Melam, jeeo, H2O- WATER

New place in the city officially procured. I get to move in in a few days. There are so many things to be excited about: electricity, privacy, meeting new neighbors, a market near my house, and indoor plumbing to name a few. And how excited I am about these things makes me think maybe I should blog a bit about basic needs here and how for so many Gambians, satisfying those needs is different than for most people who will read this.

One of the most basic needs is water, so I'll blog about that one first.

Probably most of you have heard something from a charity in the US about water in Africa- how hard it is to get, how clean water is hard to come by,etc.
Here in The Gambia, we're pretty lucky with water. The country is based around a body of water- The River Gambia, so our water table is higher than a lot of places.  This makes wells easier and cheaper to dig. In Foni, where I was posted before, our water table was about 5-10 meters (way more shallow than the national average).  That means that in my area when you needed water, you either threw a bucket on a 15-30 foot rope down into a hole to pull up water or you went to the pump and pumped the water up. In some places, there are mechanized pumps run by solar or generator that put water in tanks that can then be gotten out of taps- like the hose pipe on the side of your house. Only with a tap or a pump, and often with a well for that matter, the water is shared between a lot of people. This gets a lot worse in the urban areas or in big villages where people have to stand in line for their turn for water or even plan their days around the time when the tap is open for use.
Clean water is aonther issue. There are 2 kinds of wells- open and covered. Their names say it all. Covered wells are covered with a concrete lid and a pump brings the water to the surface. This water is usually pretty clean and safe to drink. Open wells are open to the elements. They are just a deep hole in the ground. Anything can fall in there. Anything can grow in there. Its very easy for this kind of well to become contaminated. Covered wells are far superior, but also far more expensive and more liable to break. When the rope on your bucket breaks, pretty much any idiot can fix that. Tie a knot or get a new rope. When something inside a pump for a covered well breaks, only a trained professional can fix it. That takes money and the guy also has to show up to fix it. My village was without a covered well for about 3 months during my stay once because of a pump failure, and they did a commendable job of getting it back up and running quickly and efficiently. Some pumps sit months or years waiting to be fixed.  And during this time, everyone around is drinking questionable water.  In many villages, there are only open wells and only ever have been.

Think of all the things in your life that use water. Cooking, washing dishes, washing hands, showering, drinking, watering plants, pets drinking water, washing clothes, etc... Imagine if you had to go get that instead of it just coming into your house. Its not convenient.  Thus why indoor plumbing is on my list of things to be excited about for city life.

She's back!

I know this is a little late, as pretty much everybody knows I made it back safe and sound, but I just wanted to talk a little about going home and being back.
I had a great time in America.  I got to see a lot of people I had missed and do a lot of things I had missed doing.  It was awesome how quickly it felt normal hanging out with friends and family I hadn't seen in almost 2 years.
Overall, the U.S. wasn't as shocking as I thought it would be. Some things did take me by surprise: The grocery store was miraculous, albeit a little overwhelming.  Driving a car again was fun, and the way American traffic is so organized and choreographed was beautiful/astounding/miraculous (that word describes a lot of American things.) Eating American food was amazing. I worked through my whole list, and it was all delicious.  I would like to thank everyone who had a part in me gaining 7 pounds in a month.  I appreciated it all so much! Along the same vein, throwing "spoiled" food away freaked me out more than I thought it would. Never thought I'd be so upset about having to throw away some old leftovers, but don't worry the food was rescued and my stomach of steel handled it just fine. In the end, I'm really glad I got the unexpected 2 week extension on my trip.  It allowed me to do a lot more casual hanging out with friends and family that I wouldn't have had time for otherwise.
The trip back was great. On my 2 longest flights, I had an open seat beside me. I got horribly misdirected in some Canadian airport, but that just led to me seeing the beautiful terminal where the international flights to nice places leave from, then getting to ride on an express moving sidewalk two different times, (It travels faster than a person walking on a regular moving sidewalk- like running only you're standing still hoping you'll figure out how to get off when the sidewalk ends.) and getting to pass through customs with the wave of a card like some celebrity.  Overall very good travel experience, and then at the end of my travel, friends had come to get me at the airport.
Once back, I got to hang out with a lot of people from the group I arrived in the country with 2 years ago, and then headed back to see my family here. Baby Muhammed Ken started walking just a couple of days after I returned to the compound, and I was so excited I didn't miss that. I don't know how its possible, but somehow he's even cuter now that he can walk.  We had a big celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Peace Corps a couple of weeks ago, put on by the president (of The Gambia). It was very cool. We all got to shake hands with His Excellency, and heard many speeches of Gambians appreciating the Peace Corps and what we have done in the country, and plus there was a ton of delicious food.
Part of the reasoning of going home was to see if I was ready to stay in The Gambian another year.  Although it was awesome to be in America, I think the opportunities I have here for the coming year are too exciting to pass on. The work for the next year, provided that it works out, sounds like it will be challenging and a great experience. Looking at the job description, I can't believe someone thinks I am qualified to be doing this, but I have the opportunity to give it a try and I can't wait.  And its not just the work I'm staying for.  I really do enjoy living here.  I have people here I enjoy hanging out with, and there's something about being here. Everyday, there's probably going to be something that will drive you absolutely crazy, and definitely ten other things that are just hilarious and a few things that make you really happy, and probably something that will make you think about how lucky you are that this is your life. Its a roller coaster, but I like to be on it, and in my experience, its way more up than down.  So, barring any unforseen circumstances, I'm proceeding with my one year service extension.  That means I get to look for an apartment next week!

JOSANEY- culture/customs

A couple of the villages near Salliya just finished their futampaf, the celebration of the boys circumcisions. The celebration was held in the village nearest mine.

PRE-FUTAMPAF:

 Women in the host village and most of the surrounding villages spent the weeks leading up to the futampaf pounding millet and grasses to make a drink (bunkap) that is always served at these occasions. It was likened to fermented tea by a few volunteers that came to visit. You could probably have filled a swimming pool with the amount of bunkap that they made.
There were so many guests from out of the area coming that every compound built extra housing for visitors. They were just palm frond huts but they at least doubled the living space in the village.

DAY 1

On the first day, the boys got ready to go to the bush. In the afternoon, the boys gathered to kill chickens. Each boy and his mother came to the gathering place with 2 chickens. The mothers gave the son two skirts, one to wear as a skirt, one to serve as a shirt. Each pair sat down on the ground and the mother killed the chickens. This is a big deal because here, women don't really do any animal killing. They let the chickens run around like, well, a chicken with its head cut off, and then once it dies, they check something inside of the chicken (maybe the kidneys?). If the chicken acts normally when it dies and if its kidneys look normal, the boy will be fine in the bush. If something is wrong with the chicken, the boy is going to be sick or die in the bush unless something is done about it. All of the chickens were fine so i didn't really get to see what happens if one is not, but when I asked, I got 2 different accounts. One said that if something is wrong, it is the father's fault and the father and the mother have to fight. The other said that the mother had to do a dance to ward off the bad spirits. 
After killing the chickens, the boys were all taken to a communal tent to stay together for the night. For dinner, the boys get to eat the chickens. Two chickens per boy! These guys for sure never have and never will again get to eat that much chicken at one time.

DAY 2

In the morning, the boys were all kept inside their communal tent. They had to stay in there unless someone specifically invited an individual out for a conversation. Supposedly it was pretty cramped and hot in there.  Outside the tent, there was a butesop. (I finally figured out the meaning of that for those of you that remember it a few posts back.) Butesop- n. an event characterized by people wearing protective jujus who try to cut, stab, shoot, or maim in some other way their bodies but cannot because the power of the juju protects them. In the afternoon, EVERYONE walked out into the bush. The crowd was huge. We walked out and danced and watched butesop in a big clearing in the bush. They set off explosives to ward off evil and witches, and they had a kankurang to chase away women and children once it became time for all but the men and initiates to leave the bush. At night they had dances at almost every compound in the village.  It was a lot of fun because every party was a little different and we could go to one until we were bored or we drew too much of a crowd or just decided to switch types of music.

DAY 3

The music didn't stop at all between the afternoon of day 2 and the morning of day 4. Virtually every compound had rented a sound system and played it non-stop for at least 36 hours. I'd say in the entirity of the futampaf week, there was probably just about 12 hours that there was not music blaring from that village. I don't understand how anyone got any sleep.  At some of the parties, people would be sleeping on mats 10 feet away from a 4 foot tall speaker blaring music!

DAY 4

Yet another day of eating and dancing. I had visitors most of the week. My number of visitors ranged from one day when I had 0 to one day when I had 6. This particular day, I had 2 visitors. Visitors mean an invitation to eat lunch at a compound in the futampaf host village!  The food for the futampaf was amazing. They killed a lot of cows, made sauces that they hardly ever cook; there was even salad!!! That never, never happens. Granted, the meals are at odd times- for instance, we ate the salad at about 2 in the morning, and lunch most days was around 5pm, but it was always worth the wait.

DAY 5

Nothing too much happened today.  No visitors, so I ate normal food for lunch and then went to the futampaffing village to help the women cook dinner. After we cooked, it was getting pretty dark and a group of us from Salliya decided to walk home. In the distance though we could hear drums coming. The women told me it was tradition for all the boys to come out of the bush after dark on this night and beat the young girls. I got to see the flood of boys marching into the village in the distance, but we went home before the boys came anywhere close. Being unmarried but past prime marrying age here makes me a confusing girl/woman and I wan't too interested in sticking around to see if they'd beat me. I don't think they actually beat anyone because everyone seemed fine the next day. Maybe it was just a ceremonial tap on the head for each girl or something.

DAY 6

Day before the last, the boys got to take a bath. Traditionally they don't bathe at all for the time they are in the bush. This morning, all of the boys, escorted by a kankurang, walked to the river wearing white shawls covering their faces so no one could tell who they were. There, they all finally washed off, then trekked back to the bush. Later in the afternoon, the boys trek out of the bush again, but this time un-protected by a kankurang. In the futampaf host village there was a big field with a pole planted in it (kind of like a totem pole).  Everyone in the area came out to stand on one side of the pole and the initiates came and stood on the far side of the field still wearing the white shawls from the morning. They did some kind of call and response clapping game with the men on our side of the field and on a certain clap, all the boys took off running toward the pole. Once they reached the pole, the boys dove face down on the ground, each holding a small green branch over their heads. The boys' parents could pay the men in charge to show them which one was their son, and then the son could wave his branch over his head to say "Hey, mom. I'm okay."  After a few minutes of that, the kankurang came out of the bush on the far side of the clearing, so all the women and children had to run back to the village.

DAY 7

The boys came out of the bush to very little fanfare. I assumed after all the big parties we'd had while they were in the bush, there would be a blowout when the boys finally came home, but no. I thought, 'certainly, I'll know when the boys are coming, There'll be a big stir. People will tell me.'  I didn't know anything until the boy from my compound who had gone into the bush came in wearing new clothes and shaking hands in a weird new way.

More pictures

Facebook and Blogspot are slow at loading pictures but I've found that snapfish.com is not, so I devised a plan where you can look at my pictures there. Go to http://roethegambia.snapfish.com/snapfish and as of this evening, you can look at more than 200 pictures of my first year of PC horribly out of order but there for you to see. To read explanatory captions, enable the captions when you are looking at the pictures.  Just open the pictures and the slideshow has an icon in the lower right corner to enable the captions. I've posted that everywhere but I'm just paranoid that all my caption writing is going to go to waste.  And you can comment on the pictures also. I'm never against getting feedback! You'll probably have to make an account to get in but it shouldn't be too difficult.

3rd grade Q & A

My sister, Kayla, recently did her student teaching with a third grade class and they learned a little about The Gambia and then sent me their questions.  I thought I'd put our Q&A up so everyone could read it. I know some questions and answers are a little repetitive but I wanted to answer them each, so forgive me and maybe you'll enjoy hearing all the different ways I can talk about food and whether I like Gambia.

What's Salliyaa like?
Salliyaa is a small, small village. There are only 4 families that live there, but the families are very big because all the grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins all live together. The family I live with has more than 25 people in it! There are lots of houses made of mud bricks with metal roofs to hold all the people, but there people do not spend too much time inside. Most houses only have bedrooms. All the cooking and playing and working and chatting happens outside. People spend a lot of time at eachothers houses, and everyone knows eachother very well.
The place is very beautiful. The house I live in is under a giant tree. It's so big that its branches shade almost 1/4 of the village! There are also many mango trees in Salliyaa. The mangoes are almost ripe now. Soon we will eat mangoes every day. Outside the village, there are many palm trees, and if I walk for about 15 minutes, I can get to a small river. If I am lucky, sometimes I see monkeys on the way there.

How does it not have electricity?
In The Gambia, most villages outside the city do not have electricity. They just do not have electric poles or wires or a power station. Some people have solar electricity, so they collect energy from the sun during the day and store it in batteries so they can have lights at night, but most people do not have electricity at all. At night, people use flashlights or candles to see. In Salliyaa, they do not have any TVs, refrigerators, washing machinces, or computers. They do have battery powered radios, so many people listen to the news, music, or radio dramas at night for entertainment. And they spend much more time talking to eachother than you might be used to in America. There are many people with cell phones in my area, and there is a house in another village that has solar electricity, so they run a business charging cell phones.
Are there dogs and cats?
Yes. The family I live with has 3 dogs named Camel, Tiger and Lion, and they are getting a cat soon. Around the village there is also 1 other dog and a few cats. The animals all have work to do. The dogs go hunting with the boys and the cats catch mice and lizards around the house.
Do the peopls have unusual names?
They are names you would think were unususl if you head them in America, but they are normal for here. Many of them are Muslim names from the Koran like- Modoulamin, Ebrima, Seikou, Abdoulie (boys names) and Mariamma, Aminatta, Sallimata, Hawa (girls names.) Others are traditional tribal names like- Sutering, Kaken, Tumani (boys names) and Tening, Sanu, Meta (girls names).

Do they have books?
At school they have some text books for their classes. Most of the time several children have to share one book. They also have a very small library with some books on science and a few fictional books. Outside of school though, (at least in the area where I live) it is rare to see books. Many people here cannot read. Reading just isn't really a common form of entertainment here.
In school, do they have tests?
Yes. They have tests just like you. When they are in 3rd, 5th and 9th grades they have tests like the (TCAP/ TerraNova/ whatever you kids are taking these days).
Do the kids have toys?
There are a few toys around the village, but most of them are homemade. They make cars out of anything tied to a string. They use anything round as a ball. They play a lot of games with shoes. And they play a lot of games similar to hop-scotch that all they need is sand to draw in and some rocks.

Is the food nasty?
The food isn't nasty. Sometimes I get tired of some of the dishes they make, but it isn't nasty. Almost every day, we eat rice for lunch and dinner. Sometimes its rice with peanut sauce, sometimes rice with peanuts chopped up in it, sometimes rice and onions, sometimes rice and palm fruit sauce (i don't like this one very much), sometimes rice and sauce made of leaves and sometimes when there's a special occasion, we have fried rice (almost like what they have at the chinese restaurants.)
How much do people get paid to whack the monkeys at the hotel?
I'm assuming this is referring to the JanJangburreh Hotel my dad and I stayed at when he came.
I don't really know. Workers in The Gambia usually don't get paid very much if you compare them to workers in America. Everything here is paid in Gambian money called dalasis. If you are thinking about a Gambian wage in American money, it would be very small. Someone here who makes $10 per day is making good money.
How is it in Gambia?
It is nice here. The people are very friendly and i enjoy living here. The country is very small. (If you look on a map you will see that it is much smaller than Tennessee.) Since this country is small, almost every time you go somewhere, you see someone you know or you meet someone that knows the family you live with or someone you work with. As I said, people here talk to each other more than we are used to in America, so they are also used to talking to everyone they are around. No matter if you are at the market or waiting on the side of the road for the car, you will probably have someone to talk to. I appreciate being in such a friendly place. That makes up for it being so hot and dry and dusty most of the time.
Is it fun/cool?
Yes. It is definitely cool getting to live here and most of the time it is fun. It is very cool that I have the chance to live in The Gambia and learn what it is like to live in this place and culture. It is also cool that I have a chance to teach people at home in America about another part of the world. It is very cool to live and work in such a different eivironment!
What kind of sports do you like?
In America, I like to play tennis and disc golf, and I like to watch basketball. In Gambia, I like to watch basketball and soccer, but I don't really play any sports here.
Who's you favorite student there?
I try not to play favorites, but I'll tell you about a couple of my favorite different kinds of students. There is one 9th grade boy named Kawso who is very good at speaking english and tries very hard at school. He is older than most of the other students because a few years ago he dropped out of school so he could work to make money for his family. He understands how important his education is, so as soon as he could afford to (it was a few years), he started back to school and is one of the best students in his class. I do a lot of my teaching outside of school too, so one of my favorite students outside of school is a man named Modou. He is working on starting a vegetable garden in a village near mine. I help him by teaching him new ways to do things, like keeping insects from eating his plants. He is always willing to hear what I have to say, happy to see me come to his garden, and works hard.

What is your favorite food (at home and in Gambia)?
At home, my favorite food was mashed potatoes. In Gambia, my favorite food is called chakari. It is pounded millet in soured milk with sugar. It is maybe a LITTLE like yougurt with grape nuts in it.

Is it fun in Salliyaa?
Yes. Most of the time it is fun. I like hanging out with the ladies in my village doing household chores and chatting. And the children are always full of energy and fun to play with. I like my work, so even that is fun.

What are the sports like there?
Children here love to play soccer. Some of the schoolchildren know how to play volleyball and basketball. These sports are played by the same rules as in America. Each year, schools also have an "interhouse" which is like a field day where students participate in races and events like the long jump.

What is the food like?
The family I live with rarely cooks breakfast. They usually heat up what was left from dinner the night before but when they cook a special breakfast, they make porridge with rice. It's a little bit like oatmeal. I make my own breakfast, so sometimes I eat oatmeal, sometimes I mix granola and peanut butter, or I make some grits. Almost every day we eat rice dishes for lunch and dinner. It is rice with some kind of sauce on top. Sometimes, there is fish in the sauce as well. Even more rarely, we get chicken. On special occasions, we eat fried rice with goat, sheep or cow meat.

What is your favorite animal?
In general, my favorite animals are penguins. My favorite animal in The Gambia is the monitor lizard. They are huge lizards that live near the river, and I'm lucky enough to see one every few months.

What's your favorite color?
My favorite color is green

What do you do in Gambia?
I am an Environmental Education and Awareness Peace Corps Volunteer. I do work with school gardens. Many of the schools here have gardens where the children learn about growing things and the school can either use the vegetables in school food or sell the vegetables they grow to raise money. I help improve the garden at the school near me, and I work with an organization in the city on making school gardens all over the country better. I also work with a few people in my area on making their gardens better, so they can provide their families with more nutritious food and make some money. I also do other small projects like planting tree seedlings and doing HIV/AIDS education, among other things. Part of my job is also to live with the people here and try to understand what life and people here are like so that I can help Americans learn about other cultures.

Do they eat fried chicken?
They do make fried chicken here, They don't put breading on it like most people do in America, but its fried chicken and its good anyway.

Is Gambia a great place?
Yeah, it's a great place. There are problems here like poverty, struggles of education and deforestation, but there are also many good things. The country has many beautiful places. The people are nice. The culture here is interesting. Overall, I still think The Gambia rates as great.

Do they have Police?
Yes, but their police do not drive around in cals like the ones you are used to. Some police walk around the city to make sure everything is peaceful, but most of the police in this country work at checkpoints along the roads. When you are riding in a car and your car comes to one of these checkpoints, the car has to stop and the policeman looks in the car. Sometimes, he asks for the driver's driving licence to make sure he is driving legally. Sometimes they check to see if the passenger is wearing a seatbelt. Sometimes if they feel suspicious of the people in the car they ask to see their identification and might even take their bags out and search them for anything illegal.

What foods do they have there?
In the city, we have many of the same foods as we have in America: pizza, hamburgers, spaghetti, egg sandwiches, chicken, french fries, even chinese food. I miss some food like mexican food, sushi, turkey sandwiches, lasagna, chili and lots of other things that are not anywhere in this country. Outside of the city, the food is different. For breakfast, many people eat sandwiches. The most common type is bean sandwiches. It sounds strange, but they are very good. In most smaller villages, no one sells sandwiches, so bread or porridge is a normal breakfast. After that, it is usually rice for all the meals. In some families, millet with sauce is eaten instead of rice for one meal a day. For snacks, people eat fruit that grows on trees here. There is cashew fruit, mangoes, baobab, oranges, mandinka cola, kaba, and some other fruits that have no english name. Many of these fruits are not in America, not even in the grocery stores.

Do you teach the children about the United States?
I do not teach a class about the US or anything but I do answer questions all the time about what the US is like.

Leafe ni je- I went on vacation

Casey, Eileen and me overlooking a valley. Guinea has topography!!!

Thankfully, our guide had plenty of poses he wanted us to do for pictures, so we never had to think about how to stand for pictures.

We got to swim in this waterfall and then ate lunch beside it.

Huge rock formation we hiked around

Vulture over the valley

I just got back from 8 days of traveling in Sierra Leone and Guinea Conakry. I traveled with 2 friends from Peace Corps The Gambia- Casey and Eileen.We flew into Freetown, Sierra Leone and took the ferry to meet Chelsea and Mike, my friends who live in Freetown.  They took us to River #2 for a great day at the beach.  The water was a perfect temperature, the beach was beautiful and it was awesome to get to catch up with friends I hadn't seen in such a long time.  Casey, Eileen and I were planning on visiting a national park in Sierra Leone, but after finding out how complicated and perhaps impossible it would be to get there, we decided it'd be more fun to just go to Guinea from Freetown. We loaded up in a station wagon (public transportation) and headed across the border.  We spent one day in Conakry. Between the city being crowded and confusing and everyone speaking French, it didn't register as one of my favorite places to be in the world. We left the city asap. Once we were out of the city, the drive was BEAUTIFUL. Being in an overcrowded compact car for more than 8 hours was actually pleasant because of the scenery. We're used to flat, dry Gambia and Guinea (Sierra Leone too) is nothing like that. There are hills, valleys, and trees everywhere!  After 2 days in transit, we made it to Dookie for hiking.

The hiking was a ton of fun. For a couple of days, we clinbed around on rocks, swam in waterfalls, swam in waterfalls inside caves, saw valleys, mountains and cliffs. Once again, coming from flat, dry Gambia this was all SO impressive. Also, coming from flat, dry Gambia, we were all SO sore afterwards.

On the way back to the city to catch our plane back to The Gambia, we spent a night in a huge village on the way toward the capitol. It was a nice laid back night (with air conditioning!!!) followed by getting to hang out with the resident Peace Corps Volunteer. She showed us around a bit, took us to a restaurant and then used her French to get us in a cab straight to the airport.  Its really awesome to be able to link into the Peace Corps network. You meet some cool people and I'm so thankful for all the help we got from volunteers along the way.

Now I'm back in The Gambia. Even though, it doesn't have mountains or waterfalls, I'm glad to be back!

Butesap

First of all, I have no idea what the aforementioned word means. It might mean banging metal together; it might just mean cultural party; it might mean whatever happens before a circumcision ceremony, but whatever it is, it just happened in my area.
A couple of days ago, we had the official announcement of when the circumcision ceremony near me is scheduled to be. This was a huge party. We had people coming in from all over the area, the city and the Cassamance to attend the event. The event was supposed to start around 8 or 9 am, but in tradition of Gambian Maybe Time, it began around 4pm. There were a couple of hundred people dancing on the highway for a while to the music of girls banging pieces of metal together. During this dance, there was one old man in the front who was using something which was possibly formerly a cow's tail to fling ceremonial water on people in the crowd. A few times during our time spent in the road, some men did a display of the magical powers of their jujus by attempting to cut themselves with knives or machettes, but they were never cut because they were protected by their jujus. There was maybe an hour of dancing in the road before the whole crowd moved into the bush to wait for the date announcement. On the way, the crowd upset some bees, making everyone run a small portion of the trail to avoid being stung. This episode also made the crowd really nervous of bees, thus contributing to a couple of stampedes later in the day when a few people in the crowd thought they saw a bee. Before we walked back to town, an offering had to be brought to the bees to convince them not to sting anyone on our way back out. It must have worked because there was not nearly so much running and yelling as on the way in.
While we were in the bush, there was more dancing to clanging metal with the ladies, while the men all went to sit under a big tree where the date decision was being made. After an hour or 2, the date was announced and the men paraded back to meet the women waving tree branches and singing.  We all walked home for dinner, and then after dinner, there was a party with a drumming group and lots of dancing until late into the night.
After all this, I assumed the date would be all anyone talked about, but in fact, no one seems to care about the date that was announced- the entire purpose of this party. I think there was just too much fun to be had to worry about some date. I still don't know when it is and I've asked around like crazy. But whenever that date is, I've been promised that the party will be bigger, better, and last a whole week.

What's in a name?

Most everyone knows I go by Sally while I'm in Gambia.  Its nice to have a Gambian name partly because, with a Gambian name, you know people you meet will be able to pronounce it.  But probably the best part of having a Gambian name is the "toma effect."  A toma is someone that shares the same name as you.  Meeting a toma is great.  Its an instant guarantee of friendship and your tomaship will probably be announced to everyone around.  In America, I feel like being in a group with several people with the same name its a little annoying, but here they love it.  There's a standard bank of names that most people use, so I'd guess that at least 75% of the country is named names from the top maybe 25 names.  (And I feel like that's a conservative estimate.)  Most of the standard names are Muslim names: Modoulamin, Muhammed, Ebrima, Fatoumatta, Mariamma, Isatou... These, and nicknames that derive from them, account for tons of the population. 
One of my favorite conversations with a middle school boy at school was about names, and he said all boys should just be named Lamin (a shortenig of Modoulamin). It's the best name because so many people have it, and if all the people named Lamin decided to fight everyone else they would win, no doubt.  Sounds like logic is on his side. 
In my village, its no exception to the name situation in the rest of the country.
- A full 10% of my village's population (not women, total population) is named Fatou Badjie.
- My host father has 6 sons, 2 of them are named Ebrima.  
- My host father had 4 wives- 2 of them have exactly the same name.
- The oldest son in every family in my village is named Modoulamin.
Its just crazy that this much name overlap is unheard of in America but is so common here.  So common that I'm the only one around who finds it confusing.

Nna dimbaya- "My Family"

These are a selection of pictures that the first grade class at the school closest to me drew for Kayla's Kindergarten student teaching class. I just thought people might like to see.
The class has about 40 first graders. I don't know how Mrs. Gibba handles it but somehow she does, and after being in class with her for that day we did drawing, she's coming out ahead as perhaps my favorite teacher at the school.
I'm giong to have to ask you all to turn your heads to enjoy these pictures. I forgot to turn them before loading, and loading again is not an option.

Mailrun

Just got back from mailrun- a trip around the country delivering Peace Corps Volunteers their mail. We spent 5 days in a car driving everywhere. I got to see a lot of the country I hadn't seen before, which was really interesting. I got to ride on the big ferry for the first time, spent my first long trip on the north bank road and gained a new appreciation for being able to walk from my doorstep to the main highway in 15 minutes or less.

This is the side view of the car on day 1. This car was packed full!

The mailrun crew in our asobee. Even Bob (the cat) had a collar but you probably can't see it.

Pictures from trek

Team 2 is #1!

The team out in the bush en route to one of our sites

A baboon some of my team and i hung out with while we were waiting

Basketball

Basketball got introduced to my area this year.  A non-profit in my area made a basketball court and trained a few teachers on how to play the game, and then they had about 2 months to get girls basketball teams together.  They held a regional tournament that was based at the school nearest me, so i got to be around and root the girls on Bondali's team on.  Three of the girls on the team are from my village so it was great to get to see them play and they did GREAT. They won our district and are playing in the regional final next month.  It was exciting to see these girls who are generally so shy in front of people going out on the court in front of a small crowd and really being proud of themselves.  Go Bondali Nugggets! (They didn't pick the names by the way. Some American shirt printing comapny's printing error made these jersy's discards, then donations, which chose the name for them.)

 The team

SCORE!!!

A banta le!

Mandinka for "It's done/finished."

Just finished the WFP Food Security and Livelihood Assessment trek.  We went around the country taking surveys to help the World Food Programme figure out what the food security status of The Gambia is. I've thrown the term food security around a lot, so here's an official definition:
"Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietart needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life"- World Food Summit, 1996
As one of the most densely populated countries in Africa, and one of the smallest, food security is a big concern here. Gambia is a net importer of food, which means the country doesn't produce enough food to support itself and has to buy almost half its food from outside its borders. And being among the poorer countries, affording said food is sometimes an issue for people.  So the survey is supposed to help inform the government, NGOs (non-profit organizations, etc) and the UN on what their plans should be to address this in the future.

My team covered the West Coast Region. It was me and 7 guys in a minivan for about 10 days. Me, a driver and 6 interviewers (mostly university students.) Treks get better with time, so for the first few days, I was super stressed and running around like crazy, but by the end it was fun.  My role was organizer.  I had to plan the days, keep the team moving and check all the surveys for obvious errors.  I just did the background work. I had a great team. We got along great, spent a lot of time together, and were all a little sorry to see the trek end.

Pictures and hopefully an amusing story or 2 to follow...