Life in Protugal

I've gotten some questions about my new living situation now that I'm in the city, so I thought that I would slowly share what the new place is like.  Today, outside the compound...

Here's my gate.  Keep in mind that I took these in the early morning.  There are always, always people around here- day and night.  It seems like around 7am is the only time there are no people on the street, so I took advantage to take some pictures.  I'm usually not on the street at 7am either.

 Here's my street.  I live on a side street in a densely populated area of the city.  The side street has no vehicle traffic ever due to the mound of dirt and gravel across from my car gate which I never use and the fact that sometimes, the end of the road you see here is only a ditch.  Other times they put concrete slabs over the ditch, I guess whenever they clean the ditch they leave it open for a few months so people never get in the habit of driving down the street.  The area right outside my house-less than the length of a block is called Portugal.  I have no idea why and neither does anyone else, but I promise though I've never been to real Portugal, this place is nothing like it.  But within 200 yards of my house there are more shops than there were in all the villages within 5 or possibly 10 kilometers of my old place.  Big city living!

This is the view down my street in the other direction.  It has a T junction into another street, which is where I go if I want to hang out with some teenage girls.  There's a family just a few houses down that road with 6 teenage-early 20s age daughters.  They're a fun group to go hang out with.  I can also go the other direction to head toward the market.  It's not right around the corner but close enough I don't mind going every couple of days to get vegetables and etc. I'll say it again- Big city living!  It has its advantages.

Next stop.....

inside the compound.

The Gambia vs. Algeria

Yesterday, I went to my first international football match. (Internationally, it is called football, not soccer- to all of you Americans out there.)  It was Gambia vs Algeria.  The day before the match, I had gotten to see the Algerian team arrive at their hotel.  It was right across the street from the UN building and I got stopped on my way home by a police entourage protecting the Algerians until they were safely in the hotel.  

I skipped out of work a couple of hours early to go to the game along with a few thousand other people.  Actually, a lot of people didn't have to skip because a lot of employers gave their employees a half day in honor of the game. The place was pretty packed.

At games here, there are still people selling food in the stands, but its very gambian appropriate.  Cashews, bags of frozen juice, bags of water, cans of coke, sour milk and coos...  And the vendors are mostly women with the goods on their heads and babies on their backs.

Lined up before the game for the national anthems.

The teams taking the field.

This guy was wearing a Gambian flag themed outfit and was a combination of cheerleader and self-appointed usher.

Playing the game...

We had pretty good seats.  A little less than $4 gets you a seat in the shade.  I'm really glad we had the expensive seats- way better than frying in the sun.  And we had a good view as long as most people stayed sitting down.

The game was fun.  Gambia didn't play very well and broke their tradition of "never losing a home game" according to a guy at work.  They were defeated 2-1.  Afterwards, it was interesting to see the Gambians attitude of team loyalty.  It could be summed up as a 'never root for the loser' philosophy.  Walking out of the stadium, you'd think that 75% of people had come to root for Algeria.  I'm still a Gambia fan, but if I ever get the opportunity to watch them play again, I hope they do a little better.

The Office

Here are all the people I work with at the WFP The Gambia office.  This picture was taken at our Annual Performance Plan retreat about a week ago.  

Dear System, Sorry about bragging.

So that last message about beating the system was a little hasty.  Yes, I went on trek but it did not go quite as planned. 

Day 1:
We were supposed to leave in the morning by 10 and go all the way to the end of the country.  Some delayed paperwork pushed departure back to almost 2, and then a flat tire sealed our fates.  We had to stop in Jangjanbureh for the night halfway.  Made arrangements to meet the trek I was supposed to be on in the morning.

Day 2:
Waved goodbye to the driver and other guy from my office so I could wait for the trek I was supposed to be on to come pick me up.  Waited. Waited. Called.  When I thought I had made arrangements for them to pick me up, I assumed an "okay yes" meant okay yes we'll pick you up in the way you are suggesting.  Instead it meant okay, yes, I cannot hear anything you are saying.  They had left me behind.  They said they would come to the place I was by around 2pm, so I should sit tight and wait.  So I spent the day exploring the town, eating street food, and hanging out with a friend who lives nearby.  Around 10:30pm, the group finally showed up.

Day 3:

The truck I shared with 4 guys for part of the trek.

Was told to be ready to go by 5am. Knowing we would be late, I set my alarm for 5:30.  We left at 8.  We went to a few schools to distribute tools and seeds for school gardens.  The schools we went to had all recieved these materials from the same grant.  Part of my job is to make sure they all get training on proper school garden management soon, so I wanted to go and see how they were doing now. 

 

Salikine's school garden

I think this place was Chamen.  Probably the best school garden I've ever seen.  Here, the kids are fake-learning about tomato plants.  This is a staged picture we had to work on for a while to get the kids to look down instead of at me.

In the early afternoon, things started to go sour.  The other truck we were traveling with had a tire problem and a couple of the men started fighting and name calling.  I think they had been together a bit too long by this point, with one more day to go.  The tire was not a routine fix so we spent a few hours at a mechanics shop.  One of the guys and I wandered around town for quite a while eating peanuts and "ice"- basically a popsicle in a plastic bag.  Eventually, we left and I changed vehicles.  We went to spend the night in one guy's home village.  They made us chicken with peanut butter and tomato sauce (domoda) and of course rice.  It was a nice night.

Day 4:

Remember when I said I changed vehicles.  My mode of transportation got a little more interesting- a dump truck.   The suspension was not so good, but how often to you get a chance to ride around in a dump truck? So I can't complain.

My day 4 vehicle.

Now for time #2 I got left on this trek.  Me and another guy were in the dump truch catching up with the group.  He called them and said 'don't go anywhere.'  Well, they went ahead somewhere that involved dropping things off at one school and buying several buckets full of milk.  The dump truck crew was then stuck going to the governors office and petitioning for a ferry pass.



The North Bank regional courthouse at the governor's office.  This courthouse is in a pavilion- no walls.

One hour and 2 ferry passes later, we got the whole group back together.  We visited a couple more schools and then got ready for the last big hurdle of the journey- the ferry crossing.  For the ferry crossing, they load a boat with about 10 vehicles and a couple hundred people for an incredibly slow journey from the north to south banks of the River Gambia.  You can pretty much see one bank from the other but you can never tell how long it is going to take.  This particular trip was 2 hours long.  Finally back on the south bank, we dropped off supplies and started dropping prople off at their homes.  I got home just in time to make it to the American school's elementary school production of a Midsummer Night's Dream, featuring the president's daughter and a really cool venue- the largest dome in West Africa.  (Impressive, however. probably much much smaller than you are imagining.)  Sounds like on Monday, I'll get to go over how this trek went and start planning our next one!

The System- 57 Lindsay- 1

A lot of the new job feels like me against the system. And believe me, the system always wins, but not today!

After jumping through some paperwork hoops and missing the car full of people I was supposed to go on a school garden observation trek with, it looks like I'm still going to get to go on trek.  A day late but certainly not a dollar short.  (They're giving me a daily field allowance.)  Turns out another guy in the office is going across the country for work tomorrow, so we're going to share a car and I'll meet the car I was supposed to be traveling with whenever our paths cross. On the way, I'll get to see what the guy I sit across from at the office every day actually does when he's not behind a computer and then I'll get to spend a couple of days checking out school gardens and making plans for the rest of the year.

NEW everything

Around the new year I moved out of my village to start my new job in the city.  This involved the arduous task of finding a house, which proved much more difficult than I could have imagined, but ended in what seems like success.  I don't want to jinx this place.  The second I say this place is perfect, the cats and rats or whatever creatures go nuts in the ceiling on occasion will come down and take over, or who knows what else might happen, but the place is pretty good.  I've got running water, electricity, a shower, a toilet, my own space indoor and outdoors, a fridge (that really is more like a freezer but whatever), a couch, shelves, 2 bedrooms, a kitchen... there's a lot to be excited about.  And the location is good.  A ten minute bike ride from work, a short walk to public transport routes, the same 10 minute ride that gets me to work can also get me to the beach and the new place is in a really lively part of town.
The new job-
I'm still a Peace Corps volunteer, but my posting has changed.  I'm now posted at the World Food Programme country office as a Programme Assistant working on school gardens (and whatever else they tell me I'm doing.)  I've been kind of doing this job on the side for most of my PC service- just doing coordination between PC and WFP, helping at trainings, etc.  Now I just do it all of the time and have some responsibility.  I've been on the job almost 6 weeks now.  So far, its been a good experience.  I've learned a lot.  This is the first time I've had a job anything like this.  I'm getting a lot of opportunities to work on my business writing skills, learning a lot about working within hierarchys and government agencies, trying to figure out how one gets used to a job where you are at the computer all day, and much more.  Right now, I'm working on planning trainings (which may or may not ever happen, which is a little unnerving), working on getting some educational resources on gardens made, planning on going on a monitoring trek, writing a partnership proposal for us and a different organization, etc.

Ni rano rano Kanjibato. - I miss Kanjibat.

My last picture in Kanjibat.  Hopefully I'll be able to visit soon.  I was going to go this weekend, but then a trek got scheduled for next week.  As much as I'd love to go say hi, the last thing I want is to go hang out for the weekend, then come back, pack and leave the next morning for a week on the road.  I talked to my "husband" (the boy I'm holding in the picture) a little while ago on the phone and since I left, he's gotten a lot better at talking.  I can't wait to see how much Muhammed (the baby in my compound) has grown in the last couple of months.  I can't wait until I can go.  I even miss the food a little tiny bit. Who would have thought?

That said, life in the city is going pretty great.  An update is coming very soon.