In the hood (aka the compound)

I thought you might like to meet some of my neighbors in the compound. There are quite a few people who live in the compound but these are the ones that I see most frequently.  The first is Pa Njai, the owner of the compound.  He is a former captain in the Gambian navy and captained the ship for the deposed president (who is alive and well BTW).  He is 72 and has many children but only 4 are still living in the compound. 

The next two pictures are of his two daughters, Sukai and Mariama.  I will leave for you to guess which one's ambition is to be a model in Atlanta. (I know, why Atlanta???)



Next door to me is a family with 6 children.  The youngest is Mohammed who enjoys being the baby of the family and is somewhere around 2 by my guess.  I can hear him throwing major hissy fits on occasion.  Kids seem to be the same every where.  The first picture is of him with his tricycle.  He enjoys pushing it around and putting his flip flops on the seat to give them a ride, but so far I have never seen him ride it. 

The next picture is of Mohammed with his mother, Haddy.  When he saw her walk into the compound he dropped everything and went running to mom.  As I said, kids are the same everywhere.

The next one is a picture of the two oldest girls in the next door family, Houja on the left and Derok on the right. Derok is my favorite of the kids.  When I come in the compound she will take my hand and curtsey.  The girl knows how to act in the presence of royalty.

Derok is in the next picture, too, along with her younger sister Isatou.  They are on the way to Arabic school which they attend on Saturdays and Sundays.  The boards have Arabic on them for the things they are learning.  When the board is filled up, theold writing is sanded off and they start anew.  As you can see, their heads are covered when they go to Arabic school. I walked by Arabic shool today and there is a lot of repetition going on -- as there is in regular school.

The next pictures are from a night that I came home and found a braiding party going on.  The first is Haddy braiding Isatou's hair.  Her two older girls had their hair braided in a shop and had little plastic charms braided in.  However that had not happened at the time I took the pictures.

The next set are sisterly devotion.  In the first Sukai is showing off her model pose again.while she is working on Mariama's hair.  In the next picture you can see a little more of how it was done.  She had a mass of fake hair and was creating dozens of long braids in Mariama's hair.  It took many hours to complete.  Note the short shorts she has on.  I have never seen her wear them outside the compound but have seen her with the many times inside the compound.  Pa appears to be quite religious so I find it interesting that Sukai wears those skimpy shorts and tank tops.

Whie the braiding was going on music was being played. Derok, Mohammed and Baitam decided to bust some moves.  Kids (and adults) love to dance here.  And they also love to be photgraphed dancing.

The picture below is The Gambian version of South African house protection.  This is the common wall that we share with the next door neighbor.  He must have been nervous about the front gate being open in our compound because he put big shards of glass all along the top of the wall. It is interesting to watch the cats walk carefully along the top.  So far they are all still alive.

You will have to look closely in the picture below, but one day I passed two rats standing on their hind legs fighting each other on my way to work.  I stopped to take a picture but someone came along and saw me.  I was too embarassed to check to make sure that I got a good picture.  But I think you can get idea of the size of them by the trash on the ground around them.  Thank goodness we have the 4 cats in my compound.  Rodents are not much of a problem.  Lizards and roaches, yes, but not rodents.

So that's all for now from the hood.  Stay tuned for the next exciting installment from The Gambia.

Office Space Gambian Style

I thought it was about time that I gave you a little peek into office life at WFP.  I work in an office with 2 other guys.  One of them is a Serbian, Darko Petrovic, who has been working in the Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping  area.  For those of you who are not in the development world, here is a definition of what it entails: (ahem..read the Vam part only if interested.)

VAM is a WFP information tool for targeting who are the hungry poor and where they live. It is an analytical tool as it inquires about the causes of their hunger and tries to answer hown food aid can make a difference. It provides WFP decision makers with food security and vulnerability information as well as monitoring tools to effectively implement.VAM efforts are guided by five fundamental questions:

• Who are food insecure and hungry?
• Where do they live?
• How many are they?
• Why are they vulnerable to food insecurity and hunger?
• How can food aid make a difference in reducing their vulnerability to food insecurity?

So that is probably more than you ever wanted to know about VAM. 

Anyway, Darko is a tall, charming, super multi-lingual guy(Wolof, German, Serbian, French, Italian) who is fun to work with. He is the one pictured with me below.  Some of his VAM analysis on the bullitin board to our right. It is a lot more impressive when seen in person.  You can also see a palm tree and sunshine right outside our window.  The weather is really beautiful at this time of year but it is slowly starting to inch up in temperature.

The occasion we are celebrating in the pictures is Darko's new position as a UNV in Muangdau,Myanmar.  He had been going through the process for a couple of months and was offered an opportunity to stay in The Gambia, but the guy instinct kicked in.  Muangdau is the right in the middle of a Serbian style conflict with the Muslim population and armed fighting and insurgencies.  That would be the last thing that I want to do but he is pumped.

Darko brought in a bunch of snacks and drinks, including champagne (no he did not get fired for that). The goup in the picture below are those who came for the festivities.  The woman in the flowered dress is a Gambian who spent 10 years going to school in Canada.  Apparently most of the American slang is also Canadian slang.  I asked her what part of the states she was. from (because of the slang and accent) and she told me in no uncertain terms that she was Gambian. The Canadian bit came out later in the conversation.  The lady sitting on Darko's lap is the number 2 person for the UN in the Gambia.  That involves many more organizations than the WFP.  The woman with the white shirt behind her is Tersita Mosquera, who is the programme officer for the WFP, and is my counterpart (as the Peace Corps terms it).  The girl with the green scarf around her neck Isatou Njai, our local fashionista.  She is always perfectly dressed and accessorized and wears some of the tallest heels I have ever seen.  Some days she towers over me.  Needless to say her family has money.  She has applied to get her masters degree from a university in Windsor, Ontario -- she is a sharp cookie so I hope she gets in. BTW my desk is in front of the green bulletin board at the back of the picture

The last picture is the terrible trio who share our office.  The man on the left is Dean Tunkara.  He is half Gambian and half British and was raised in Great Britain. He has had an interesting life and done a lot of crazy things in the past, including being a recording artist and actor. But I am sure the pinnacle moment in his life is working with me on Monitoring and Evaluation (AKA project management for development).  The three of us have quite a bit of fun together so I will miss Darko when he leaves.  Today he dropped the bombshell that he was taking Isatou Njai (the fashionista) to a wedding today.  He and Dean have been regularly harrassing her when she comes in the office so I should have known something was up.  An Interesting thing about weddings here, they don't invite people until the last minute and then send out a general invitation via email or phone call.  Can you imagine the Bridezillas in America dealing with that?

At long last the naming ceremony video

I finally decided to come to work to try to upload the video.   For some reason things upload very quickly here.  I am not sure if it will work for you but at least it uploaded. The video is pretty bad quality but I think it gives you a feel of a party here.  The two American men are both PCVs.  My host mother is sitting on the bench next to the drummer who has previously graced this blog in the Ramadan pictures.  She and Kumba are good buddies.

Howard Buffett comes to The Gambia

Last week was a rather interesting week at the WFP.  Howard Buffett, the son of Warren, came to town.  He has a farming background and has been a WFP Ambassador Against Hunger for several years and visited The Gambia as part of a multi-nation tour of Africa.  Needless to say, the WFP office here was in a tizzy before he arrived.  We had to choose three schools with decent school gardens that were relatively close to  airport so we could get him back to the airport after a whirlwind visit, less than 24 hours. I was not invited to the dinner the evening before or the meeting at the vice president's office.  Even though I was not there I thought I would include a picture taken in the her office.  She is the woman in white in the picture.  I recently discovered that if you double click on the pictures in the blog, it will bring them up in bigger format.  I would recommend doing it with this one just to see the detail in the picture.  At the back of the room you can see a picture of President Jammeh. 

I had to throw one more vice president picture in because I got a kick out of it.  In this picture Vitoria is presenting a computer to the vice president to represent the equipment we will be presenting to the regional office.  Everyone in the picture is looking at VItoria and the VP except Mr. Buffetts new assistant who is looking at the camera with the stock Hollywood glamour pose.

The remaining pictures were all taken during the part of the visit in which I was included.  We ended up going to two schools with good school gardens.  We had to tell the third school we would not make it. When we arrived at the first school the student body was lined up along the driveway singing a welcome song and clapping to the music.  The girls were all on one side and the boys were on the other so Mr. Buffett went down both rows slapping the girls' hands and fist bumping the boys.

Then he and one of the teachers held hands and kick stepped their way back.  As you can tell he is not a very formal kind of guy.

The first place we went we got to the school was the school garden.  One of the first things that Mr. Buffett did was to grab a handful of dirt, rub it through his fingers, and smell it.  He was not very impressed with the dirt -- needed more organic matter.  That made me smile because I had recommended composting at every garden I visited in December.

In the picture below, our WFP country director Vitoria is with Mr. Buffett.  She recently cut all her hair very short but used to have elaborate braids etc.  Since having the braiding done takes hours, I would probably do the same if I was in her place.  The stick that has leaves on the top of it, in the lower left of the bed they are looking at, is cassava.  To harvest it they cut the plant down and eat the roots.  But then they cut the woody part of the plant into pieces and stick the pieces into the garden.  They root and create more cassava plants  The one in the picture has just started the process of growing into a larger plant after having already been part of a larger plant.

In my post on my trek I showed you a school kitchen that was not being used. This one is in full swing-- the cook was making benecin, a Gambian dish with rice soaking up a sauce -- a Gambian verson of dirty rice.  Mr. Buffett and Vitoria both took turns doing the stirring and then turned it back over to the cook.  As you can see she has some good muscles in her arms from stirring these giant pots.



Here is the school store of WFP food and equipment.  The rice is front and center, the peas at the back right, the salt in the middle of the back and the oil is in the boxes.  These pallets are the latest and greatest WFP version -- not enviromentally sound but won't break and allows lots of air flow around the food.

We visited math class and Mr. Buffet sat himself down in one of the children's chairs which the children got a big kick out of.  They had were doing fill in the blank number math problems and, on the most complicated one, kids were doing random guesses.  Mr. Buffet stuck up for the student sitting next to him and called the teachers attention to the fact that the boy had given the right answer.  The man in the blue robe is the Minister of Education who came with us on the visits.

Then it was time for a program.  The children performed a drama (they love dramas) that was focused on school feeding.  The boy in the suit at the end of the table is playing a man from the WFP giving the parents and children the news that they will be receiving WFP school feeding.

The drama ended with the kids getting a food bowl with Vitoria joining in.

The PTA made a short presentation and then began to dance accompanied by drums.  If you look at the left of the picture you can see one of the drummers who has a whistle in his mouth.  Blowing a whistle while drumming is often done in group performances.  As you can see, Mr. Buffett jumped up to participate.

When the festivities were over we hurried off to another school.  This one had a beautiful school garden and also a banana orchard.  But they are no longer receiving school feeding.  WFP does not have the funding for their region.  The dirt was not good there either -- more composting needed.

Here is a Gambian teacher at work.  He was doing phonics and it was pretty interesting to watch him.  He had a string suspended across the classroom with different letters on it.  He would arrange the letters into a word, have the children sound out each letter and then sound out the word.

In one of the classrooms Howard noticed 3 children who had US Flag school bags.  He had them walk out into the yard and took pictures of them with the bags.  I have no idea where they got the bags but it does make a cool picture.

Some singing and dancing by some boys and girls at the school.

As part of the festivities some of the boys bought up a present for Howard.  When he opened the box they had given him a giant papaya they had raised as well as some bananas from the orchard.

Below is the WFP crew who went on the school trip along with Mr. Buffett and one of his assistants(the one in checks).  The background is a map of The Gambia painted on the side of one of the school buildings.  After this was taken we were off again --  some of us to the airport and the rest of us back to the WFP.

All in all in was a pretty interesting day.  He makes an excellent ambassador for the WFP.  His primary  focus was the kids and he loved being with them.  I had all of a 20 second conversation with him.  He asked me where I was from.   When I told him Portland, Oregon, he asked me if I had ever heard of EcoTrust.  I told him I lived across the street from the EcoTrust building.  He said he used to be on the board.  End of conversation.  I don't know exactly how many countries he had been to on this trip but I know there had been quite a few.  Nice to watch a philanthropist in action.  Probably the most fun thing in our preparation was getting the staff to say his name right.  They all wanted to pronounce it like Boofay.  Luckily we Americans were there to save the day. 

Random Things

I usually have my camera with me wherever I go and if I think of it I will take it out when I see something interesting (to me anyway).   The picture below is a photo of an aid magazine cover.  Kind of dumb to take a picture of magazine cover but it was an incredible picture and even though it is not West Africa it still has elements that ring true here.  First of all this woman is a living skull.  Now I have not seen anyone who resembles here but there is plenty of hunger in the Gambia. Then the men laughing behind her and one of them raising a glass of tea.  I have no idea what was happening when they took this picture but the juxtaposition of the men and the woman is an amazing contrast. The final thing of note is that she is clasping bottles of vegetable oil to her chest.  The amount of vegetable oil consumed here is incredible. A lot of it in The Gambia is palm oil. 

The next two pictures were taken on my walk to the United Nations.  As I have mentioned before Gambia is a free range country.  I regularly see chickens, goats and sheep walking around the hood on my way to and from work.  However, this day there was a herd of cows walking through.  No one was with these cows and they were just walking.   Then about 3 hours later I was on Kairaba Avenue at Traffic Light and the same herd of cows came strolling by, again without anyone tending them.  Traffic Light is one of the main corners in the entire country so the cows literally stopped traffic.

It probably sounds racist to repeat the euphemism "black don't crack" but living in Africa, I have to say it is true and I am damn jealous.  The woman below recently retired from my office at age 60.   She doesn't take very good pictures but take a look at that face and neck.  Arg, she looks better than I would if I had had plastic surgery.

Here is a Konkuran coming down the street of the village I walk through to come to work.  The Konkuran is a red monster who is part of the male circumcision celebration.  I talked about it in the blog about the dancers during my pre-service training.  But I have run into them several times in different parts of town.  In fact I saw one tonight on my way home.  They are always red, hairy and smack machetes together.  I have seen kids imitate them with torn red tee shirts for costumes and smacking flip flops together.  Gambian children are good at imaginative play.  A couple of times I pretended to be afraid of them and people came to my rescue.  I guess I will have to stop that practice.

For the final random photo I thought I would include one of me in South Africa having  a latte, or what is called a latte in SA. (I had to order extra espresso) The only reason I put this in is because I like the way that I look in it.  The woman in the picture is a PCV in Uganda and had thyroid surgery, hence the scarf.  She is back in Uganda and doing fine.

The Incredible Woman Eating Bed

I have already told you in an earlier post about my Gambian bed.  Little did I realize at the time that it is a determined foe.  It all started with minor misbehavior -- I would sit on the side of the bed or lie down to go to sleep and the end of one of the support boards would crash  to the floor, which meant getting up lifting up the mattress to find the errant board and then fixing it.  I was resigned to this until New Years Eve.  I guess my bed wanted to bring in the New Year with a bang -- literally. I got into bed and bang down a board went.  Fixed the board and bang another one went.  Got up and fixed that and then repeated the whole experience two more times.  AAARG!  The bed was defeating me.  At that point I told my woeful tale to Lindsay Roe, my UN co-worker.  She came up with the magical solution to all problems -- duct tape. When I got home that night I carefully duct taped all of the boards to the support boards.  Oh bliss, oh joy, the boards were firmly in place!!

I had tamed the beast.  But I tried to give the bed proper respect.  I tried to avoid sitting on the edge of the bed and would carefully slide into the bed at night, not wanting to anger the bed spirits.  But last week I did the unthinkable and sat on the edge of the bed as I got into bed.  BAM! one of the boards dropped to the floor.  In my  foolishness I decided to ignore it, thinking that the others were securely taped and went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning I was disoriented.  I could not figure out how to get out of bed.  Then I realized that both the foot and head of the mattress were upraised and I was stuck in the middle.  I tried to make my  way to the side but slipped back.  My mind was racing -- was I to remain locked in my house being consumed by a bed -- had any other PCVs been eaten by a bed?  Finally I was able to summon up super human strength and pull myself out of the jaws of the monster bed.  I threw the mattress aside and grabbed my mighty duct tape and wrestled the boards back into submission, applying duct tape as if I owned a duct tape factory.  The beast is tamed for now, but I know that it lies there, waiting for me to make another mistake, so that in can envelope me in its jaws.

United Nations International Volunteer Day

Every year the United Nations sponsors and International Volunteer Day. Since I work for the United Nations, it may not surprise you to hear that I participated.  It was celebrating volunteerism in general so Peace Corps Volunteers were also included in the event.  The day started with a parade down the middle of Kairaba, the main drag in Fajara, the street on which the US Embassy and the Peace Corps office are located. Kairaba is one of, if not the, most heavily traveled streets in The Gambia with a constant stream of taxis and cars.  Before the event started the various volunteers all grouped in front of the president's bakery and received tee shirts. and waited for things to get under way.  Finally, only about an hour late, the parade got started let by not one band, but two.  We had both an army band and a police band.

As I said Kairaba is the main drag through Toubob land, aka Fajara.  This gives you a little idea of what the good roads are like.  There is one lane in each direction but as you can see there is nothing resembling curbs and sidewalks.  When I walk to the Peace Corps office, I walk on the side of the road as you can see people doing in the picture.  This can be a dicey proposition here because pedestrians definitely do not have the right of way here.  If one of the taxis wants to pick up or let off passengers they just zoom into the roadside and you had better move out of their way.  I regularly curse them but not in a voice that they can hear.  

The pictures below are of the Peace Corps contingent in the parade.  We did not have that many people but we had a good banner.    The woman on the right hand side of the picture with glasses is Lindsay Roe.  She is a third year volunteer who spent the last year at the UN.  Unfortunately for me, she will be going back to the US in March.  She is smart as a whip and a tough act to follow.

I included another picture below to show you the PCV who is a vet who retired after a career as a zoo vet in Philadelphia and did a stint as a PCV in Samoa before doing another in The Gambia. She is the grey haired woman in the middle of the second row.  Unfortunately she went back to the US last Saturday.  I also wanted to call attention to the woman in front of the banner with the camera around her neck.  She is in charge of visibility (aka PR) for the WFP at the UN. You can't quite tell it from the picture but she is a real fashionista.  She is tall to begin with and wears a variety of towering heels in the office.  She is always perfectly accessorized and wears a variety of Gambian and US fashion.  I am a little jealous since I have never had the knack for fashion.  She is applying to a masters program in Windsor, Ontario so we may not have her around for much longer.  As you probably may have figured out her family does have money.

The woman behind the banner  in the black skirt and black tennis shoes with white laces is a UN volunteer from the US.  She was born and raised in the US but her family is from the Gambia.  She lived in the Gambia for a couple of years when she was younger so she speaks fluent Wolof.  She gave me a ride to work one day and pointed out the various ocean front homes that her uncle owns for his various wives.  Needless to say her uncle is wealthy.  She and I worked at a urban food distribution one day (probably need to write about that one) and it was fun to watch her in action.  I am jealous of her language abilities but not jealous enough to work hard to attain the same skills.

Our parade march down the road about a mile to a local soccer stadium.  At one point there was road work so we took up the entire road.  I loved being the one to make the taxis move rather than vice versa. At the stadium there was a little speechifying and then we sat down to wait for the speaker and food that never arrived. Catering is not the most dependable thing here.

The final picture is one that the visibility woman took of all the UN volunteers who made the march.  I think this is the only picture I have with my cast on.  I had been wearing my white sling which is actually covering most of the cast in the picture.  The cast itself was wrapped with an ace bandage since the doctor made the cast in two pieces and then wrapped gauze over the wet plaster to keep it together.  It made it easy to remove the cast but the gauze was a dirt magnet so I usually kept the ace bandage over it.  Once the picture was taken a UN driver came and whisked us back to work.