Marabouts and Juju

One of our assignments in training was to interview a marabout aka traditional healer.  The marabout tradition is centuries old but has evolved though the years.  Being a marabout is a tradition passed down in families and it turned out that the head of the compound in which I did my training, Baba Ceesay, was a marabout.  So one afternoon we sat down and interviewed Baba.  He learned his craft from his father who  had learned it from his father before him and so on.   He has already started training his two oldest sons as marabouts. Sick people will often go to the marabout before seeking help at a health center. Baba will talk to the person and then write down the appropriate text from the Koran that will have the power to cure them.  Baba will also tell fortunes, and make jujus for various requirements.   You can get a juju to protect you from evil, to bring good luck, to make someone love you etc. etc.  The marabout writes it down and then depending on the marabout he will make a pouch for you to wear it or you will need to have one made.

If the marabout does not make you a pouch you can take it to a local artisan who will make you a pouch.  You will see babies with jujus on the wrists, ankles, around their necks and bellies.  That baby is protected.

 

If you want your fortune told, you have to wait a day.  Baba will sleep and your fortune will come to him in a dream.  We asked Baba if he had any problems with the medical community.  He said that they would refer to him and he would refer to them.  An example of his referral would be if someone presented malaria symptoms he would refer them to the health clinic.  We asked our trainer, who is an educated woman, if she ever consulted marabouts and she said definitely.  Finally we asked Baba how you trained to be a marabout and he said a thorough knowledge of the Koran was necessary.  Both of the sons he was training were attending a madrassa so the Koran is part of their regular schooling.  

I myself am juju-less but many people from my group are sporting jujus.  Maybe I should have had one for protection.  ;-)

Trek for school feeding part 1.

I recently returned from a trek for school feeding and school garden monitoring.  I left on Sunday with two men from the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education and one man from the WFP warehouse staff.   We spent the week visiting 29 schools, most of which were located deep in the bush.  If you saw my Meriama Kunda pictures, they are nothing like the upcountry bush communities.  In the bush the compounds are all located close together and a good percentage of the homes are mud block with thatched roofs.  I have heard that thatched roofs are cooler, but they also have other living tenants so dirt and other things drop out of the ceiling, such as rats and 500 earwigs (true story, but not mine thanks goodness).The homes have a door and maybe some smaller ventilation holes.

The roads themselves are an adventure.  In many places they are so narrow that the brush is touching the both sides of the car at once. They are also rutted and bumpy.  So all of the bush travel   i.e. most of the travel was spent bouncing up and down.  On the first school day we actually got a flat tire on a particularly rocky and rugged stretch.  All I could think was that OMG! we have 5 more days to go with no spare tire.  But the driver must have been having the same thoughts because we stopped at MRC, the British Medical Research Center, and prevailed upon them to help us.  It took awhile but we ended up with a functioning spare.  Side note:  There are at least 3 MRCs in The Gambia and more around the world.  They do research and have clinics  that treat Gambians and other assorted weirdoes, like me.  I had my post casting X-ray at MRC in Kombo, the area in which I live. The picture below is a fairly tame stretch.  But I could not keep asking them to stop and let me take pictures.

Part of the school feeding portion of the trip was to review the details of the last delivery -- they deliver the food once a term.  It was interesting to hear delivery details.  Many of the drivers did not bring the food all the way to the school, because of road conditions during the end of the rainy season.  In this case they are supposed to give the consignee money for further transportation to the school but in most cases they did not.  In many cases they left it with someone who was not a consignee.  This meant that the head master had to arrange for a donkey cart, a horse cart, an ox cart or a tractor to  haul it back to the school and ended up paying out o his own pocket.  This will not be reimbursed by the WFP.   This is one of the things we trained the heads on -- refuse to sign the paperwork if they don't give you the money.  The signed paperwork means the driver is off the hook.  We need to have Con-Way come in and show them how it's done.  Note the ox cart in the background below.

The teaching staff and the head are all national employees.  They are posted in a position and go where they are sent., and often far from their homes.  Because of this most of the schools have teacher quarters, right on school grounds.  It may be a short commute, but I don't think I would like it.  Since the teachers are national rather than local, there tends to be a constant shuttling of teachers, especially in the least  desirable locations.  Of course local teachers are not really an option since the villages are small  and spread widely over the countryside -- not to mention that few go beyond 5th or 9th grade, much less finish secondary school.

An interesting fact is the enrollment of girls.  The Gambia is working hard to ensure that girls enroll in school -- education for all.  As a result of this many of the schools we surveyed had more girls than boys, one even had 100 more in a school of less than 400 students.  One of the heads explained this to me by saying that girls attend for free, but boys have to pay.  (I don't know how much, but any amount to these people is a lot)

I also reviewed the school gardens with the Garden Masters.  The school gardens are supposed to supplement the rice and oil and come up with a more nutritious meal.  Unfortunately the majority of the schools had not even started theirs.  But I did take some pictures of one that was doing a good job.  One of the problems with school gardens is water.  The worst case scenario was a school that was getting their money from a windmill pump.  It was owned by a man and everyone had to pay him for the water.  Then when there is no wind there is no water.  Life is tough in the Gambia. 

Bad Update to Senagalese Refugee Story

For those of you who read my post about my trek to the towns with Senagali refugees, you may recall that I posted a picture of a landmine warning.  It turns out the warning was definitely serious.  Some of the men from that village were just on the other side of the border with a tractor hauling wood (most likely mahogany poaching).  The tractor ran over landline and four people were killed.  So even though this rebellion has been going on for years, it has some serious consequences in the present day.

My Home in the The Gambia

Finding my home was a bit of a challenge. Initially they found me a rental that was a furnished one bedroom/living room with a minimal kitchen. They showed this to me in July and I shopped with that house in mind. Shortly before swear in I went to the house with the Peace Corps to take measurements of the kitchen. Well --  lo and behold there was someone already living there. The Peace Corps had agreed to the terms with the landlord only the week before. Apparently someone else offered more money or something and the landlord took it. That was house # 1.

The next house that Peace Corps found me was amazing but expensive. We called the WFP (UN) and their finance person was out sick so the country director named a top number we could pay. Peace Corps negotiated with that number and the owners said yes, they would like to have Peace Corps in their house. I was shocked because the house was so nice in comparison to the first. It was totally detached from the rest of the compound, had two bedrooms, two full baths (one with a tub), a kitchen with cupboards, an air conditioning unit in the bedroom, a hot water heater for the master bedroom, fully furnished, a television, a mango tree in the front yard, and the ultimate kicker was daily maid service to clean my house and do my laundry. Oh-- yes, it also was very close to the UN. How much better could it be and still be something Peace Corps could live in? As soon as the Peace Corps guy told me that I had the house, I booked it to the office to get the paper work filled out to take to the landlord. When we got to the house to sign we found them painting the interior of the house - how nice. Unfortunately they were doing it for someone else. He had come in with cash in hand the same afternoon they had agreed to my offer. What a bummer. So I was still homeless. This all occurred just before they made the decision to send me to South Africa so I assumed that nothing would be done while I was gone and I would still be homeless when I returned.

When I returned from SA, I found out that they actually had been looking while I was gone and found a house. This one was the farthest away from the UN, about 1 1/2 miles and completely unfurnished. I so-o-o wanted to protest but it was time to move out of the transit house. The house is large but a little strange as the pictures will show. The kitchen and bath are, shall we say, interesting? I have some cleanup to do and I might see if I can repaint the kitchen and bathroom. Good thing is that it is fairly close to the transit house so I should be able to access air conditioning and internet fairly regularly. But, compared to the volunteers up country I am living at the Ritz. So please take my whining with a grain of salt.

The first picture is the "burglar proof gate" my landlord had installed shortly after I moved in.  It made me feel quite secure until the landlord said that thieves will use a jack to get past the gate.  It does seem to me that this would cause some noise which would hopefully wake me or the neighbors up.  There are always people around in the daylight so I don't think they would be that bold then.  After the burglar-proof-gate, my front door has a long dead bolt and the windows are barred so they would have a big job to get in from the front. As you can see my front porch is quite spacious and with the weather cooling, it is a pleasant place to sit in the late afternoon.

The next two pictures are of my living room or salle in Wolof. As you can see it is quite large.  I am saving up for living room furniture. I got an allowance from WFP for furniture but it ran out fairly quickly.  The first picture is one of the two storage devices I got at the beach.  A young Gambian man and his father make them with metal rods that they weave palm leaves around.  They are surprisingly sturdy.  I plan to make a cloth cover for the front of it but have focused on curtains first for my hand sewing enjoyment.  I could get a tailor to do all this but I am being cheap in order to save for living room furniture.

The gorgeous plastic table and chairs are my dining room.  It is some place to sit other than my bed.  The chairs are in decent shape but the "new" table is permanently discolored and has something that looks like a cigarette burn on top.  But I also use it as a desk so I will get my money's worth out of it.  One curtain is visible, but I have actually made more.

This is my bedroom with the bed I bought in Serrekunda.  The other picture is of the other storage unit made from palm leaves.  The silver thing on the bed is my pedometer, not a giant bug.  I was using it but the battery died and I did not have a screwdriver to change it with.

I have 2 bedrooms but they are pretty much the same so no pictures of the other. It is currently serving as my storage room and underwear drying room.

Next we will focus on my gorgeous kitchen.  This is the sole thing provided in said kitchen, a lovely sink.  But it is running water -- if the water is running.

Below is the refrigerator I purchased -- it's a good place to keep water cold -- if the power is on.  The gas bottle will eventually connect to a two burner stove top I bought, but I am waiting for a table to be made so that I don't have to cook on the floor.

Here is the lovely bathroom.  The green thing on the right is a screen covering an decorative open block.  Their are two of them in the bathroom so the windows can never be shut.  This is obviously the shower.  There was no shower rod or curtain but the amazing Susie Miller sent me an expansion rod so the whole bathroom does not get wet when I shower.  I bought the curtain at a local store.

This is the sink and my version of a medicine cabinet.  There are holes in the wall where a medicine cabinet may have been, but the former renters did not leave one for me.

It's not the Ritz but it is not a one room hut either and most days I have power and water, though not necessarily at the same time.

Rindi Gets Mugged

I wish I could say that the title of this is a joke, but unfortunately it is not. Friday night I came back to my compound between 7 and 7:30 PM with my telephone in my hand.  I had been using the flashlight option to watch where I was walking.  A young man I did not recognize was inside the compound, standing close to the front.  When  he saw me, he asked if he could use my phone to call his sister. Since he was a stranger I told him no and continued walking toward my house.  Unfortunately he followed along, so I stopped and told him I didn't want him to come with me.  At that point he got a weird smile on his face and then lunged and grabbed the strap of my purse.  I use a messenger bag and always wear it across my body, so it did not come off when he grabbed.  I grabbed my strap and started screaming my landlord's name. At that point I am fuzzy on details.  I ended up on the ground and felt him grab my phone and then saw him running away.  About that time my neighbors and landlord came running up and found me on the ground.  By the time I told them what had happened, he was gone.

The good news is that I still have my purse which had  my computer and iPhone inside and my landlord found my Gambian phone inside the compound the next day .  The bad news is that I was hurt.  When they came running up, I was already starting into shock.  They kept trying to help me stand up and walk back to my house,  I would take a step sit down on the ground and go to a happy place only to rudely come back to reality. It was like I was in a white cloud that would get an expanding hole and I would realize where I was -- on the ground, in the dark surrounded by people  Kinda weird.  They finally brought out a chair so I managed to stay with it for awhile.  My landlord called the Peace Corps and they came and picked me up and took me to the med unit.  Bonus was that our regular doc was out and they had a cute American doc from Malawi -- too young but fun to look.  My left wrist hurt like crazy and several ribs were very painful.  It took awhile to get the shock under control.  At one point I was under two blankets and a heated towel and still shivering but my blood pressure recovered before he had to do an iv.  I spent the night in the med unit, mostly wide awake keeping my wrist on ice.

The next day we set off for AfriMed, the only place open on Saturdays that takes x-rays.  The PC doc was a little horrified.  The x-ray room was totally unshielded and people were waiting directly outside the room.  When I went into the room, neither I nor the tech were shielded.  My arm had been wrapped with an ace bandage and a splint and the tech told me to take it off so I took everything off.  Then he told me he meant only the ace bandage clips, and proceeded to wrap the arm back up with the splint.  Then I had to squat down and lay my arm on a little wooden bench for the x-ray. When the films were developed we had a lovely picture of the splint in the background of my arm.  However, the films were clear enough to show that I had cracked a couple of metacarpals and the bottom of my radius.  I think my ribs are just bruised because they do not hurt as much as the time I fractured 2. They do not x-ray ribs because they do nothing to treat them, unless they are so broken they are out of position

I had to wait until Monday to get my cast.   They still put on the plaster casts here and the PC doc had never done a plaster cast, so the weekend was spent putting cold gel packs on my wrist -- when the electricity stayed on long enough to keep them cold. So Monday I went to still  another clinic and a Gambian named Dr. Jones put the cast on.  He said it needed about 4 weeks to heal, which after one day with this thing cannot go quickly enough. This sucker is heavy -- I can see why they use fiberglass or splinting in the US.  It is lined with cotton batting so I know it will be very ripe by the time it comes off.

So that is the end of the mugging story.  The good news is that the Peace Corps talked my landlord into hiring a night watchman so I will be a little more comfortable about coming home after dark.

Thanksgiving is coming up in a couple of days.  Peace  Corps is having a potluck with turkeys provided so I will not be sitting there alone thinking poor me.  I hope that anyone reading this before has or had a wonderful time with their family.  After all of my experiences here I am richly aware of my blessings and the importance of family.

My First Trek for Work

I went on my first trek for the WFP last week.  I was only out for two days which was a good introduction to the process.  I was the WFP representative for a multi-sectoral team that was interviewing Sengali refugees in the Fonis, one of the regions in The Gambia.  They are fleeing from a rebellion in the Cassamance province of Senegal.  This rebellion has been going on since 1982 and waxes and wanes.  We were interviewing people who had come 6 years ago and people who had fled earlier this year.  We were also interviewing their hosts.  Our questions revolved around their living conditions and availability of water and food.  It was a humbling two days.

The villages in which we stopped were all close to the border which is not a fenced border.  These people have traveled back and forth for years and most are related.  However when the fighting erupted again, the refugees fled leaving nearly all of their possessions behind.  They had nothing with which to cook and no farm tools.  They were truly destitute.  Their host families, who are also poor, shared what they had with the refugees.  All of the refugees were given land on which to build their homes and the hosts helped them to build.  The hosts shared their farming and cooking tools and food until the families could grow their own food.  They were given access to farm land for growing their crops.  Unfortunately the land has been over-farmed and is not fertile and fertilizer is too expensive.  One of the villages used to have cattle and would use the manure for fertilizer.  However when the fighting started up again they sold the cattle to a village farther from the border because the rebels were killing the cattle.  When we asked how much food they had left and expected to have left after the completion of the harvests, many of them said 1 month.  That is supposed to last them until next year.

Our first stop in each village was at the home of the alkalo, the head of the village.  He would gather the hosts and the refugees and we would interview each group separately.  Our first village was less than 1/2 kilometer from the Cassamance border.  Below is a picture of  a warning sign directly behind the interview area.

They used to go into the bush and gather firewood, fruits and nuts to sell.   But after this sign was posted they stopped doing that.  Wonder why?

The next two pictures are a group of refugees and a group of hosts.  Can you figure out which ones are the hosts and which ones are the refugees?

As you can see neither group looks wealthy and neither group is.  Below you see the alkalo's home and the other part of his compound.  I include them because when we asked for household size, his compound had 36 people, all family.  Doesn't it look luxurious?  Notice the mud block construction. 

I also included the second picture because of the little boy rolling the bicycle tire.  He spent the entire time we were there amusing himself with the tire, rolling it all around the compound.  Here is another picture below in which he came to a stop.  I saw a girl playing a game similar to jacks with stones.  Simple pleasures can be found anywhere.

The final picture is one of the crops they grow.  It is a variety of millet which the Gambians call coos.  This was super coos.  Some of the plants were at least 15 feet tall.  It tastes something like sand.  Not high up on my hit parade.

As I said earlier, the trip was humbling.  These people have so little but they share what they have.  Yes, many of them are related, but how many of us would put up with relatives for 6 years?

Warning -- Tobaski Ramicide Pictures

I talked about Tobaski in an earlier post before I went to Mariama Kunda for Tobaski.  Tobaski arrived and was a bright, sunny, hot day.  It took me 2 taxi rides and 2 gelly rides to get to Mariama Kunda.  I found that riding in air conditioned splendor in a Peace Corps vehicle is definitely a preferable way to go.  But when I arrived my family was glad to see me and I was made to feel very welcome.  There were 3 of us PCVs there, Xander who stayed with my family a year and a half before I did, Rita a PCV who is in training and staying with them, and me. My family was happy to get the pictures that I had had printed but Xander had even more special pictures.  When he was there they had a six year old son who died about six months before I arrived.  I had no idea there had been another child until I had left their village and another volunteer filled me in on the details.  Apparently when someone dies people do not talk about him -- and they did not.  But Kumba was very excited to get the pictures and told me these were .pictures of her son who had died.  I think he died of liver disease but they said yellow fever.  The Peace Corps doc said that when someone is jaundiced they will say it is yellow fever, but yellow fever has been eradicated in The Gambia.

Since I am not a Muslim the interesting part of the day (other than seeing my family) for me was the slaughter of the ram.  The ram had been washed and was clean and snowy white.  They had dug a small pit in front of where the ram's neck.  In the photo below Xander and Momodu, my host brother, are holding the back of the ram.  My host father is hold the ram's mouth and is reaching behind himself for the knife.  I am happy to report that he used a brand new knife for the ramicide.

In the next picture he has cut the wind pipe and arteries and is allowing the blood to flow into the pit, which you can see is right in front of the clothesline (??? -- not where I would have placed it).

In the last picture they have broken the ram's neck.  Apparently they are not allowed to break his neck until he has bled out into the pit.  That is a part of the tradition that is not so humane because our ram actually tried to get up before they broke his neck.  But he did not make one sound.

Once they had finished, they skinned him and prepared him for cooking. Another part of the tradition says that the heart and liver must be cooked and served first. Here is the plate they served to us.  The yellow things are french fries (even in the Gambia), there is a rib visible that was tasty and a couple of bites of mutton, but the rest were bites of liver.  I am proud to say that I ate several bites of liver without a fuss and it turns out that Xander did not even eat one.  .

During the preparation.and meal, neighbors were over with platters of ram meat and Kumba prepared platters to give to the neighbors.

After the liver and potatoes was gone they served the main dish meal which was more palatable than the liver. Meanwhile the Gambian sun was at its peak with not a breath of wind.  Sweat was poring off everyone.  I was leary about leaving too late so I left about the time that the neighbors were arriving in their fancy dress.  The same group of women who had been there for Ramadan showed up for Tobaski.  They are Kumba's buddies.  I was so hot when I got back to Fajara that I went straight to the transit house to sit in air conditioned splendor.  One of the PCVs there said that the heat index that day was 124.  Now that is hot..  Enough said.

Buying a Bed in The Gambia

I am now safely ensconced in a new home in The Gambia but getting to this point was has not been an easy process.  I will post more on that later but one of the things I needed was a bed.  I did not realize that this was going to be a difficult thing to find but it was.  A Peace Corps driver took me shopping in the Serrekunda market which deserves a whole post on its own.  We drove around looking for beds on display on the side of the road and found several used twin sized beds.  However Peace Corps had said to bring queen sized sheets so I wanted to get a bigger bed then twin sized.  Finally the driver spotted these beds on the side of the road.  They at least were big enough and were 1500 dalasi -- $50.00.  So I said fine.  Then the driver had to go find the man who had made the beds.  He turned out to be a white haired man who looked to be about 70 or more.  After we said that we wanted the bed, he had to nail boards onto the dies of the bed to hold the slats,

Then he had to cut the boards that served as the slats using a handsaw.  If you look closely at the picture below, you can see that some of the boards end with a diagonal cut.  What you can't see is that  the ends of a couple of the boards were lying in a puddle of urine.  I was starting to back out of this because I could not see how 7 boards were going to support a mattress when the carpenter said we needed to buy a "cardboard" to fit on top of the boards.  This could be procured at the mattress store across the street.  

The cardboard turned out to be a thin sheet of masonite so the mattress would be evenly supported on the cross boards.  Then it was time to get a mattress.  The mattresses are made of foam and I don't mean memory foam ala Tempurpedic.  I made the mistake of getting a thicker one so that my sheets would fit better.  These are super memory foam, in other words they don't forget.  There is a big crevice in the mattress from where I have been sleeping and another from where I sit on the side of the bed.  Not to mention that the foam is sweat inducing.  Thank goodness on some very sage advice, I purchased a wonderful fan that will build up a charge while it is plugged in and run off the charge if the power goes off.  So far I have always had enough charge to run the fan while I sleep.

Anyway,  my total cost for the bed, "cardboard", and mattress was 3400 D or $113.33.  Just for grins I went into furniture store and priced a bed.  Now any furniture store in the Gambia caters to foreigners and wealthier Gambians.  I was looking at a bed that had a mattress, box springs, and headboard with built in side tables.  I asked the salesgirl how much it cost and she said 75000 D or $2500.00 US.  I am sure there was bargaining room there but obviously not enough room to meet a Peace Corps volunteer's budget.  After sleeping on the foam I am a little jealous of the innerspring mattress though.

Rams and More Rams

Id al Adha is the second great celebration in the Islamic calendar.  It is celebrated in The Gambia using the name Tobaski.  It celebrates the fact that Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son to God and God allowed him to sacrifice a sheep instead. Traditionally the head male of the family will buy a ram and ritually sacrifice the animal in remembrance of the mercy of God.  It is also the time to bring out the fanciest clothes that people have, preferably new ones.  The tailors around the city have all been working overtime to make the new Tobaski clothes. 

But another new thing has crept up around the city -- rams of all shapes and sizes.  Last weekend I was walking down the main drag of Fajara and came upon the Africel headquarters. (one of the phone companies)  They had been advertising Tobaski ram giveaways to random customers.  On Saturday they were giving out rams to some of the prize holders.  There was a large holding pen in the front of the store.

Each winner was presented with his ram and had his picture taken with the ram and being congratulated by an Africel employee. 

Once the picture was taken it was time to take the ram home.  From the rams I saw, they were not particularly willing to go with their new owner, though I am sure they had no inkling of their intended demise.  Here is a ram being dragged down the street to its new owner's car.  Once there the man opened his trunk, unceremoniously dumped the ram in, slammed the trunk shut and drove off.

Below is a random flock of rams that I pass on my way to work.  There is another one at one of the busiest street corners in the country and others throughout the city.  By Sunday there will be no more random flocks around. 

My current plan is to spend Tobaski with my old host family in Mariama Kunda.  Hopefully I will not be there for the slaughtering.  One of the PCVs who has been here awhile is a veterinarian and has been in slaughter houses in the United States.  According to her the sheep in Tobaski have a much more peaceful death than the animals in our slaughter houses.  When sacrificing the animal, they use a sharp knife  (though I am not sure such a thing exists here) and Allah's name is spoken. After the animal is slaughtered, large portions of the meat are given to the needy so that nobody misses out on the celebration. Then meat is given as gifts to friends and relatives and the rest is reserved for the family. The idea of sharing is the what the feast is all about.

Omar's Peace Corps Kitchen

One of the happy bits of information passed onto volunteers is Omar's Peace Corps Kitchen.  Omar is the owner of a small, very reasonably priced restaurant -- can you guess the name?  I use the term restaurant very loosely because it is tiny, my kitchen in my condo may be bigger.  The building is only the kitchen, all of the seating is outdoors.  But from this little kitchen Omar has been able to make some of the best food I have had in The Gambia.  He has a large tree in the courtyard, under which he has placed an assortment of plastic tables and chairs.  He usually has an assortment of friends sitting and kibbutzing in another group of chairs.  Then there is an assortment of chickens of various sizes plus a couple of dogs who also add to the atmosphere.  His food is very reasonably priced.  There are two African specials every day that run about $1.00.  He makes a mean plate of lentils with tomato sauce and cheese, for $1.65.  Other specials run between that and $3.35.  My favorite meal he makes is Ginger Chicken -- yummy.  So, the long and the short of it is that I have yet to cook anything in my new "kitchen".  When I get around to  posting a picture of my new digs you will see the reason for the quotes.

But before that happens I wanted to post a picture of Omar himself.  He is wearing a chef's jacket in the picture, which is what he wears everyday, along with the black cap.  He apparently learned his trade in a hotel kitchen.  You may be able to tell that he has the Peace Corps insignia on his pocket. You can also see some of his tables and chairs and the new overhead screening he recently put up.  He is an incredibly sweet man.  I spent most of my cash before I came to his place last night and he told me that I did not have to pay him until today even though I had the money in hand to give him.  But I paid him, my trusty Gambian ATM card came to the rescue this morning.

The picture below is obviously Omar's Peace Corps Kitchen.  It was built with the help of Peace Corps volunteers.  It is a relatively easy walk from the Peace Corps transit house and from my new house.

One of the things Omar always gives you is a placemat and a bag of water.  Most of placemats are a little worse for wear, but the water is always cold.

Here is a plate of lentils to which I have already done significant damage.  The silverwear is in a cup of hot water, so it has a reasonable chance of being clean.  The bread is the standard tapalappa, the local bread, and excellent for mopping up lentils.

The last picture is of the crazy chickens.  These birds spend a lot of time up in the tree.  And when I say up in the tree they really get up there.  They also run around on the ground so I am not sure what makes them head for the tree.  But it does mean you should be careful where you sit.  One time one of the dogs was lying peacefully at my feet when one of the chickens came up and attacked it.  The dog ran a respectable distance away and stayed there.  I must say chickens have been a real learning experience here.

Rich White Woman

As I previously mentioned, I have started working at the United Nations and most of the people with whom I will be working are on trek up country.  The result is that I have spent a lot of time reading documents on the shared drive that pertain to my subject area. On many of the documents there is a background section telling about the poverty statistics in The Gambia.  One sentence that is always there is:

“53 percent of the population lives below the US$2 per day.”  (Okay, so sometimes the sentence is more or less grammatically correct but this is it copied from the current report.)

I decided to calculate how I compare to that.  Right now, Peace Corps pays me my stipend plus a supplement because living in the city is much more expensive than anywhere else.  Also WFP will be paying my rent.  Adding this money up and converting it to dollars comes to roughly $12.85 per day.

That’s pretty impressive considering the $6 a day I would get if I was living in village. Of my $12.85, $4.35 goes to rent, which leaves me $8.50 for daily expenses.  I am RICH.

But trust me, it does not feel rich. You really have to think about every purchase.  But where I am thinking, can I afford this bottle of beer that costs a dollar, the poor are worrying about having enough to feed their families.  In the time before the harvest comes it a meal will often be rice with greens that they have foraged.  Protein can be a luxury.  One of the volunteers said yesterday that she always loses weight when she is at her site.  She shares the family food bowl (she pays the family) and the bowl is not large.  In addition they have a teenage son sharing the food bowl.  For those of you who have had teenage sons you understand why she loses weight. The fact that so many people are living on a such a small amount of money is why they have the World Food Programme in The Gambia doing school feeding and emergency food relief.  Hopefully, next week I can start making a bigger contribution.

Marathon March Redux

Just wanted to show you a little proof of the Marathon March.  This is a picture of the group of us at the start.  I am the woman who is wearing a hat.  I would not want to damage my dainty complexion.  We are missing the older man volunteer in the picture and have added a random Gambian guy.  But otherwise this is the group of PCVs before our big adventure.  By the way, even though this looks like a down and out area, this is a fairly normal look in a village.

The next picture is shortly before lunch when we were still slogging though water.  You can just see my hat as proof that I was in the water.  This was not the worst of it but wisely most people did not have their cameras out in the worst of it.  You can see the water where the water had been on the pants of the last woman in line.  She is 5'10" so you can see what it was like.

We had lunch in a village that had been "invaded" by British artists who did super duper graffiti all around the village.  Obviously it was planned out but it was very impressive.  Here is a cool example painted on the routes of a baobab tree.

It's About Time

No, I have not fallen off the face of the earth.  I just got a little lazy about doing a new blog.  But the title of the blog relates to the real subject of the email, my swear in as a PCV.  It still is appropriate though, because even though I have been a full fledged PCV for well over a month I am still living at the transit house and just sort of started my job.  I have signed with a landlord for a house.  It is probably about 2 miles from the UN but that will mean that I get some exercise.  The transit house is also about 2 miles away so I know what it is like.  Right now it is the hottest time of the year so I might be taking a few 7 7's.  No, I am not talking about the drink,  7 & 7. In The Gambian 7 7,  the taxi's will take people to a pre-determined spot for 7 D.  They will fill the cab and stop and drop/pickup more people along the way.  7D is worth about 25 cents, so a bargain it is.  However, so far I have hoofed it both sweaty ways.  I said that I sort of started my job because everyone who knows about what I will be doing is on trek up country.

Anyway, I digress, the subject at hand is the swear in.  The main event took place on August 31, at the home of the US Ambassador to The Gambia.  The Ambassador, our program director, our country director, and the head of the Gambian University all gave talks.  Then PCVs who were good at language, obviously not me, gave talks in the local language.  Then we actually raised our right hands and were sworn in.  This was all done at the ambassador's house which overlooks the Atlantic ocean. This is the view from the backyard.  He also has a lovely swimming pool and big tennis/sport court.  We were not invited into the house so I can't give you any commentary on that.  However his house is a quick walk from the Peace Corps transit house.  I have gone to the beach below his house several times.  The water is warm and the surf is moderate

The gentlemen below are all Peace Corps staff.  They are wearing the traditional Gambian dress for men.  As you can see the men's dress is much more comfortable than the woman's'.

These were all the main dignitaries at the event.  Starting with the man in white at the left and moving to the right, the first man is the vice chancellor of the Gambia University, the next is the second in command at the embassy, the next is Leon Kayego, the Peace Corps country director, and the man in grey is the ambassador. 

Here we are at the actual moment of swear in.  As you can see we are all in matching fabric.  This is a Gambian tradition and the fabric is called an asobi.  Not this specific fabric, but anytime a group gets matching fabric for something. Unfortunately for the picture they seated us alphabetically. As Stewart I was the last person in the group so I was in the very back on the right hand side sitting behind the girl with sunglasses.

The people below are my fellow Wolof trainees and the two instructors.  Mine was Haddy Sowe, the woman, and was a force to be reckoned with.  I will cheerfully admit that I was the bottom of the group.  Learning a foreign language at 65 is not very easy.

In the picture below, it is immediately after I received my certificate proclaiming me a Peace Corps volunteer.

And finally, the celebratory plunge in the Atlantic.  Trust me, I went all the way in, but this is the only one that you can tell who I am (the one in the back right)

So now you know that I have not been faking it.  I am really no longer a trainee and am a PCV.

Tranquility

One of the guest lodges I stayed in was across the street from a bird sanctuary.  Another medivaced PCV from Ghana and I went over and spent the afternoon.  They had a lovely restaurant overlooking the sanctuary.  We had a couple glasses of wine and lunch and just enjoyed the scenery.  Oh the rigors of the Peace Corps!  Below is an example of what we had to look at when we were enjoying our wine.  Poor me.

The birds below are Crowned Grey Cranes.  I think you can understand how they got their name.  They are quite spectacular looking birds.

These are blue cranes, the national bird of South Africa.  At one point only chiefs and great warriors were allowed to wear their feathers.

The critter below is obviously not a bird, but there are a lot of them roaming through the sanctuary, including a family of three.  This one was kind enough to be right next to the restaurant entrance so that I was able to get a good picture of him.