Getting ready for permanent assignment

I  spent two days last week at the United Nations learning about my new job and the programs.  Things are a little crazy there trying to coordinate the emergency feeding and  the school feeding program.  This month's emergency food was not released by the government until a week and a half  after it was supposed to be.  Not sure what the holdup was but I was at a meeting  at the warehouses when the trucks came rolling in with rice.  That is what they  giving out for the emergency feeding -- rice and oil.  They give it out based on the family size and have records to say how many are in a family.  It's unfortunate that it can't be more nutritious but what they give out is supposed to last a month, hence it cannot be too perishable and these villages have no electricity or running water.

I met a cool woman on Saturday.  We went to a ceremony at the Starfish Academy, which is the project and dream of a local woman who wants to make girls strong and independent.  She and her husband built a library on the family property for the girls and also made it available to the local children.   There was no bathroom so the US embassy donated money for the building materials and the village did the construction.  Yesterday was the dedication of the bathroom.  These were flush toilets with sinks so tres modern.  Quite a few of the girls performed in front of the audience and they were impressive.  The link below is to her website  -- she recruits 6 week volunteers. 

 http://www.starfishinternational.org/about.   

I saw my new house.  It is small but will work out.  City compounds are a lot different than the country compound.  There is no green space in between them, just walled compounds.  Mine actually has a door directly into a small police office so help is very close.  I am also three blocks from the larger police station so I plan to make friends in both places.  I do have electricity and running water so will be a good thing.  Before you know it, home sweet home -- after I spend some money.

Pictures from my training village

I thought I would try to post a couple of pictures.  The internet seems to be moving ok since most of the volunteers from my class are up country visiting their permanent sites before they return for the rest of training.  The first picture is of my family from the training village.  From left to right is Fatou who is almost 18.  Next comes MaMa who is a niece/cousin from Senegal.  Roxey is the 13 year old daughter and then sums toma ( my namesake) Kumba Joof.

This was taken at the local pre-school.  A class had won first prize in something and they were having a major party to celebrate.  It varied but many of the girls took this as an opportunity to get dressed up to the max.  Sequins and spangles were the order of the day along with lots of make-up, even on younger girls.  MaMa came back from Senegal with Kumba, after Kumba had gone to visit Base, her younger daughter who is staying with her grandmother for the summer.  I bought, how interesting, they have a name that sound like our short name for mother.  Well, lo and behold that is also shirt for mother here.  Mama has the same name as Kumba's mother so this family calls her Mama.  I think MaMa has a potential career as a fashion model.  She has that Imam look.

Here is a better picture of suma toma (do you remember what that means) and her middle daughter.

In the first picture, Fatou still has her braids and extensions. But a couple of days before I left for the transit house, she was busy taking her braids out and sawing at the extensions with a dull carving knife.

The fruit below is the the fruit of the cashew tree.  The cashew nut is hanging off the bottom of the fruit.  The nut is actually poisonous until it is roasted.  To me looking at this I can't believe how little cashews cost.  It looks pretty labor intensive to me.  You are not supposed to harvest them until the fruit falls from the tree.  Trust me it does.  We were sitting under a cashew tree for one of our classes and a couple of people got bonked.

The picture below is a snail at the "resort" we have used for PCT training.  These fellows come out at dusk and are out throughout the night.  As you can see they are rather large.  I wear a size 9 1/2 shoe so you can see how he shapes up in comparison.

Sideways view of mangoes growing in my family's compound

Here's a picture of my neighborhood donkey who helps me wake up in the morning.

 Last but not least here is a picture of two babies.  They are typical of the African babies.  They are all pudgy while being breast fed.  BTW,  the mom closest to you is chewing on a chew stick, the Gambian equivalent of a toothbrush.

Mbaa nelew nga bu baax.

The sounds of Africa

Waking in the morning to the sounds of rural Africa is amazing.  The first sounds I hear are the loud speakers from the local mosque (a block away).  It starts with Allah and goes on from there.  I obviously do not understand what they are saying since it is Arabic but it does continue for quite awhile.  That is enough to start the animals.  The roosters have to greet the morning of course and there are a lot of roosters.  At this point the donkey behind my compound feels the need to bray, which is a sound that has to be heard to be believed.  Some times it sounds like the donkey is in pain and others it sounds like it is angry.  We were walking down the road one day and a donkey came out into the road and gave us his opinion of the toubabs (white people) walking down the street.  I also had a day in which the donkey was calling to another one and it was answering, all in the horrible sounding braying.  

The donkey(s) are then joined by the bird calls.  There are so many different calls.  One of them sounds like it is saying How are you in Wolof.  The insects join in the chorus, buzzing and humming, and then the chickens add their own two cents.  BTW, chickens in The Gambia are completely free range.  They are free to wander in and out of the compound and just come into a holding area for the night.  From what I have seen the people generally do not eat the eggs.  They just grow more chickens.  The eggs we eat are actually imported from Holland.  Don't ask me why that is just how it is.

I have my first day at the World Food Programme tomorrow.  I am sure that I will have a lot to say about that.

Peace Corps Reality

I don't know where to begin.  So much has happened since I left Philadelphia, it seems impossible to cover it, but I will give it the old college try.  I am now sitting in a village named Mariama Kunda and am living with a family in their compound.  This is one of the training villages the Peace Corps uses for the pre service training.  I am in this village because I am studying Wolof for my language.  The family consists of a mother, father, 3 girls and a son.  The youngest daughter is spending the summer with her grandparents in Senegal so I have not met her.  The son is 21 and studying for college entrance exams  He spends the daytime working on the family farm/garden that is about 1.5 kilometers away.  The two daughters are 13 and 17 and spend the day working around the compound and being with friends.  The interesting thing about the family is the fact that the father of the family died and the wife was inherited by the younger brother. She did have the right to decline but she had young children at the time and this culture is very family based.

I have been covering all the body parts deemed inappropriate for viewing by Peace Corps policy, but I would probably keep them covered anyway. No one should have to see these body parts on me.  However, the first day I got to the training compound my host mother walked out topless.  It definitely does not have the same connotation that it does in the US.  Topless may be okay, but the waist through the knees are never visible on any of the women.  Even the little girls wear ankle length skirts.

I do not spend all my time with this family, because a lot of the training is held at the compound in which my Peace Corp trainer resides.  This family has 8 children  so there is always a lot going on there -- 6 boys and a 5 month old baby girl.  When they say it takes a village to raise a child, I think the phrase was invented in Africa.  All the kids seem to pitch in with the baby, even the 3 year old.  People from all over have been very welcoming and accepting.  Cooking meals is a long slow process but the kids get involved as part of their upbringing.  The middle area of the compound (family living area) serves as an outdoor living room.  So one of the chores is sweeping the dirt  every morning to get rid of  accumulated debris.  I  spend time sweeping my own room.  This area has very fine, sandy type soil so dust gets everywhere.  I will take a picture of the broom and post it.  Sounds weird  but the broom is weird.

The village culture is very friendly.  We were given Gambian names in a naming ceremony shortly after we arrived in the training village.  I was given the name of my host mother, Kumba Joof.  The ceremony included tribal drumming and African dance, which all the trainees attempted to imitate.  Now that I have an African name, when I walk to the training compound the children  along the way call out Kumba Joof, Kumba Joof. 

 Language training  has been difficult.  These young whipper snappers just out of college are kicking my butt.  We have a fairly interesting group.  The only other one over 36 is a man from Portland, OR.  We have both been in remedial Wolof training.  Another of the volunteers is a Brit.  He has American citizenship because he was born to an American woman, but his mother died when he was young and he was raised in England.  He sounds like the people on the BBC.  Several people studied abroad  including one who had a semester abroad in The Gambia. One of the guys did ESL in Korea.  He is the star of my language class.  This is his 4th language.   BTW the reason it is The Gambia is that they were trying to distinguish the country from Zambia.  

The weather has been hot and humid but not unbearable.  There always seems to be a mango tree for shade and a nice breeze.  I will say my room can get a little warm since I am supposed to lock it down whenever I leave.  I can get it cooled off by bed time though.  This is the rainy season and it knows how to rain here.   It will give some wimpy warning drops and then a wind comes up and whoosh, major downpour.  We probably get as much rain in a hour as Portland gets in a month.  Since most of the roads are dirt, it makes car travel interesting.  We were in a gelle gelle (aka bush taxi, aka van crammed to the gills with people) and I was stilling next to the driver.  Watching him select the path through the pools of water was amazing.  I guess the rain only comes for 3 months.  We have had a lot so far but I guess it is still a huge problem if they quit early.  Last year was a bad food year.

Ramadan started on Friday for some and Saturday for all (depending on whether they had seen the moon).  My family gets up before the sun rises and eats breakfast.  Then they do not eat or drink until the sun goes down at which time they will have a light meal to break the fast.  But two hours later they have another bigger meal.  Two days ago I saw my brother walking around carrying a rooster upside down.  The rooster did not seem to realize that he had been chosen to be part of the big dinner.  Luckily,  my brother did not make me observe the rooster's demise.  Volunteers do not have to observe Ramadan.   I might try it for a day but I know that I do not have it in me to do it for longer.  It is meant to make you empathize with those who have nothing.  I think that I am capable of one day of empathy. The meals I have been having have included a lot of fish since Mariama Kunda (the training village) is pretty near the coast.  Some of those devils have some tiny bones.

The big news (save the best for last) is that I have been told my permanent assignment.  I will be working with the World Food Programme, which is a UN agency.  They are doing both a school feeding program and an emergency food program.  I am supposed to be working with the data which apparently is not in good shape and then also traveling to sites and verifying the collection methods and the data itself.  I met my supervisor today and she said it has internet and air conditioning.  :-)  I also will travel with a UN driver when I go and have a travel allowance.  I am not entirely sure what difference the allowance will make when I am in a remote area, but we shall see.  My supervisor today is a bright woman from Ecuador  on her 9th assignment for the WFP and has a lot of goals that she wants to accomplish.  I definitely  will be busy and I am pretty excited about the assignment.  My lack of language skills will not be a problem there but I still need to develop them to get around in the rest of the world.  

For those of you to whom I promised pictures of me with a crocodile and python, it will not happen.  The visit fell prey to budget cuts.