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. 

South African impressions

I have now been in South Africa for a week, a week of good health and good vision.  The Peace Corps in The Gambia has to arrange my transportation home and The Gambia is not easy to reach from South Africa.  They apparently could have booked a flight yesterday that was business class, but that was not approved, even though I said I was more than willing to suffer in business class. So now my flight is arranged for October 2nd.  That means I will have to suffer through another week of beautiful weather, malls, a wealth of restaurants, even movie theaters.  The sacrifices I make for the Peace Corps.  I was thinking that 2 weeks of per diem and lodging would more than cover the business class costs, but probably the medevac comes from a different budget that does not impact The Gambia. 

As I indicated the weather here is amazing.  It is the beginning of spring here and it is sunny with low humidity and moderate temperatures.  I haven't worked up a sweat since I have been here.  I have a private room with cable television and a hot shower and a huge breakfast provided every morning.  Oh, the agonies I must endure.  This was my fifth room and third guest house ( long story) but I am settled now.  I am in Praetoria which has over 2 million people (I had no clue).  They had a huge air show over the weekend of which I saw a tiny bit of when they overflew our area.  One thing that jumps out at you is the security in the residential area.  There are many large beautiful homes in the area, and a good percentage of them were built in the aparteid era.  I was speaking with the peace corps doc and he said when he was a boy, kids would just run out of their homes to meet up with playmates (reminds me of when I was growing up).  Now things are radically different.  They have major security on all of the properties.  At the very minimum there is a tall wall, and some of them are very tall.  Then there is always some kind of sharp object on the top of the wall.  This is a picture of the gate for the guest house at which I stayed for the first 3 nights I was here. 

The type of fencing they have here is called devil horns and the horns are very sharp.  The armed response sign is truly that.  The owner said that they are there within two minutes if called.  There is also lighting and electric fencing that is on 24 by 7.  Many homes also have large dogs who run barking and growling up to the fences if you walk by.  Many homes also have 1 more more rows of razor wire. The guest house owner also has the lodge alarmed with motion sensors at night and is thinking of hiring a guard.  So as you can see, they are serious about security here. 

Here is close up of the devil horn fence.

 And you can see how many rows of electrified wire is the norm.

The guest house owner (born and raised in South Africa) said that the crime problem has been exacerbated by people streaming into the country from other countries looking for work when no jobs are available.  I did see a boy holding a sign up in traffic saying that he would rather starve than steal.  It is interesting to say the least.  I hope to visit the Aparteid museum and Soweto this week.  All of the museum tours were booked last week due to the air show.  They do not come cheap but I think will broaden my perspective. 

Happy Ending to My Story

After a long trip to get to Johannesburg and  a comedy of errors in getting safely ensconced in a guest house I have good news to report.  I saw the eye doctor this morning and he concurred with the Gambian doctor's diagnosis.  However unlike the Gambian eye doctor he did not think a 3 month wait would improve things.  Apparently the eye capsule thickens and gets opaque which causes the blurriness.  This is actually pretty normal with people who have had cataract surgery.  I had my cataract surgery on the blurry eye about 2 years ago which he said was a much longer time than most people take before they need laser treatment.  Anyway he did a laser treatment on both eyes and my left eye is better than it has been for quite awhile.  My right eye is very clear too.  I am sitting in the living room of the guest house in which I am staying, watching television and typing this on their wireless network and drinking a beer that the owner brought me.  I am happy to report that I can read what I am typing with my left eye without glasses even though it is pretty small type.  (good thing it is only 1 beer)  The treatment was very fast and was painless.

I imagine that I will head back to The Gambia as soon as they make travel arrangements.  Once I get back, hopefully  I will find a place to live and move permanently out of the Peace Corps transit house.  A crop of new volunteers is moving in at the end of the month and I hope to be out of there before they come.  Shall we say that not everyone who passes through the transit house has the same standards of cleanliness and some have standards much worse than mine and I do not consider mine very high.

I will miss the South African climate.  The temperatures are moderate and the humidity low.  I even had to sleep under two blankets last night.  It felt wonderful.  I met a few other medical evacuees at the Peace Corps office this morning.  One of them was walking very slowly with a cane.  I asked her what her injury was (assuming it was an injury) and she said that they do not not know.  She just has lost all of her strength and energy.  Their latest theory is an insect bite she had.  They are hoping that will be the right diagnosis because it is easily curable.  Makes me glad my issue was so easy to fix and glad that it is not 20 years ago because it probably would not have been so simple then.

My Latest African Adventure

I am about to embark on an "adventure" that most PCVs will not have in the course of their service.  I am leaving at 1:30 AM on Monday to go to South Africa.  Now many volunteers do take a trip to South Africa when they are here, but I am being medevacked there. That sounds much scarier than it actually is.  When we come up with a condition that cannot be handled locallly, the Peace Corps will authorize medical care at another location.  Washington DC determines if you will be medevacked and where you will be sent and South Africa is the main medevac site for Africa. 

My adventure started when I realized that my left eye had gone blurry and was still blurry with my glasses on.  I went to see our local Peace Corps doc and he set up an appointment with the eye clinic at the Gambian hospital in the area.  The primary benefactor of this clinic is an Arabian sheik so it is named after him and their is a giant picture of him in the lobby.  I must say that their system of managing appoitments etc is different than the US.  Luckily they had sent me to the clinic with a Gambian named Marie.  Having her there to help me made all the difference.  I might still be there if she had not come.  I basically had vision tests on Friday but did not see the opthamalogist.  After the testing they gave me an appoitment for Monday to see the opthalmologist. When I say Monday, that was the appointment, there was no time specified.  When I arrived on Monday the clinic was jam packed.  People and their entire families were there.  I had Marie along with me, which was again a great help, but it still took quite awhile.  When I finally got into see the doctor there must have been twenty people in the room.  There were Gambian med students, other technicians, the patient who was being seen at the time and his family, and people passing through the room to get to the waiting room on the other side of the examination room.  I imagine that they see many more people in a day than a doctor here, but I was experiencing a little culture shock  The net result of the eye doc's exam was that I had some opacity in my eye capsule that was causing the blurriness.  He said it sometimes would resolve itself and to come back in 3 months.

I did not feel entirely confident with that.  The doctor seemed compentent and most likely is very good since he sees so many patients in a day.  However when I reported back to the Peace Corps doc I said that since it was my eye, I did not feel comfortable waiting for 3 months to find out if things got better.  Bless his heart, Dr. Blessing got right on it and set things in motion with Washington DC.  The next night he called me to say that I was going to be medevacked to South Africa.  So tonight is the night.  Dr. Blessing said that if they need to do laser surgery they will do it when I am down there.  He also said that they have 50 opthalmoligists at the clinic in SA so that raised my comfort level quite a bit.  I could also just end up with a new pair of glasses, who knows?

Anyway my return is booked for October 10th but hopefully I will be back well before then.  The clinic is in Praetoria, which reminds me of a song from my childhood.  Unfortunately I am unable to sing it for you so you will have to do without my rendition of it.  (I know this is breaking Patti's heart).  If I end up being down there for awhile they said that we can make day trips so hopefully I will be able to to the tourist bit while I am down there.  Send some positive vibrations my way, folks.  I am calm but it is a little scary.

Scenes from Mariama Kunda

I thought I would post some random pictures from Mariama Kunda.  I just liked some of these pictures and am about done with tales of Mariama Kunda.  Below is the main road through town.  The dirt here is basically sand.  When it rains the water pools up and the roads are treacherous.  You definitely need a big 4 wheel drive to navigate though them after a good rain.  But the picture below demonstrates the beauty of a nice day.  Now that I am living in the city I look back on this with longing.  Cars were not numerous as you can tell by the picture and the overall feeling was pastoral.  Note the fencing along the road.  This encloses compounds and can be made of mud block, corrugate in various stages of rusting, palm fronds, or anything else to enclose the area.

The next is a picture of some school girls in their school uniform.  I just like the picture, plus you cn see a little more of the 'hood.  Note the ever present chickens.

A picture of Haddy Cesaay, the youngest member of the family who live in the compound in which we did  our language training.  If she doesn't make you smile, something is wrong with you.

Here is Isatou from my training compound, working hard doing the wash.  I enclosed this picture because this will be me for the next two years doing my wash.  I try to do it frequently but sometimes the weather will not cooperate and it piles up.  I hear that the rain usually stops at the end of September but the humidity remains until November so October is the toughest month.

As I mentioned above the roads can get a little hairy in the rain.  This is not a road, merely a path, but any port in a storm.

Another rainy day scene that is quite typical.  When it rains hard and the puddles form, the little boys love to shed their clothes and splash in the water.  

Baobob trees are one of the scenic wonders of The Gambia.  Some of these trees are huge and are beautiful.  This was one in the village that was the marker for finding the bar that served beer and mixed drinks.  The bar is in a Christian compound since the Muslim faith does not believe in intoxicants.  

The Gambian children seem to love Toubobs (can mean various things but I will go with the kindest one -- white person).  We returned from training that had taken several days off site.  The neighborhood children were glad to see us return.

This little boy loved his blue rain boots.  He had his priorities when he was getting dressed -- boots first.

The Gambians use a very large mortar and pestle for their cooking.  I thought I would give you an idea of the size of it by including a picture of little Koomba Gaye,  hard at work.  She is 4 1/2 years old and a real firecracker.

Model School

I came to The Gambia as an education volunteer and as part of the training for the education volunteers we had a week of model school at a school in our training school.  This school was an upper basic school which had grades 5 through 8th.  The students were from that that school but since it was summer vacation, the Peace Corps paid them 10 Dalasi a day to incent them to attend.  The current exchange rate is about 30 dalasi to the dollar so not a huge amount.  However my monthly salary is a little over $200.00 and I am relatively well paid in Gambian terms.  So 50 dalasi is an incentive and attendance was very good.  My host sister, Roxy, was one of the students and her family let her keep the money.  

I was scheduled to teach 3 computer classes to the eighth grade.  The first day was basic and we went through keyboard, mouse, cpu, and monitor and did a drill on connecting them all since they had never done this.  The next day we passed out keyboards to the class and had them compete to type the characters first.  They were good at hunting and pecking but they were not aware of how to use the shift keys and typing special characters.  Finally on the third day we went to the  computer lab.  In order to make it easier for the PCTs to teach, the Peace Corps lent a large generator to the school.  With this generator we were able to have 10 computers up and running for 27 students.  Normally they depend on solar power and can only power 4 computers at a time.  The classroom is beastly hot, and full of dust and dirt, but these kids love to use the computers, even if there are 3 or more sharing one computer.  Here is a picture of us in action.  I am the gorgeous one in the pink and turquoise.  The guy in the foreground is a PCV who has been here about a year.  BTW, if you hadn't figured it out, they wear uniforms to school.

Unfortunately at the time of model school a nasty bug was circulating among the Peace Corps trainees.  People were dropping like flies, so I ended up teaching 3 more computer classes to cover for sick people.  The computers had Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on them so that was my lesson plan. After always doing hunt and peck it was tough for them but some of them were really trying while others discovered the games section in Mavis.  Kids are kids wherever they are.

The very last day was graduation day so I helped with the eighth grade class since I was officially an eighth grade teacher.  The pictures below show the other eighth grade teachers and our classroom which was typical.  There are no windows, just decorative holes in the wall that allow in air, light, and dust.  Note the floor in the picture, I think there is concrete under there but the dust and dirt won the war a long time ago.  Also note the ceiling made of corrugated metal.  It is an extremely common building material here. I had visions of thatched roofs but the  majority are corrugate in this country.  The other education volunteers were pretty innovative in the materials they created for teaching -- I have to hand it to them.  The class voted to sing songs for their graduation presentation which they did.  But one of the students, who was the head boy for the school, said they had put together a drama for the graduation.  The other 8th grade teacher told them they could not do it, but during the ceremony they got up and performed it anyway.  What a hoot!  Some were playing bad boys and girls who went to the beach instead of school and tried to tempt the others into going to the beach.  Their entertainment value was way beyond any other act and their message was of course to stay in school.  I am not sure what the staff felt about it, but it definitely beat the songs that they sang.  

The amazing thing about the students here is that, from the time they start school, all classes are taught in English.  Can you imagine growing up speaking a language and then when you start school all of your teachers speak another language.  I guess they are in an English immersion program.  It is quite possible that their teacher cannot even speak the language that the children speak at home since there are so many tribal languages in the country.  

The Push Up Lizard

I have no idea what the real name of this lizard is, but we affectionately call him the pushup lizard.  He will run along like a normal lizard, then stop and toss off a few pushups and continue on his way.  They are very common here but their actions make me smile.

Money laundering in The Gambia

I am going to point you to Chris's site again.  He created a funny posting on money laundering.  piddy.org for September

The Art of Attaya

Preparing and drinking attaya is a Gambian tradition.  Attaya is more than a beverage, it is a ritual, usually performed by the men, but women can brew a mean glass of attaya too.  Brewing attaya involves  Chinese Gunpowder green tea that is sold in small boxes, lots of sugar and often fresh mint or small mint candies.  Attaya brewing usually is done in the afternoon and evening except during Ramadan when it is only done after the fast has been broken, usually after the 9 pm prayer.  I was going to detail the steps but then I discovered that You Tube has a couple of attaya videos so seeing the real thing will probably be better than my description:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iBFUfEs4KE&feature=related

Here is a picture of my training village brother getting some good foam on his attaya:

Here is a closeup of the attaya pot in action.  In the video on You Tube the charcoal burner is round but the ones I have seen have all been square like the one below:

I have drunk my share of attaya, but I am not its biggest fan.  Some of the PCVs have purchased their own sets.  As with many of the drinks in The Gambia I think there is too much sugar but maybe in two years I will think differently.

Another volunteer's web site

Just thought I would point you to the other PDX volunteer's web site.  He has posted some nice pictures.  It is piddy.org.  Take a look

Koriteh in Mariama Kunda

Koriteh marks the end of Ramadan. On Koriteh the people celebrate by dressing up in their nicest clothes and visiting their neighbors.  Children also will come to compound and ask for sallibo.  This is a little like trick or treating because money or treats are the sallibo.  The children are far more polite and reticent about demanding their sallibo and will depart without comment if none is available.

We started the day by preparing a dinner.   I actually helped in the preparation this time.   We made chicken, onions, potatoes and sauce, plus rice.  Rice is served very frequently.  My mother would sit with a large bowl of rice and pick out the bad inclusions.  How many times have you read that you should do this and actually done it.  Since rice comes in 50 lb bags here, picking through the rice is a necessity.  Below are pictures of the meal in progress:

  

Another part of the day was getting ready for Koriteh.  My oldest sister had her hair braided in a spiral that started at the bottom of her head and ended at the top.  Then my mother took out a needle and thread and started sewing strips of fake hair into the braids.  Fake hair was very much in evidence for Koriteh.  Fatou had dreams of smooth black hair but her mother did not get it quite right.    Super glue even came into play and Fatou was not happy.  Meanwhile my mother braided my hair for Koriteh.  We had talked about it previously and I told her my hair would not stay braided because it was too soft.  She said to give her money and she would buy xxx in Serrekunda.  I thought that xxx was extensions since they use so much fake hair.  You can see by the attached picture that it was not extensions, it was rubber bands.  While she was braiding my hair the girls were saying "rafettnah" which means pretty, handsome, beautiful etc.  The other female pcvs had braiding done that was more like many French braids.  I was rather flabbiergasted when I saw what I looked like.  Of course I smiled and said that I was indeed "refettnah".  I kept them in for 3 days and then said that I had to wash my hair.  Some of the braids had come undone by that time so I definitely was particularly rafettnah by the time that I took them out.  The pictures below show me in all my loveliness and Fatou looking most unhappy with her hair.  She refused to smile for the camera.  She did go the next day and get her hair fixed by a professional and it looked much better so she was all set for her Koriteh visiting.

Once the cooking was done and the hair braided we were ready for visitors to come to the compound.  We ate together as a family but there was more food for those who stopped by.  One of the most interesting was a woman who came in and asked where her dinner was.  We had finished eating and put things away.  My mother told her she would fix her a plate so the woman said she would go to the local market and come back.  When she returned she sat down and m;y mother gave her a plate of food which she ate and then left.  In this country if someone is hungry and wants food, you feed them --end of story.  The pictures below are of a group of my mother's friends.  They definitely made themselves at home.  They made attaya ( a blog to come) and let (warm, sweetened milk with a little mint candy at the bottom).  Meanwhile my mother made a food bowl for all of them and the whole group, including my mother had a great time.  By the way, the standard way of eating from the food bowl is squished the food together with your right hand and eating the squished up stuff.

Last Kortieh pictures are my sisters ready for their evening Koriteh rounds.  The day dragged on and

they still had not put on their fancy clothiers but then came the magic hour and they translated into printesses..  The results are below.

Fatou

Mama

Roxy