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.

The Big Reveal

I moved out of my village a couple of weeks ago to start work in the city. I served for two years in a small rural village yet unveiled on this blog. Since I no longer live there, I'm allowed to tell you all about the place now.  Drumroll please.  The place formerly referred to as Salliya is............. Kanjibat. Spelled like that but somehow pronounced Con-G-bot-toe.
Its a small village just off the south bank road in the Western Region of The Gambia. Home to a whopping 60 people and formerly me. Check it out on google maps. You'll be able to see http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Kanjibat,+The+Gambia&hl=en&ll=13.261333,-15.446777&spn=2.614285,3.532104&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.038806,56.513672&vpsrc=6&hnear=Kanjibat,+Foni+Bondali,+West+Coast+Region,+The+Gambia&t=m&z=8
Make sure you look at it on satellite view.  Probably more cool to me than anyone else, but you can see the house where I used to live behind where the A marker is to the left. The closest house to the marker was mine.  If you drag the screen to the right you can see the school I used to work with.  Further down the road  near my house you can see the garden.  Even further down that same road you get to the river. 
The cluster of 3 houses that are formig a rectangle with my house is Sanneh Kunda.  That was my compound.  Maybe that gives people a little better idea of what a compound is.  I know I've used that word with some of you and its not a concept we have in the US.  All the people who live in those 3 houses are related by blood or marriage.  They all eat together and share a lot of things- work, clothes, stuff, responsability for raising the kids, etc.  Its an extended famiy all technically living in different houses but in the same compound, and really I feel like people treat the whole compound like immediate family.
I miss it a little but I knew from the get-go that this was just going to be for two years.  And I'm really lucky and can be more objective about it than someone who is leaving the country because I can still see and talk to the people I miss.  Hopefully I'll get to go for a visit in the next month or so.  I'll blog an update on what I'm doing now- life in the city- soon.

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!