Actual School Feeding, the Pump and Hanging with the locals

If you have been reading my blog you know that I am working with the World Food Programme, which provides daily lunches to school children all over The Gambia.  Recently I was on a monitoring trek and had the opportunity to actually observe school feeding going on at a couple of schools.  The fare is not exciting -- rice, oil and perhaps a small among of topping.  There are two ways the food is served.  One is in a large food bowl that ideally is shared by only 5 students.  However kids being who they are there will often be more than 5 on a bowl so they can share with their friends. You eat with your right hand and squish the rice up into a manageable lump that you put in your mouth.  You are supposed to eat only from the area right in front of you and if you have some choice tidbits you are supposed to share and put them into the other people's area of the bowl.   Obviously I did not get there at the beginning of lunch.

The other way is to serve individual plates.  This is obviously the more sanitary way of doing it but the method of eating is the same -- scooping the food and compressing it into a lump and putting it into.

In the villages up country, the pump is an active place where you are liable to meet neighbors.  Any water that people use for any reason comes from the pump.  Can you imagine walking from your compound to the pump with containers for water, waiting for your turn at the pump, pumping the water that you need and then carrying it back on your head. The process needs to be repeated if you cannot carry what you need.  The picture below is a long view -- the cow gets a free ride to drink the spilled water.  There is a woman washing clothes in the background of the picture.  A boy is carrying water back from the pump.  This is not typical -- fetching water is women's work.  Note all the water containers lined up at the pump.

The other shot is closer up and gives a better of the actual pump.  I have seen the younger children at some of the schools actually jump up and down as they are pumping to give added oomph to the pump.

The next shot is of a new kind of WFP employee.  They call them Capacity Development Officers. One of them is posted in each region and they are supposed to help the government at the regional level develop the capacities they need to be able to take over school feeding.  Ousman Bojang in the picture below is a 27 year old Capacity Development Officer who was married within the past year (not an arranged marriage), and will be a new father in about 7 months.  He needs to find lodging for him and his wife in the regional headquarter area before he can send for his bride.  He was on the trek in my car so we had fun together.

When I finished taking his picture he told me he would take a picture with me and the kids.  It was like a magnet.  Suddenly kids came rushing in to have their picture taken.  No, I was not threatening them, that is the way that they posed. In general smiling in pictures is not normally done. 

As proof of the no smiling in pictures, here is a picture of a man that I have worked with who works for SAFMU (School Agriculture and Food Management Unit) which is part of the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education. We were on trek together and he spent the night in his mother's village.  Here is a picture of him and is mother.  She fixed him rice porridge that morning and invited me to come and eat.  Which I did because I like rice porridge.  Luckily we got to use spoons.

I know my posts have been slowing down.  Just have been busy with work and don't usually have web access when I am not at work. I am fast approaching a year in The Gambia -- June 28th.