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
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
posted by Mike | 6:31 AM
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