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.