Pictures

This is my house.  It's attached in a row to three others, but most of what you see is mine. Note the great tree behind it.

I don't know why this likes to distort my pictures.  This is me and my host sister Siabitou.

Me helping pound palm nuts.

This is the salt flat.  I've gone down here several times to help the women make salt.  It's pretty hard work. 

Some of the kids in my village.  These three are SUPER cute- Hawa, Ami and Aba.

(L to R) Me, Koko, Casey and Jenna on the beach in Senegambia.  We had just finally found some ice cream so we are very happy!

Q & A

Q: What did you decide on as your project?
A: Ask me this question again in a year and maybe I'll have an answer.  The way projects work here, I'm pretty much placed in an area and it is up to me to work with the community to choose/ design projects that the area needs.  So far, I have done a bit of work on different things so I'll throw a few of my posabilities out there: doing environmental education with the school, working on woodlot project in the area with an NGO and the forestry department, working with the forestry department on education or starting a community forest in the area, working with the ag extensionist in the area on education programming, doing education work in village, convincing people in my village to plant trees, etc....  There are lots of things I could do and its all up to me.  We'll see how this plays out.

Q: Have you had any wildlife encounters?
A: I have gotten to see monkeys.  They live near my house. I've gotten within about 20 yards of them. Other than that, no real encounters with wildlife.  I have encounters with domestic animals frequently.  I have had many close encounters with chickens and I had a cow eat part of the fence of my bathroom.  I woke up at 3 in the morning to the sound of chomping on my fence.  It happens a lot so I didn't respond at first, but it sounded like a lot of fence getting snacked on so I jumped out of bed and ran out to scare off the cow. I didn't notice anything wrong with the fence until the next evening when I went out to take a shower and I was exposed stomach up through part of the fence.  After a couple days that finally got fixed.  It's happened one more time since then, but it was a small enough hole the second time I could fix it myself.


Q: Have you made friends with the locals?
A: Well, I definitely have people to hang out with and joke around with.  I sit around with the women in my village a lot, but I don't know that I would really qualify anyone as my friends quite yet.  Probably my best Gambian friend is my 13 year old host sister Adja.  She and I go places together (meaning I follow her around) and we joke around and act silly and have races.  As I get better at the language I'm sure I will develop real friendships, but I have learned that you can have a great deal of fun with people you don't really understand.  And I think that, as people, we understand each other more than you would imagine without needing to understand the words being said.  I'm not lonely. I have a whole village to hang out with.

Q: Why did you punch a chicken?
A: I was out with my village cracking peanuts by the road.  That's a normal afternoon activity and the chickens often discover that everyone is there and want some peanuts for themselves.  They often try to sneak up and steal off of someone's pile.  One was sneaking up to my pile and I went to shoo it away with my fist full of peanuts.  Because of my catlike reflexes, I was too fast for the chicken and ended up punching it a little bit before it got out of the way.


Q: Has a donkey been a mode of transportation for you yet?
A: Yes ma'am. No one but small boys ride donkeys, but donkey carts are pretty common.  I've only been on one once.  In training village, I hitched a ride on one on the way to my friend Casey's house.

Q: Have you danced at the discos?
A: Yep.  Supposedly I'm pretty good.  Who knows!

Q: What is the music situation in your village?
A: No one really plays an "insturment" but people will beat on pretty much anything that sounds like a drum.  People sing all of the time and the girls dance a lot.

Q: What's the weather like? (I'm just giving a general response to weather questions here)
A: Right now it is hot and dry.  It's not as hot as I thought it could be, but there is still a good deal of the hot season left, so I still might be impressed.  I am also in the western half of the country, which is a good deal cooler than the eastern portion.  Most days just feel like a hot summer day in the southeast US.  Maybe a little hotter but less humid so it balances out.  I spend a lot of time sweaty and gross, but that is to be expected.  It hasn't rained even a drop since December and even then then, the only rain I saw was just maybe 30 drops in my yard.  I won't see rain until June.  There are 4 seasons here, but there are always 2 seasons happening simultaneously.  Hot, cool, wet and dry.  Right now I am in the hot and dry seasons.  The weather here allows for an almost constant growing season.  Any area that can be watered can be planted with crops in the dry season.  Larger scale agriculture only happens in the wet season because you don't need to worry about watering your crops.  They plant rice, millet and peanuts in Salliyaa.

Q: What do you need?
A: Letters!
Honestly I don't really need anything.
If you want ideas on stuff though:
Granola bars, Cliff bars, etc are always a safe bet.
M&Ms (especially peanut butter)
Pictures
Flavored tuna packs
Beef jerky
Newspaper clippings
Magazines
Memory card with a case for sending back and forth
Suprise me...even if I don't want something you send (which is highly unlikely, I'm sure one of my friends does)

Learning from other people's packages I have compiled a list of things not to send as well- things for my host family (I need to make it very clear to them I am not here to give them stuff- only help), stuffed animals, peanuts (I eat these every day anyway), a christmas tree, etc.

Thanks for all of the questions.  I'm always glad to get questions to answer, so post them as a comment on here or facebook any time.

Q & A

I am planning on doing a Q & A blog while I am in the city this time, but to do this I need questions, so I need your help!  Anything you want to know write as a comment on this blog or send the question to me on facebook.  I'll answer around the 12th. Really any time you have questions feel free to post questions on here.  I'm glad to answer.  Can't wait to get your questions!

A Normal Day

I got a question on facebook about what a normal day for me is like and thought that would be a good blog.

A normal day in village*:
7:30-8... wake up, maybe read some
8:00-9:00... untuck the mosquito net and get out of bed, then get ready for the day
about 9... go out into my compound, take the bowls from my dinner out to the kitchens
after that... help out with something around the compound or just hang out (maybe process some palm fruit, maybe sit around and talk to some kids, maybe sweep my house- just depends)
after that... usually go to another place to hang out for a while or do some work. Could be the school, forestry camp, another compound, agriculture camp, etc.
1:45... if I'm going to go home for lunch I need to be home by now.  We eat lunch between now and 2:30.
after lunch... I hang stay in my house for about an hour taking care of business
3:30-5:00... hang out with people around the village.  Lots of times we crack peanuts.
5:00-7:30... this is a big work time of the day.  I go to the garden every day to water my tomotoes and help out with watering.  Sometimes I do other things like go to the salt flat, go out to gather fire wood, etc.
7:30... take a bath. Take comfort everyone- my family here makes me bathe every day.  It's rediculous!
8:00... either help cook or spend time with my family
9:00... eat dinner
9:30... go out and spend more time with my family
after that... go in my house and read, write letters, get ready for bed, etc.
I'm asleep by midnight.

*All times are extremely approximate

Food

Probably the thing I get the most questions about is the food, so I thought I would make a post about it. 
I eat what my family eats so that means rice or millet- plus oil, usually fish, usually some MSG/bullion and other stuff.  My family is really big, and a few years ago it was decided that there are too many people for one person to cook for, so we have 2 dishes for every meal cooked by two different teams of women.  For breakfast, the family usually eats leftovers from dinner the night before.  I sometimes do if it's nyakatonge- my favorite dish, but usually I eat granola with peanut butter and milk powder mixed together.  Or if I really feel like living it up I eat a granola bar. On Sundays, I mix chocconut (pretty much nutella: chocolate-hazelnut butter) in with the peanut butter, milk powder, granola combo.  That is really good. 
Nyakatonge is rice or millet cooked with pounded up peanuts and bullion and most of the time pounded up fish.  It is so good!
Here are some picture of my food-

These are both millet nyakatonge I think

This is fitof (palm oil) domoda (sauce with pounded peanuts) and rice

This is different than the millet I usually eat- this kind is ground much smaller.  This is how most Gambians eat millet but I am just lucky that Jolas grind their millet more coursely because it tastes great that way!

I think it's millet nyakatonge on the left and rice with noodles on the right.  They use maccaroni here to soak up flavor and oil and basically use the pasta as a sauce for rice.

I don't know why some of these look so distorted, but you should at least get the idea. 

In general, I like the food here a lot.  There is really just one dish that I really hate and cannot eat.  I have no idea what it is.  I think it might just be rice with vegetable oil.  Whatever it is, it's terrible and whenever that comes (which thankfully is not very often) I rely heavily on the other dish or make something in my house.

I eat on a different schedule here than I used to at home. We eat lunch at about 2:00- they usually bring me my bowls right before the 2:00 prayer. Then we eat dinner between 8:30 and 9.  Breakfast is an eat when you want affair so depending on the day, I might eat any time between 8 & 11.

Headed out

Just leaving a quick post to say that I am headed to Salliyaa tomorrow.  I should be there about the time most of you are eating breakfast in the morning.  I'll probably be back near a computer in 6 weeks or so. 
Ni jaawjaaw Salliyaa- I'm going to Salliyaa! (in Jola)

Jola

I am going to be finishing up Jola classes today.  We are on our break right now.  I'm pretty excited about how well Jola has gone.  Our class goal today is to try and see how long we can have a conversation in Jola without breaking down to using English.  They're by no means deep, meaningful conversations but I feel pretty proud of myself right now.  We've ben doing so much practice on asking questions about people and their families, etc. - all the basic get to know you stuff- that we got bored with eachothers answers, so in the last couple of days we've been pretending to be celebrities speaking Jola.  We've used Britney Spears, Hillary Clinton, Paris Hilton, Angelina Jolie, etc.  It's been pretty fun and I think it makes us better because we can't just rattle off the phrases about our families and stuff that we have memorized; we have to actually think about the answers.  Usually with a celebrity, you can come up with much more entertaining questions and anwers than you can for yourself, so that adds another layer of fun.

I took a picture of a page from my Jola notebook. It's just a bunch of random vocabulary, but if anyone really wants to see what some jola words are like, you can click on the picture and it should get big enough for you to read.