can be seen on my photo website.)

The Ambassador’s residence sat on a small bluff, overlooking the ocean, and was surounded by a beautiful array of exotic plants and flowers. There was a long staircase that ran down to ocean level, and a swimming pool halfway between ocean and house. The ceremony took place on the upper patio- essentially the backyard- that overlooked the ocean. Upon our arrival, we learned that several VIPs, actually all of them, would not be attending the ceremony. Both the Ambassador himself and the PC country Director were away on Emergency leave, and the Gambian government’s Environmental Director was unable to attend. We dubbed it the “Stand-in swearing –in” since all the VIPs had stand-ins to deliver their speeches. Fortunately, the lack of VIPs didn’t affect the food, and after the speeches and oath talking (I swear to defend the U.S. Constitution, against all enemies, foreign and domestic) we got down to business. Honestly, food was probably the reason most people came, particularly the 2nd-year Agro forestry volunteers, who were there for the occasion. After eating ourselves sick, we all headed to the beach to lie in the hammocks and digest the feast

. That evening, the 2nd-year Agfo’s threw us a party @ the Pc transit house. It was quite the party too-I don’t know much they all spent on alcohol, but is must have been a small fortune. We even had a table for beer pong and a table for flip cup (competitive college- drinking games, for the unitiated). After a rocky start, I had been over 2 years since I last played, Nick and I dominated in Pong, but stepped down after 3 consecutive wins, due to the fact that our stomachs were still full from the swearing-in feast.

A bunch of is had decided to go out to a dance club after the party began to wind down. Matt decided it would be a good idea for the 5 of us hanging out in the kitchen to finish the rest of the whiskey and Wanjo before we left for the club. (Wanjo is a sweet red juice made from sorrel flowers). In our drunken states, we all thought it was a good idea too, and no one complained when he added the rest or a bottle of whiskey to the already potent concoction.
We were about halfway to the club, packed into an old, beat up Renault taxi when the first wave of whiskey and wanjo hit. By the time we got to the club, I knew that I was going to be in trouble if I didn’t do something to sober up. Therefore, for the next 3 or 4 hours, I danced as hard as I possibly could to sober up. (It was one of those strangely clairvoyant moments in the midst of a drunken haze.) Those few hours we all spent in the club were easily some of the best I’ve spend on the dance floor. When we arrived, we were essentially the only ones on the dance floor, and we got the DJ to crank out 80’s hits, from Michael Jackson, to Wham! The music progressed to Hip-Hop as the night went on, and by the time we headed back at 3am I was both exhausted and only mildly drunk.

Training is Officially Over (p. 34)
Early Sunday morning, our group of trainees packed up all of our belongings and began to load them into the fleet of PC vehicles waiting to take us to our sites. Training was officially over, and there was a nervous, excited tension in the air. We had all spent the last 2 and a half months together in a strange country, and had grown pretty close. Now it was time to go it alone. I was really excited to get to Jali, and to see my house, but it was sad to leave everyone, particularly Sharon. Knowing that I would see her in a couple weeks for Christmas made the pain a little easier to manage. Peace Corps had effectively brought almost its entire fleet of Land Cruisers and Land Rovers, a totally of 5, and still we had to cram ourselves and all our gear into the vehicle, barely fitting. The vehicles were each going to separate areas of the country, with ours being the only one to take the South Bank Road. Our group rode in relative comfort compared to the vehicle that was headed to Janjanbuch. I believe they had to sit on each other’s laps to make enough room, and their roof rack had 10 feet of gear on it-trunks, gas stoves, and mattresses. Our Land Rover was crowded, but we dumped two people in the first 30 minutes or so, which made things considerably more comfortable. The crew going to Janjanbuch, however, had a 6 hour drive before they dropped-off a single person.

It was interesting going to everyone’s sites and meeting their families, checking out their houses, and driving through the various villages. Mohammadou Bah, a PC language teacher, summed it up nicely; “Well, once you’ve seen a PC house, you’ve seen them all.” He was referring to the fact that they all had white walls; green floors, the exact same windows and doors, and all were essentially the same size. It’s a very standardized housing system, since the houses all have to meet PC specification. Watching everyone’s reactions as the vehicle drove away and they were essentially on their own. I was impressed by how cool and calm everyone looked. It seemed training had prepared us well.

When I arrived in Jali, I was a little surprised, naturally, to see that my house did NOT have a roof!! Again my first response was laughter. I had half assumed that something like this was going to happen. That being said, I was greatly relieved when I saw another Pc vehicle parked under the African Locust Bean tree that abuts my backyard- Mustapha’s truck!! Mustapha, who is in charge of construction and maintenance for Pc, and 2 of his men were here helping my host father with the house. I jumped out of the Land Rover and greeted my family, who had all come out to say hello. Mustapha came up and explained that my father had been too busy with his peanut harvest to work on the house, so he had arrived yesterday to help get things squared away. When I entered the house, I realized that the fence surrounding the backyard was really the only thing that had been fixed. “Oh well”, I thought at least it would give me something to do for the next couple days.

Mustapha and his men had pulled the old grass off the roof, and were in the process of re-cementing the destroyed back wall when I arrived. After unloading my things from the PC vehicle, and saying my goodbyes to Nick and the driver, Sam, they drove off, and I quickly got to down to business. While the cement was drying, the men had erected a support for the back section of the roof, and we started to lay the new grass on the repaired wooden super structure. It was a very quick, efficient procedure, they simply laid a pile of grass on top the wooden structure, unfurled it, so it was spread flat, and tied it into place with Baobab bark rope. When the first layer had covered the lowermost section of the roof, another layer of grass was placed on top, overlapping the layer underneath. In about 4 or 5 hours, we had exhausted out supply of woven grass, but the roof was almost completed, except for the upper quarter, while Lamin (my host father) and 2 of the other men began weaving more grass, Taliboo (the carpenter/mason and I started replacing the old, cracked door frames. Finally, around dusk we called it quits for the day. It was then that Mustaphu excitedly told me that they had killed a crocodile earlier in the day while they were harvesting grass for the roof, and that we would be eating it for dinner. I wasn’t sure exactly whether to be excited or worried, but he assured me that it was “very sweet,” He wasn’t kidding. I had 3 or 4 chunks in my food bowl that night, and they were delicious! It tasted like a cross between fish and steak; essentially very mild, juicy, tender fish. We had it a few times during the next 2 days and I looked forward to every meal.
We worked dawn to dusk for the next 2 days, finishing the roof, re-cementing the interior gap between roof and walls, patching the crakes in the walls, putting screens on the doors, and repainting the walls, floor, and exterior of the house. I slept outside in my bivy sack during the repair process-either the house was too filthy, the roof wasn’t finished, or the floor paint wasn’t completely dry but it was nice and cool, so I slept well. The night before they were supposed to leave, Mustapha locked his keys in the Land Cruiser, so we spent the next hour breaking into the truck, eventually using a red-hot wire to create a groove in the door lock tab so we would pull it up from the outside. The next morning the floor paint was dry, so we went in to inspect our work. It didn’t even look like the same house, the change was dramatic. Satisfied that their work was finished, mustapha and his men left to fix another new volunteer’s house.
The 12 days I spent at site before heading back to Kombo for Christmas absolutely flew by. I was so busy I found myself wondering whether or not I had actually left the fast—powered world of America. They kept warning us in training not to be too ambitious and to go slowly, and had conditioned us to adjust to a slower pace of life, but to this day, I feel I haven’t had a free moment, There is always something to do, some new project to start, or people coming up asking for help with a mud stove, or with a garden. I’m not complaining, whatsoever, I thrice on the activity and the busyness, and wouldn’t want it any other way, but it certainly has made finding time to write, rather difficult.

Peanut Fields (p. 38)
The day Mustapha and his crew left, I headed to the peanut fields to help Lamin with the harvest. He had already brought a load of groundnut hay (essentially the non-nut part of the Peanut plant) back in Mustapha’s truck, and we needed to winnow the remainder before returning with a donkey cart. In the Gambia, there are many phases of harvesting, all of which are labor intensive. First, the peanut plants are pulled from the ground and laid in small piles to dry. After a few days, the small piles are collected and deposited in one large pile. The pile of peanut plants is then hand- threshed to separate the nuts from the plant. Finally, the threshed material is winnowed to separate the nuts from the hay. The Gambians rely on the strong Harmattan winds that blow from the northeast during the dry season to facilitate the winnowing process. Therefore, a certain amount of patience is required, as the winds aren’t totally consistent.

When we arrived at the fields, Lamin climbed up the remains of a dead tree that had been buried in the ground, the whole thing shaking wildly with his every movement, I was certain it was going to snap, but it held firmly. He was about 7 feet off the ground when he reached the top, and it was my job to gather the peanut hay and pass it up to him in buckets. At that point, he would wait for the wind to pick up enough speed, and slowly dump the contents of the bucket onto the ground, letting the wind do the sorting, It was a very simple process, but unfortunately, not very efficient, as we had to winnow half the pile again, to remove all the hay. While Lamin and I were winnowing, my two little brothers, Buba and Alagi, both 5, were picking up individual peanuts out of the dirt surrounding the pile and throwing them on top. It was a pretty thankless job, as the lowermost peanuts were constantly being re-buried by dirt. It amazed me that he hadn’t thought of throwing down a couple rice bags to act as a tarp and prevent the dirt from hiding all the nuts. I pointed this out to him and he thought it was a wonderful idea saying that he would do it next year. It made me realize how little value Gambians place on efficiency- it’s all about cost saving measure here. Which, considering it’s one of the poorest countries in the world, is pretty understandable when the winnowing was completed, Amadou (Lamin’s eldest child) and his friend, both 13, began bagging the peanuts in old rice bags. When we finally had bagged all the peanuts, including the several thousand buried in the ground, it was approaching 3 pm, and we hurried back for lunch.

Lamin and I returned to the peanut field 3 or 4 times over the next 2 days to gather up the rest of the peanuts and the leftover hay, and bringing them back to village with a donkey cart he borrowed from a neighbor. He sold the peanuts to a merchant in town, and we dumped the peanut hay in the fenced- in backyard. It would be used to feed his 5 cows during the heart of the dry season, when they would no longer find enough food by foraging. When I wasn’t out working in the fields, I was busy fixing up my house, getting my locally- made bed and mattress (local mattresses are made from the rice bags sewn together and then filled with straw, which I was told was much cooler than the soft, cushy foam mattresses due to the fact that you don’t sink into it.) and unpacking and sorting out all the things I had accumulated since my arrival. I spent considerable time getting my backyard spruced up. I made tree basins for all the moringa trees and the papaya, added cow manure for fertilizer, and pruned and transplanted some of the larger moringa trees. I was starting to feel at home finally, and began to settle into a little morning routine where I would get up and go for a run or do yoga, come back and bathe, and then cook myself a delicious breakfast of oatmeal, that I would spice up with peanut butter, honey or Jam, freshly ground cinnamon and nutmeg, or wheat bran; depending on my mood.
First Projects Chosen

Despite all the busyness and activity, it was strange and sometime difficult, to adjust to a completely none-scheduled life. There was essentially nothing that I had to do, so it took a fair bit of self-motivation and drive, sometimes, to get started on a project. My mood was also extremely varied, and would undergo dramatic swings on a daily, even hourly basis. There were times when all I wanted to do was hide out in my house and not talk to anyone, but then almost invariably, something would happen to make me realize how great it was to be here, and how many possibilities I had for projects and work. Mornings are typically the hardest for me. I usually wake up exhausted, not so much from lack of sleep, (I usually mange to get a good night’s rest) but because adjusting to a new culture, lifestyle, language, and environment is totally draining. Add to that all the exploring on my bike, garden work and morning exercise, and it becomes quite a load on the body. Granted, I wouldn’t want it any other way but it does take me a while to leave the bed most mornings. That being said, compared to me, Gambians hardly sleep at all, and I haven’t been able to figure out how they manage. I’m usually asleep between 10:30 and 11:30, and I get up between 7:00 and 7:30. When I go to sleep, my family is up at first light, pounding rice or coos and Lamin goes to the mosque every morning at 6am when it’s still dark.

During the two weeks before Christmas, I visited the school in Jali twice to meet the headmaster and to see if there were any projects I could assist with. Jali has a Lower basic School, which is essentially like our elementary schools, Grade1-6. The Gambia also has Upper Basic Schools, Grades 7-9, and secondary schools, grades 10-12, but these are much less common then Lower Basic Schools, which usually can be found in most villages and towns. Jali’s school was relatively new and in good condition. The Headmaster, Demba Bojang was very excited about the possibility of our collaboration, and took me on a tour of the school to show me his various projects. Even in our first encounter, I could tell he was a very determined, ambitious, and hard working man. After seeing all the projects he had helped to implement. I knew he was very committed to the school and would be a fantastic counterpart for part of my work in Jali.

The school projects were both numerous and varied. The headmaster had obtained a grant to start a poultry project to generate income for the school. They had purchased 50 commercial layer hens from Senegal, and were selling the eggs to people in the area. It was an impressive se-up, they had the chickens well protected in a small bamboo shack, and had purchased commercial chicken feed from Kombo. The headmaster told me that he even had to use some of his own money at the start to pay for the feed, but since it was for the school, he was happy to do so. The school also had a small goat project, where they bred and fattened goats to sell to the surrounding area. The Headmaster had also implemented a banana plantation some years ago, which was now thriving. The students had their own banana plant, which they were responsible for watering every day, and the banana sales were used to help pay for their book fees. When I arrived they were in the process of starting a school garden so the children would have practical gardening experience, and would reap the benefits by having fresh vegetables in their school lunch. All together, it was an impressive enterprise, and I told the Headmaster I looked forward to working at the school, and helping out in any way that I could. We discussed the possibility of expanding his poultry project to make it more profitable, and talked about starting and Environmental Club for the students. I left the school very excited about the potential there, and promised to return after the Holidays.

On the walk back, I probably greeted about 50 people- a very typical occurrence here, as the school is on the other side of town, During one of the many greetings, I discovered that the man I was talking to was the baker in Jali. I expressed interest in his work, and he invited me to come over that evening to observe. I was very curious to see how bread was made in the Gambia, so I said that I would definitely come. When I arrived at his compound that evening, his family took me over to a semi open-walled hut that was dominated by a huge clay oven, about 7 feet in diameter, and 10 feet tall. It sat on a large mud-brick square, so its door was at waist level, and the roof had a small opening for the chimney. When I arrived, Lamin greeted me enthusiastically and began explaining what he was doing. He had already shaped the dough into individual baguette-esque loaves, and was busy preparing the oven for baking. He had a large fire burning in the middle of the oven, that he said he started at around 4pm. It was not 8pm, so it took a considerably amount of time to heat the oven large oven. While I watched, He carefully pushed the fire to one side of the oven letting the embers continue burning. He then took a mixture of water and dirt, and spread it over the surface of the oven, presumably to keep the bottoms of then loaves from burning. Today, he said he was only baking 40 loaves, because the demand had been low recently. In the candlelit semi-darkness of the hut, he transferred the loaves from his dough making area on one side, to a wooden shelf next to the oven, from where he would lad them into the oven. When he was satisfied the oven was ready, he placed 4 loaves into a wooden baker’s paddle, scored the tops with a razor blade lengthwise, and brushed a thin solution of sugar, water, and yeast on the tops of the bread. Then, with quick, expert hand movements loaded the bread into the far corner of the oven and withdrew the now empty paddle. He placed a piece of wood over the opening while he prepared the next 4 loaves. The whole time I watched, I imagined myself somewhere 5 or 6 hundred years ago, watching the exact same process. Except for his small flashlight that he used to peer into the oven, we may as well have been in Medieval Europe, watching a baker at his craft. It was simply fascinating. While he loaded the remainder of the loaves, he rearranged the ones he had placed earlier with the same quick expert movement, made it all the more impressive by the fact that he only had 3 fingers on his right hand, and 4 in his left. (This is a pretty common problem I’ve noticed among older Gambian men). Lamin was a smallish, thin man, who looked like he was in his late 60s. Because of the heat, he was working with his shirt off, and even at his age, he was still very sinewy, and his small body belied a quiet strength. He started to pull the loaves out, as they were ready, knocking them together and then brushing them with a rag to remove the dirt on the bottom. When they had cooled enough to handle, he broke one in half and handed it to me, the broken and still steaming. It was delicious!! My mind very quickly thought of all the possibilities, fresh baked pizza, with fresh tomatoes from the garden, bean sandwiches, ect. Needless to say, Lamin and I became pretty good friends. I visited him twice a week to chat and watch him bake, He would always give me half a loaf to munch on, and I would buy several loaves for my family, Unfortunately, as I write this Lamin is currently sick, and is staying with his son in Kombo.

Eating peanut butter with my oatmeal every morning quickly exhausted my stockpile of peanut butter I had bought at the Kwinella market, so one day I asked my family if anyone in town sold it. Then said no, but Fatoumata offered to help me make my own the following day. After breakfast, I sat with Lamin and the two of us de-shelled a big bowl of peanuts. After an hour or so, we gave the bowl to Fatoumata, who hand winnowed the shells and the nuts with a big, flat woven basket. Once the nuts and shells were separated, we roasted the peanuts in a big metal pot partly filled with sand over a small workfire. After about 10 or 15 minutes of stirring the peanuts and sand, we removed the nits and allowed them to cool in the basket. Once cooled, I de-husked the peanuts and put them in a peanut grinder that my family had mounted on a small table in the porch. The grinder was, of course, hand powered, so after 20 minutes of good solid cranking, my peanut butter was ready. Most of it had ended up in the bowl, but the grinder had a good layer of peanut butter stuck to it, which I gladly ate off my fingers as I wiped it clean. It was still worm, and delicious!! So, far the next 2 weeks or so, I had my own handmade peanut butter with my oatmeal in the mornings.

Later that day, as I was sitting with my family practicing my ataya brewing skills, one of our neighbors, Baba, came over and quickly said something to Lamin that I couldn’t catch. I didn’t know what was going on, but Lamin and Baba made it clear that they wanted me to go with them. I followed them up the path a ways, and turned the corner to see about 25 men gathered around a water pump. As men NEVER fetch their own water here, I found it pretty unusual that so many men would be gathered around the pump, but it turned our that a man had come from Kombo to fix the pump, which had been broken for about 2 weeks. Watching the procedure, I was amused by how similar the whole operation was to a construction project back in the U.S. There was one man who clearly knew what he was doing, a handful of men working, a bunch of guys “helping,” and another bunch just watching. Pretty much the only thing missing was the beer. I have trouble just standing around whilst people are working, especially here, where everyone assumed that Toubabs don’t do manual labor. Since this Toubab enjoys getting his hands dirty, I was eager to help out, and to prove that I would work just like the rest of them. At first, they resisted, talked about how hard it was, and that I would get my hands dirty. (I get that a lot, to this day) I had trouble reigning in my anger, and insisted that I would help. I had watched for a few minutes and knew what to do. They already had the pump housing off, and were starting to haul up the pipes that led down to the water table. The man from Kombo had diagnosed a problem with the rubber valve at the bottom, the piping was very heavy. It took 5 of us to lift the pipe up (2 with pipe wrenches) while one man operated a clamp that locked the pipe into place. Slowly we began to haul the piping out of the hole unscrewing the 3 meter section and placing them to the side, as they came up. We pulled up and detached 9 of the 3m segments before getting to the pump unit. The repairman replaced the faulty pump with a new one, and we reversed the process, slowly adding pipe and lowering it into the hole. It was a pretty ingenious design, and despite some quibbles between the “chiefs” the whole process went smoothly, and I proved, once again, that yes, Toubabs could work too. Although some people tend to forget it rather quickly.

Knowing that I was only going to be at site for 2 weeks before going to Kombo again for Christmas, I wanted to do a small quick project that I knew would help my family, and get the word out around the village that I was here to help. I decided that building improved cook stoves would be a good start. I talked to Fatoumata and Bintou about it, and they were both were receptive to the idea, They knew what the mud stoves were, but just didn’t know how to make them, and after I explained that the mud stoves use about a third less firewood for cooking, Amadan, my younger brother said he would like to help out, He’s the primary firewood collector for the family, so he had a vested interest in getting the stove built. The stoves are fairly simple to build, and will last several years if made well. Amandon and I went out the following day to collect the necessary materials; Clay from termite mounds, cow dung, and wood ash. We dumped the materials in the backyard, and began pounding the cow dung and termite clay into fine particles that would mix well. After the pounding, we mixed everything with water, and stomped on it with bare feet to mix it. Once it was mixed well, we piled it, and covered the pile with grass, where it would sit for 6 days to allow the mixture to strengthen. We watered the pile every day to prevent the mixture from drying and hardening.

In the meantime, I did some exploring of the surrounding town on my bike, and went Keneba to visit a livestock research facility there, and to try again at MRC. (I had met a health extension worker in Jali from the MRC who gave me the name of the doctor I should consult.) The visit to the livestock facility went really well they were eager to collaborate on a project to grow fodder for their cowherds the second attempt at MRC also went very smoothly. Having the name of the doctor helped immensely- I was taken right to his office. I think he was a little surprised when I opened the door- I don’t think he was expecting to see another Toubab, especially one he didn’t know, He invited me in and we had a nice chat. He said he had been here for 1 year, with his wife and 18 month old daughter, He was from a small town in the southwest of England, but said he was familiar with Harrogate when I told him I lived there for several years. WE talked about MRC, its purpose and service, and vaguely discussed collaboration possibilities, but said he would be eager to see me after the holidays as he was leaving for England the following day. He also said he’d like to have me over for dinner occasionally, which I told him I didn’t think would be a problem. It was very encouraging to get such a positive feedback from both organizations, and it just added to my growing list of project ideas. Our Volunteer Leader during training, who has since completed his service, put it nicely; “The advantages of working in once of the poorest countries in the world, is that there is always something to do.”

As luck would have it, (actually not luck, just poor planning on my part.) the materials for the mud stove constriction weren’t ready until the day I was set to leave for Nick’s site to begin our crazy travel to Kombo- which I’ll discuss a little later. Luckily, I didn’t have to leave until the evening; since he’s only 25 km away- a quick hour plus bike ride. Nonetheless, I got up early that morning, did my yoga, and began work on the mud stove after breakfast, Amadou had the day off from school, and so he and we built the stoves together. Bintou and Fatoumata wanted 2 stoves built, one for cooking rice, and one for cooking the various sauces. After mixing the clay a second time, we formed it into little balls, and formed a ring around each of the three cook stoves, which the pot sits on to prevent them from moving. We then slowly built up a wall of clay around the perimeter of the three stoves insuring that it made a good fit with the pot. While I was supposedly teaching Amadou how to make the stove, I was also learning how to do it myself. I knew the theory behind it, but missed the hands on demonstration during training due to sickness. It took considerably longer than I had expected to build both the stoves. The second one, although larger, took less time as I already had the technique down. By the time we finally finished, it was 4 pm, and my lower back and legs were killing me from all the bending over and squatting. I left instruction with Amdou to cut a hole in one of the sides for firewood after a day, and to keep it covered for 6 days while it dried.

I took a quick bath to wash the fermented cow dung off, threw some clothes into my bad, locked the house, and said goodbye to my family. It took another 15 minutes to get out of Jali, since everyone wanted to know were I was going and how long I was going for. When I finally got on my bike at the edge of the village it was 5:30pm. It starts to get dark around 7 pm, and being that I had never actually been to his site, I was anxious to get moving, The largish pack I was carrying slowed me down a bit, and only made my lower back pain worse, so I stopped in Keneba to throw it on the rack, half expecting it to fall off during the ride. I had also tried unsuccessfully to confirm with Nick that I was actually coming that day- my text messages weren’t going through. I was especially anxious to let them know I was coming because his last message had said that his father wanted to kill a chicken for my arrival, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to miss out on that. I tried again, in Keneba, where I have full service, but the message still wouldn’t go through. (I was out of credit, I just didn’t realize it.) I was pretty frustrated at that point; the sun was sinking fast, my back was sore as hell, I still had 17 km to go. To top it all off, I was probably going to miss out on the chicken. (I pedaled as hard as I could, but had to stop a few time to get directions or confirm I was on the right road, and when I finally got to Janned Kinda it was pitch black. After a bath and dinner, I passed out.

Travel to Kombo
Nick and I woke early the next morning, eager to get started on our adventure trip to Kombo. Nick had found a way for us to cut off the vast majority of the terrible South band road by crossing the Bintang Bolong, that essentially makes our area a peninsula. The first leg of the journey included biking 14 km to Misira, where Nick had arranged for us to leave our bikes with the Alikaloo (village head). Once our bikes were safely secured, we shouldered our packs and walked a few km to the edge of the bolong where we would catch the boat that was to take us across the bolong to a small town called Bintang. We had to wait about an hour and a half for the boat operators to show up. They had been waiting for enough passengers to arrive to make the trip profitable. Transportation here runs on demand, not by schedule. The two operators showed up, checked to make sure they had enough passengers, and then promptly walked off into the bush. They returned in 5 minutes with a small outboard motor that they had presumably stashed in the brush nearby to prevent theft, while the two men were setting up the motor. we began to load the boat. The bolong’s bank was comprised of shippery ankle deep mud that made loading a fun little challenge. Before everyone had brought in preparation for the holidays. There were bags of rice, bags of charcoal, gallons of milk, goats, suitcases, firewood, a couple chickens and containers of oil. Once the gear was haphazardly stowed in the middle of what was essentially and oversized, glorified canoe, (technically called a pirogue.) the 20-odd passengers slipped and slided their way aboard. It took us about 30 minutes to get to Bintang. We had to go up a separate side creek before turning and going down and across the bolong. The ride was very pleasant, nice breeze and good scenery. I wouldn’t help thinking that our alternative as being cramped into an overloaded van while careened crazily down the South Bank road, trying to avoid potholes, but hitting most of them anyway. We were told that there would be a gele-gele waiting in Binang to take us, and the rest of the passengers to Kombo, but when we arrived, there was no gele in sight. Everyone we talked to said that the gele would come, so we simply sat and waited. 10 minutes became an hour, and hour quickly became 2 before we head the distant sound of a diesel approaching. We had followed the advice of several men who we had befriended, and we were waiting for the gele in the middle of town, hoping to get aboard before the rest of the previous gele stopped, it was immediately swarmed by people trying to get on. We tried to explain to the people hanging all over. Nick and I tried to jump aboard, but we wouldn’t fine space on the rear bumper, and ended up chasing the gele down the street, packs slapping our backs. When the driver stopped at the riverside he erupted at the swarming people to wait and let the people get off, which everyone reluctantly did. It quickly became clear that there was plenty of room for everyone, once the other passengers disembarked. I wanted to yell “I told you so” but I didn’t know the equivalent Mandinka phrase. The ride to Kombo went pretty quickly, and smoothly, we had bypassed the vast majority of the bad road. We arrived at the PC transit house around 4:30 pm. We both agreed that it was far better than sitting in that cursed gele on that cursed road.

January 23rd, 2007
So as you can see, I got a little carried away once again, and failed to finish the letter on time. (The Pc mail run comes today, so I have to give this to them today.) Mail run comes once a month; it leaves Kombo on the 18th, and arrives at my site on the 23rd. However, another PC vehicle comes in a week or so to pick up some grass thatch from Lamin to store, in case they need to do an emergency repair during the rainy season. Bush fires have been sweeping across the country-like they do every year- and soon there will be no good grass left, hence the storage.
Things are excellent here, my garden preparation is finally finished, and I’ll plant it in a week. I should have an absolute ton of fresh vegetables when March, April, May rolls around. My host family is very excited about it, as am I. Things with Sharon are going well, despite the month long absence from each other. I’m going to head to her site at the beginning of next week for a few days, which I’m very excited about. The Yoga book you all sent is great, I’m getting much better at it. I either run or do yoga every morning, and can feel myself getting stronger and better in shape after the 2 months hiatus during training. Miss you both. Love you very much!
Rob

Thanksgiving in the Gambia - Letter 4 Dec. 20, 2006

2007-03-18T01:42:00.000Z

Thanksgiving in the Gambia – Letter # 4 December 20, 2006

We all left Tendaba on Sun. Nov. 12 after the boat ride through the bolong. We had lunch before taking off, and, knowing that it would be my last good meal in 10 days, I ate well. Actually, the whole time we were n Tendaba, I stuffed myself at every meal, knowing that as soon as I got back to village I would lose weight again. I’m managing to keep most of my weight on (I’ve only lost a couple of pounds so far) but I think all the meals at Tendaba, and the lunch that Peace Corps provides in village is the only thing keeping me from losing more. Its funny, when we first arrived at Tendaba, I turned my nose up at the bland soups they served before lunch and dinner. We call the “cream of white” and “cream of red.” The second time around however, they may as well have been beef stew and chicken tortilla soup, they tasted so good.
I rode my sorry excuse for a bike back to Bambako , stopping in Kwilla to pick up a few supplies. As is customary in the Gambia, I bought my family a “silfando”- translates as a gift from the road more or less. Ataya and sugar is pretty customary, but I bought some bananas and sardines as well. I also did some asking around and found out who made peanut butter in town. It turned out that an old woman in a small compound owned a peanut grinder and sold a cup of peanut butter for 5 dalasis, which is about 20 cents. So I bought myself 4 cups of freshly-ground home-made peanut butter for less than a dollar- the kind of stuff people pay $5 for a cup at Wild Oats in America.

Being back in Bambako was really nice in a strange way. It kinda felt like I was home again. I was very warmly welcomed by my family and by my friends Bakary, Seecu, and Jakaria. I also had some new inhabitants in my house. A family of rather large praying mantis had found their way inside. I discovered them the night I arrived during my bath. There I am, out in the backyard, squatting naked, thoroughly enjoying the cool weather that had seemingly arrived that very day when something rather large came flying into my groin area and caused me to jump about 5 feet and simultaneously knocked over my candle in the process. So not only was there something flying around my exposed genitals but now I couldn’t see what the hell it was. I swatted it away rather spasmodically and managed to get my candle lit again. Turns out that it was attracted by the light, so it came back again, but this time I could see it was a praying mantis- about 4 inches long. Now, I don’t know a whole lot about praying mantis, other that the fact that females use their rather large scary looking forelegs, which are essentially lined with teeth to cut off the heads of male praying mantis’ after mating. My mind kept coming back to this thought, and made me more that just a little uncomfortable having this creature near my groin. I made every effort to the damn thing out of my backyard without killing it, but by the time it was over the fence, I think it may have been a little banged up. The next night its child paid me a visit.

The cold weather I experienced my first night in Bambako wasn’t just a fluke. It turned out that the strong, dry wind I had felt the day before while biking from Tendaba was the first of the Harmatan winds that originate in the Sahara and mark the beginning of the cold season, bringing cool, dry air from North Africa. My first morning back in Bambako was unforgettable. I woke up at 7:00 AM to a beautiful quiet sunrise that lit up the patches of fog still lingering in the trees and set the sky ablaze. The temperature was a very pleasant 50 degrees F and since I had left my bucket out overnight, the water was equally as cool. I poured the refreshing water over my head and just stood looking at the sky, overjoyed by the cool weather and marveling at the fact that there was actually STEAM coming off my body. It was a beautiful thing. Here’s the corker: the night before, I actually woke up in the middle of the night because I was COLD, and glad to get a sheet to cover up with. To say that the arrival of the cold season was a relief after the hellishly hot month of October wouldn’t do it justice. I spend the whole day in high spirits. Unfortunately, the cool winds are no match for the Equatorial sunshine, and while the sun is high in the sky, it’s still too hot in the direct sun, but the shade is very pleasant. The real benefits came when the sun crept low in the sky, as the crystal clear blue skies cooled off very quickly when not heated by the sun, and it made sleeping at night wonderful. That first night in Bambako marked the first time I didn’t lay in bed sweating, trying to fall asleep. Waking up in the morning reminded my of fall back in the U.S., the cool crisp air, the falling leaves, and the smell of work fires burning.

That feeling of contentedness I finally felt being back in Bambako was truncated rather quickly on the morning of November 14th when I got the news that Ben, probably my best friend in the Gambia, had been medically separated from the Peace Corps and was being sent back to the U.S. Ben and I had grown very close during our stays in Bambako and Tendaba, and it was hard to believe that he was being taken out of my life so quickly and abruptly. The whole thing was made even harder when I had to help pack up his things. I remember thinking how quickly and impassively Sarjo and John packed up his bags and took them to the Land Cruised. The whole process didn’t take more than 10 minutes, and at the end, it was like Ben had never been there. It made me realize how fleeting our presence here can be, and how little impact we will have if we aren’t careful and forget about that often misused word: sustainability. I’m not trying to discredit Ben’s presence here in the Gambia, he certainly impacted my life. It just seemed too quick, too easy to send someone home.

I was a little anxious to leave. I kept thinking about all the food we would be eating for Thanksgiving at Tendaba, and I was really looking forward to finally seeing my sight and putting into practice some of the things we have learned. All the same, I have made good friends in Bambako, and I was starting to feel like I belonged in the community. I spent many nights sitting out under the stars, thoroughly enjoying the cool air, drinking ataya, and chatting with Bakary, my family, Seecu, and others. We continued to have language lessons in the morning, but by this time I had completed foregone studying in favor of simply spending time in the community, being immersed in the language. I reasoned that this would be most beneficial to my language acquisition and based on my language test results, I’d say it worked quite well. Gambia has an extremely community-oriented culture, and people begin to look down upon someone if they are spending too much time in their house. Therefore, this pretty much takes studying out of the equation anyway.

That brings us to one of the toughest challenges I ‘vet been facing in the Gambia: and that is adjusting to a culture where personal space, privacy, and “alone-time” aren’t part of people’s vocabulary. In the US, most people have the luxury where everyone has his or her room and we are also an extremely individualistic culture. In the Gambia, people often sleep 4-5 to a room, or more, especially the children, and a person is judged not by his/her accomplishments but by how his/her family and the community in general view the person. Unfortunately in my experience, it doesn’t take much to tarnish one’s reputation or standing among the villagers. For example, if, say you are really tired and want to go to bed early, or make a habit of going to bed early, people will say you sleep too much, and that you don’t like the people. This is precisely what the villagers would say to me about a couple of the other trainees in my village, and I would do my best to stand up for them, but it was for naught, the people had already made up their minds.

I made a few mistakes in Bambako that didn’t help my lack of privacy – namely letting people walk in my house whenever they wanted. This turned out not to be such a good idea, because literally the minute I would go in my house to read, study, write someone would be coming in to see what was up to. I vowed that I would change things when I got to Jali. I also felt a bit like an OCD germaphobe whenever people would come in my house and touch things. I hated the fact that I felt the urge to wash something simply because someone touched it. Granted, the Gambians do wash themselves when they take a poo, and I’m pretty sure they don’t use soap, so maybe I am justified. It’s amazing how much our culture emphasizes cleanliness and sanitation. I am slowly weaning myself off my old standards of what is considered clean, and as my body adjusts to the new germs steadily lowering those standards. It’s more practical that way.

Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day came rather quickly and despite the fact that my body was desperately craving all the good food that was to come, it was rather sad saying goodbye to my family and friends in Bambako. In truth, I hadn’t spent that much time there but I already felt a part of the community. Thanksgiving was to be at Tendaba, and we had prepared a list of the ingredients we needed to make our dishes and submitted that list to Rodney, our Associate Peace Corps Country Director For Environment. (Since the Peace Corps is part of the government they have a nice 4-letter acronym for that too- APCD.) I departed for Tendaba very early Thanksgiving morning giving into my bodies urgent call for real nourishment. I didn’t want to wait for PC transport so I hopped on my bicycle for the last time and pedaled to Tendaba. Those of us who had arrived early wanted to get a jump on the cooking because we had not yet seen our food nor the facilities that would be available to us.]
It turned out to be a wise move as our turkeys were still in the freezer when we arrived!!! Luckily, they were very small turkeys (by FAT American standards) so we chucked them in a hot water bath to defrost, all 6 of them!! I’m not usually one to complain about an overabundance of food- especially turkey, but the fact that we had 6 turkeys and only 2 ovens did present us with a little problem. Since the turkeys were far from being ready to cook, we turned our attention to the other food. Apparently, some “budgetary limitations” prevented us from receiving a number of items on our list- particularly the case of wind we had asked for. As an example, someone had volunteered to make a green bean casserole, but instead of green beans, we got baked beans. Needless to say, we had to get a little creative
As you know, I volunteered to make Key Lime pie for dessert. However, the complete lack of limes (which were probably the easiest thing on our list to get since they grow all over here) and whipping cream present a pretty insurmountable obstacle, being that it is a Key Lime pie- half of which is whipped cream. We put a call through to Kanimung, our training director, to see if he could rustle up some limes, and he said he would pick some for us on his way to Tendaba, but the whipping cream was a lost cause. I decided to cut my losses and make the pie anyway- an experiment of sorts. Being that there were so many of us, I wanted to double the recipe but the problem was I had only one slightly largish casserole dish to use. I made a crust using digestive biscuits in place of graham crackers (which actually turned out really well). The filling took a bit more work since we didn’t have a proper zester to work with. It’s amazing how well that little thing works. We tried all manner of utensils finally settling for a serrated blade on 2 of our Leatherman’s. It took a long time to get enough zest, but we managed eventually. While we were making the filling, I baked the crust and set it in the fridge to cool. So far so good. I still hadn’t figured out how I was going to make the topping out of thin air, so I put it all in the fridge and moved on to other foods.

Tendaba wasn’t going to be serving us lunch that day and with only 2 ovens we knew it would be quite a while before dinner was ready so we prepared a lunch for everyone. We contacted the local baker and ordered 20 loaves of bread (essentially long baguette rolls which are actually quite good). Lunch was a hodge podge of dishes that were put together from the incorrectly purchased and extra food that wouldn’t go with Thanksgiving dinner. We made garlic bread, cream of mushroom soup, pasta salad, and served a cheese and cracker plate with olives and tomatoes. (Oh man, just writing about it is making my stomach ache with longing). Lunch was delicious, especially because it was complimented by a couple of ice cold Julbrews.
After lunch, we turned our attention to the turkeys and the rest of the dinner food. By this time 2 turkeys had thawed, so we gave one to Cam and Matt to deep dry and put one in the oven with an onion and garlic baste. Since there wasn’t enough room in the kitchen for them, Cam and Matt came up with an ingenious method of frying their turkeys, using an open fire outside. They rigged up a sort of frying basket out of a couple of clothes hangers, and stuck a metal pot full of oil over the flames. The pot was too small to fit the whole bird, so they cooked the turkey in quarters. It was my first time eating fried turkey, and it was delicious! I spent a good part of the afternoon hanging around the fire with about half our crew, waiting like starved vultures to pounce on each piece of meat as they came out of the fryer. I think we all burned our gingers trying to tear the turkeys apart, but no one cared.

I’m not going to go into all the details about the rest of the cooking but in the kitchen we were making: 2 huge pots of mashed potatoes, sweet and spicy yams, a sweet potato casserole with candied peanuts on top, a salad, baked beans, fruit salad, 4 turkeys, and a host of other goodies I’m forgetting. Dessert was to be apple pie, apple crisp, and Key Lime pie. I had decided to make a meringue topping on the Key Lime pie to replace the whipped cream, but none of us could really decide how to make it. I know that it needed egg whites and sugar and a lot of whipping, but that’s where my knowledge stopped. Jen and I decided to make a go of it, feeling pretty confident we knew what to do. We put 10 egg whites in a bowl and started the beating, assuming it would take about 20 minutes for the 2 of us to get it adequately whipped. It was tough work, especially in the sweltering kitchen. We both worked up serious sweats and would go outside to cool off while the other was whipping. After about 20 minutes of serious whipping efforts, the eggs were STARTING to look like meringue so we added the sugar and continued whipping. Another 10 minutes later the mixture hadn’t progressed a bit; we were starting to get frustrated and our forearms were screaming in agony. Suddenly Jen let out a small yell and moaned, “SHIT, we forgot the vinegar!” Sure enough we added a bit of vinegar and after another 5 minutes of beating the mixture was ready. However, by this time dinner was ready and we had to put the pie on hold. Not knowing what to do with the meringue, we put in the fridge to sit. About this same times, we realized there was a gravy crisis, and Matt and I hurried over to see if we could fix it. The “gravy” was basically brown water with chunks of flour floating in it. Someone had forgotten to combine the butter and flour before adding it to the gravy. Despite Matt’s expertise (his father is a chef) there was no saving the gravy, and we had to leave it so we could join the feast. It tasted like watered down butter and flour. We realized later that the cooks at Tendaba had run off with our turkey necks which is why the gravy tasted so bland.

Despite the lack of gravy, the spread was impressive, and delicious. Garlic mashed potatoes, a garlic and onion basted turkey, regular mashed potatoes, a huge salad, orange-glazed turkey, fried turkey, sweet and spicy mashed yams, roasted turkey, sweet potato casserole with candied peanuts, a massive fruit salad, baked beans and more garlic bread. After I finished my second place I ran back into the kitchen to take the Key Lime pie out of the over. Unfortunately, due to the lack of pie pans, the overly thick pie filling hadn’t solidified, despite being in the oven for an extra 60 minutes. I put it back in the fridge, hoping the cold would solidify it and then went back to eat 2 more plates of food. I was all for holding off on the desserts, partly because I was so full, and partly because I wanted to let the pie solidify a little longer, but I was out-voted. Jen and I went back in to prepare the meringue topping, but when we took the cover off the bowl, our hearts sank and I had to hold in a very angry yell. The liquid had totally separated from the “foam.”- it was ruined. Despite our furious efforts to revive it, there as no hope. So not only was the pie still soupy, it now has not topping. I brought it out, feeling a little embarrassed (I had been talking up this Key Lime pie all day). Luckily, my embarrassment was for naught: Everyone LOVED the soupy, sticky goodness, and I have to admit that it was pretty damn good.

After dessert I was so full I could barely move, but I managed to waddle of to the Med Office so I could step on the scale. I couldn’t believe my eyes: 169 pounds. Earlier in the day, after eating lunch, I had a pre-Thanksgiving meal weigh-in of 162 pounds. 7 Pounds in one meal! I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. I went to bed very happy, very full and very excited to see my site the following day.

Moving to our sites
The next morning, Nick, Jessica, and I loaded ourselves and our belonging into the PC Land Cruiser along with our driver, Alugi, and our LCH (Language and Culture Helper). Our three bikes were strapped precariously to the roof rack on top of the rest of our gear and then we set out for Kiang West. After 2 months of training we were finally visiting the villages were we would spend the next 2 years of our lives. Well, at least Nick and I were, Jessie, along with a number of other trainees had already seen their villages on site visits, but since there was no one to visit in either Jali or Janneh Kunda, this would be our first time. We dropped Jessie off in Dumbutu, then drove another 8 KM down the main South Bank road before turning off on the sandy track that would take us to Jali and Janneh Kunda. It was a pretty, but long drive. The forest was still in relatively good condition here, and we passed many huge African Mahogany, Bush Mango, Tallow and Baobab trees. We also drove through 3 smaller villages along the way, before coming to Jali.

I remember thinking that Jali was rather large compared to Bambako, and feeling a little nervous about how may names I would have to remember. Those thoughts were immediately flushed out of my brain when we arrived at my family’s compound and I got my first glimpse of my “house.” It was a disaster. Just looking at the outside alone, I knew it was going to be bad. I could see holes in the roof from the street and the fence around the backyard was a joke. However, this was NOTHING compared to what the inside looked like. I pushed open the front door, which swung wildly off it hinges, and just started laughing. It was so bad, that I couldn’t think of anything else to do. (There are pictures posted on my site but I’ll describe it here too.) First of all, the house was FILTHY – everything was covered in a thick layer of dust, mud and grass, including my belongings that PC had dropped off a week ago. The paint was peeling off the walls and where it was still intact there were long, brownish red stains that eerily reminded me of dried blood. There were termite holes all over the interior and exterior walls and both doors were cracked, the screens torn, and were hanging off their hinges. There was a big hole in the roof in the corner of the front room and it looked as if a bird had built its nest on the side of the holed. The back room was even worse. The entire back roof and back wall of the house were eaten away in a twisted, organic evil looking way, the bits of straw that hung down reminded me of goblin fingers and the whole room had a very scary feel to it. This was accented by more blood stains on the wall and what looked like a medieval torture device taking up half the room, that I assume was supposed to be a bed. The whole house looked like something out of a sick, twisted, psycho ward in a horror movie. The backyard was overgrown with weeds and the “fence” was basically non-existent.

Bakary, the PC teacher, was none to happy about the condition of my house, and said a few angry words to my host mother, Bintou (my host father wasn’t there) about me not staying in the house and that I should sleep in their home until mine was fixed. Meanwhile, Nick and I were getting a good chuckle out of the whole thing. He was thoroughly entertained by my “house of horrors.” After the rest of my belongings were unloaded Nick and Bakary hopped back in the Landcruiser to head to Janneh Kunda. Bakary would be coming back the nest day to help me sort things out after he helped Nick settle his rent and arrange his house.
So there I was, alone again in a new and totally strange environment, only this time I didn’t have a house to retreat to. I did, however, have a much better grasp of the language, and was able to sit and talk with my host mother, Binou, while she shelled peanuts. After a while, word got out that there was a Toubab in town, and soon kids were wandering over from nearby compounds. I tried getting all their names, but as I would find out later, remembering everyone’s name and face is one of the toughest challenges for me. It has become somewhat of an issue lately, despite the fact that I remind people that it’s very easy to remember the ONE Toubab’s name and very difficult for me to remember all the new names I’ve never heard before. Plus, Gambians all look somewhat alike, they aren’t as distinguishable as say, Americans, where we have blondes, brunettes, Mexicans, blue eyes, brown eyes, etc. Anyway, I digress.

My father, Lamin Dramin, arrived from the peanut fields after an hour or so, and we talked for a while, about the house, his work etc, and it turned out he spoke some decent English, which make my life immensely easier. I soon ran out of things to talk about, which, I find, happens rather quickly here, and so, not knowing what else to do, I entered the house of horrors to see what work I could do. I spent most of the day cleaning my backyard of brush and weeks, and trimming the moringa trees that had overgrown the place. I also cut and transplanted a papaya plant, which was growing, diagonally across my footpath – not having a clue whether papayas can be vegetative propagated like that or not. (Turns out they can, and mine is currently thriving.) That night, I set up shop in my house, under my mosquito net, which I had rigged onto the far corners of the torture dev…bed. I bent down the metal fragments that were poking up, and arranged the rebar crosspieces so that they might support me weight. Then, very gingerly, and very slowly, lay down on the mattress I had shoved on top, flinching every time the thing squeaked or groaned. After 5 minutes, I was finally lying down, but I was too scared to move, so I just stayed on my stomach. I slept pretty poorly that night, most likely because I kept having visions of the bed collapsing and impaling me with a piece of rebar. Luckily, that didn’t happen and I surveyed the night, somehow.

I awoke the next morning at 7 AM to find Bakary already here. The gele-gele that leaves from JannehKunda leaves @ 4:30 am and arrives in Jali about 5:30. He was too nice to wake me, even though he was obviously freezing in the morning cold – he had only a towel to drape across his shoulders. After a delicious breakfast of monoo, which is sweetened coos porridge mixed with sour mild (I had to ask too). We got started on fixing up the house, which I might add, I didn’t think necessary because I was secretly hoping that they would do considerable more e than just fix-it- up. We put some patches of corrugated metal over the holes to stop the birds from getting in, then went through and did a half-assed cleaning – there really was no point, and finally walked around and made a list of all the problems so that PC would know how bad it was.

We spent the rest of the day walking around greeting people, ordering a bed and a straw mattress from the local carpenter, and negotiating rent with me host father. He had come to me the day before, asking to go inside the house so we could talk, and then looking very nervous, and shady, asked for D800 a month for rent. Even without knowing how much rent was supposed to be, I knew from his body language that he was asking too much, and told him that I was supposed to wait for Bakary to come and negotiate. To put that figure, D800 into perspective 800 dalasis (sp?) is about $30.00, and that was for housing, 3 meals a day and laundry! Now, it’s not that I wanted to rip my host family off, and it might seem to the outsider that I was being cheap by refusing to accept his offer; but from the moment we set foot on Gambian soil, we’ve been treated differently because of out skin color, especially with regards to money, and frankly, I was tired of being ripped off. After some serious negotiating between Bakary and my host father, Lamin, the rent was set at D600 for housing, 2 meals a day, and laundry, which is the going rate in my area, according to Bakary.

Bakary also helped me explain that I wanted to really be a part of their family, meaning that I work and help in the fields during harvest and planting times, and bring back food from the market when I went. I seasoned that if I brought actual food back, it would better contribute to me family’s overall health; rather than giving me host father an extra hundred dalasi or so to buy ataya and sugar.

Bakary left around 1PM, and I spent the rest of the day helping Lamin collect grass for the new roof. He explained to me that he’d been too busy with the peanut harvest to work on the house, which I completely understood. Peanuts are the main crop grown by Gambian men, and basically their only form of income generation – so it was very important that he get the peanuts harvested before the brush fires started. Was amazed at how much work was involved in the construction of a grass roof, and I was only helping Lamin to collect the grass at this point. He borrowed a donkey and a donkey cart from a nearby compound and after hitching the donkey to the cart, we set out for the bush. We rode on the cart most of the way, jumping off occasionally to help the donkey through the deep sandy patches. Lamin and I chatted sporadically along the way, with me quizzing him about Mandinka names for various trees and bushes we passed. At one point, Lamin pointed to a small rocky rise of about 10 vertical feet that lay on the path ahead, and, I kid you not, said “mountain”. I barely managed to stifle my laughter, and explained to him about the mountains around Utah, he was amazed, and I think a little disbelieving, having never seen anything remotely that high. We traveled a considerable distance into the bush, about 6 km. All the way to the bolong (which is a small, tributary-esque body of water connected to the River Gambia). Along the way, we passed innumerable stands of, what looked like to me, perfectly good tall grass. When we finally got to Lamin’s harvesting site, the grass there looked exactly like all the other grass we had passed, but I decided to keep this to myself.

Harvesting the grass turned out to be a very itchy, sweaty, and sometimes, painful process. The day before, Lamin had gone out and cut all the grass, today we had to bundle it and transport it to the cart, which was waiting on the path. The grass is cut at about ankle high and is akin to walking through field of razor grass. During our first trip to fetch grass my ankles felt like they were getting clawed, but it wasn’t until we reached the grass pile and I looked at my bloody ankles that I realized how mean that grass was.

The task was simple; Lamin would bind up the grass piles with “rope” made form Fara bushes, and I would carry the piles back to the donkey cart. It was a lot harder than it looked. For one, the” rope” wasn’t very strong and the piles – which weighed about 75 lbs –had to be lifted very carefully onto one’s head or the rope would break, sending waves of itchy grass all down your back. I managed to break only one pile before getting the technique down. With the grass balance on my head I carefully made my was back to the cart, this time avoiding the cut grass like a rabid dog avoids water. After 10 or 12 trips the cart was full and out supple of grass exhausted. My ankles were shredded, and the top of my head, arms, shoulders, and back were itching like crazy and turning bright red. To make matters worse, the grass seeds, which are as sharp as a razor blade, were firmly embedded into my shirt, and I spent most of the trip back picking them off my clothes. The donkey was now pulling about 750 lbs. Of grass as well, and we had to push the cart through the deep sand so we didn’t kill the poor animal.

When we finally arrived back at the compound we unloaded all the grass and stacked it next to the other bundles – about 30 in all, and considering each one weighs about 75 lbs. that’s 2250 lb. of grass just for one roof! Rather impressive, I’d say.
On the way back, Lamin had also collected a few stacks of young palm fronds to use for weaving the grass. After unloading the grass, I tied the palm fronds together in sets of two. While I was tying them, Lamin pounded two stakes into the ground and began spreading out a pile of grass between them, so it was about 2 inches thick. He then brought out a bucket full of water that had balls of “: rope” soaking in it. The “rope” was made by stripping the back from a Baobab tree, tying it together into one long strand, and then shaping it into a ball which is then soaked in water to make it flexible. It works amazingly well, and is remarkable strong. I am constantly amazed at the resourcefulness of the Gambians. It seems they have a use for every single plant in the bush, and even the most experienced woodsman here in the US would be hard-pressed to match their knowledge and skill.

Lamin tied the rope taut between the two stakes so it was lying on top of the grass and then proceeded to weave the palm fronds around the rope and the grass, forming a thick mat of grass. I took him about 40 minutes to do one mat, and once the first one was completed he wove another separate mat on top of first, and so on, until the stakes could hold no more. Then, for storage, we rolled the mats up into themselves and piled the complete ones in the garden next to my house. We then called it a day, as darkness was quickly approaching. (Page 19 of letter)

My bucket bath that evening was both particularly painful and very refreshing. Painful in the fact that I had to scrub the dirt out of my shredded ankles, but refreshing because I was finally able to wash the grass residue and seeds off my still-red skin. After a dinner or rice with dufango (a spicy-ish sauce made from ground peanuts) and half a fish, I chatted with Lamin, Bintan, and Fatamata while sitting around the fire. Jali, it seemed to me, was consistently colder than Bambako, my family here built a fire every night to stay warm, and I actually had to wear a light fleece at night and while sleeping since I only had sheets for warmth. Whether this was function of geographic location or simply that we were further into the cold season, I didn’t know, but I loved it. The days were still plenty hot – that African sun is might powerful, but it made sleeping extremely pleasant. I retired early, once again praying that I wouldn’t be impaled by rebar in my sleep.

The next morning I woke up expecting to have at least one life-threatening injury from the bed but after a quick sweep for blood, I was surprised to find that I had escaped a puncture wound once again. Nick, who was staying in Janneh Kinda,
25km further up the road, arrived around 7:00. The plan was for the two of us to spend the day in Jali, then the next morning, take a gele-gele to Sankandi, Where we would walk the remaining 8km to Dumbunto to meet up with Jessie and Bakary.

Travel to Banjul

We went to bed very early that night, after packing, in preparation for our ass-crack of dawn, departure time. I set the alarm for 4:30am, and we were out the door by 5:00am. We walked to the village square, navigating by the light of our headlamps. The reports from locals on what time the gele-gele arrived here in Jali ranged from 4:00am to 7:30am, so just to play it safe, we got out there plenty early. It turned out to be a little too early, and while we sat and waited in to cold morning air, we were subjected to the full blast of the mosque’s loudspeaker, announcing the dawn call to prayer. Not long after, villagers, all men, began silently filing their way into the mosque. The first gele-gele came around 6:45am, and didn’t so much stop, as simply slow down. There was a mad rush of people pushing, shoving, and pulling their way into the still-morning vehicle. When the madness was over, Nick and I found ourselves chasing after the gele as it sped away. WE could see that there were still open spots on the gele, but the driver didn’t seem to care. The rest of the crowd that was left didn’t seem nearly as upset as we were., We discovered that another gele would be coming soon, lessening our anger somewhat. For all their friendliness, hospitality, and “it’s nice to be nice “ talk, when it comes to getting on a gele Gambians do not mess around. They will literally throw you off the gele so they can get on. But the first vehicle had taught is well, and we prepped ourselves for the arrival off the final gele, packs on our backs, ready. This one came flying in just as the first one had, but it actually stopped. Nick and I elbowed our way to the back door and after much pushing, fought for a seat for ourselves in the back, only to be kicked out by the Operante a minute later, We had unwittingly made the mistake of telling the Operate (the driver’s assistant) that we were only going to Sankandi, and it turned out the driver didn’t want to take people who were only going to Sankani, as we found out when we were kicked off. I had already thrown my bad on the large luggage rack on top of the gele, so I hurried up the ladder to grab it before the gele took off. In a strange twist of fate, the Operante saw me on the ladder and said, “Oh you can climb?” I yelled down that of course I could climb a ladder, so he told Nick to join me up top, and said we could ride to Sankandi on the luggage rack. My first thought was “Hell yeah!! This is going to be awesome! Fresh air, plenty of space, and a killer view of the impending sunrise.” Then my mind started replaying images of all the geles I had seen careening down the roads, leaning over at impossible angles as they negotiated all the bumps ,gullies, and potholes. I decided I had better find a good solid perch. Nick and I were soon joined by 3 Gambians in their 20’s whom I had met a few days prior. They were originally from Jali, were staying in Combo, and had come for a funeral, their father’s. We hastily rearranged the multitude of itemsp that had been thrown on top, including charcoal, firewood, bags of rice a goat, buckets of milk, and a pile of suitcases, so that we al had a somewhat secure place to sit. We had all just found our spots when the Operante banged his hand on the van’s side tow time, to signal the driver to go.

The Adventure began before we even reached the edge of town, as a low-hanging mango tree made us hit the deck at the last second, to avoid getting our head knocked off. From that point on, all 5 of us kept one eye looking ahead for low branches. The ride was superb! Despite a few knocks on the head, and a thrashed leg from a passing thorn bush, the ride was incredible. Our view of the sun rising over the African Savannah, with the Baobabs silhouetted by the sun’s rays was something I’ll never forget. There were a few times when we forced to grab onto the rack to avoid getting thrown off, but most of the time the ride was pretty smooth, and surprisingly cold. I found myself wishing I had brought a jacket, and praying that the sun would rise faster so it would warm me up.

Our company, if the form of the 3 Gambians, was almost as entertaining as the ride itself. The talk, as it tends to do in a group of young guys, turned quickly to sex. Seriff, the more talkative of the three had proclaimed himself an expert on the subject, but he took both of us by surprise when he stated loudly, “African pussy, it’s so sweet!” Nick and I almost fell off we were laughing so hard. He then proceeded to tell us tha this friend, another her self-proclaimed expert, had determined , through a number of “experiments” (he was apparently a scientific expert) that, “African pussy was sweeter than white pussy”. The conversation went on, but you get the basic idea. While we were stopped at one of the small villages in route to Sandandi, Seriff asked me for my mobile number so he could bring me a “sweet African woman, so sweet”, while I was staying in Kombo..I told him that unfortunately, I didn’t have a mobile yet, but thanked him for his kind offer.

When we arrived in Sankandi, the 5 of us climbed down, Nick and I paid our 20 Dalasi, and Seriff and Company found seats inside to go to Kombo. We said our goodbyes and started the 8km walk to Dumbuto, where we could meet up with Jessie and Bakary. It was hard leaving that gele-gele, knowing that if we had stayed on board, we would have been in Kombo, swimming in the ocean and drinking cold beer, in a matter of hours. Unfortunately, it was not to be –we trainees weren’t supposed to arrive in Kombo until the next day, so we walked the WRONG way to Dumbuto. Upon our arrival in Dumbuto, we found Jessie in his house, complaining about its condition, which having come from my hellhole of a house was rather hard to fathom. Nick and I explained to him the condition my house was in, and when he saw the pictures on my camera, he quickly stopped complaining. While we waited for Bakary to arrive, Nick and I borrowed Jessie’s’ two mats, unrolled them on the floor and promptly passed out.

Jessie woke us at 1pm saying that we were supposed to meet Bakery in Wurokang (where he lived) and that we would spend the night at his home and catch a ride to Kombo the next morning from one of the gele-gele drivers he knew in town. The 7km walk to Wurokang went by quickly, the road was pleasantly shaded (Unusual here in Gambia) and we had the pleasure of running into a troop of patas monkeys foraging on the roadside.

That night, Bakary put us up in a spare room of his family’s compound. The three of us were to share 2 foam pads they had kindly let us borrow for the night. I made the mistake of arriving for bed last and got stuck in the middle, foam canyon and all. Nonetheless, it was comfortable enough, and the night would have gone well, had Nick not stared snoring at and inhumane volume 4 minutes after I laid down. Now, I usually don’t have a problem falling asleep, except if people are snoring, and this was no ordinary snore. It sounded like a Harley-Davidson was starting up about 2 feet from my head. After about 20 minutes, I got pissed off and punched Nick, hard, to get him to stop, but it was no use, he was out. I tried to lessen the racket by moving so my head was at his feet, but it didn’t matter. I ended up reading till about 3am, getting more and more angry as time went by. I finally fell into a fitful sleep, that lasted maybe 2 hours until I woke up freezing- I had already slipped my pants over my shorts for warmth, and had a long-sleeved shirt on, but I neglected to bring any other warm cloths, so I tossed and turned until the alarm went off at 6:00am. We got dressed and packed in a hurry to sit outside while we waited for the gele-gele to come. It was a good thing we were outside so early, because the gele showed up around 10:30am. The waiting was made all the more painful knowing that Nick and I could have been in Kombo by the time yesterday.

The gele also decided to break down about halfway to Kombo turning a 5-hour ride into a 6-hour ride. When we finally got to Kombo, Nick and I threw our bags in a room at GPI and practically ran all the way to the beach. The ocean had cooled off considerably over the previous 2 months, and was incredible refreshing. We swam and body surfed in the waves until after sunset, enjoying the play of the sky’s vibrant colors reflected in the water. The date of our arrival in Kombo was November 29th, and we were to depart on December 11th, giving us 11 full days. I went to the beach every one of those days, usually in the afternoon when the waves tended to be good and we would swim and watch the Sunset over the Atlantic. We usually were in sessions or on field trips in the morning, some of which I felt the need to skip so I could spend more time at the beach. Every day we had a solid crew of guys at the beach, usually body surfing or playing Ultimate Frisbee in the surf; - Matt, Nick, Cam, Peter, Can, and myself. AT night I would usually head over to the PC transit house to hang out with Sharon, who had come down for our Swearing –In. The two of us had a really nice dinner one night at a beachside restaurant on the outskirts of town. We sat outside at a table on the beach and enjoyed cold Julbrew and fresh seafood. It was like being on vacation! After dinner we met up with Nick, Peter, Allison, Cam, and Stephanie at a dance club in the heart of Kombo. The place was rather impressive. It was essentially a huge open-air courtyard with raised seating in the middle and around the edges, and 2 dance floors in between. We danced until about 2am, and then walked back exhausted.

I felt it was necessary to skip the following day’s training field trip, and instead, went out for a big greasy breakfast with Sharon, and then the two of us nursed our hangovers in a hammock on the beach, in the shade of 2 palm trees. It couldn’t have been a better day.

Shopping For Supplies

Unfortunately the 11 days in Kombo weren’t all fun and games, our group also had to do all the shopping for our sites. A number of folks were replacing previous volunteers, so they were handed down all the necessities; gas burner and canister, mattress, trunk, pillows, pots and pans, etc. In my case, however, shopping is not something I particularly enjoy, in fact, loathing is probably the more accurate feeling I have towards it. Shopping is bad enough when everything has a set prize and one is free to simply roam the aisles, looking for what he or she needs. But here, where, where one has to bargain for practically everything, (without, I might add, knowing what the prize is actually supposed to be) it becomes an exercise in frustration management; especially when the sellers like to charge a separate price for Toubabs.

The Serrekunda market is where one can find most of the things that he or she needs, at a relatively good price. Most of the stores lining the main (and only paved) street are priced for tourists and rich folk, and since I fall into neither of those categories, I did most of my shopping at the Serrekunda market. This particular market is the biggest in the Gambia-think huge flea market, but 50 times bigger, louder, crazier, and more crowded, and you’ll begin to understand what it’s like. When shopping in such a market, one has to develop a very quite eye for locating the things you want. Let your eyes linger for a moment too long at a specific stall, and you’ll be assaulted by a barrage of questions, offers, prizes etc. This is mainly because everyone assumes that a Toubab is loaded with cash, and they simply want a piece of the action, but knowing that fact doesn’t make it any less annoying. Some of the venders are pretty aggressive, shopping just short of physically preventing you from leaving their vicinity.

Once one has located an item he or she wants, usually after 10-15 minutes of looking, followed by asking five or six venders where said product is, the really fun part; bargaining, begins. This is made nearly impossible by the simple fact that I had absolutely no idea what any of the items were SUPPOSED to cost. During training we were told to take the initial offer and cut in half, or a quarter, depending on who you talked to, and then work up from there. Despite my loathing for shopping, I found I was actually quite good at getting what I thought, at least, was a good deal. This was usually anywhere from a third to half of the initially quoted prize. My typical strategy, for the more expensive items at least, involved visiting three or more vendors to see what starting prizes were, and listening to how much Gambians paid for the item. After deciding how much I wanted to pay, I would put that exact amount of money in a separate pocket, before approaching a vender to start bargaining. Most people assumed I was a tourist, so I liked to quickly inform them in Mandinka that I would be living here for 2 years. This usually brought the starting price down a third. We would go back and forth for a while, I usually started very low, and worked up to what I wanted to pay. Most of the time, they wouldn’t accept the price I had decided upon, so I would start to walk away, and they would pull me back and offer something a little lower then their previous price. At that point, I would pull out the money I separated earlier, and tell them that was all I had. It hardly failed. That being said I’m sure I still paid more than the average Gambian.

Part Two - It's Official - continuation of Dec 13 letter

2007-01-28T04:11:00.000Z

After pulling ourselves across the river, we unloaded and drove maybe a kilometer to the second ferry crossing, where we had to wait another hour. This ferry was a little bigger and its motor was intact, so we were spared the arm workout. We learned from our previous loading experience, and put logs down before we tried to load the coaster, and it made it on just fine. I think the fact that the bumper was bent up 3 meters helped immeasurably! After the final crossing it was only a short 30 minute drive to Bansang, where we met up with the rest of the group at 6:00PM. We left the PC office at 8AM that morning.

Unfortunately, the Nursing School where we stayed in Bansang was a bit downtrodden. The showers were housed in a small concrete shell, the walls of which I was afraid to even touch. My foam mattress weighed about 50 pounds, with 90% of the weight coming not from the mattress, but from the mold, bacteria, and fungus. I assumed was living inside. So, I used my sandals to pull the mattress off the metal bed frame, making sure not to let it touch any part of my body, and put my Thermarest down on the frame instead. (Luckily I brought the Thermarest to sleep on during the site visit.) The showers also had the fun habit of refusing to drain, so as the little stall filled with water, I had to manuever myself around the growing cesspool in the center, all the while avoiding the muck-encrusted walls. It was a fun game to play, and it kept shower time interesting, but I found myself missing my bucket baths constantly.

The upside to the poor housing conditons was the presence of a volleyball court on the school grounds, which provided much needed exercise and stress relief in the evenings. A bunch of Gambians played there every night, and we had good , friendly matches with mixed Toubab and Gambian teams. The second night, however, the Gambians wanted to play the Tuobabs and it became a Team USA vs. Team Gambia showdown. We had one woman on our team and it was interesting to watch the Gambians try to form their team after they saw we had a woman. It was obvious that they wanted teams to be "fair" by having a woman on their team, but at the same time, none of the guys were willing to let one of the women play. The funny part was that they viewed having a woman as a handicap, when in realty Erin was probably our best player and certainly, our best server. Interesting cultural differences. The teams ended up being good matches, worthy of both countries, though the styles varied greatly. Team USA adopted the traditional bump-set-spike approach to the game, while Team Gambia seemed to play half soccer and half volleyball. Both strategies worked well enough, and we were tied up down to the end. A couple bad calls by the referees and some foul play by Team Gambia, fired up some members of our team and things got a little heated, tempers flared, but it was resolved with retaliatory foul play from Team USA. In the end, we pulled through and won, barely, with me serving out the game.

Now, back to the real reason we were at Bansang - technical field trips. We went to a number of interesting places that unfortunately , required extensive Coaster travel, so I had the pleasure of spending even more time in that vehicle. We visited the national Agricultural Research In stitute, NARI, which is a joint project between Taiwan and the Gambia. Their research is focused on improving agricultural techniques, practices, and crop yields in the Gambia - namely rice, since that's the crop of choice here. Although with rice being to water and labor intensve, it has always puzzled me why it is grown in such abundance in a country that basically abuts the Sahara Desert. One of the trainees in our group, Ben, was assigned to work there, so that he could assist them with their research and disseminate the results of the research to those of us in the field.

The following day, we went to YBK, which is a livestock research facility near Bansang. We learned about various methods of poultry production - for laying eggs and for meat consumption, and were shown examples of successful rabbit and small-ruminant raising projects. The highlight of the visit however, was watching a Halled goat slaughter. We were able to witness the whole procedure, from the slitting of the throat, (the Hallel way) to the inspection of the thyroid glands for signs of disease. The skin was saved for drum-making , and we ate the goat for lunch. We also visited the "Martha Stewart" of the Gambia, as an example of just how much one can do with a "mud hut". Her house was ridiculously nice, she had painted the walls, and had decorated everything very nicely. She also had really creative ideas for shelving, table, and storage space that I'm going to try to implement in my "mud hut". Our last day, we visited the Wassu Stone Circles, which are thought to be ancient burial sites for dignitaries and royal families. The stone circles are comprised of large rectangular blocks of laterite that were hewn from the local bedrock in nearby quarries. These blocks were then sunk into the ground and arranged in circles.

After Wassu, we all piled back into the Coaster and started the long frieve back to the Training Villages. Because the South Bank road is so bad, we went via the North Bank road, which meant 3 more ferry crossings. The two crossings at Janjanbureh went off without a hitch, and this time both motors were working so no cable-pulling was necessary. The last crossing was at Farafeni, where we would cross to Soma and catch the South Bank road the rest of the way to training village. However, the genius' who designed the crossing failed to take into account the affect of the tide on the river here, and at low tide, the ferry cannot move, it literally is stuck in the mud. We had the luck to arrive right in the middle of low tide. There was already a HUGE backup of vehicles when we arrived, and someone said they had been there for 2 hours already, and the ferry hadn't moved. Now that little piece of paper I mentioned earlier came in REAL handy here: we drove past a line of cars and trucks that must have been a kilometer long, right up to the stern of the ferry!! Even with our line-skipping privileges we still had to wait 2 hours. I hate to think how long those poor bastards at the back of the line had to wait!

After arriving in Soma, it was a simple matter of driving down that bumpy-as-hell South Bank road until we reached Bambako.
After all that traveling it felt great to be back in Bambako and back to a somewhat normal life. Our garden beds that we had dug and sewn before leaving for the field trips were a disaster - two plants germinated. No one had watered them in our absence - mainly because we lacked the language skills to ask someone to water them for us! So., I spent one afternoon re-digging the bed and replanting the seeds the PC had given us. I then spent the next several hours hauling enough water to the garden to last for the 8 days that I was going to be at Tendaba- so the small boy who was going to water for me didn't have to fetch the water (which is a lot of work to ask of someone). We were only in village for 4 to 5 days before heading back to Tendaba so I don't remember much of what happened.

One thing that stands out, however, was my first attempt at brewing ataya. A Tuobab in the Gambia cannot so much as read a book without having 10 curious pairs of eyes glancing over his shoulder, so when word got around that I was going to brew ataya one evening, you can imagine what the turnout was like. I have to admit, I was a little nervous at first, it's such a ritualized process, and I had a rather large audience watching my every move.

Ataya is brewed on a locally made miniature coal stove, whereby a small metal kettle is placed directly onto hot coals from one of the cooking fires. Once the water in the kettle was hot enough, I added the green tea directly into the kettle, and allowed it to brew for several minutes. Then, at the proper moment ( I was instructed by Bakery as to when this proper moment occured) I added about half a cup of sugar, which, considering that there was only about three-quarters of a cup of water in the kettle, amounts to a VERY sweet drink. (You can literally feel the cavities forming as you drink it). The mixture of water, tea, and sugar then sat for another proper period of time, unknown to me, before Bakary said it was ready. Now, if you'll recall, the ataya was being brewed in a metal kettle that was sitting directly on a bed of coals, and as we all know this makes for a very hot kettle. So, you can imagine my surprise when I was goaded unmercifully for picking up the kettle with my bandana so as not to scold my fingers, despite the fact that I had seen other people do the same thing with the empty tea box. Brewing ataya requires a great deal of mixing to get all the tea and sugar to properly dissolve and mix together. The mixing is done by pouring the scalding hot liquid back and forth between the metal kettle and what are basically 2 shot glasses, preferably at great heights. This is where the fun begins: with my bandana-clad hand, I took the kettle and filled one glass with ataya, from what I thought was respectable 4 or 5 inch height. It was not, everyone laughed at the Tuobab. Then I took the glass of ataya and poured it back into the kettle to continue the mixing , but it was so damn hot that I almost dropped the glass, and ended up spilling half the ataya onto the ground. Everyone laughed again. After several of these mixings, the ataya began to cool down enough where I was no longer scalding my fingers, and my confidence began to build. I got the height up another inch or two, and then Bakary said, it was enough. Again, that mysterious timing thing. Bakary put the kettle back onto the coals to heat it up just enough to burn the crap out of my finger during the second mixng phase - glass to glass.

While the ataya was heating up to scalding temperature, I washed the two glasses and the plate they were sitting on in preparation for the glass to glass mixing. Now, as far as I can tell, the second mixing phase has two goals, these are to further dissolve the sugar into the water, and to create a bubble, foamy, goodness in the two glasses - much like the frothy milk in a cappuccino. When the ataya was ready, I again took my bandana to grasp the kettle and filled up one glass with ataya. The brewer is supposed to pour the mixture back and forth many times without spilling. Well, it's a lot harder than t looks, as I soon discovered. I took hold of the burning glass and managed to endure the heat long enough to pour the ataya into the other glass at about a 6 inch height without spilling too much. I did this back and forth until Bakary said it was enough. At this point, about half the liquid remained in the glass, and there was only a barely discernible amount of foam in the glasses. I poured what was left of the liquid back into the kettle, being careful not to lose what little foam I had, and then filled both glasses halfway with ataya and served them to the oldest two people in the group, as one is supposed to do. After they finished they handed the glasses back, and I filled 2 more, passing them to the next 2 oldest people. This continues until the kettle is empty, which, in my case, happened about then. Usually, 3 or 4 rounds of glasses go out. But, I had spilled so much there was only enough for 2. That concluded the first brew. I had two more brews to go before the ataya-brewing was finished. Needless to say, it was a late night.

We left Bambako on November 6th to head back to Tendaba for a second round of training sessions. We were supposed to eat lunch in village, but we had been warned that lunch would be corned beef (essentially Spam, minus the pork) Neither Ben nor I had much of a liking for the stuff, so we departed for Tendaba early, with thoughts of cold beer and swimming pools fueling our desire to leave. It's amazing what a few weeks in village can do for one's appreciation of simple comforts. Tendaba seemed MUCH nicer the second time around, and the Julbrew might as well have been a Black Butte Porter (spelling?), it tasted so good. Not long after we arrived in Tendaba we noticed something a little out of the ordinary: there was a huge cruise ship steaming up the river towards us. Now , maybe I'm a little out of the cruise ship loop, but the last I checked, the Gambia River is not exactly the kind of 0f place most cruises go. For one thing, there's not a whole lot to see, but it was there nonetheless. We watched with further amazement as the ship proceeded to drop anchor out in front of Tendaba. We did a little investigating and found out that the cruise was stopping at Tendaba that night for an "African cultural experience" or something like that. We had visions of the ship being full of beautiful single Norwegians. They turned out to be Danish and really old. The cruise ship organizers, like the ferry designers, forgot about the tides, so they couldn't reach the dock with their Zodiacs, despite numerous hilarious attempts that we all observed while hanging out on the dock. The event was suppose to go off around 9ish so all the dancers, drummers, and other performers started practicing and playing around 8. The cruise ship folks couldn't even reach the dock until around 10 pm, so the show didn't get rolling until 11:30 pm. This basically meant that we all got a free show of the Jolas (that is the name of the ethnic group the performers were a part of)doing their thing, and performing for themselves. They had a bunch of dance contest among them selves, and were practicing different drummings and dances. It was really amazing to watch.

After a while the zodiacs started pouring in and that in itself, was a show as well. We observed the whole procedure from the bantaba on the dock, laughing quietly among ourselves, as boat after boat of gray haired Danes hobbled their way up the ladder and across the dock.
The boats had such presumptious names, such as "Sir Francis Drake, Marco Polo, Ernest Shackleton, and the like.
We had good fun with that too, calling out in posh English accents, ( ohh, hare omes the Sir Frances Drake 'cross the savage waters of the river Gambiah"). The show itself was rather impressive, the Gambians, for their part, went all out- it was amazing to watch. After the show there was a huge buffet of sea food and cold German beer that we had the opportunity to pillage, once the cruise shippers had left. Pillage we did.

A number of us had birthdays while we were staying Tendaba, and since mine fell in the middle of those birthdays we decided to have our party on the night of the 8th. We all got good and drunk and had ourselves a grand time drinking beer on the dock dancing under the Bantaba , and eventually having a dance party / skinny dip in the pool around 1 am. The night before , I buzzed my head down to 1/8 of an inch- the shortest its ever been- as a heat relief measure. ( It was a beautiful decision and I am going to keep it short all two years ). Before I completely buzzed it, I had Peter give me a wicked good mullet, complete with mud flaps and all. Not only did I have a hideously good mullet, but, by this time, I was also sporting an incredible dirty looking mustache. The whole effect was overwhelmingly redneck. Now I am afraid I must take a little diversion to explain just why I was sporting this sketchy 'stash. The PC swearing -in ceremony is held at the Ambassador's residence, and the current Ambassador allegedly has a rather good mustache. So it has been a PC tradition for the guys in the training group to sport mustaches for the swearing in ceremony, partly to make fun of the ambassador and partly to look just ridiculous. The mullet was more a spur of the moment idea, but its value was quickly recognized when we remembered we were going to the Kwinella School the following day to teach a class on environmental education! Despite looking like a total ass with my mullet and mustache, the teaching went really well and I enjoyed it immensely, although how Karissa and Tamara kept a straight face during our lesson was beyond me.

On November the 11th, our second to last day at Tendaba, we had the infamous " Marathon March". It used to be called the "Death March" but that name apparently didn't sit well with the politically correct, safety-conscious folks at PC admin, so it was changed a year or two ago. The Marathon March as its name suggests , is essentially a long, 27 Km, bushwack through the bush. Our route took us into Kiang West National Park and then back through the mango swamps along the river"s edge. I was basically " volunchosen" to be the rear guard in case there were any medical problems . We had a guide from Kiang West who was to lead the way and two second year "agfos" who had done the hike previously, also accompanied us. The first half of the hike - the outgoing leg-was pretty, but mundane hiking along a well traveled trail. The return leg- the bushwack, was a lot more interesting. It started out with a zig zagging route through ten foot tall elephant grass where not even the guide could have known where he was going- the stuff was just too thick and dense.

We eventually made our way to the edge of the mangrove swamps, and spooked a nearby baboon troupe. ( We had seen some smaller Patas monkeys earlier in the hike, but they didn't get nearly as close). The baboons were just as interested in us as we were in them, and a lot of them got pretty close- peering at us through the bush. There were always a handful of them up in nearby trees keeping an eye on us. Most of the group went on ahead, but 4 or 5 of us stayed back to watch the baboons more, since they were coming closer. I was supprised at how big they were- a couple of the big males that stayed up in the tree were the size of adolescent boys. The baboons would run around in the bush just out of sight , screaming, and then stop and look at us, and then run around some more. After awhile it became obvious that we were agitating them, as they started to scream a lot more, and come closer , and then, when we realized that they were attempting to circle us, we decided to leave. About 3 or 4 of the baboons followed us through the bush for about a km, pausing to glance at us , and hiding behind a log or a tree when we would turn and look at them. It was really amazing to see, and crazy to observe how humanlike their actions and mannerisms were. When we were safely out of their territory, the baboons took one last look at us, then disapeared back into the bush. Very cool.

The last day at Tendaba, we took a boat ride up a small tributary of the Gambia and saw an amazing array of different bird species. After the boat ride, it was time to bike back to Bambako for my final 10 days in training village. The End of This Letter.

It's Official -Dec 15, 2006

2007-01-24T03:57:00.000Z

I'm now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! Our swearing in ceremony was this past Friday and I am now living in my permanent site in Jali. Before I tell you all about Jali, however, it's time for a rather large recap of the past six weeks....

When I last wrote I believe it was Korith and I was back in Bambako enjoying the festivities and drinking ataya under the mango trees. We were only in village a few days before we departed for our volunteer site visits - I went to Kafuta to vist Tina, who had served in Jali for 10 months before moving to Kafuta because of security concerns and was almost finished with her service at the time of my visit. Those of us that went on site visit relatively near the Kombo area, traveled to the Peace Corps office a day early so we could catch a ride with the Coaster the following morning to Bansang - where we would be staying during out Technical Field Trip. This was a very welcome surprise, and I spent the afternoon at the beach, languishing in the waves and enjoying a nice cold Julbrew - that's the local Gambian beer, while watching the sunset. A few of us went out to dinner - which was amazing in itself, smply because I didn't eat rice, but was made even better by stoppng for ice cream on the way back to the Peace Corps Transit house.

"The stodge" - as it is lovingly known by PCV's is quite the place. It's a large 2 story house surrounded by a high cement wall that encloses a really nice yard containing mango, lime and orage trees. The huge cement wall is complemented by a garrison of guards, 2 of which are on duty 24 hours a day to keep us Americans safe . Despite the imposing first appearance the Stodge is actually really nice. There are seven dormitory-style rooms, 3 of which are airconditioned and all the rooms have a separate bathroom, complete with showers that may or may not have hot water - but who wants hot water anyway? The ground floor has a TV room with couches and a wide selection of DVD's - most of which are the illegally copied ones that you can buy on the street here. There's also a pretty decent library and a number of board games, cards and puzzles for other entertainment. The kitchen is well-stocked with a fridge, stove, oven and plenty of storage space for volunteers's food. The backyard has a nice porch for chatting and beer-drinking. The second floor is all bedrooms, but it has a porch all the way around it - which is, I found out firsthand, is perfect for launching surprise water balloon attacks onto unsuspecting bystanders below. I spent that night in ar-conditoned bliss, and got up early the next morning to meet the Coaster at the PC office.

As I mentioned in my first etter, I had alraeady experienced the joys of travel on the South Bank Road, so although I had heard the North Bank Road was considerably better, wasn't exactly lookkng forward to the trip to Bansang, which is located or stuck 2/3s of the way upcountry. To get to the North Bank Road from Kombo, we had to drive to Banjul and take a ferry from Banjul to Barra accross the mouth of the Gambia River. Peace Corps has a handy little slip of paper that essentially allows them to cut to the front of the line when waiting for a ferry crossing and although the line at Banjul wasn't too long that little piece of paper would prove its worth a little later in the trip. Aside from good views of Banjul from the water, the crossing itself was pretty uneventful and we reached Barra in about 45 minutes. We unloaded the ferry at Barra and started our long journey upcountry on the NOrth Bank Road.
Now, comparing the North Bank Road and the South Bank road is a bit like comparing Interstate 80 to a 2 lane dirt track in Kentucky. Suffice it to say that the North Bank road was many magnitudes above the South Bank road and we made excellent timing to Janjanbureh. Somewhere along the way I had to request a quick pitstop to get rellief from a still-adjusting digestive system, and discovered that the leaves of the wooto plant make for excellent T.P.
Janjanberuh is a decent-sized city located on an island in the middle of the river, and it is here that the N B. road crosses to join up with the SB road. There are no brdges, however, so one must navigate not one, but two ferry crossings. It is an island after all.

Of the two ferres, the first, and smaller one, is reminiscent of the old cable-guided ferries that you see in old Western movies, only this one had cars on it, not horses. It's small, very small actually, only two cars (or one Coaster) will fit. Being that the outboard that usually propels the craft across the river was broken, the ferry's small size actually worked in our favor, becase we had to hand propel the ferry across by yarding on the big steel cable that ran the length of the crossing. As you can imagine, this made progress very slow, and we had to wait for an hour of so. Finally, it came our turn to load, but the angle between the loading ramp of the dock and the loading ramp of the ferry was so great that the coaster fully bottomed out its rear end tryuing to load. John, the driver tried again to no avail, so we stacked up some logs from the bush and used them to decrease the angle. This time the coaster made it onto the ferry, but almost lost ts rear bumper in the process. ( I am having trouble with the web site - this is just the first part of this letter )-

New Photos Up!

2006-12-10T06:27:00.000Z

New photos are up on: www.webshots.com/user/skibumrobby

Sorry for the lack of a post, but I've been thwarted by a couple VERY inconvenient power outages. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!!

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

2006-11-15T22:35:00.000Z

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........

Arrival in the Training Village -- Oct. 7, 2006

2006-10-21T21:07:00.000Z

So, on Friday, yesterday, 25 of us crammed into "The Coaster" (which is short for rollercoaster, as I'll explain in a minute) and headed east, "up country" towards our training villages. It was a 4 1/2hour bus ride to our villages over what was easily the worst road I've ever seen, period. Bumpy as hell, potholed like crazy and incredibly uneven - such that the driver swerved back and forth to avoid the biggest holes. Hence, the name "Coaster". Of course, I had the good fortune to contract a particularly nasty bout of diarrhea (or "ass-cough" as it's affectionately called here), the day before, so I was feeling awful before the 4 1/2 hour jarring-fest began. Luckily I procured some Immodium from the medical office before departing, so there were no emergency stops along the way, although I did get the urge to throw up every 20 minutes from the nausea. Good times. On to Part Two of the The Gambian odyssey....
We arrived at Bambako at around 2PM and the four of us that wre training here said our goodbyes to the rest of the group. Bambako is a mediun-sized village of 50 family compouds (around 500 people). My first impressions were good - the village is really clean and the houses, while meager, seemed well cared for. Most of the buildings are constructed from mud bricks or concrete, and have corrugated tim roofs, or grass roofs. Most compounds have a fence partly enclosing thm made up of reed branches.
The whole family lives together in the compund, and as Gambians like to have lots of children (children are a social welfare program in Gambia - the idea is that the more children you have, the better the chance of havig a rich child who can take care of you in your old age) the families are large - 8-10 people. So, after the bus left, we met with our LCH, Language and Culture Helper (local Gambians who are our teachers during training) whose name is Muhammoudin B__. We talked for a short time in his host family's compoud, under the mango tree. In a short time, our host family's children came to help with our bags and to show us to their compound. Laame, the oldest son living at home speaks very little English and was able to give me very basic instructions. After a short walk, we arrived at the D_______ compund, where I am spending the next 3 months. When I walked through the fence, most of the family was sitting on a large matal "bench" in the middle of the compound. I said a quick "Salaamaleekum" and put my things inside the door that Laami pointed to then came back out to formally greet my family. Greetings are VERY IMPORTANT in Gambia, not greeting someone is seen as a big insult. They are also VERY EXTENSIVE. Here's a sample of a typical greeting:

Q. Salaamaleekum. (Peace be with you)
A. Maleekum Salaam. (And also to you)
Q. I saama. (Good morning)
A. Surname, I saama. (Surname, good morning)
Q. Suumoolulee? )(How are the home people?)
A. I be jee. (They are there, in peace)
Q. Kori tana te jee? (I hope there is no trouble)
A. Tana te jee (There is no trouble)
Q. Kori I siinoota? (Ihope you slept well)
A. Haa n siinoota buake le. (Yes, I slept very well)
Q. Soomandaa be naadii? (How is the morning)
A. Soomandaa be jay doroy. (Morning is here,(in peace),only
Q. Kayira laata? (Peace in the morning?
A. Kayim dorong. (Peace only)

So this is done to every person that you pass by, every time. It is accecepted that if you are busy (which rarely happens in Gambia) that you can shorten the greeting to a few exchanges, but yo must greet nonetheless. Of course, people rattle these greetings off and I have gotten pretty efficient in doing so myself.

OK, back to the narrative.
I greeted my family and gave my host father 1/4 kg. of kola nuts to show my appreciation for living with them. Kola nuts are a very important ceremonial gift in Gambia, thay are given at many important gatherings and ceremones. My host father's name is Laame (same as his son's) ____. He is "Tay naani niy worowwla" - 47, and as far as I can tell, he has 3 wives and about 6-8 children who are living at home. The family is reserved around me and I around them, as we are getting used to each other, and slowly working around my language deficiences. The hardest part of the language learning for me, is audibly comprehending the different words, and pronouncing them from hearing only. The Gambians tend not to enunciate at all, so it's really difficult to pick up on what they are saying, expecially since the words are nothing like English or anything I've ever heard for that matter. Not only that, but my Spanish has an annoying habit of substituting itself for Mandinka words. It's funny, I'm acutally remembering MORE Spanish by learning Mandinka! Strange, Huh?
So, I found out a little about my host father, and then having run out of things to say, I just stood there awkwardly, smiling, wanting to escape inside, but not wanting to appear rude. Luckily, Laami (the son) said, "you go inside". So, I made my exit. I walked in and got my bearings. My house is concrete with a corrogated tin roof, 2 windows, 2 doors and 2 rooms. The first room has a desk and chair, and the back room has a bed. It's actually pretty nice - and very clean - the Gambians place a high value on cleanliness. My backyard" is surrounded by a reed fence and has a concrete slab which covers the pit latrine and is also used for taking bucket baths - something I've readily embraced and love. I take three a day. After getting my bearings I walked back inside and my first thoughts went something llike this: "What in the hell am I doing here?! I'm soaked with sweat, there are big lizards hanging out under my mattress, it's hotter than a fat whore in a Baptist church on a hot August day in Georgia, I can't even speak to my host family, there's not a single climbing spot in the whole of Gambia and I'm missng out on not one, but 2 ski seasons?!?!? It's going to be a very looong 2 years. Luckily, this feeling of impending doom passed quickly and I attribute most of it to the fact that I had had 9 bouts of "concentrated evil coming out of my butt" (quoting Maggie) in the past 24 hours, and was therefore almost delirious from dehydration, exhaustion and complete lack of food. Unfortunately, I had misplaced one of my water bottles earlier during the day so I was also out of water. I managed to convey to my host brothers that I needed water, and a couple of them took me down to the well, where we fetched water from the pump. It took all the self-restraint I possessed not to plunge my head into the buckets and drink heavily of the delicoious looking nectar of the gods. WE carred the buckets back to my house and waited very impatiently for my excruciatinly slow filter to do its job. Water has never tasted sweeter!! After drinking a couple liters of water with rehydration salts, I started to feel human again, and dozed off for an hour or so. I woke up feeling much stronger and ventured outside to chat with my host family and visit the other volunteers in the village. Everyone in Bambako is very friendly and very helpful with the language. All the volunteer's host families are vey nice, always curious about us. Being that it is Ramadan, I returned home and broke fast with my family at sundown by eating bread ad drinking mosquito grass tea, which is delicious and very sweet. I spent the rest of the night playing with the children, and went to bed after dinner feeling exhausted, a little overwhelmed, but definetely glad to be here.
Today was much the same, we had an informal village greeting where we took kola nuts to the Alkalo (head) of the village, and the Imam of the mosque. Afterwards, we had a few hours of language courses complete with "Snakes and Ladders" in Mandinka! After eating lunch (with my hand, of course) I returned home and spent the rest of the day studying, practicing language with my host family, sweating, reading, sweating, showing my host family the pictures I brought, and just generally being a sweaty mess, despite all the bucket baths. Luckily, this is the hottest time of the year and although I don't believe it, it supposedly gets cold enough at night in December to use a blaket!!!!! I'm anxiously awaiting December. So, all in all things are going "domamdiy, domandiy" (slowly, slowly), but I am enjoying it and learning a hell of a lot in the process. This time next week I'll hopefully be able to have meaningful conversations with my host family.
Letter written to family Saturday, Oct 7th, 2006

Heading Upcountry

2006-10-05T21:44:00.000Z

The first week in Gambia went very well, and now it's time to say goodbye to the West Coast for about 2 months. Our group heads to our training villages for language and technical training sessions. I will be living in Bambako, a village of about 50 family compounds. There will be 4 of us living in Bambako, each living with a different host family. The idea behind living with a host family is so that we will be fully immersed into the culture and language more readily than if we were surrounded by other English-speaking Tubabs (Gambian for white person).

I'm looking forward to getting out of the Kombo area, and settling into a more traditional Gambian atmosphere. I think the language and technical training sessions will be really interesting, and we are all looking forward to receiving our Mandinka names. While we're at the training villages, internet access will be sporadic, if at all, so I won't be able to communicate for a while.

Finally, I posted some photos taken from my first week in Gambia at:

http://community.webshots.com/user/skibumrobby

Kori tanate jee

2006-10-03T18:33:00.000Z

Greetings from The Gambia! I've been in the country 6 days now (although it feels like 6 months since I was in Philly last). Our training group is staying in a compound near Banjul, with dormitory style housing (with sporadic electricity and running water!!). I'm adjusting to the myriad differences between the US and Gambia pretty well, and the heat is getting slightly more tolerable. Although I'm already dreaming about the Alta snow. The training has been incredibly hectic and we have very little free time, so this post will be shorter than I would like. We have visited a suprising variety of spots in Western Gambia, considering the short amount of time we've been here. Sunday was our first day out of the compound, and we spent all morning and afternoon at the beach! It was fantastic...I think it took all of us about 10.5 seconds to rip off our clothes and sprint into the water. The ocean breeze kept the temperature and humidity at bay. We've also ventured into some of the city markets, attempting to use our very basic language skills to bargain for basic items. Speaking of language, I am learning Mandinka, which is the dominant language (and ethnic group) spoken in Gambia. On Friday, our group leaves to go to our training villages, where we will spend the next couple months, living with our host families, and learning the language and cultural traditions. Apparently, Gambians also eat with their hands out of a community food bowl that is shared by a family. We all had a good time spilling food all over ourselves while practicing this new technique. Miss you all, take care. Fo waati doo.

Life is Good.

Africa Bound

2006-09-27T13:24:00.000Z

Today's the big day! After 2 days of training and orientation, our group of 24 heads to the airport in a couple hours. We got our first round of immunizations today (yellow fever, MMR, Polio, and Malaria prophylaxis). Good times. Well, assuming all goes well, we'll be in Brussels tomorrow morning, and we'll arrive in The Gambia tomorrow evening. I should have internet access for about a week, so I'll post updates when I get over there. Peace.

Skiing in Africa?!?

2006-09-25T00:30:00.000Z

My trip out to the East Coast has gone very well. I spent some quality time with my sister and her family, the highlight of which may have been playing 'Hullabaloo' with Hannah and Natalie at 10am Saturday morning with a particularly nasty hangover. Seriously though, it was really great seeing my nieces and nephew, and it's hard to believe that they'll be 5, 7, and 9 when I get back.

On another note, my brother and I were watching TV this morning and just happened to catch a spot about a SKI RESORT in Morocco! It turns out there is not just one, but TWO ski resorts in the Atlas Mountains. We both just looked at eachother in disbelief, and then immediately started making plans to check it out while I'm in Gambia. So, it appears that my fears of not skiing for 2 years may be unfounded...

Tomorrow I head to Philly for Staging, and will officially start Peace Corps training. We leave for Africa on Wednesday...only 3 more days!

The Torture Begins

2006-09-18T04:32:00.000Z

So it's official... Alta got their first snow of the season yesterday, and here I am sweating down in Florida. Unfortunately, this is only the first in a long line of painful snowfall updates I'm bound to receive over the next couple of years, while in a country that has a geographic high point of 171 feet above sea level.

Well, for all you A-Lodgers, I hope these next 2 years are as good for you as the past 2 years were for me. Although, with the announcement that Alta is closing its Terrain Park for the 2006-07 season, I would imagine that most of you will be looking for other places to work and ski, so I wish you luck in those pursuits.

Practicing my self sufficiency...

2006-09-15T03:29:00.000Z

Took a break from all the many preparations to depart and spent the day fishing with my Dad. After a VERY slow morning, we had much better luck in the afternoon on an outgoing tide. As soon as the tide shifted, we started pulling in fish. We reached our limit on Redfish pretty quickly, with me landing 2 of the 3. That night we had blackened Redfish cooked on the grill... DELICIOUS!! Pretty sure I ate about 2 lbs myself - I'm trying to fatten up a little before I have to survive on rice alone for 2 years. I still haven't quite gotten used to the heat down here in Florida, but I suppose it's a good warm-up for what's to come. On a fun note, I wrote my Will and Living Will yesterday....THAT was a little strange. And I still haven't found quality information on what to pack, so I'm going to go with my gut and bring a week's worth of loincloths, that should at least get me to Banjul.

P.S. - For all you east-coasters, I'll be in the Wilmington-DC-Philly area Sept 21st - 27th. Give me a shout if you want to meet up.

SHARK!!

2006-09-12T03:46:00.000Z

Ahh yes, Faden proudly displays the Bonnethead shark that he caught on our first fishing trip with the parents. After a sweaty, exhausting, 2 minute fight, Faden managed to land the vicious creature without any serious injuries. That was pretty much the highlight of the day for Faden and I, as we watched my Dad pull in fish after fish, while we sat with our bobbers in the water wondering what we were doing wrong. Despite our poor performance, we still had fresh sea trout seviche the next night, courtesy of my Dad's skills.

Note to All

2006-09-11T04:40:00.000Z

So, my initial plan is for me to mail letters home to my parents and have them post entries on this site for you all to view. We'll see how that goes....

Me

2006-09-11T04:24:00.000Z

Photo taken on a climbing trip at City of Rocks with George & Charlene, May '06