Trip to Soma / Pakalinding

After the trips to Dakar and my weekend trip to Georgetown I realized I had more time to travel. Most upcountry volunteers don't receive that many visitors so I wondered how many I could reach. I made a conscious decision to try and visit as many volunteers in our group as possible. For most volunteers it would just be a weekend trip; leave on Saturday and come back on Monday in order to be back by Tuesday to teach. While looking at the map at The Fishbowl it occurred to me that I never stayed in Soma before, a town about halfway upcountry on the south bank. I decided I would go to Soma on Saturday. Doug lived near Soma in Pakalinding and was in the kitchen when I announced my plans.

"You're going to Soma on Saturday?"
"Yep. Weekend trip."
"Who are you staying with?"
"No one yet. I figured I just show up and call either Greta or Kate [J.] and say 'I'm here!'"
"I might have to go back there anyway. I can let you know tomorrow whether I'll go with you on Saturday and show you around."
"OK"

This being Thursday night there was another day ahead. Annamarie and Kate [L.] were having dinner together and so the three of us, Bear, Doug, and I had spaghetti had the Fishbowl - a mutual girls night out / guys night out type of thing. A while later Hilary showed up, just getting back from her Spanish class. What followed next was a funny discussion of the semantics of the sentence "I am well," along with the direct object meaning of "me" and "I" in proper usage. Next came a half-hour of experiments of determining if one can count when they are reading. Hilary read aloud of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" while Doug tapped his leg to keep count to see if Hilary could read and count the taps simultaneously. I counted the taps as a double check while Bear couldn't believe we were doing this for half-hour and just sat in the corner playing on his laptop computer. One thing you quickly begin to realize is that you definitely have time in the Peace Corps to do experiments like this for a half-hour without thinking it's a waste of time. What else are you going to do? She was able to count while reading and other experiments to determine exactly how were put on hold for another time.

Friday we all went out to dinner to say goodbye to Robert. He went back to the US permanently that Sunday. Although he was not a member of our training group he became friends with us all. The day before he had a going away dinner with his group and tonight with people from our group. Knowing we would be going out to eat at a somewhat fancy restaurant I thought I should cut my hair since it had been two months without a haircut. Hilary said she would cut my hair for two boxes of Macaroni & Cheese that I got as part of my Christmas packages a few days before. I thought that was a good deal but Bear was trying to convince me otherwise. Although not explicitly stated, the jiff of his argument was basically in the form of: what if someone had a hundred Mickey Mantle baseball cards and he gave one away for a haircut? To him, losing one out of a hundred is nothing but for the person giving the haircut it's as if they won the lottery. In other words, you must savor your Macaroni & Cheese! On the balcony of the Fishbowl I received my haircut, with a few funny mistakes along the way. None to worry about but fun if you noticed them.

An hour later we met at the gas station to find transportation to SeneGambia. It was Kate, Annamarie, Hilary, Robert, and I. He wanted to go to this Indian buffet in the tourist district. As we were waiting on the corner for transportation a van pulled up and told us we could climb in. The odd thing about the van was there was no aparante. He was officially done for the night but figured he could take us to SeneGambia as one last trip. Every time someone wanted to climb in or out along the way he would have to stop the car, turn it off, get out and walk around to open the door. This was not out of courtesy; it was out of necessity as the door could only be opened from the outside.

For D199 (~$7) you can have all you can eat. I noticed something as we sat at the restaurant waiting for the buffet to begin. Volunteers are so used to eating cheap that going out is a luxury for us. The most popular chop-shop that we go to is right across from the Peace Corps Office and we can order a full plate of rice with a chicken leg and sauce for only D10 (~35 cents). A half-chicken is D35 (a little more than one dollar) there. If we feel good enough to go out we step it up a notch and go to someplace that's in the D50-D100 range. When there's an occasion to celebrate, such as a going-away dinner or birthday celebrations, we dress up and go to the tourist district for a fancy meal of $10. Most tourists are in shorts and t-shirts since $10 is nothing to them, but we're all dressed as if we just got back from a wedding.

Dinner was quite good and even paying D199 I could only have two plates and bowl of soup. The all-you-can-eat found new meaning to everyone since we all couldn't eat as much as if let's say we were at an all-you-can-eat resturant in the States. My stomach was full to the point of being painful.

Earlier that day Doug and I agreed to meet at our house at six in the morning to find transport. At a quarter before six I woke up, put on old clothes and waited. There is no point in taking a shower or even putting on new clothes when traveling because within an hour you will be so dusty anyway that you practically wasted your time in the morning by getting ready. After an hour of waiting I left for the Peace Corps Office. On the way there Diana drove by and was kind enough to give me a ride to the office. The reason she was going to the office so early on a Saturday was that Peace Corps was having an auction of old office supplies. I saw it the day before when I went to retrieve the mail and the driver had to stop by the warehouse. There were file cabinets, old computers, desks, and even a few Peace Corps vehicles up for sale. Three hundred people were expected to attend and bid on the items. I told John, the driver, I'd like to bid D200 for the car. Needless to say I didn't win. There is a few reasons for having the auction: All property of Peace Corps is US Government Property and can not be thrown away (except paper and the sort) and they have to be sold at auction with the money going back to the US Government. The money they make from the auction stays within Peace Corps to buy new material.

Louis was already at the office because he wanted to get on the computer and get stuff done before the onslaught of volunteers wake up and there is a wait for the computer. While checking e-mail, and talking to Louis, Doug showed up at a quarter to eight with the first words he said as he walked in the door were: "We're even now." This was in reference to WAIST when it was Bear and I who overslept and had him waiting for an hour. This time he overslept.

Knowing we were going to Soma, we placed Greta, Kate J., and Jeff Z. mail in our bags and checked the package room to see if any of them had packages we could deliver to them. Greta had one and it couldn't fit in our bags so we just carried it along.

We took a town-trip to Bundum Car Park and as we were waiting in line to take the D50 van to Soma a bumster tried selling us another trip: "This van too full, not comfortable. I have small car, very comfortable. You are going to Soma, yeah? I will go to Soma, small car, very comfortable. Only D100 each." Up until his last sentence it sounded nice. Doug exclaimed: "D100! Are you crazy!" with full seriousness. We got on the big van and paid D50 for our comfortable-enough-for-D50 ride to Soma.

Along the four-hour ride we had a discussion about probability. For my midterm exam that I gave for my statistics class I had the students roll a die ten times to receive random numbers to do their analysis. I had a spreadsheet made up so all I had to do was input their ten numbers and the correct answers would instantly appear for easy grading. There was a small problem the day of examination as not everyone had dice. Some students had no choice but to share. While grading, I found two groups of students who had identical numbers. One group the students had different answers for most of the questions but the original ten numbers were identical. That first coincidence could be explained as one student didn't have dice and so he copied the numbers from the first one who did, and then they worked individually solving the problems. This, in by itself, was not a major problem. The second group of identical numbers had every answer the same. They were obviously cheating. One reason for doing the dice experiment is to detour from cheating as it is very prevalent in The Gambia and most students don't see why it's a big deal. Some volunteers teaching at the equivalent of Middle Schools and High Schools became exasperated the first day when explaining the rules of their class had to continuously explain why cheating was not allowed.

The question we were trying to solve on the ride to Soma was this: What is the probability that out of a class of 57 students at least two of them will have the same numbers when rolling a die ten times? The mathematics to solve this problem is the same as trying to solve the classic birthday problem: What is the smallest number of people you need in a room to have a 50/50 chance at least two people have the same birthday? The answer to that one is 23 people, a surprisely small number but easily testable at any gathering of that size. At Fishbowl a few days before was when the initial discussion happened about the exam problem, we forgot to take into account the rest of the class and just thought it was a one in 6^10 chance that there would be a match. The problem we had now was two-fold: 1. We had to take into account all 57 students, 2. The only calculator I had couldn't do permutations of that high an order. We did some tricks of multiplying by prime factors, dividing by other factors, and making approximations and came up with the chance that at least two people having the same numbers couldn't be better than 1 in 18,000. When I returned to Kombo a few days later I figured it out on Excel and the true probability was 1 in 38,000. In other words, they cheated.

We arrived in Soma around one in the afternoon. Doug asked if I wanted to walk to Pakalinding, being around a 20 minutes walk, or take a D5 van there. We agreed on the van and climbed in through the back. The aparante wanted ten dalasi as oppose to five. We were just about climb out and just walk the way (yes, to save D5 the equivalent of 15 cents) but realized everyone else was upset but were paying the ten dalasi anyway. It was later explained to us that fuel was hard to come by in The Gambia and so they had to pick up their fuel from Senegal. To make up for the lost cost they had to increase the payment a little. A little I can understand, but to double it? Here comes another lesson. One good thing about being in a van full of HCNs (Host Country Nationals; Peace Corps talk) is that if you think something isn't right but everyone else is doing it then more likely then not you are not going to get ripped off and it's just the way things are done. It's like the phrase: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." Heading back from WAIST we had a private car and didn't know we were suppose to pay ahead of time. In this situation everyone else started paying their ten dalasi fee and so we did too. A few minutes down the road we were let off at Pakalinding.

Doug had been away from Pakalinding for about a month and I could tell. The villagers started greeting him the moment we started walking inside the village. "Long time!" they would say. We started walking down a street, which I thought led to Doug's compound but instead was Kate Jorgensen's. She was leisuring laying in a hammock in the middle of compound saying she was sick. We could tell it wasn't a true sickness, just the sickness of it's Saturday and I don't want to do anything today, so I'll think I'll lay in the hammock and tell my family I'm sick.

We talked for a few moments, dropped off her mail, and continued on to Doug's compound. The night before I called the Fishbowl and asked Doug if I should call home, for Owen's birthday, before heading upcountry or if there was a telecenter nearby in Soma I could use. He gave a little laugh before saying don't worry about it and that there's one in Pakalinding I could use. As we turned the corner to his compound I could see why he laughed. His host-family owns the telecenter and it's connected to his compound. You could walk out Doug's front door, take ten steps and you're at the telecenter.

His host father greeted him: "Long time!" and asked how was Kombo and his trip to Senegal. He had to explain that he won't be living here anymore and that after this week would be transferred to Kombo to work at the University. His host father was a little disappointed but understood. His host-father was the former bursar to Tahir Senior Secondary School and his compound was quite lavish compared to other villagers. He owned the telecenter and even a car.

The compound is quite huge. Coming into the compound you have the back-door entrance to the telecentre directly to your right, followed by a small building (about the size of a walk-in-closet) which served as the kitchen, and then the main living quarters. There were four separate doors so I'm pretty confident there were four separate rooms. Which rooms for which members of the family, I do not know. On the left-hand side was Doug's house. His house also consisted of two rooms but the first one was comparable to size of other volunteers both rooms combined. I like to call it his "map room" since he had four full-size maps hanging on the walls. From left-to-right were a map of his European trip, his bike trip across the US, a world map, and a map of Africa. There was a big chair in the corner and a table/desk with four chairs on one side. He had all them made months back with a funny side-effect. The table/desk was made during the rainy season and so the drawers stick and are distorted is some shape and fashion. Walking in the room you see a door to the left which actually leads outside the compound, but he has it blocked off and doesn't use. To the right is an open doorway to his bedroom.

The backyard was quite unusual in a sense. It had the usual pit-latrine but also had brick walls separating the latrine from the yard. Usually, from other volunteer sites, the latrine is out-of-sight from the door but is still open-air. Outside the latrine and also separated from the yard was a pit for a bonfire, still smoldering from what his host mother burned that morning when she cleaned.

He told me earlier that Kate and him were back-door neighbours. I didn't know that was quite literal. At the back of his compound is a back-door leading to Kate's compound. Previously, they used the door when visiting one another but the kids and chickens got mixed up and so they just go around the block. Another unusual aspect of his compound was the water tap. Doug had two taps in his compound; one inbetween the telecenter and the kitchen, and the other near the backwall that was the back-up. The overflow of the water from the backup tap fed a banana tree that was growing in the corner of the compound. Through the backdoor was Kate's compound with zero water taps and she had to go outside her compound everytime she needed a bucket of water or two. We had to walk ten feet.

One of Doug's host-brothers came up and Doug swung him around as a welcome-back hug. This boy, in particular, has an interesting story. He was named after the former principal at the school and so even from an early age his friends gave him the nickname of "Prince" (short for "Principal"). This happened so frequently that even his parents and family now call him Prince. He's about ten years old. To keep him occupied I brought out the travel-Simon game I received as a late Christmas present, which I just brought along. Even though Prince speaks perfect English, explaining the game took same effort.

[Simon]: Red
[Prince]: Red
[Simon]: Red Blue
[Prince]: Red Red
[Simon]: AAAAAAaaaaaa [Repeat twenty times with different two color combinations]

It took a good fifteen minutes for him to realize that you had to repeat what Simon gave and not hit any button you wish. For more than a day that's all we heard from Prince was the sound of Simon, until his father took it away from him and gave it back to me.

After relaxing a bit and taking the hottest bucket bath I've ever had, we set out for Greta's compound. Greta previously lived in the Fishbowl but requested, and got approved, to transfer to Pakalinding. She now lives in the same compound that Olivia used to live. Olivia met her future fiancé the first day in country back in July and went back to the US to plan their Fall wedding. The odd thing about all this is that coincidentally both Greta and Olivia have the same Gambian name, Seynabou. Whenever conversations arose with Seynabou coming into the conversation they either had to say "Seynabou One" for Olivia or "Seynabou Two" for Greta.

The distance from Greta's compound to Doug's is about a two-minute walk. They both live on the same dirt road. If you are walking down the road Doug would be on the left and Greta to the right. The only reference point I knew to get to her compound was a small water tap, and this was validated later on when Doug drew a map for me and independently put down the water tap as a reference point as well. As you walk into Greta's compound you see a nice bantaba in the middle of the compound. Bantabas are elevated platforms made by half-tree trunks or other wood material that people just relax on. They usually have a bumpy feel to them as the round part of the tree trunks are faced up, but feel quite comfortable after a while.

The first door to the right after entering her compound was her house. Jeff was visiting and they were just relaxing, talking and listening to music. She was quite surprised to see me with an exclamation of "Dude! Mike!" The first room had three chairs, a table, and a four-piece Chinese latern hanging from the ceiling. We sat around while she opened her package. Whenever anyone gets a package it's Christmas and everyone wants to join vicariously in the celebration. Packages are that big of a celebration and even more so when they don't expect them to arrive upcountry other than mailrun.

Lunch was being served back in Doug's compound and so we went back to eat. Doug and I shared a foodbowl inside his house while Prince played Simon in the background. Doug wanted to relax and take a nap so he drew me a map of Pakalinding in case I wanted to walk around. Even though the map is a simplistic representation of the whole village of the area that the volunteers live, it's quite funny the landmarks he put down. Only six lines were drawn with reference points being his family's telecenter, a water tap, and a big tree. The water tap was the reference for Greta's compound, and the big tree for Jeff's. I wandered back to Greta's compound first and seeing no one was there went to Kate's. Greta, Kate, and Jeff were just relaxing by the hammock reading old Rolling Stones magazines and braiding their host-sisters hair.

A few hours later Jeff and Doug wanted to open the computer room at the school for public Internet use and asked if I wanted to come along. We walked the half-kilometer to the school while Jeff pushed his bike along. Earlier in the day we discussed watching a movie on Jeff's laptop but they needed the car battery that was in the computer lab, hence they needed to bring the bike along unless they wanted to strain their muscles on the walk back. The school looked vaguely familiar and I couldn't figure out from where. Doug finally pointed out that we stopped here one day during training while everyone in the education sector was visiting local schools. I remembered sitting on the bricks outside in the small open auditorium and the first memory of the school came back.

Me: "This is the school with the chicken coop!"
Doug: "Yeah. The chicken coop."
Jeff: "Why does everyone in your group remember a chicken coop from this school? Where is this chicken coop? I've never seen it!"
Doug: "It's behind those buildings along that path," and he pointed down a path along the other end of the school.

The reason why everyone remembers the chicken coop is that it was the first thing they showed us. Not the computer lab, or the principal office, but this chicken coop. Only afterwards did we get to see the lab, his office, and classrooms. Hence, it's the chicken-coop-school for our group.

The computer lab had two air conditioners hanging from the walls. Doug exclaimed, a little guiltily "I've spent many hours grading papers in this room." There were about fifteen computers with the main server up at front. From seven o'clock until nine, when they kicked everyone out, they had open-Internet night. The students who wanted to use the internet signed their name on the roster and paid D15 an hour to use the computer. As more people got on the internet the slower the internet became for each computer as they were all sharing a single line. Jeff played on his laptop trying to put together a picture collage of WAIST while Doug worked in the back of the room with a voltmeter to charge the car battery. This was no ordinary car battery. It wasn't Duracell, but Durecell, and we expected it to behave as such.

It was now around nine oclock and we still haven't had dinner. We walked back to Pakalinding, with the Durecell battery tied to the bike, against the moonlight. We stopped at Greta's compound to say the movie would start in an hour or so after everyone ate. In the compound Greta and Kate were tutoring their host-sisters simple algebra; quite unexpected for a Saturday night activity from a student's point of view. We walked back to Doug's compound and our food was already inside his house sitting on the table waiting to be eaten. I ate my rice with sauce dinner and then walked the ten feet to the telecenter to call for Owen's birthday.

After around an hour we headed back to Jeff's compound. The big tree Doug drew on the map for me was quite exact. Right at the entrance to Jeff's compound is this huge tree with limbs almost drooping to the ground. They were big enough that it's easily climbable and was told Jeff spent many hours his first year just reading in the tree. Jeff's house is in the way back of the family compound and is in the shape of Mickey Mouse's head. The main room is in the middle, his bedroom to the left and a kitchen room to the right. In the kitchen was something I had not expected to see in any volunteers compound, let alone one in a village. He had an old Coca-Cola refrigerator in the middle of the kitchen. It's the same type of refrigerators you see at 7-11 when you want a bottle of Coke. Now transplant that to a West African village and you have yourself a workable refrigerator for all your culinary needs - when the electricity works.

Jeff, Kate, and Greta were already there watching a mockumentary while eating their dinner of hummus with bread. The mockumentary was entitled "Fear of a Black Hat" and was quite funny as it was shot to portray a fake documentary that made fun of the rap industry. It was not something I had expected to see but a good laugh nonetheless. Halfway through movie the Durecell battery decided to quit on us and the whole laptop shut-down within a fraction of a second. That ended the night. Jeff said I could crash at his place since Doug had no extra bed or mattress. He brought out the mattress and pillow and I went to sleep.

The next morning I felt like a Senator running for reelection. I was trying to walk back to Doug's house but turned into what I thought was the correct street but ended up being a side street into someone's compound. Each person in the compound greeted me individually and I had to go through the whole greeting procedure a half-dozen times. They already knew my name as word travels fast in the village when it comes to visitors, but I knew none of them. I'm trying to be polite and shake their hands asking, "how is the morning?" They kept referencing my name as if we were old friends. I shook a dozen or so hands before I was able to make my exit and correct myself.

For breakfast his host-mother set down a bowl and left the house. We lifted up the lid and saw this thick liquid, and thought it was some new breakfast. The liquid ended up being some peanut concoction that was poured on top of rice and other items. I'm sure George Washington Carver missed this one! It was one of the best breakfasts I've had since being in country. Usually the give you more than you can eat and you give them back the rest. We finished the bowl within minutes. The next few hours were spent relaxing. We tried teaching Prince more about Simon, to no avail, until we switched to Crazy Eights. This was played on Doug's open-porch which is hard to describe. In Mandinka they are called "perengo." His entire house is elevated by about foot or so, so the rain can not run in; and you have to step up to get inside his hut. That step is extended around the front and makes a nice porch. We just laid out the baso, got comfortable and started playing.

Playing Crazy Eights with Prince tried my patience as he knew the rules very well, as it was primarily the only card game he knew, and I played it maybe twice during service without fully knowing what the rules were. After a game we switched to Memory and then a kid-friendly game of Bullshit (we called it "Liar"). This again had some funny situations happened as kids here are trained not to lie, or they get beaten. In this version whenever we want to call out someone instead of saying "Bullshit!" we say "You are a liar!" or "You are lying!"

Doug: Prince, you are up. We are on the number four. You have to lay down fours.
Prince: [looking at his cards] I do not have any fours.
Doug: You are not suppose to tell us. Just pretend. Lay down some cards and say they are fours.
Prince: [flips his hand over so we can all see] But I have no fours.
Doug: Just pretend and lay some cards down.
Prince: [Lays down three cards] I have three fours.
Doug: [Smiling] You are lying!

Prince picked up the whole deck and continued to play 'Liar' truthfully until the very end, when he lost.

After a few more games more kids showed up. We moved inside and Doug opened up his desk he had made to reveal wooden blocks with letters and numbers on them. We sat around playing with blocks. He would try and get them to spell a word but they were more interested in hearing how Doug would say the words when they threw random blocks at the beginning.

"Kanifan"
"Panifan"
"Xanifan"
"8anifan"
"2+3anifan"

We called it quits when replacing blocks turned into throwing blocks which turned into semi-lethal projectiles. We threw the kids out, packed up the blocks and went to visit Jeff. He wasn't there and so we just read in his tree for a while. I brought along Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" which is as boring as it sounds. The historical parts I like, talking about Newton and Copernicus but the rants on the philosophy gets a bit dreadful at times.



After lunch we walked to Soma. It was about a twenty minute walk and wasn't too bad even for being in the middle of the day. If you walked from Pakalinding heading north you'll arrive at the ferry terminal to reach Farafenni - if you head south out of Pakalinding you reach Soma. As we reached the main transport terminal, where all the vendors are, and was buying a bag of wanjo someone behind me said, "Excuse me." Usually when someone says that it's a bumster trying to sell you something so I ignored him.

"Excuse me, Mr. Sheppard?" I turned around and it was one of my students.
"Mr. Sheppard, are you here on Holiday?"
"No. Just visiting for the weekend."
"How was the examination for Statistics?"
"Went quite well."
"Will you be at Graduation on Saturday?"
"I do not know."
"If you are, I can give you a chicken. Or, you can take your car and pick it up from me some other time."
"Thank you for the chicken. I don't have a car, but I'll let you know about Saturday."

We exchanged cell phone numbers even though he already had mine from the first day of class. Saturday was not only graduation, but it was the first graduating class of the first university of the entire country of The Gambia. President Jammeh himself was going to be there. My counterpart was the main planner for the event and throughout the weeks leading up to it I could tell the stress was getting to her. I was invited to attend, along with Doug and Kate, but only Kate made it on time to be let in the doors.

After having a bean-sandwich for our second lunch we stopped at this second-hand clothes seller. Some jeans were faded, others stained, other ripped or torn. They come from all over the world as the sizes are not even compatible. A '6' on one could be a '24' on another, which was the same size as 'pi cubed over three' for the next. And of course you can't try them on so you're left handing two identical jeans, one labeled in probably Swedish with a '6' and the other Dutch with a '24'. It was confusing! I picked out two jeans and two shirts, but he wanted D210 for them all, and I wasn't going to pay more than D150. No deal. As I walked away I saw an array of belts hanging from the wall. I knew I needed a new one, the only problem was they were all women's belts with decorations or other items. No belts were bought that day either. When I returned to Kombo I just solved it myself and took an ice-pick from my Leatherman and made another hole. I guess you can say I'm on hole number negative one now.

Across the river, in Farafenni, is what's called "The Dead Toubob Store." It's not an actual store, per say, and it doesn't have that name but that's what we call it. Apparently, across Europe and the US whenever someone dies and the family doesn't want to deal with their clothes they just donate them all. A fraction of them shows up monthly in Farafenni, The Gambia and sell for very cheap; about D7 a shirt and D15 for jeans. They are not organized in any way, just boxes of shirts you can go through, boxes of jeans, boxes of belts, etc. Most volunteers in that area go there to buy good cheap American type clothing. Sometimes you become lucky and find a shirt that is quite recent as it has a face on it with a new famous young actor or actress on the front. Other times you don't get so lucky and you might have a good probability of finding a "Carter for President" T-Shirt among them.

As we were walking back we passed a very small convenience store. Don't think 7-11, think hole-in-the-wall. I went in and bought a six-pack of toilet paper for Doug. This calls for an explanation: For volunteers, toilet paper is the most convenient gift to give when staying at someone's house. During Christmas or Thanksgiving when people stayed at our house we received toilet paper. When volunteers stayed at The Fishbowl they gave them toilet paper as appreciation. This wouldn't have the same affect in the US. If your Uncle Bill shows up for a week and hands you a six-pack of toilet paper as thanks, most likely than not two thoughts would cross your mind quite simultaneously 1. Am I really related to him? [And if so, is it too late to change the will?] 2. Don't invite him over again! [Unless you just happen to be low on toilet paper]

Doug appreciated the gift of toilet paper.

While relaxing that night I read the instruction manual for the Simon Game. If you win at the highest level it does a little tune and sings for you. Having nothing else to do we asked for Simon back from Prince and commenced to try and beat the game. Doug had four fingers on each button and I sat on his right recording each color as they appeared. Originally I was on his left but my arm got in the way and it timed-out on us half-way through. We must maximize efficiency! I abbreviated each color by one letter, wrote in rows of three going down the page while Doug never took his eyes off the paper and used his fingers to push the buttons. Out of the 31 colors in a row we needed the best we got after an hour was 28 before we handed it back to Prince.

We then asked the question: When are we half-way there? It's not when you are done with 15 or 16 colors as each time you have to add one more color to the sequence and so the ending sequences are longer, and more prone to error, then the beginning. With 31 colors we needed to win the game it called for a total of 496 buttons we had to push. (1+2+3+. . . .+31=496) I saw the numbers 31 and 496 and was amazed at what a simple game of Simon just illustrated for me. 31 is the 3rd Mersenne Prime Number and 496 is the third Perfect Number. That night I spent a half hour proving the formula relating Mersenne Primes with Perfects Numbers with a corollary being that Perfect Numbers were Triangle Numbers. All this brought out by playing Simon!

Having given up with Simon for the night we had our dinner while discussing uncountable infinite sets, A.I., cellular autonomy, and other areas which also sprung from the Simon game situation. Kate stopped by later on and left, then Jeff showed up and we talked about Presidential Elections and Electoral College before I fell asleep for the night.

Since we were leaving the night morning I slept on the floor at Doug's with the six-pack of toilet paper acting as a pillow. The next morning, while packing, I reread the instruction manual again for Simon to see if there was an easier way to beat the game. One version you can play is two-players with the second person having to repeat the sequence of the first person. But what if you were both players and only push just one button! As Doug was packing I was pacing around the room pushing the Yellow light continuously "beep beep beep . . .". A quick 496+496=992 pushes of Yellow and I would win! I continued pushing the button " . . . beep beep beep . . .". Still pacing the room, " . . . beep beep beep . . . ". Finally, after 992 times Simon lit up and started singing as Doug ran from the other room to hear what we tried to so hard to hear the day before. "That's it?" was our mutual disappointed response. Oh well, what else are you going to do to keep yourself busy?

We left to visit the school one more time before us two headed out. Doug was going half-way back to Kombo to visit Justin for a day or two to help set up the computers in their school. The students this morning, as we walked into Tahir Senior Secondary School, were dressed in their uniforms going from one class to another. Quite a few students came up to Doug proclaiming, "Mr. Douglas! Long time!" He explained to each one in turn where we was and why he was most likely not staying the rest of the semester. They were disappointed to lose him.

I stayed in the Computer Lab with Jeff while Doug said goodbye to other teachers and the headmaster. Although he was going back to Pakalinding in a few days it was as if this was the true goodbye. During break some students go over to the bean-sandwich ladies for a quick snack, and knowing break was in a few minutes we headed over there early and got first dibs.

By noon we pulled our bags over our shoulders and headed out the door to Soma. Along the way we stopped at a telecentre to make a call and ran into Kate. She was on her lunch-hour at work and couldn't make a call as they had no electricity, but the telecentre did. After a few phone calls later we reached the car park. Whenever traveling it is best not to leave in the middle of the day as the car park will be full, it is better to leave in the morning when it is empty. It was the middle of the day, and lo and behold, the car park was full. We met a newly sworn in volunteer still waiting from that morning to go upcountry. As we were waiting in line to buy a ticket someone asked where we were going: "Serekunda". He said "Come! Come!" and so we followed. He led us to a big van which was still being loaded with people. He found an open window, grabbed the roof and jumped in through the window. "Here, give me your bags!" We knew the routine by now so we gave him our bags through the window and headed towards the back of the car to climb on. Upon reaching him our seats were reserved, with a little assistance from him, and we had a spot on the van without waiting not more than 10 minutes at the park. The guy climbed out the back and asked for a tip from the window. We were both quite impressed with his Dukes-of-Hazard abilities and gave him D25 each.

About two hours we passed Bwiam and let Doug out.

An hour after that someone tried to climb out and accidentally tipped over a large container, about a gallon or so, of peanut butter which slithered through the alley; as two people also tried to climb out they started slipping and sliding and had to hold on to the seats as they walked from the front of the van to the back. They threw the container out of the window and did their best to clean the bulk of the peanut butter up.

The ride from Soma to Birkama lasted four and a half hours. From there another van took me to Serekunda, which was another 40 minute ride. At Serekunda I had a hard time finding the car park and went up to a random taxi:

"Can you drive me to Seven and Seven's?"
"Yes."
"How much?"
"D75"
"D50"
"Make it D60"
"No," and I walked away.
"OK Get in."

I got in and after getting settled I noticed wires hanging from the driving wheel, radio, and other dashboard items. Then I noticed he had no key. "You have no key!"

"Don't need one. See these two wires. One red, one yellow," he showed me the two wires and continued, "this one starts the car, you just touch it while this one needs to be plugged in." He unplugged that wire from his set-up to illustrate the purpose that the car will not run without it plugged in. In this case the car immediately stopped in the middle of the street in Serekunda Market. Case proved.

For ten minutes I received a private lesson of how to start a car without a key and which wires to do it. He had me start the car a few times, leaning over from the passenger seat to do so. On the road out from Serekunda a bump rattled the red wire out of his duct-taped apparatus and the car stalled again. He turned to smile as if to prove again, that yes, that wire needs to be plugged in. He let me plug the wire in and using the yellow wire start the car before he headed out of the market.

After dropping me off a block from my house I gave him the D60 he requested.

-MIke

Trip to Georgetown

Last Thursday a small group of us were at the Fishbowl just talking and having a good time. Jessamy was going back upcountry the next day and wanted to know if Ariane would like to come along. Ariane wanted to stay one more day, but also didn't want to go upcountry by herself. Before I knew what I was getting myself into I said:

"I'll go."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Sure. Why not?"
"When do you have to be back?"
"The latest? I have a class on Tuesday at noon."
"You REALLY want travel to Georgetown, stay one day, and head back the next day by yourself?"
"Sure." I said with a shrug.

A general consensus was reached within the room: "Are you crazy?" I've heard that transportation was a problem and that the trip would take roughly twelve hours each way. Most upcountry volunteers, after making that trip to come up to Kombo, usually stay a week (or more) before heading back. I was planning on staying just one full day.

"Give me a time," I said in full seriousness.
Laughing, but believing I was serious, she responded: "Saturday. Five AM."
"OK"

On Saturday morning at five AM I'm up and Ariane is nowhere to be seen. Figuring she probably decided to go back later in the weekend, I went back to bed. At 6:45 a knocking on the door woke me up. "We're leaving." She spent the last night in Kombo watching movies, something she didn't know when the next chance to do would arrive. We got everything packed and headed out the door. The night before I finished reading "Atlas Shrugged" (finally!) and brought a new book along for the ride, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." I had no idea how appropriate it would be later on. We walked down Pipeline and finally saw a taxi, which we rented to go to the Bundum car park near Serekunda for D50. I thought Bundum was the same car park I was at a month ago when we went to Kartung but this one was on the outskirts of Serekunda and very few vehicles were there at this time in the morning. But the taxi driver assured us this was correct.

The plan to get back to Georgetown was going to be in stages: from Serekunda to Soma, and then from Soma hopefully we would get a ride Janjangbureh (Georgetown). We found a van going to Soma and the aparante wanted us to pay D20 each for our bags, which instead of being on top of the van at charge we were going to have just sit on our lap for free. Ariane handled this one, in Gambian English.

"No pay. Bag on lap. See," as she faked sitting down in mid-air with bag on her lap.
"No. D20 for bag."
"No pay."

We get inside the van and got front row seats! (These usually have the best legroom, other then the main passenger seat.) The aparante tried one more time.

"Ok. No D20 for bag. I'll give you D10," as if this was bargaining deal of some sort.
"No pay! Bag on lap!"

Finally he gave up trying to scam us out of a total of D20 and just got in and we headed out. The trip to Soma was going to be a few hours. We left at around eight and would be lucky if we arrived before one. It's not that it's far; it's just that the roads are that terrible. During the trip whenever the van had to stop for a police stop or some other mundane thing the aparante would run to the front seat, open up the driver's seat, and, taking a jug of water out, open the hood and refill the radiator. They run these vehicles into the ground until they can't go any more, and even a small leak in the radiator doesn't faze them. It's cheaper to just refill with water at every possible stop then to fix the radiator.

That canteen of water also has another purpose that we found out a little later. The guy next to us said something to the driver and the car pulled over. The driver pushed his seat up so the passenger could get out the driver side door and gave him an empty bottle that used to be filled with water. The passenger took the canteen, poured some water into the bottle and went out into the bush. He had to go to the bathroom and we had to wait for him. No toilet paper, remember?

We arrived at Soma without any incident, arriving a half-hour past noon.

Getting out of the van we tried to find something to eat. The usual road-side stands of bean-sandwiches, bread, and other assortments were up.

One guy opened up his bowl to show some meat and offered me a piece. I liked it and decided to get a sandwich of it while Ariane went to get a different sandwich somewhere else. We both met up a little bit later eating our half-sandwiches. I knew I paid too much for it, so I asked:

"How much did you pay for your sandwich?"
"Too much, got ripped off."
"I paid twenty for mine."
"I paid seven."
"DOH!"

While walking around, eating our sandwiches, and we found a van going to Brikama Ba. This is located most of the way towards Georgetown and just meant one more stop on the way, but it was the best we could do. As we were waiting in the car to fill up and leave we saw Alicia in the car park. We were yelling "Alicia! Alicia!" but she couldn't hear us. Some of the other passengers realized we were trying to get her attention and one stuck his head out the back door and yelled "toubob!" She turned her head and finally saw us waving through the windows. She came up to the back of the van and we talked for a bit, before she headed out to find a van going in her direction.

While waiting for our van to leave Ariane realized the two men she was sitting next to were from Senegal. She doesn't speak Wollof or French, they don't speak English, Mandinka nor Fula, and I barely speak Wollof. We got the point across that we just came back from Senegal last week and that they were heading there right now. We thought that was odd and could have sworn this van was heading to the town of Brikama Ba and not the country of Senegal. We stayed in the van nonetheless.

At one point through the multiple-hour trip we reached a police stop, one of many, but something caught the cop's attention. He ordered everyone out and checked everyone's IDs. Other then the driver and the aparante, the two of us were the only non-Senegalese people in the van. Senegalese IDs were just papers with no photo, and I'm not sure how identity can be established that way. We just took out our Peace Corps IDs and he barely acknowledged it before moving on to the next person. They were, in fact, heading to Senegal, stopping at Brikama Ba first to drop us off as they said they would.

Everyone was allowed back into the van and we continued on the journey. A few hours later we arrived in Brikama Ba. It was Lumo Day! In a town whenever it's lumo day it's a good day. Lumo means 'market' and each semi-big village has a specific day when their market is. For example, Brikama Ba's is Saturday while another town might have it on Wednesday, etc.

There are two good things about lumos: first, things are available upcountry that aren't on other days; second, they are excellent for making transport connections. There were many vans going into Brikama Ba bringing customers in and vans going out taking customers back to where they came from. Imagine New York's Grand Central Station, a vast transportation hub, changing locations throughout the US everyday. If you wish to get from upcountry to Kombo, or vice versa, you first figure out which day you want to leave and then which village has a lumo that day. Your best bet for transportation is to leave from the lumo.

At Brikama Ba we asked around the car park trying to find a van going to "McCatty Island". The real name is "MacCarthy Island" but no one would recognize it if you called it such, they all know it as "McCatty Island." Sitting in the back of the van, with the aparantes, we saw Sarah Grimm! Heading in the same direction we were going she got inside and asked the guy sitting across from us if she could sit there. I'm paraphrasing the Wollof but I suspect it went something like this

Sarah: "[Wollof] Is anyone sitting here?"
Gambian: "[Wollof] No."
Sarah: "[Wollof] Can I sit, then?"
Gambian: "[Wollof] Yes. [English] You speak Wollof?"
Sarah: "[English] No. I'm speaking French!"

Conversations about the obvious are quite common in The Gambia. During training we get comments like "You are eating?" "yes. I am eating." "You are reading?" "yes. I am reading." Or, my personal favorite: "You were sleeping?" "yes. I WAS sleeping!" While waiting for the van to leave Sarah was talking to Ariane for a few minutes before she finally recognized it's me behind the hat. A double take later she announced "Mike! You're going upcountry?" "yes. I'm going upcountry."

Throughout the hour or so ride from Brikama Ba to the Georgetown junction we talked about how I was going to get back on Monday by myself and by which way, and using what stops. Half of the towns or villages I never heard of before, let alone know where they are on the map in reference to where I was going! Finally Sarah realized that I'm leaving on Monday, lumo day for Wassu on the North Bank. It was settled in a minute. Monday morning I would take the ferry to the North Bank, get a van to Wassu (there should be plenty going there, lumo day) and from Wassu I might be able to get one going all the way to Barra (on the opposite side of the river from Banjul), or if not to Farafenni as a connection point. Farafenni is halfway upcountry on the North Bank and is the second or third biggest town in The Gambia. If worse comes to worst Louis lives there and so I could crash at his place for the night if I couldn't find transport. This also had a nice aesthetic feel to it as I would be literally going around the country: out on the South Bank and returning on the North Bank. The farthest from Kombo would be Fatoto, but Georgetown is at least 2/3 of the way upcountry.

Ariane and I paid the aparante our fee and no one else paid. Sarah had to explain to me that we were the only ones going to the Island and so we had to pay first; everyone else would pay after they dropped us off and picked up more people coming from the Island.

An hour later we arrived at the ferry terminal. We said good-bye to Sarah and waited for the ferry. The river is narrow enough that one could wave to a person on the island and be clearly visible. The ferry is a small boat that could maybe hold three cars. Ariane pointed out a rope that crossed the river and went through the ferry.

"Do you know what the rope is for?" she asked.
I thought for a bit, getting my mindset into Gambian thinking, and said,
"So they can pull themselves across if the engine died?"
"Yep! It's one Dalasi to cross if the motor is working and free if it's not."
"Free?"
"The men stand on the side of the rope while the women stand on the other side. The men pull the ferry across using the rope. For their efforts, it's free."



We joined the group already waiting for the ferry and waited for a car to arrive. The ferry doesn't usually cross until a car is on and so everyone must wait. Finally a car showed up and we got on the ferry, the men on one side and the women on the other - for that just-in-case free ride. Honestly, I doubt they were really looking forward to the possibility of getting a refund of one Dalasi, it's just no one wants to be stuck in the middle of the river so they were being prepared for the inevitable. The engine didn't die and we crossed without a hitch.

Walking to her house she started informing me who was in her host family.
It consists of a host father, two host mothers, and eleven children.
"Name them."
"All eleven?"
"Yep."
"Queenie, Ebrima, ." she named them all in thirty seconds, in ascending age order. I was impressed. I thought that would get her, but I guess after eight months living in the same compound you get to know everyone. The two mentioned above were the two significant ones during my stay. Queenie was a four-year old girl who loved hanging around Ariane's house and Ebrima was her host-brother who also was a teacher and spoke English quite well. Ebrima was the son of the father and the first wife; the second wife was roughly his age. The father was 43 and the second wife around 20 or so, younger than either Ariane or I.

We arrived in the compound after a quick 10-15 minute walk from the ferry terminal. As you walk through the corrugated tin door into the compound you see three buildings. One is the kitchen in the back of the compound and the other two are living quarters, on the left and on the right. Ebrima lived in the first room on the right, a wife lives in the second room, and I don't remember if there was a third. On the left hand side was Ariane's room, then the main room of the husband and wife of choice. They greeted us as we walked in and she explained who I was and that I would be leaving on Monday.

Her house is broken into two rooms: one a living room / kitchen / storage room (for the bike etc.) and the back room was her bedroom. In the back was the latrine and on the side of the house was a hammock she set up earlier.

Before she moved in the latrine collapsed and so they had to rebuild it, and moved it a few feet over. You can still see the cracks in the cement of the old location and coincidentally that is where you take a bucket bath now. My fear before coming into Peace Corps was falling into a latrine and now I had to take a bucket bath on top of a cracked cement filling of a caved-in latrine. Nice.

She went to get two buckets of water, one for the bucket baths and another for the water filter. An interesting aspect of the water filter is that we have better filters then some Americans working in Senegal. During WAIST we found out that they can't drink the water in Dakar and the Embassy staff have these full-sized metal Starbucks look-alike water filters with lights and switches, all directly connected to the main water pipe. The other Americans, working at the high schools and such, just have two plastic buckets rigged together and a bottle of bleach next to it. In Banjul we drink the tap water all the time and began questioning why is it that in the most advanced European-type city in West Africa you can't drink the tap water, but in the poor 3rd world country inside of it you can. The reason is that the British, years back, installed a water purification system in Banjul. Peace Corps has done tests to see how clean it is to drink and it's perfectly safe; the only thing that fluctuates is the chlorine level - but all within limits. As such, in Dakar we drank bottled water and in Banjul we can drink tap water. In the village we're back to well water with a water filter.

The whole trip took roughly twelve hours, as we arrived a shortly after seven at night. Dinner usually isn't served until around eight or nine and so we had to wait around for a few more hours in order to eat. Most volunteers don't eat much when they travel, especially across country, since it's a hundred times harder here to find a place to go to the bathroom then just driving up to a McDonald's in the States. Most host parents know that and so when the volunteer comes back from Kombo (or some other site) their dinner is significantly larger. Ariane's host-mother (one of them) came in and brought a big bowl of rice. We took the lid off and just had to take a picture of it. Imagine a nice full serving size of rice, then add a little more for the travel; then double it for the other person eating; then add a little more for just-in-case. It was huge! The amount of rice just the two of us received would be enough for about five people to eat. It could have been a whole meal for a small family in a village. We ate what we could and gave the rest back to the family, who finished it off for us. Being exhausted, we both went to bed right afterwards.

The next morning I forgot about those roosters. They didn't forget about us and promptly woke me up at the crack of dawn. For Sunday breakfast they served us rice porridge. Wondering what to do for the day we just decided to walk around Georgetown and get the five-butut tour. Each compound on the island had either a mud-brick fence or corrugated metal to surround their houses. The streets were dirt and chickens were walking in the gutters on the side of the road. The gutters are for the rainy season so most of the water runs off the road. Maybe they can take out a few roosters along the way.

As we crossed one street, turned left, turned right, I felt like the map of the streets in the island was a maze. Some led to dead-ends while others turned a 90-degree and then split, with one maybe leading to a dead-end where a compound was. We approached Vickie's compound but she still was asleep so we went to Armitage School where Ariane's working. Armitage is a boarding school, in fact the only one in The Gambia. The students live on campus and the school provides housing and has a cafeteria. The dorm rooms I did see reminded me of something you see in the Army: bunk beds along the wall going across the room with one small dresser between them. Each dorm room had about twenty students living in them. The common necessities of college students of TV's, Microwaves, Refrigerators, stereos and the like were non-existent. I saw beds, desks, papers, pens, and books. In fact, the twelfth graders were preparing for their WAEC exam (West African Examination Council.) They must pass the exam to graduate. There are nine subjects; they pass a subject if they get at least 40% in it, and to be eligible for the University they must get at least a C on five of them. As we passed the classrooms, I saw a class in session with no teacher.

"Classes on Sunday?"
"No. They're doing it on their own."
"Why?"
"To study for the exam."
In the U.S. most students wouldn't study for an exam that far ahead of time, let alone on a Sunday. They might start studying a few weeks or a month ahead of time but most likely not on the weekends. These students were quite serious in their efforts.

We stopped to talk to the headmaster for a few minutes. It turns out that both the registrar for the University and one of my co-workers (both of whom happen to have the same name) are alumni of Armitage. The headmaster was quite proud of that fact.

Near the cafeteria were ladies selling bean-sandwiches. The cafeteria I suspect is not open on the weekends and so the ladies from Georgetown take advantage of the situation. We bought two sandwiches that were wrapped up in old homework assignments. Whenever you buy bread or sandwiches from the bidick or these ladies they always wrap it in whatever paper they can find.

Sometimes you get newspaper clippings written in German or French, other times some spreadsheet of Dalasi amounts, or in this case last year's 9th grade mathematics midterm. I got the top half of the midterm with my sandwich and Ariane got the bottom half. Looking at the exams itself you began to wonder how anyone could pass these exams, let alone the main one in 12th grade. The questions were badly written and in most cases ambiguous. One question in particular just had one equation with two variables and just said "Solve." Solve for what? Solve for x in terms of y, or y in terms of x? You need one more equation to solve for both! In another question the correct answer wasn't even listed as one of the choices! I finished my sandwich and asked her what to do with the exam I was now holding. Her response was the usual: "Just throw it on the ground." I took one more look at the exam and said, "my pleasure," before crumbling it up and letting it fall to the ground.

We went back to Vickie's house and she was finally up. She and Jordan arrived in Georgetown the day before we arrived and Jordan was heading back today. They were quite surprised to see me, as rarely do people from Kombo go up country. It also has a shocking affect when you just show up on their doorstep without notice. We sat around talking, listening to music, finished their breakfast for them (yes, our third breakfast for the day) and then went back to Ariane's to relax before lunch came.

Around two o'clock her host mother showed up with lunch. As we opened up the lid we saw rice with sauce, and a fully cooked fish on top with its eyes looking right at us. Ariane looked at the fish and announced: "I'm usually pretty good. I can eat the fish all the way up to the head. Seeing the head doesn't faze me anymore."
"Have you tried the eyes yet?"
"No. Haven't worked up the courage. I'm slowly getting there."
Without thinking I took the tip of the spoon, plucked out the eye and ate it. As I'm chewing it, she's still holding on to her spoon in mid-air in disbelief. I'd never had eyes before but figured I might as well. A few months ago Kelly and I had a conversation that a Peace Corps volunteer on "Fear Factor" would win the eating contest outright. The host, bringing out some body part to gross the contestants out, would be shocked if the contestant said: "Ah! Fish eyes! I had that in my lunch bowl everyday in the Peace Corps!" and promptly win the contest. So far I've now added to my list: brain, intestines, liver and now fish-eyes.

"How does it taste?"
I finished the last few bites and thought of the best word to say:
"Crunchy."
"Man! Now I have to do it! Tomorrow for lunch now I have to eat the eyes since you just did it like that! Except I won't have a witness, " then she remembered fish have two eyes, "there's another eye! Here, help me flip the fish around."
We flipped the fish around and she hesitantly plucked the eye out, and teeth still clamped shut, brought it up to her mouth and quickly ate it.
Eyes closed, she agreeably announced: "Crunchy." After it was completed she proudly proclaimed:
"There I ate it! I ate the eye! You saw it! I have a witness!"
"Sorry, I had my eyes shut."

After lunch we went back to Armitage to see Charles. He's another Peace Corps volunteer working on the island. He lives in the teachers' quarters on campus of the school. His house is quite unusual set-up. As you walk inside you find yourself in a living room with only two other doors. One is to the bedroom and the other to an open-air hallway leading outside. As you walk into the hallway there's three other doors - the kitchen, the shower room, and a storage room. When I asked if I could use his bathroom he showed me where it was. You have to walk all the way down the hallway (it's quite short in reality, maybe ten feet) and then walk outside and turn right.

There's the toilet-room, completely inaccessible except by walking outside. The odd thing was not that it was outside, as all pit latrines are, but that it's a well-off house that still makes you walk outside.

Every month, two volunteers go on mailrun to deliver everyone's packages and the rest of their mail. This usually takes around five days, delivering mail to over eighty volunteers, and the schedule is quite known. Upcountry volunteers not only know what weekend to expect their mail each month, but within what span of a few hours the van will arrive. As Ariane and Vickie weren't in town when mailrun arrived, they left their mail and packages in Charles' house. We picked up her mail and walked it back to her house, with her doing it Gambian-style, carrying a box on her head.

Back in the hut, the electricity was still off. The electricity had been off for a few weeks now and usually doesn't become a problem until after dusk. As I looked at the light-bulb hanging in the ceiling I thought of an idea for the hot season. During the day you don't need the light, as sunlight would work, and during night-time you also don't need the light - except for the dawn and dusk period. What you do want, most likely, is a fan. You could probably rig up a ceiling fan so that it screws in like a light bulb. The only question being: would it unscrew itself? If I could find a cheap ceiling fan in Kombo it would be a nice experiment to try out.

While we were relaxing she brought out a three-string marionette that she received as a Christmas present. At that moment, her four-year old host-sister, Queenie, walked in and her eyes bug up. The three of us played with the marionette, while listening to unconventional Christmas music, all to the delight of this four-year old. Afterwards we played a card game with Queenie acting as our hands. We would point to the draw pile and she would pick up a card for us, and occasionally flip it over before handing it to us, showing the opponent the face. After a few plays she got the hang of it and we no longer needed to point to which pile to draw or discard, except she still kept accidentally showing the cards she picked up, to the amusement of the other player.



I had to head back to Kombo the next day, a full day of traveling, and so after reading some more of my book I went to bed relatively early, around nine. While sleeping, and quite contently, I might add, I awoke to a Gambian running around the village screaming "EEEEEEEeeeeeeEEEEEeeeeeeEEEEE!" while banging on a metal pot. I thought that was quite odd and could hear the Doppler effect of his voice as he ran down the street but honestly didn't think anything of it and went back to bed. I figured he was running around the island because about an hour later he came back just as loudly, still screaming and still banging on that pot of his. I went back to bed again a little more confused. A third and final round of the Screaming Gambian had me thinking the whole village must be going mad to put up with some random guy running around in the middle of the night banging on metal pots, waking up everyone within ear-shot.

The next morning, I wasn't sure if I had dreamed the whole thing or the bizarre occurrence actually happened.
"Ariane, was there some Gambian running around in the middle of the night screaming and banging on a metal pot, or was I just dreaming that?"
"Oh yeah, I forgot to warn you about that."
[.Thanks.] "What was it?"
"Yesterday two kids got circumcised."
"OK." as if that explained everything perfectly.
"They think the witches are going to eat the kids, so they have some guy run around the town at night screaming and banging on the pots to scare the witches away so they won't eat the kids."

She later explained that no one wants to be outside during his screaming, even to stop him after a while, since they might be accused of being the kid-eating witch. When her host-brother got circumcised the father believed a witch was hiding in the tree outside the compound and so the guy stayed by the tree all night long screaming and banging that pot to scare her away.

Relieved that it was only one night worth I said: "Well, at least you only had one night of sleeplessness."
"Oh no, it goes on for about three weeks," she said despairingly.
I couldn't help myself but laugh and say, "Have fun!"

Having reached the north bank ferry and catching the eight o'clock ferry, my solo travel home begun. In this part of the country Mandinka and Fulla are spoken the most often. Having only known the greetings I tried to determine which way a van would be going by asking the name of the potential destination and see if they would agree. It's like being in Michigan and saying "Detroit?" and they respond "Chicago." with one word communications, you know where you stand.

The first van pulled up and a crowd started getting on. I went up to the
Aparante:
"Wassu?"
"Fesna."
So I sat back down and continued reading until the next van came along.
About ten minutes later the next van showed up, "Wassu?" "Fesna." Again I waited.

Within an hour the end of the ferry terminal was becoming packed with people. Around eight in the morning, when I arrived, it was only around ten or fifteen people, but now it was like thirty or more. People were getting desperate to get to this Fesna place. What I saw was not atypical, just more extreme than usual.

As vans came down the road people ran head on to catch up to them and grab hold before the van stopped. The people getting on the van didn't leave any time for the people in the van to get out before trying to get in themselves. This situation happens everywhere in the country from the far banks of Georgetown to downtown Banjul. The idea of waiting for the people to get out of the car before you get in is non-existent. One must push, shove, and fight not only the people coming out blocking your way getting in, but also the other people trying to beat you to your potential seat. For the most part, I refused to do that and usually waited longer than usual. At least in Kombo you have the option of renting a taxi for D4 or even a private taxi just for yourself for D25. Good luck trying to find a private taxi in the middle of the country. (Although, everything does have its price apparently. For Thanksgiving a group of volunteers rented out an entire van to drive them directly to Banjul as not to fight the crowd also going to Banjul for Koriteh).

One van in particular demonstrated to me how desperate people are for transportation. I believe that sentence is not entirely correct; it should be how desperate the country is for more transportation. A van pulled up and people started to run towards it. Three people were the first to reach the van and ran behind it to the ladder that led to the roof. They grabbed on to the ladder and were about to open the door while the van was still moving, in order to start getting in the vehicle. As the van turned to park, the forces of the ladder were too much and it snapped sending all three men to the ground while knocking two others down with them. This didn't faze the other people, women and children included, from opening the door and trying to get in. As with some vans the door on the side that slides open is welded shut. Most of these vans are used so much that the doors just fall off the tracks and are held on by string alone at times. For simplicity sake, some drivers just weld the door shut and use the back door. This was the case for this van. No one could get out because you had people trying to all get in one door. They were climbing over the people who fell from the ladder and even pushing people out that were trying to get out.

One guy who got pushed out had enough. He threw his bag to the ground and went to the side of the door. For ten long seconds he opened the back door as far as he could and slammed it against the bodies. Continuously he opened, closed, opened, and closed the door, to the point where even the mayhem of people trying to get on stopped their commotion and shrieked in terror. A few heads were bumped from the wild door; children were screaming because they got knocked down, and an arm was caught on the final swing shut he made before the passengers stopped him. People were still trying to get out of the van, but couldn't because the side door was welded shut and the back door was in the control of a man who got pushed too far. Finally things settled down to the point where it was just the usual commotion of getting on. I didn't get on because they told me "Fesna."

After that incident one guy offered me a ride to Wassu on the back of his motorcycle for the price of four liters of fuel, which he told me, was about D100. While very tempting, as I never been on a motorcycle before, let alone on one in West Africa, it wasn't worth being Administratively Separated from the Peace Corps for a joyful hour.

For two hours I waited for "Wassu" but no van to Wassu came. All vans were going to Fesna. Not knowing even if Fesna was in the right direction I just figured to just go there since everyone else seemed to be going there and it couldn't be all that bad. The next car, based on past experiences, was probably going to Fesna, so I figured to just get in before I knew where was going. Around ten o'clock I saw a van coming down the road and I ran after it before any Gambian thought of running. What followed next was nowhere near the mayhem of the previous experience, but worth noting nonetheless. I was the first one to reach the van, right when it stopped, and tried to be nice and let a few people out before attempting to get in.

Bad mistake. One person squirmed between myself and a woman coming in and other people starting to follow. I missed my chance so I just went for it. I got knocked down, had my head on the seat, my right arm holding myself up from the floor, my left arm reaching back holding on to my bag, my right foot on the rear bumper and my left foot on some guy's shoulder. He tried getting in when I was and tried to go under me, but when I got knocked down he decided to stand up and fight his way through. My left foot was caught on his shoulder as he stood up and was now between his shoulder and the top of the doorway. Throughout this whole commotion the person next to my head said to me "Here, sit here." My head being in the spot he wanted me sit, I replied back "I'm trying." By now my foot was completely caught between shoulders, doors, heads, and other bags. Had no choice but to kick my foot free, hitting a few bags and shoulders along the way.

By the time we all sat down and the van was going, it was as if the whole incident never happened. The people I had to kick to get my foot free were sitting next to me asking how I liked the bumpy-road ("It's smoother then south bank!"). Normal conversations happened and I realized that the whole ordeal it was quite normal for them. Consider a boxing match: they might fight each other in the ring in order to win the match, but in the end of the day the loser acknowledges the winner and just waits for the next round to show him that he could win just as easily. For every van that pulls up it's a contest: who will win, who will lose. The winners get a seat, the losers get to wait. If you lose in one match there's another van coming in a while in which you have another chance. The amount of time you have to wait to get a seat is inversely proportional to how aggressive you are to get that seat. Welcome to third-world public transportation.

About an hour later we arrived in some town and I heard "Wassu." The guy that I was sitting next to spoke English and I asked if this was Wassu. I managed to get out before the van started moving again. I was now in Wassu, on Lumo day and there were vans parked everywhere. I had a choice of either finding one going directly to Barra or to Farafenni. Usually if you look lost, a few aparantes ask you, "Where are you going?" hoping that you either can go with them, or that they might get a small finder fee from the other driver. One such person came up to me and asked me that same question. I replied "Barra" and he showed me to a van that was going to Farafenni as a stop and then heading on to Barra, each half costing D50. Perfect.

Having only the back door working (the side door again welded shut) I was yet again one of the last people on. I sat next to two of the aparantes. One was in charge of money collection while the other had to refill the radiator at every available stop. Even while the van was moving, these 12-year olds would climb over the van, out the back door, on top of the ladder, on the roof, and even in one instance along the side of the car for half-its-length for some unknown reason. Whenever someone wanted to get out, one of them would bang on the back door twice so the driver could hear and stop the car.

One time they were both on the roof and something flew off. They banged on the roof twice stopping the car and one climbed down and ran to get the bag. As he was almost to the van, the kid on the roof would bang twice to tell the driver to go and the other aparante would have to jump to get on. During most of the trip, however, they were inside the van.

Around four hours later we passed Kauur. As we passed the village and were on the outskirts of nowhere, screams erupted from the front of the van. The van held roughly twenty people with six being in the back facing each other, the rest facing forward. I was in the back facing the two aparantes. The first two rows of people jumped from their seats and those who were closest to the windows jumped out while those in the middle tried to run to the back. The driver yelled to the aparantes who had already opened the door and were running to the front of the van. I was the third person out the back after the two aparantes. Men, women, and crying children followed. Within ten seconds the entire van was evacuated, with the sole exception of some old woman who I suspect been through worse and decided to save her energy and stay. I ran to the front of the van to see four people throwing sand into the engine. I never saw what caused the scream, as when I turned my head people were already getting ready to jump out of the windows, but I suspected the engine was on fire.



Everyone sat on the side of the road waiting for the driver and aparantes to fix their vehicle. If you look down the road not a single trail of dust in the air can be seen. I sat down and continued reading "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest." About fifteen minutes later, the driver told the men passengers to help push the car to get it started. I put my book down and leaving my stuff on the side of the road, helped them push the van. The women and children walked along the pushed van. After about half-a-block the van started and everyone got back in. I realized I left my bag a half-block back and ran to get it. As I ran back, the van moved forward along the road. After I grabbed my bag and ran to catch up the moving van, I was about two feet away when the aparante hit the back door twice. I knew what that meant. I wasn't even on yet! My left arm reached for the ladder and I pushed myself up to get my feet on the bumpers while the aparante grabbed my right arm and helped me in. He smiled as I sat down and we continued on our way.

Not more than ten minutes later, the car came to a shrieking halt as the front-passenger tire exploded. Everyone got out, yet again, and waited for the driver and aparantes to replace the tire. Having it replaced we got back in again. Throughout both events of getting out of the van everyone's seats remained the same. It was almost as if we were assigned those seats for the entire journey and were required sit in them. Even the guys who jumped out of the windows sat back down in the front seats, next to the same windows they went through not an hour ago.

We finally reached Farafenni. Two girls held bags of well water through the window and before the entire transaction finished of buying one bag for fifty bututs, the entire van emptied. I sat there with my newly bought bag of water looking at the empty van amazed at how fast people left this death-trap. I got out also. It was now two in the afternoon and I've been in transport for six hours and only halfway home. I tried getting in other vans going to Barra but they were all full. One lady sitting in the front told me "You're going to sleep here!" Not that discouraging but not what you want to hear; especially at two in the afternoon. A few bumsters came up trying to tell me there are no more vans going to Barra for the rest of the day but they have a car [insert: laugh!] and can drive me to Barra for a price. I told them no, knowing more vans will show up and besides I already fell for that trap once in September and that's all I needed.

I sat and waited. A bumster told me, "Transport is hard," as if I didn't know.
"Yes. I know."
Before he could try to finish his next sentence, not only does a van pull up but a huge bus. The waited crowd burst into a happy cheer before realizing the time they cheered took away from the time they could have used to get a seat. So, they started to run after the vans. I ran. I'm trying to get into the back of the bus when an aparante told me to come to the front. I followed and he took my bag and threw it in the window on some seat. I tried to get in the front door, while simultaneously keeping an eye on my bag and also getting out of the way of people getting out. He told me not to worry - my bag reserved my seat. I doubted it. I thought it was a scam and by the time I reached my seat my bag wouldn't be there. Surprisely, by the time I reached my seat not only was my bag still there but it was in fact reserved as no one was sitting there or close by. Three rows back of seats were already taken by the time I sat down. The bumpster asked for ten dalasi from the window. I figured ten dalasi to get a seat on a four-hour D50 ride to Barra, sure. I gave him D10 and paid the driver his D50 and after everyone else was paid we left.

Throughout the day the heat is getting so bad in the bus that they were passing a cooler of water around with each of us taking a few gulps of the water. Throughout the four hours the heat was dropping since the sun was setting, but it was still hot in the bus. Finally reaching Barra at a quarter before seven, I ran to get a ticket before they could even get their luggage off the roof of the van. I made the line just in time before fifty people stood behind me. I paid the D5 ticket price, bought another bag of well-water for 50 bututs, and boarded on the seven o'clock ferry.

Standing on top of the ferry I saw whole bunch of French tourists. I must have been the dirtiest toubob on the ferry. My face, clothes, and bag were all monotone in a light brown color of dust. I stood up against the rail at the top of the ferry and as we were going across the river I read a few more pages of my book.

Then it dawned on me: I wonder who has a crazier day, McMurphy and The Chief in the asylum or the average Peace Corps Volunteer?

After I crossed to Banjul I didn't want to take public transportation anymore and would just pay a private taxi to take me home. I live a block away from the most popular casino in The Gambia. Officially called "Jackpot Palace" it's better known as "Seven and Sevens." Now when you think of casinos, don't think anything to the order of magnitude of Las Vegas. Think of some Nevada slot machine building out near the border of the state and you might have a picture of the best casino in The Gambia, the rest being worst. I just had to tell the driver I wanted to go to "Seven and Sevens," and he'd know exactly where it was. We agreed on a price of D125.

Riding down the coast of the island of Banjul he said he needed to buy "foil." To the Gambians, fuel is pronounced "foil." I agreed and he went more into the outskirts of the city near the old docks of abandoned boats and into neighbourhoods of fire burning in old tin trash-cans. He told me not to worry it's just the black-market. Figuring what else could go wrong today, I told him OK and he went further into the underworld of the black-market to get his fuel.

His contact wasn't there. On the way back to Banjul and continuing on our way to Seven's he explained:
"Black-Market fuel cheaper. Gas Station wanted D150 for 10 Liters. I get 10
Liters for D125 and they even give me two more for free, 12 liters for
D125."
The next day I figured out how much that would be in American prices. Using
D30/$1 it turns out that gas is $1.89/Gallon on the normal market and only $1.31/Gallon on the black-market.
I asked him a few minutes later: "Is 'Fesna' Mandinka or Fulla?"
"Fesna?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Fees Na! It is Wollof."
I was more surprised that the aparante in Georgetown was speaking Wollof then the fact I didn't know it was Wollof.
"What does it mean?"
"It is full."

-MIke