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...