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.