The Gambia: Training, Part II

Evening! (5:00pm)

Continuing from where I left off I will start from somewhere different from where I left off.

While in Tendaba the staff wore shirts that have their slogan on their back. Their slogan is "A million mosquitoes can't be wrong." I'm not sure about being wrong or right but a million sounds about right. Just had to throw that in.

Since most of the Gambian population is Muslim there's a very small mosque at Tendaba that the staff use daily (more specifically: five times daily). They must take off their shoes and wash their feet before entering. Out of respect we're not allowed to go into any Mosque but we can see inside from the door. One morning while in my village I wanted to sleep in and so I reset my alarm an hour later, or so I thought. I accidentally reset the time and so I was an hour ahead the whole day without realizing it (very easy to do). Come around eight o'clock at night my host family asked if it's eight o'clock. I said yes, and they did their eight-o'clock prayer (prayer number 5). Then later found out my watch was an hour ahead. By that time it was really eight o'clock. My instructor had to explain to my family why I already told them it was eight and so they had to pray again. Bring out the rugs, wash their feet, etc. all over again. Later they were laughing about it.

Going back to what happened in Tendaba we had visitors of teachers around the country, along with parents and students. We were randomly split into three groups and I got into the teacher group. We had to answer the question: "What do you think the purpose of education is?" First there was a discussion of what 'you' meant, whether you as in Gambians, you as in educators, or you as in everyone in the room. Twenty minutes later we agreed it was the latter and spent the rest of the time going around the room individually telling what we personally thought that purpose of education was. Most of the Gambians gave answers such as "to get out of the farms" or "to have a better life then your parents." By being the last one to speak I thought about an all-encompassing definition irregardless of culture. My thinking was why is it generation after generation we go to school. Not everyone are farmers, and not everyone, even with a better education, has a better life then their parents. The answer I gave was: To develop and advance new ideas through time for the betterment of mankind.

After that conversation we talked about the school system in The Gambia. Peace Corps pays Tendaba $10/night for each one of us while we are there. To send a child to school for a semester costs only $10. Most families can only afford one or maybe two children to go to school, and so they send the sons and have the girls out in the rice fields. Because of a substantial difference of education between males and females the government issued a statement a few years ago that they would put up the bill for every girl who attends school up to grade nine. Some of the current volunteers are doing, as secondary projects, girl's education.

Most volunteers found the educators are in some sense a cause of the problem of low attendance and dropout rates. If a student is late to class he is sent home for the day. If a student talks too much in class he is sent home. Not wearing school uniform, sent home. Uncombed hair, sent home. Refusing punishment, suspended for two weeks. Their punishment is corporal and we had a hard time with that. Most schools that we are placed in have eased up since volunteers have been there, but it still happens. Just last year a student died from heat exhaustion because his punishment was to carry buckets of water back and forth in the schoolyard for hours in the middle of day. This was also on top of it being Ramadan, a month long of fasting; so the student had nothing to eat all day except before sunrise. There were riots and outrage over that incident and new legislation is being slowly passed trying to outlaw corporal punishment in schools.

The next weekend there we found out our placements. I was placed near the capital at the University of The Gambia as a math/science teacher. One other person was placed at the university but he wanted a village and so he and another volunteer switched. I'll be teaching math/science, Kate will be doing computer technical training at the university, Bear and John will do the same at the capital and we have two health volunteers also in the city. Out of our group of 37 we are the only six near the capital. In fact I found out I'm the test-volunteer of having a lecturer at the University. We were given folders of each placement of other volunteers' stories of what it's like at that particular placement. Mine was all blank.

Back at the village my host family wanted to know where I was placed. Using the translation book we had I managed to say "teacher, University". They asked what I was teaching. Flipping through the book it had no words for math, arithmetic, physics or science. I went inside to grab the only math reference book I brought and randomly opened it hoping the symbols will show it's math. The page I opened was how to do the curl in spherical coordinates (few of you know how much a pain that is). I shuddered at even looking at the page and quickly just went to the very beginning, except now page one was about infinite series. They didn't understand that was math either. (I knew they wouldn't understand what the problem was, but hoping they could tell it was math was all I was going for)

Twenty minutes into this conversation I just took out a piece of paper and wrote "1+1=2 2*3=6" and handed it to the oldest brother. He smiled, looked up and said, "Ah, you teach one plus one at university!" Biting the bullet I just said "waaw [yes]"

Two other stories about the town: First, the equivalent of the mayor is called the "Akalii". He settles disputes, performs marriages, etc. His family name is Samba. Found out later "Sare" mean's 'town'. And so our village name literally means "Samba's Town". Whoever is the first to start a village becomes that villages Akalii by default and can name the village whatever they like (usually). The Akalii title is hereditary from the first Akalii and so our current Akallii is a direct descendant of whoever come to this remote location 120 years ago, built a mud hut and called it "Samba's Town". If you look at a Gambian map you will see a lot of "Sare xxx" villages. It will be like in the US looking at the map and seeing "Sheppard's Town" or "Bush's Town" etc.

The second story involves the model of the White House I brought along. Actually, I wanted to mail it home before I left DC but never had the opportunity and so I just brought it along. One morning I just brought it out and showed my host sister saying "America's President, his house". Within five minutes I had the whole family looking and holding the model admiring the White House. Most of them never have seen a picture of the White House let alone a 3D model. By the time language class came around the volunteer who's the closest neighbor came by and asked me "My host-mother said something about you having the President's house? I wasn't sure if I was understanding it correctly." And so, in a mud hut in the middle of a West African village stands a model of the White House that half the town came to see.

Our village has two water pumps that Saudi Arabians help build twenty years ago. One has been broken for three months now and the six of us got together one night to see if we could help out and brainstorm ways to get the well fixed. The part they need costs D1500 (~$50), which we all knew we each had that much in American money somewhere in our suitcases individually. The whole town collectively didn't have enough. Since there is another pump fixing this one is not a necessity but just for convenience for half the town who have to walk to the other side up-teen times a day to get buckets of water. Whatever money they do earn they spend on food.

We had an income-generating workshop the weekend before. We were shown three ways villagers could make money. The first was to use bones of chickens to make laundry detergent using acid. The second was to use cheap plastic bags to make purses and large carrying bags by crocheting. The third was to use oils of plants to make tie-dies. All three were considered useless to this village since they couldn't even afford the start-up materials.

Other ideas we had were to eat vegetarian for a month. About every other lunch PC pays someone for their chicken and we have fresh chicken for lunch. A normal live chicken costs anywhere from D100 to D200. Multiply that by two groups (the six volunteers are divided into two groups of three and eat separately as a group) and by a month and you get enough for the well to be fixed. We dropped that idea too since it's basically PC just giving them money and there's no sustainability. By that I mean, what if it breaks when no volunteers are staying there? No one is buying chickens then. In a sense it was a quick fix.

A funny thing happened at lunch one time. A group of women from the next village came by to talk to our instructor. Throughout the whole lengthy process of the greeting all the visiting women were saying "Jamma rek [peace only]" in unison as if they were singing it. When they left I just starting saying "Jamma rek" repeatedly to the background tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" sort of making fun of the song-like greeting process that the women had. Another volunteer caught on to what I was doing and starting singing the main lyrics. We had the rest of the volunteers laughing hysterically, the instructor baffled, and the villagers wondering why I was saying "Peace only" over and over again without anyone asking me the usual greeting questions. ("How's your family?", "Peace Only", "How's your job?", "Peace Only", etc.)

Last Thursday starting a downhill turn for me. Woke up Friday morning and couldn't get out of bed. Had to miss the whole day and spent it just sleeping. Saturday it was the same deal. By then my instructor biked to use the cell phone of another instructor to tell the PC office that they should pick me up and bring me to Tendaba a day early. The one-hour ride through potholes after potholes almost made me throw up but survived. At the camp I could order anything off the menu at PC expense (not customary, except for medical), but only could eat soup. Had I known Thursday night during dinner that I couldn't eat anything until Sunday lunch I would have had a bigger dinner. (But then again it was cheri and honestly I wouldn't want more of it) Was put up in the medical room, lots drugs and given a double bed and a fan. Lost eight pounds in those three days.

Subjectively, though, there was one other person worst off. Two weeks earlier a volunteer (in our group) had to be transported to the capital and stay at the PC medical office for two nights. I think I was the second sickest. Everyone is all right now, including myself. Which brings out a very interesting and startling statistic. We are the first group in memory of Gambian Peace Corps service (30+ years) of not having a single person drop out during training. Granted, we still have a month left but the overall culture shock is now gone for everyone. Every single group before us has had people leave in the first week and some on the very first night they stepped off the plane. The news of our group has spread to current volunteers all the way upcountry and to even DC that no one has left yet. By what I'm hearing is that if everyone lasts to swearing in (Sept. 12) it'll be the first time ever that has happened for The Gambia, and a rarity for any country worldwide.

Another statistic is that The Gambia has the highest ratio of PC volunteers per population then any other country. Our group of 37 brings the total to over 80 volunteers in a country the size of Delaware. Most countries don't even have 80 volunteers to begin with.

Just found out another still interesting fact just now. There are only four places in The Gambia where all the following are available in combination: stable electricity 24/7, continuous air conditioning, and direct-line Internet access. Those four places are The President's house/office, the national bank, The American Embassy, and the Peace Corps headquarters (where I am now). There is electricity in most areas in the country but it goes off either at night and at one o'clock for a few hours. Air conditioning is found in some buildings near the capital but that too depends on stable electricity. Internet café's are sporadically located across the country but a power outage and your e-mail is gone.

There is a sign-up sheet at the office for mail run. Once a month two volunteers bring all the packages to every volunteer in country, spending five days traveling around the country visiting every site. I immediately signed up. I get to do it in November 2004.

I shall end it there for now.

-MIke

The Gambia: Training, Part 1

Morning! (It's 12:30AM here)

Most people have suggested I write a journal. I'm not a journaling person. I liked telling stories, though; and so these e-mails may be considered my journal. Let me tell you about the past month, what the first half of PC training was about. As such, this e-mail may be excessively long since I now have the time.


During staging at GPI (the first five days in country) they asked you where you would like to be posted and what language you would like to learn. I requested the university and Mandinka for language. Those are quite contradictory I found out later. They told me I will be studying Wollof instead of Mandinka. That night we found out why each one of us was placed in the language we were: Wollof is primarily in the city, Mandinka is mid-country and Fulla is back country. To those that wanted the city and got Fulla it was quite the shock. They would be living in a village in the middle of nowhere with no volunteers nearby. Some actually wanted that and they got it. For me, I found out it was the city.


Now, you may think that since you would be learning the language that they speak in the city that your training village would be close by. Not exactly. The Wollof training village is the farthest village away from anything, except maybe Senegal. We are located in a village called Sare Samba near the Senegal border halfway up-country. The nearest big village is Kaiaf (for those of you who might have a Gambian map on you currently available).


The drive from GPI to Sare Samba was four hours long. In roads in the US it could easily be driven in two hours, or maybe less. To get a feel of the main road of the lower bank image the worst road you can think of in the United States. Potholes the size of small craters, the road wearing along the edges, patches of paved and unpaved alternating for miles. They would love to have that road; this was worse. This was all the above and more. There is no "your side" of the road. You go on whichever side of the road has the least potholes and sometimes you are playing chicken for a little bit (granted, going 10 miles an hour). The only exception is when going uphill in which you always stay on your side. Along the route kids are using shovels to put dirt in the potholes to make them semi-passable (until they next rain comes, oh and by they way. this is the rainy season). Sometimes riding off the road is safer, or easier, then actually driving on the road itself. In more than one occasion our van was halfway on the road and halfway on the ditch along side of it, with the tilt of the van seemily coming eerily close to a 45 degree angle, but more likely only 20 or so. Sometimes we most go through pothole to pothole tire by tire, for a mile or so; people could be walking faster then we're driving. Did I mention it was the rainy season and so all throughout the road the potholes are also full of mud and more likely then not it will also rain on you wherever you are going? It was wet.


We arrived in the village at night after the rain. Our village contained six volunteers. Me, Doug, Jenni, James, John, and Janny, The first three are with one teacher while the latter with a different teacher. So all six of us arrived in the middle of the night with all our bags wet to the bone (Forgot to mention that they were on top of the van and not actually inside of it). We each met our host families and got the key to our mud hut.



Yes, we are living in a mud hut. Each volunteer has their own hut in their host family compound. My hut is fairly typical and measures roughly fifteen feet squared. I was supplied with a bed, pillow, mosquito net, table, chair and a trunk. The trunk is filled with stuff we might need, such as: peanut butter, jam, crackers, cereal, and other commodities that we might crave during the two months. It also had inside of it our only utensil, our U.S. Government issued spoon!



More about the hut: It's made of mud bricks that individually take about two weeks to dry. There's plaster on the outside and inside to make it more "homey". There's also screens on the windows for our health (mosquitos) and bars on the windows and a metal door with a lock for a our safety. Primarly it's more of the safety of our possessions then our actual physical safety, though.








Meeting our host family at night wasn't a real help either. For the first week I thought my host-niece was my sister, my host-sister my mother and my host-mother my grandmother. To this day I still get them all confused because of that first week. I live with the Sin~an family (spanish 'n' there). The husband and wife share separate huts and their son and wife and kids share another. A total of six huts make up the compound with one being the kitchen.





At the edge of our village you can see the next village called Medina. Other volunteers are stationed there also. The next day in the village was caused for celebration as it was our eighth-day in country. To the Gambians they traditionally name their newborn when he/she is eight days old. As such, we had a naming ceremony for ourselves and the other volunteers from Medina were welcome to join in.


Traditionally the eldest woman in the village holds the baby while a village member shaves their head and the family announces their name. For us, our family dressed us up in their 'Sunday best'. The men volunteers were dressed in full length Muslim attire with cloth head pieces while the women were dressed in intricate patterned dresses. Individually they called our names and we sat on the ground next to the eldest women while they ceremonially pretended to shave our heads. And then our host family gave us our Gambian name. This is also an important tradition as they believe you will inherent seven good characteristics from your namesake, or 'toma' (in Wollof as it's called). My 'toma' was my host-nephew. His name, and as such, my Gambian name, is Biran Sin~an. The toma then gave the elder woman a few dalasi for thanks and we went back to our group. After everyone was named they had a drumming and dancing ceremony in which we had no choice but to dance in the middle with the whole village surrounding us. This was individually, not collectively. I tried my best, and yes there's pictures of the ceremony and afterwards.





The next day during break of language we tried teaching the local kids tic-tac-toe in the sand. That didn't work. So instead we brought out the frisbee. What we didn't expect was that they would bring out the adults to play!


Life in the village is quite different. A prime example is about a week into living there a group of us decided to do our laundry together by the water pump. Within two minutes we had half the town's women and all the town's children surrounded us asking us "Where is your mother?". I was trying to wash a white shirt at the time and they told me it wasn't clean. I held it up and it was pure white. "Deedeet [no]" they responded and asked where my mother was. When I responded "xamuma [I don't know]" they immediately sent a child out to the rice farm to fetch my host-mother to come back and do my laundry for me. In the meantime they paid no attention to the female volunteers doing the same and actually suggested that they should do my laundry for me. I jokingly agreed and handed my laundry bag to one of them. She just about exploded.


And so in the end I can't do my own laundry and I can't get my own water. The women volunteers have to do both for themselves. They even showed them the "proper" way to pump water from the well. You don't stand and pump with your arms, you hold your arms firmly down and bounce on the balls of your feet. I tried once and immediately my host-niece ran from my compound and pushed me aside and finished getting my bucket full of water. Now I just put the buckets outside my hut and within a half-hour or so when I check again they're full. The same for laundry. When my host-sister (she's the mother of my host-niece and the daughter-in-law of my host-mother; now you can see why I was confused for a while) gives me my dinner I can give her my laundry bag and say "foot" [to do laundry]. All the male volunteers felt bad about doing that at the beginning, but it's a cultural thing that males are not allowed to do laundry and females (and young males) must do laundry and fetch water.



The food is something you have to get used to. I can eat the rice porridge we get for breakfast and the rice with topping we have for lunch, but the cheri we get for dinner is another story. If you think Guinness is an acquired taste you have to try cheri. The current volunteer warned me "It looks like sand, it feels like sand and it tastes like sand. Personally, it made me sick to my stomach." I said I'll try it. Bad mistake. Every single dinner I'm given a bowl of what looks like sand. But supposedly it's just ground up millet.


After the first week in the village we went to Tendaba Camp for a few days. We go there every week for roughly three days to have meetings, workshops, meet officials, etc. It's basically a tourist camp in which the Peace Corps is the main supplier of tenants. The camp is located right on the bank of the Gambian River halfway up country. It's supposed to look like an African village for the tourists and bird-watchers but we laughed when all of us realized they failed. We're given showers and bathrooms as opposed to bucket-baths and latrines. There's two bars and we're catered three meals a day.





The first time we arrived we were given soup with bread for dinner. We thought that was great! (Compared to cheri all of us have been getting) We started to get up and leave when the staff asked us where we were going, dinner was just about being served. We were quite satisfied with only soup and bread and that was only the appetizier! For dinner we're usually given rice with topping, sometimes chicken, and actually desert of pudding or jello.


Two other great things we love about Tendaba are we get one free drink each time we're there, either a Coke or a Fanta (paid for by U.S. Peace Corps, therefore your tax dollars; thank you). The other thing we didn't realize until the next time we were there was that you can catch crabs by the dock and the cooks will cook them for you. We had twenty crabs to eat that night! This is not to mention the outdoor pool we have access to, which we all take full advantage of.


Besides the meetings, seminars, and other actual Peace Corps stuff we do there we have lots of free time. Tendaba is the place where we receive and send our mail each week and so there's a lot of letter writing and also a lot of card playing. I learned how to play hearts.





At the end of the first visit to Tendaba we were given our bicycles. Not pre-assembled. Three hours later we still couldn't figure out where some parts went and how the gears go together. Finally we got them assembled and a few days later they delivered them to our villages.


The six of us decided to go for a half-hour bike ride two villages over to use the nearest phone. During the trip we had a fender-bender, a flat tire, and accidently swallowed a moth. I was involved in two out of the three. The first and the last. Gagging on a moth that flew right in and got stuck in my throat I drank half of someone's water bottle just to get it unstuck. Had to swallow it. So far that's the most disgusting thing I've eaten; granted, not by choice. (The cheri comes a close second)


The second trip to Tendaba we had a VIP visiting. Henry McCoy, who is the director of Peace Corps for all of Africa. The country directory was also there. They hired Mandinka drummers and dancers for entertainment. Before that I had the opportunity to play Ludo with him (Ludo is like Parcheesi) along with other volunteers. He learned one way in how we had to adapt when the only dice we could find was that it displayed powers of two. Instead of {1,2,3,4,5,6} it had {2,4,8,16,32,64} written on it. After a few plays we just remembered that 64 was a 6 for example; but remembering that a 2 was a 1 and a 4 was a 2 got a bit crazy at times.


During that time in Tendaba I finished reading ROOTS, which if you want a good depiction of village life read the first few chapters. There's now a short list of people who want to read it next.


Getting back to village, we spend out days mostly in a small group learning the local language. My group consists of Doug (Gambian name: Moot) and Jenni (Ramata) and I (Biran). The LCH (instructor) teaches for an hour-and-half in the morning (8-9:30) we get a half-hour break to eat breakfast, teach another hour-and-half and then have an extended break from 11:30-1:00 where we're suppose to study on our own but most people take a nap. At one we have lunch together in a communal bowl made of rice and other topping as mentioned earlier. After that we're mostly done for the day unless we fell behind and have to make up a language session.


One LCH in our village (which is now my current teacher since they switched) loves America. He remembers hearing on the radio about Neil Armstrong and watching on TV news about Timothy McVeigh and September 11. During one visit to his compound he recited the entire inaugural address of JFK by memory since in the address Kennedy talks about people living in huts and villages and that he pledge his best efforts to "help them help themselves", a precursor to the Peace Corps.


It's now 2:30 a.m. and I'm not even half-way done of what I thought I would write about. I'll hopefully finish the rest tomorrow.



-MIke