Water Stories

Two little funny stories, a little connected:

NUMBER ONE
Tuesday night Kate, Greta, and I went to a local hole-in-the-wall restaurant called "Eddy's" which is a block away from where I live. At first I didn't think it was a restaurant until someone pointed it out. Their entire menu is hand-written in chalk on a board outside. You have your pick of one of three items: 1. Chicken and chips, 2. Fried Chicken, or 3. Baked Chicken. I guess you have to be in the mood to have chicken to go there, which we all were. We all ordered the Fried Chicken with to drink each one of us a Sprite and a tap water.

A few moments later two Sprites showed up, along with a bottle of tap water. We thought we ordered three Sprites with three tap waters. So, needed another Sprite along with three glasses for the bottle they gave us. Kate: "Excuse me, we ordered three Sprites and three tap waters. Can we please have one more Sprite, and three glasses for the water. Thank you."

Out came one Sprite with one glass.

Strike Number one.

A few moments later she tried to clarify the issue again Kate: [As she's holding up two fingers] "Can we please have two more glasses so all three of us can drink the water from the bottle. Thank you."
Out came one glass.

Strike two

We were about to give up when a few moments later Eddy came by. We figured we'd have better chance with him then the waitress.

Kate: [holding up one finger] "Yes. Can we please have one more glass for the tap water."

Out came the third and final glass.



NUMBER TWO

The next night, Wednesday, we all decided to go out again at another restaurant. This time it was AnnaMarie, Bear, Kate, and I. I was quite thirsty and so I ordered a bottle of tap water for a drink.

"You would like bottled water?"
"No. A bottle of tap water."
"Bottled water?"
"No. I'm really thirsty. I'm going to refill the glass a lot of times, I would like a bottle of tap water."

Both Bear and AnnaMarie tried also to explain to him that I did want a bottle of water (that you pay for), but an empty bottle that you filled with tap water, which would be free. Finally he said they don't do that for an individual, so I agreed to get a glass of tap water.

He delivered our drinks. I was the first to get my drink and by the time he laid the last drink down I asked for a refill. He took the now empty glass away and came back with a full drink and asked what we would like to order. By the time we were done ordering I needed another refill. He took our orders away and came back with another glass.

By the fourth refill he just gave me a bottle of tap water, which I asked for to begin with. I was now able to refill my own glass the rest of the meal.


That's about all the excitement so far. I'll write more about the classes.


-MIke

Essau

Last weekend as we were all going out for dinner Marc asked if I wanted to go along with him to Essau on Monday to help do computer surveys. Bear had already went with him a few weeks before , for a few days, to set up the lab; Marc now had to go back and do the survey. Since I didn't teach I agreed to go with him on Monday.

Sunday night I couldn't remember if he said: "Meet at the corner at six, since the ferry leaves at seven." or, "meet at the corner at seven, since the ferry leaves at eight." Too late to call, so I figured I'd be there at six and if I had to wait an hour was better then missing him by an hour. At six in the morning he arrived, on time. We waited for a taxi and finally a gelli-gelli came. No one was inside so we got front-seat for the whole ride to Bakau. At Bakau we had to get another taxi to Banjul, then another taxi from Banjul to the ferry terminal. However, at Bakau waiting for a taxi to show up a man going to work in Banjul said he'll drive us straight to the terminal for D30 each. Deal. By 6:30 we at the ferry terminal, earlier then expected. The "7:00" ferry usually leaves around 7:30, and the 8:00 ferry leaves around 9:30, and just gets progressively later.

The ferry left close to 7:30 with more then a hundred people on it, comparatively empty compared to later in the day. We actually had seats. During the half-hour ride going north from Banjul to Essau he explained the survey we had to do to. We would split up in two groups. One would do an internet search survey with him. He would ask questions like: "Find any book that mentions a whale." This, hoping they would type in "book whale" in the search engine or any derivatives thereof. The most common first search he found was "visa America". One student, after a half-dozen encouragements used all possible combinations of words in the sentence, except the key words! ["find that", "a any mentions", etc.] This is to test their comprehension skills of typing in what they need to find. Very few "pass" (by American standards).

The other group I would be surveying. They would have to show basic tasks on the computer: Where is the Start menu, open Microsoft Word, minimize it, maximize it, resize it, open Microsoft Excel, switch back to Microsoft Word, type any sentence, underline, bold, and italic different words from that sentence, how would you print, how would you shut off the computer. That is all they had to do. These are students in High School who received the highest recommendations from their teachers of knowing computers. I thought for such recommended students this test would be a too easy and maybe even insulting. He explained that I'll be lucky if I could find one student that could do all of the above tasks.

After crossing the Ferry we got on another gelli-gelli going to Essau. A few minutes later, they got to the junction where they were going the opposite of where we were going. They let us get out without wanting to be paid. We had to walk the rest of the way to the school. Twenty minutes, and a quick bean-sandwich to-go later, we arrived at the Essau Senior Secondary School. If they had power we could get done by noon, if not, then any number of hours later.

Marc went to the Principal, whom he met before and got the computer assistant to go with him to the computer lab with the key. The lab had six computers but no electricity. A Peace Corps volunteer a year ago installed solar panels to the computer lab and so we went to see if we could get the solar batteries to work. There were six huge batteries, each on its own chair, all connected in series. All were drained, except for one; the first. That could power the lab if we could somehow connect the power supplies. The solar panels used American plugs, the inverter used English and the power supply for the computers used Gambian. We decided to work on that later, and try the generator first. Less confusion there.

The computer lab had it's own generator that could be plugged into the extension cords to run the computers, if it had fuel. Marc reached into his pocket and paid the school a couple hundred Dalasi for three hours of fuel. The school didn't have fuel. Eventually a student was found who wasn't in class and was told to take this bottle and money and bike the mile or so to the petrol station to get fuel. A half-hour later the fuel arrived. I thought the last time I mowed the lawn and had to fill up the tank and rip the cord would be my last. Memories of mowing the lawn raced through my head as I ripped that cord and the generator started.

No power was reaching the computers. Using trial-and-error we realized some extension cords weren't working. We finally got them in an order that worked. By the time we got the computers to work it was two hours into the three-hours of fuel paid for and the set up looked something you see in MacGyver. The generator had loose wires we had to tape into place because the plugs didn't match. The first extension cord had the cover pried open since the fuse broke and we had to replace the fuse with a screwdriver. The second extension cord had a stick sticking out of one of the ground terminals. This was so we could use the voltmeter probes in the other two holes to measure voltage and amperage settings. They were a bit variable and so we got the UPS attached to it. UPS stands for "Uninterrupted Power Supply". Learned how they worked too: It has a battery inside of it. When the voltage gets lower then 240 it uses the battery to up it to that amount. If it's more then 240 then it charges the battery by the excess amount. All the computers in the Peace Corps office work by them too. When the power goes out, we have ten minutes to turn on the generator before the computers die.

All in all we got two computers to work, out of six. That's all we needed. The generator was making so much noise that it was a constant headache, but we could finally get the survey done. I quizzed the student the ten questions. Not bad, nine out of ten. It went downhill from there. One girl knew two things: How to open Microsoft Word and how to shut down the machine. Another girl confused minimized and maximize and switching documents and so by the time the questionnaire ended for her she had seven Word documents opened. Their typing was one letter at a time with just the index fingers of each hand with about 2-3 seconds between letters.

These were the best students.

After the students were done we agreed to try and get the solar panels working again. We brought the UPS to the other room. This solved the one problem of English to Gambian plug converters. We next had to cut an extension cord in half, strip the wires and tape two of them into the cord to the computer lab. No power. We try again, checking power sources. We have power going into the plug, but not the wires. We were about to cut another extension cord when I realized we had the ground plugged in where they should be the only one not plugged in. Shut the power off, take the tape off, switch the wires, tape them back up, and plug them in. We have power!

By around two o'clock and called it a day. We walked outside and started walking back to the ferry terminal when we got picked up by a gelli-gelli and get a lift. The ferry was about the leave and so we rushed to the near front of the line. When the gates opened it was a tidal wave of people wanted to get on board. We rushed to get on, not because of the people or to get a seat but so Marc can get a picture from the third floor looking down at the hundreds more of people wanting to get on and all still trying, until the captain ordered enough. Standing room only.

-MIke

Petty Thefts

PETTY THEFT #2:
Yesterday I received in the mail your envelope of Scientific American and other news articles, along with the ten dollars. Being relatively short on cash, as usual, I quickly exchanged the $10 into Dalasi. Now, instead of having D35 in my wallet I had D345, enough to go out for dinner; and so we did. I met up with Allison and Bear and went to the "Come Inn" (a cheap, but nice place to eat), Kate L. joined later. After a few hours of eating we decided to leave. Kate and Allison were on the closer part of town while Bear and I needed a taxi. It was around 8:30.

Bear waved one down, and after a little wait of people getting out and getting change, Bear got in front and I got in back with a woman and a baby. A little drive later the woman wants to get out. I get out of the cab to let her out and realized my wallet almost fell out. I quickly put it back down the pocket and padded it; to be sure it was there. Got in the cab again, and moved over to the other side of the cab in case more people get in. Padded the wallet again, still there.

A few seconds later two men waved down the cab and got in back. I'm on one end, the guy who accidentally(?) stepped on my foot in the middle, and a third guy on the other end. The middle guy apologized for stepping on my foot and moved closer to me, to make room for the third guy who was making sure he could fit with the door closed. The middle guy started talking to me, I did the one greeting in Mandinka I knew and he asked how long I was in The Gambia, how long I will be staying, etc. Not entirely unusual, since you get those conversations once in a while in the cab, but something wasn't right. I looked to see where his hands were and they were on his legs clasp together. Periodically I looked to see where his hands were, since he kept on fidgeting around, and they were always on his lap. He continued talking until he told the driver he wanted to get out.

The third guy got out the car to let him out. I didn't think of padding the wallet again until the third guy was getting back in the car again and the cab was starting to move. Wallet not there. A little concerned, I checked the other pocket. Nope. Leaned to the front seat:

"Bear, I have to call Jeremy" (Jeremy being the head security personal)
"Why?"
"Wallet's missing."
"Stolen?"
"I think so."

The other guy in the back seat joined in the conversation by saying the now obvious, "I think that guy stole your wallet." My reply: "Yeah, I think he did." By that time we were blocks away from where the middle guy got out.

One of three things happened: 1. He stole it in the first thirty seconds before I started watching him, when he 'accidentally' stepped on my foot (as a distraction, perhaps). 2. I watched him steal my own wallet without me knowing it by thinking I saw two hands but in reality it was only one. 3. He had a decoy hand as a prop and used his real hand to swipe it. In order of lowest to highest probability: 3, 2, and 1.

Originally my plan was to go home, but went to Bear's instead to call Jeremy. He told me to come in the next morning and fill out an Incident Report. Today I went to the office and filled out the report. I didn't have quite the description they were hoping for: "Gambian with dark hair and ugly teeth" That was all that stood out. Total amount lost was D200 and $15 I had as Just-In-Case [The $5 JIC I had early wasn't quite enough the last time, so I included a $10 bill with another $5 for whatever occasion might arise which warranted up to $15]. If they happen to find the $15 folded up in the small pocket, then they came ahead around $25. It was a good thing I had my wallet in that pocket and not my cell phone; that is easily worth four to five times as much.

[Last week I had up to D8,000 on me when I cashed two people's checks plus my own for our monthly allowance. I paid D25 to have a private cab to myself driven straight to my door on that occasion]


For completeness sake, I might as well describe petty theft number one in detail as well.


PETTY THEFT #1
During training village we were told that our host mother or host sister would do our laundry for us, for a small fee plus soap. All clothes they would wash weekly, except underwear. Even up to the time staying in The SeneGambia we got used to washing underwear in a bucket, or in the bathtub (for the latter). So when I finally moved in to my apartment and the first week went by I didn't give it a second thought of handing over all my clothes, except underwear. That Saturday morning I quick did them in the morning, and placed on along the porch to dry during the day while I went out. Also didn't think anything of it when I came back and they were gone: Maybe the laundry people do underwear, saw them and placed them somewhere else to be done by them; or maybe they just placed them better to dry. No worries.

Sunday is their day off and also didn't think anything of not seeing where all my underwear went, minus the three pair I had inside, for that day either. On Monday I was down to the last clean pair. Later that day the laundry lady dropped off my clean and ironed clothes. Now I felt it odd that there was no underwear on top of the stack or even hidden between the ironed shirts. I tried asking her where all the clothes (i.e. underwear) were that were hanging on the porch on Saturday. The Wollof word for Saturday is 'Samdi', which sounds like 'Sunday' in English. She thought I was saying the word in English and was adamant that she doesn't work on Sunday and therefore shouldn't clean clothes. I agreed she doesn't work on Sunday but asked where the clothes were again. Mass confusion. Went to the landlady, she had no idea where they were either and even did a better job in the Wollof than I did (which, by the way, isn't hard to do) by asking the laundry lady herself and acting like a translator. No confusion of work schedule there, but a new found confusion that not even she knew where they went.

For the last few weeks I've been living off of three pairs of underwear until my package from home arrives. They do laundry twice a week, and because they don't work on Sunday I have to "Go Gambian" for a day or two. This is has the same feeling of driving a car with no hubcap, you can get from A to B without anyone noticing but you just feel naked. Hopefully the package will arrive on Friday.

The landlady talked to the laundry lady and our laundry and housecleaning bill is D350 a month. We could have talked it down a little, but the laundry lady starting washing our underwear and so we kept the price at where it's at for that little added comfort of no more "Go Gambian" days in the future.

Mail: Expanded

>Okay, here's how the mail system works... for the time being. THIS IS
>SUBJECT TO CHANGE (although it will take some serious restructuring for it
>to actually change...). We have a post office box in Banjul. ALL of our
>mail goes there. People (ie peace corps volunteers) periodically pick it
>up and bring it to the Peace Corps office, where we have a volunteer
>lounge where we have mailboxes, and where I'm sitting right now, sending
>this email. Once a month, two volunteers and a driver go on "MAILRUN."
>They gather together all of our uncollected mail, all of our packages, for
>all 100+ of us (well, minus the people in the immediate area I think,
>because they can pick up their own mail here pretty easily) and do a
>several-day tour around the country dropping each person's mail off at
>their individual houses. So... a) our mailing address stays the same the
>entire time we're here and b) you don't need our Gambian names. I think
>that just about covers the essentials of it. -sarah

I thought I would expand upon Sarah’s comments about the mail system. Every Monday and Wednesday a staff member goes to Banjul to get the letters from the Post Office Box. This is primarily for business purposes as business material for Peace Corps / The Gambia and its employees also use that mailbox. Mixed in with the business letters are personal letters from back home for the volunteers and package slips. The driver sorts out the business letters from the personal and sets our letters and package slips in the volunteer lounge where a volunteer sorts through them and puts them in the corresponding box. As such, most letters get to the office pretty quickly (That is, under the assumption that more letters can fit in the PO Box, as every time we’ve checked it’s been quite full.)

The package slips accumulate throughout the week. On Fridays a current volunteer, along with whoever wishes to help, requests a driver to pick up the packages. I volunteered for the task each week and I get a lot of help. This is supposed to happen in the morning, around nine o’clock since it takes a few hours. Here’s what happened today:

Arrived at the Peace Corps office at a quarter to nine. The drivers and staff are having a communal breakfast outside. I wait. A little after nine after checking to see which driver would take me - find no drivers are available. The regular driver for package run is in Basse and a replacement won’t be back until noon. After checking e-mail, reading a book, and other time-consuming activities noon arrives. Still no driver but no worries, the Post Office is closed everyday from noon to two anyways for their lunch break. At noon I knew it would not be until two before we leave. Continued trying to solve a crossword puzzle. This boredom is also enriched by it being Friday, the Muslim holy day, in which everything closes around noon anyways. Except for the Post-Office, which will open up again in two more hours. Help arrives in the form of Bear who volunteers to go with, when we do actually leave; again we wait.

Finally a quarter before two the drivers show up and can take us, however they must wait until after the two-o’clock prayers. At 2:45 we leave! Six hours of waiting in which is not at all atypical in The Gambia.

The Driver, Bear, and I drive the twenty minutes to Banjul to the Post
Office. We check the Post Office Box again; more letters and more package slips. There are now 33 package slips in which each one we have to pay D10 in order to collect. We drop off the outgoing mail, and head inside to buy the stamps for the collection fees. Each package slip includes the volunteer’s name, along with what package number it is. We wrote most of these down ahead of time, of those slips that arrived during the week, for Peace Corps to collect from these individuals later. Peace Corps reimburse us for this cost. The new slips we quickly write down at the Post Office to add to the master list.

Handing the package slips, along with D330 to the teller she gives us 33 stamps. We must lick and put each stamp on the back of the slip and write our name, Peace Corps ID number, and expiration date on the back of each one; and on the front sign and date them. The next teller takes the slips, checks if each one has a stamp and is signed for, and starts to write the package numbers in a big book. We wait. After he’s done writing the package numbers down he flips through all the slips and marks up the stamps on the back stating they’ve been written down and recorded. He disappears into the back room. We wait more. The driver is outside keeping the Peace Corps van close by and occasionally has to, by police order, move it out of the way. A few minutes later he’s back by the door, or across the street. Note: The Post Office is (in)conveniently located in the middle of the busiest street in Banjul, where the market is located.

Three by three the packages arrive to the front counter. As the guy is walking to the counter he’s yelling out what the Package Number is, written in bold letters on the box itself. By the time he gets to the counter the teller has crossed out each number on the sheet and we can move them out of the way. I move them across the room onto the floor, in time to get the next three on the counter; when Bear is moving them out the door to the van in time to get the next three on the floor. Continual movement. A pause. We check the Post Office Box again, just to be sure, and find two more package slips have newly arrived. We buy the stamps, sign the papers, and hand the papers to the teller during the pause. More packages arrive. Two packages were disputed, as they were not on the list. Those were the two that we just found the slips a few minutes before. When all packages are accounted for, we must sign the big book on the margin for each package saying we received them.



After about an hour at the office we are ready to leave. The van is full of 33 packages ranging from big envelopes to cubic-foot size boxes. Plus, two M-Bags. The M-bags are what our Newsweek’s come in and are cheaper for bulk mail. A few weeks ago 11 M-bags arrived, in addition to the weekly packages, since someone was sending a small library of books to a volunteer for their project of building a library here. Arriving at the office more volunteers help unload the boxes and sort through the letters into the proper boxes at the lounge. The packages are sorted as they are unloaded: Kombo, Med. Unit, and ‘Village’. The Kombo packages are brought into the lounge to await their owners to come in and get them. The Med. Unit packages are walked over to the Med. Unit, if volunteers are there and have received packages. The ‘village’ packages are placed in the Package Room to await mail run. (Or, if their owner comes into Kombo for business and/or pleasure and can pick them up sooner.)

Mail Run occurs the Friday nearest the middle of the month. Not an exact science and can vary from one Friday to the next depending on when the volunteers who signed up for that month chose to go. This month’s Mail Run is next week Friday. Those volunteers go through everyone’s mailbox and put everything in a plastic bag with their name written on it in marker. The bags are brought outside, matched with any corresponding packages, sorted by village and/or general location, and are placed in a big van in order of delivery. The general route is to go north to Banjul, take the ferry across with the van and start on the North Bank. Dropping mail off as they go they head East to Basse and then start heading West towards Banjul again. The whole country route takes four to five days. Mail Run has volunteers signed up in advance all the way up to June 2005.

A bit about timing: Mail from the US to Banjul can take anywhere from a minimum of a week (for a letter) to two-three weeks for packages. Maybe even close to a month on occasion. On some occasions they might even sit in Banjul for another week since the package slip for that package arrived in the box after we collected that weekly run of packages. We try and prevent that from happening but sometimes, when they are rushed, they give us Santa-Claus size bags full of packages, forget the D10/package dues, and just hand them all to us at once. Only when we get the bag to the Office and sort through all of them do we find package slips mixed in with the regular mail for packages that we could have picked up that day, but must wait another week for the next package run. This has happened twice so far.

When sending a package, the perfect timing would be to send it three weeks before the middle of the month. Theoretically it should arrive right before Mail Run and be picked up right before they leave to deliver the packages to the villages. The ‘perfect’ timing is dependent on many variables and can be quite unpredictable, and might even be the luck of the draw. The worst timing is one week after in which they must wait another month to be sent out, unless the owner happens to visit Kombo in the meantime. In other words, send packages very early for a special occasion in which timing is relatively important.

Hope that helps.

-Mike