6 Months Later and I am off to the Village

Little Omar and the Tubobasaurus Rex ... I know I should stop scaring the children :)


Tiny Omar lives in a small house with his family.  Only a child, he fearlessly roams the compound.  That was until the scary white creature moved in next door… Now Omar scampers by the door, and whenever he sees this strange abomination he screams, cries, and runs away.  One day Tiny Omar (or Omar bundow as I call him in wolof) ventured up to the lair of the strange creature and began banging on the door.  His attempts to investigate seem to be going nowhere… until he hears a faint tapping. He looks to the window and sees the creature staring at him mimicking tiny claw like motions going “raar…raar” behold the Tubobasaurus Rex!


Tiny Omar screams in blood curdling terror and retreats. I pause in mid T-Rex mimicry and laugh.  I know that this will not help the problem but I have tried everything that you would try on a terrified rabbit to convince it you are not a vicious carnivore.  Now I figure I should just play the role.  Many kids here are terrified of my ghostly white appearance, many have never seen a white person before.  I have walked out of a compound after visiting for the first time to an entire yard of small children crying in fear at the horror which they see… I am an albino monster.


On a quick note Tubob to child relations go as follows, 


Stage 1...OH MY! WHAT IS THIS: The Baby stage - If they are babies, they just stare in wonder at me. 

Wow, look at this thing...

Stage 2 FEAR: The Omar stage- After some time, they become afraid of the white abomination 

Ok...what... are...you?

Stage 3 MINTY: The Minty stage - As mentioned earlier, after realizing that many white tourists give them things they run around saying minty or money. 

When Fear turns to give me Minty

At this stage they seem like robots, due to poor schooling where they only repeat English phrases.  They run around yelling "hello ... hello ... hello... how are you... how are you i am fine... hello i am fine... i am fine"


Strange robots that run off of candy...




My Double Life



Soon I will head off for the village.  Not living there full time, I instead will do what is now being called, extensive trekking... this is because I cannot have two sites technically, but for an indefinite period I will be heading up to the North Bank during the week to a town called Fass (or Fass Njaga Choi) to help promote our Cashew Enhancement Project by helping a large women's group up there learn about: 




1) What is business, and what are good business principles.  We have these large posters with drawing such as a man with many people fighting over a few small items in a shop, and a store owner with on one coming in as jumping off points for concepts such as Supply and Demand and proper business planning, timing, location


2) I will help them organize their own business processing cashews. With countless hours already spent in the office ordering cashew equipment from India, I will now help them learn about book keeping, balancing profit and loss, depreciation, and saving.

Some of the laminated posters we have made to help with
business training using examples they can relate to.

3) I will prepare and train them when the cashew equipment arrives. 


4) I will do this all in Wolof. This is going to need some translation help because it is one thing to explain what you are doing today, and quite another to explain the concept of depreciation. 


My trekking starts this Tuesday.  I will be up in the village getting to know the women, and figuring out which ones are most motivated and competent for positions of this new business they, with our help, want to create.

Here is the "guard " for IRD.  He basically helps open the door when the vehicles come in, sits, brews green tea, and is exceptionally friendly from what I think I can gather from his ancient mumbled Wolof.  The baby is the cleaning lady's child.  This was a great picture even though it has been done 1000 times before where the ancient man holds the new born. Now I just need to sell this to IRD because I have some great publicity shots.

My Rooster Revenge (chickens eating chickens)


So, in perhaps the most sinister way possible I realize that chickens have it both amazing and rough.  Amazing because they are happy here, they roam, they peck, they wake me up at 530 with their crowing.  I however saw a sight that made me both laugh and gave me great pause as to the oppression of the chicken here. 


I visited my host family in the village again last weekend, and they slaughtered a chicken.  It made a great lunch, but as our family ate with their hands outside from the communal food bowl they began discarding the bones of the chicken… The chickens in the yard came running, and fighting over the left over pieces of tendon, and meat sill left on their recently deceased relative.  It was a bizarre thing to watch chickens fighting over the remains of their mother, father, sister, brother that had been pecking in the yard that very morning.  The forced family cannibalism was bizarre, sad, and comical at the same time


What Peace Corps means... (a few thoughts after 6 months in The Gambia)

A large wedding ceremony I went to last weekend where they cooked for over 300 people using these giant pots

Peace Corps for everyone means something different, some people get placed in villages, cities, mostly developed, underdeveloped, and undeveloped countries.  For volunteers we wither end up with the wrong conditions, or by strokes of luck get placed in amazing conditions.  Often times it has little do with Peace Corps itself and more to do with factors beyond anyone’s control.  What links us though is the hardship, that no matter where you go you get a difficult task. As compiled from my fellow volunteers, in the Gambia these conditions include,

1. Horrible reactions to malaria medications (causing lack of sleep, mood swings, vivid dreams)
2. Being placed in villages where people are not welcoming and/or speak a variety of different languages
3. Having unbearable heat rash from the 100+ degree days (day after day)
4. Eating coos, dirt, and poop from poor hygiene and sand storms
5. No vegatables from the lack of anything but coos/rice and onion sauce
6. Incredibly over aggressive and threatening men who desire money from the men, and sex and money from the women
7. Intense language barriers adjusting to dialects and mumbling 
8. A complete loss of privacy due to this cultures' disregard for personal space
9. Horrible medical conditions ie festering wounds, malaria, Guardia, parasites, worms, scabies, schistosomiasis, and endemic rabies (indeed we had one volunteer get bit by a dog here, and was almost evacuated on suspicion of being rabid)

Then there are the emotional barriers that come with being a Peace Corps volunteer, these include

This is a woman cooking whole pieces of cow with a few other veggies.  There was at one point a snout in the bucket... 

1. Not seeing friends of family for extended periods of 2 years or more.
2. Fearing that everyone you know is forgetting about you and/or moving on
3. Trying to manage long distance relationships for some of us
4. Complete identity crisis caused by everything familiar disappearing
5. Watching the way the culture here treats families, women, children, and animal 
6. Including the beating of women by husbands, the children by women and the animals by the children, usually in that hierarchy leading to cascading violence and intense situations for volunteers placed in these families.
7. The way women are treated socially- they have little say in finances, undergo FGM, do most of the work, have multiple multiple children, having to their husbands take on as many as three extra wives, and undergo a severe lack of education.
8. Being called "Tubob" white man/woman all the time, with the racial assumptions that go with.  2 weeks ago I was walking with some friends and a man offered a taxi, when I declined he replied with distaste, "Come on, you are a white man, you can afford it, take a taxi" 
9. Putting up with long sleepless nights of lizards, rats,  roosters, 5:30am calls to prayer and above mentioned malaria medication insomnia.
10. The love/hate relationship we have with Peace Corps.  We love the people and the mission... but with the paper work and oversight is sometimes a nightmare to deal with: site changes, harassment issues, monetary issues, and just about anything requires a pile of forms and indefinite waiting.
11. Watching friends you make leave on consistent 6 month intervals with the arrival of new groups, implicitly lending to the idea that all friendships here with the exception of your own group have a shelf life
12. Thinking that you will never be understood by people in America again because you have seen what it is like to completely integrate with a foreign culture to the point where you take on a new relationships with your ideas of poverty, happiness, consumerism, globalization, and all your possessions.
13. The intense pain of the above mentioned illnesses
14. The potential loss of a family member to illness without ever being able to say goodbye
15. Family and friends getting married having children living and dying without you ever knowing until it shows up on facebook

*These views are not experiences I have personally had in all cases, but each one has been brought up by other volunteers as to some of the intense hardships that they face.  I am also not expressing any direct view on Peace Corps here, just combined observations and opinions


All combines to make each person's experience an incredible and unique representation of the Peace Corps experience.  Some experiences are just what a given person needs to succeed, grow, and help others, others are given a poor set of circumstances.  We lost a close friend to an early termination recently.  It makes me truly sad because she was a close friend. You compare circumstances in Peace Corps because everyone has such a different experience because of the situation they were placed in. In this way there will forever be people who do not like Peace Corps, justifiably so! and others who loved it justifiably so.  There cannot be comparisons, we are just a collection of people living in different countries around the world and trying to get by.  Some of us are given circumstances that should not be tolerated as they are not helping ourselves and others. 


However, if we are lucky and get the right set of circumstances where we can grow and help people, the sustained difficulties we live through become the life blood of the Peace Corps experience. And if the above mentioned factors sound harsh, I just wanted to make a point that the only way to understand who we are over here, is to know that we will be changed here more by the bad times than the good times. When we step off the plane 2 years from now, the slow adaptation to the above mentioned factors will change each of us beyond recognition. 

Me and my coworkers at IRD

 Spend the day in peace

Balding, Bees, and Impromptu Salsa with the Ambassador of Venezuela

Planet Bald - Population You

Planet Bald- Population: Almost every male volunteer but myself 

Reunited! Finally after months of separation volunteers from all over the country returned to receive In Service Training.  This included a number of exciting subjects that will be covered later.... but to my surprise, most of my returning friends, driven crazy by heat, went under the razor and were now bald.  


Am I now Gambian?

Upon landing on the Planet or Country (depending upon expert opinion) of Africa, the Peace Corp volunteers wearily venture out of their space pod to explore the strange new world. (That is in fact me in the bee suit pictured there)

Before I begin, it is becoming more difficult to write a post.  Life starts to seem quite normal here, and in my daily conversations with Gambians we start to wonder ourselves at all the amazing things that happen in America.  This week I sat down and had a conversation with Bahtu, a Peace Corps staff member.  He had visited the US, and started trying to explain a Wendy's drive-thru to the other Gambian staff members.  He switched back and forth to Mandinka, and the awe on their faces was a priceless.  Here lunch takes 2 hours to prepare and usually involves a large cooking fire, a giant metal pot, tireless stirring and maintenance, and possibly the slaughtering of one of the farm animals.  The idea that you can drive up to a building, ask for food, and then it appears out the window of the building in 2 minutes is nothing short of a miracle here.  




Afterward I took a video of him trying to relate what a parking ticket was in excited English and Mandinka.  If you watch the video, please also note that I am speaking in Gambian English, which is the only English I can effectively communicate in, it means speaking slowly and using phrasing that only a Wolof or Mandinka speaker would understand.  Phrases like "I am on my way coming" "Off it!" (Instead of turn it off), "have you lunched today?" and finally adding "eh" after most phrases is now common for me.  


Within this context, I find myself being able to relate to Gambian life more than American life.  This makes it really hard to write blog posts because I am having trouble thinking that my day to day life is that exceptional anymore, and I really have to try to pull myself to an outside perspective to realize that indeed there are so many things that I feel should be shared.

The Most Exciting Week Thus Far
Back to in service training, this past week we learned bee keeping, tree grafting, composting, water management, and general garden and planting ideas and solutions.  Meaning, this was the most interesting week of perhaps my whole service.  

BEES

By far the most exciting thing was learning about the African Honey Bee!  From a fear stand point.  The African Bee rules, they respond much more quickly to disturbances sending out swarms of bees and will pursue you for almost 4 times further than the average honey bee (about 250-300 yards).  All over the Gambia, they make large open air hives hanging from the massive baobab trees.  Sadly, traditional bee keeping in the Gambia usually involves honey hunters as they are called, climbing trees and killing whole hives by setting fires and burning them out.  This leads to declining bee populations and honey that is cloudy, sooty, and of poor quality. 


We spent a considerable amount of time learning about bees, bee keeping, and the large market and desire for Gambian honey.  Check out the video I took in one of the hives (also posted left, but of better quality on youtube) 

The pictures below document some of the interesting things learned from our beekeeping sessions.

Each of us were given baby bee hives in hopes that we would go out and catch our own bees.

This comb will be melted down to bait these top bars.

Dave a Peace Corps Volunteer putting down lines of wax on the top bars of bee hives to bait them in hopes
of catching bees.

Different than the bright white and yellow comb seen in the movie which was pure capped and uncapped honey.  This is older brood comb where the bees (drones and queen) reproduce and place their eggs.  Some honey is still at the top for their consumption.  The masses of bees on the edges are adding wax to enlarge the comb.

Some of us just like wearing Bee suits in case the world was to end... say like 3 Saturdays ago! 

Mick is an incredible man.  He has come to Gambia from England to promote local bee keeping with his wife, together they started an NGO called BEEcause.  It is a wonderful and truly selfless organization. He is preparing the smokers for action. 

One of the hives we investigated.  The signs for the closest tree are posted in front of each, every honey indeed tastes different and mango honey is awesome!

Other Activities During IST

Water and erosion management 

We built a dam as a water break to prepare for the rainy season.

Alternatives to gardening

As part of our IST this is a demonstration garden plot of lettuce using only peanut shells and a fertilizing chemical.

Pointless Games

In our free time, we pretend to be wizards and dwarfs and battle ancient fairytale creatures.  This picture commemorates me getting my butt handed to me by what I thought was just a potted plant... it later morphed into a Ancient Plutonium Dragon and I was roasted and eaten.

Composting

This amazing fellow has been living in the Gambia for about 40 years trying to help local farmers make and manage compost and bio-char (a potent fertilizer made from combusting organic waste without air). He is now 80 and still full of energy. He stands in front of a locally made solar dryer where fruit can be dried by superheated air.

Going to tree nurseries, this one was formerly sponsored by Iran, but no longer 

This means Mike can no longer run for president of the US in 2012.  This picture proves he went to a secret Iranian agricultural school! He must have been born in Iran.




All and all, this week was a truly once in a lifetime experience.

Finally Impromptu Salsa!

After a 6 month salsa drought... I found myself returning from a long day of beekeeping to the sound of salsa coming from a nearby restaurant. A few fellow volunteer friends were out on the patio so I decided to visit and watch what was apparently a salsa lesson going on... After watching for a few minutes, I decided to crash the lesson.  I went up to the instructor and tried to explain that I wanted to dance and found she spoke only spanish... I thought, "Oh, I know some spanish..." but upon trying all that came out was a weird spanish wolof mix as my wolof emerged in the midst of my decaying spanish.  This must have sounded quite ridiculous; regardless, I pressed on until I found someone in the class of only 4 who spoke English.  I explained my situation, and was allowed to dance with the instructor, a very scantily clad Lebanese woman, and a kind middle aged Venezuelan.  The latter two were novices, but we had a great time as I imagined my former glory days of salsa dance. I did quite well for not dancing in 6 months and trying to adapt to a different style of salsa.  In the end, I exchanged numbers with Carlos who said that he and the other woman worked with the government and were from Venezuela, and that we should all go dancing sometime at one of the local clubs (in fact the only one in the Gambia that has a Salsa night...).  Upon leaving I sat with my friends and was informed by the waiter that the lady I had just danced with was the Ambassador of Venezuela. Go figure!

I am going to write another extended post soon about my whole IST experience and some of the incredible things I have learned, until then I wanted to post what I thought was some really good photos and videos!


Be Beenen Yoon,
Until another time (actually translates to until another road, which I like as a unique cultural representation)

Roostatarian

This is the scariest most Godzilla like rooster I have found.  All the more reason they must be stopped!

You have heard of Rastafarian but I am resolving to be a Roostatarian.  Instead of some weird cultural movement or religion a Roostatarian has simply one conviction, to subside off of a diet of rooster meat.  My intentions behind this are simple; roosters are the bane of my existence.  The rooster does not crow to greet the day, it crows at whatever time it wakes up (here, usually at 5-5:30 depending on the mosque’s call to prayer).  It does not cease crowing really ever, it gets tired maybe, but will still squawk at regular intervals throughout the day.  If there are two male roosters it is worse.  To prove dominance I have watched two roosters awkwardly try to climb a mango tree to get the best position to squawk, all the while squawking each other in the face loudly.  This is too much for my sleep and sanity, what was a wolf spider day one, then a gecko, is now the worst trade off, a rooster.  Outside my window, they wait, wherever I go waiting to cookadoodaldo my sleep.  It is because of this, I think that I may be convinced to take my revenge by only eating rooster meat.  My thoughts have also drifted to having a C02 powered paintball gun which I can peak over the fence and painfully paint the scrawny roosters to teach them not to squawk at 5am.  For now my only salvation is finding the ear plugs in the morning.

Bumbles

Why is it that I drown the cockroaches I find (truly, large, scurrying and unkillable) and yet I find other insects adorable???  I don’t know, but for some reason I have become quite fond of the nest of bumble bees living in the roof of my bathroom shack (I have a shack with a toilet and water tap in the back of my duplex).  Anyway, some occasionally fall on their back in such a way they cannot get up (I think this is because of the smooth tile on the floor in the back).  The first one I found, I was particularly fond of naming it “bumbles” flipping him upright all the while giving him encouragement to fly after his tiring accident (Like “Oh bumbles you fell” and “Come on bumbles you can do it” in fact he flew away and was fine).  Others I help back into the nest, usually by letting them grab onto a broom and then holding them in from of their nest until they crawl back.  So far I have not been stung, but have been getting continually more paranoid that I will step on one as I make my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night as I have almost this done many times already.

Watching people watching me

So, I was recently surprised when I was looking through the stats on my blog and found out most people have been accessing my site recently from the UK?  I found the link and realized that I had entered into a tourism forum where a lady had found my blog and titled it “Interesting Blog by NGO worker, Gambian life” Complete with an analysis “He certainly has it sussed lol. If you read all his posts from the beginning you can see how his feelings for Gambia can be at variance in the same posting. He has a clear respect for the traditional Gambian way of life but hates modern Gambia with all the crassness its absorbing from the 1st world." It is fascinating to see how the internet forms connections like this over the web.   Also, we have a ridiculous chain of “I see you, you see me” because now, they will know that I know that I see them seeing me, and it could continue infinitely, but I will end it now by just saying hi and apologizing if anyone was offended by my comments on the royal wedding, as I have had some negative feedback on the polarizing comments. (I guess it up already as I just posted on there).

My main room after a few homey touches.

Just a note, if anyone wants to keep up with other friends of mine; most people access my site, and the site of other Peace Corps volunteers through Peace Corps journal which indexes all of us volunteers throughout the world.

Thanks

Spraying Mosquito Repellant in Open Wounds

Once again, serious and funny stuff for the day.

How do you save a continent? 

It is a growing thought of mine that leaving Africa to heal on its own is better than interfering with ignorance. That does not mean do not help, it is just that I experience many things here that tell me that just giving money to Africa does not help and may actually hurt!

One story as an example is that of my friend Kelsey and how she came upon a teacher spraying mosquito repellent into a child’s open wound; when asked why are you doing that, he replied, “It is in the medical kit I figured it would help.” A similar experience I had recently when visiting my family in village, Fatou my host sister had a tooth ache… which is understandable because most Gambians have a healthy addiction to sugar and know only about the tooth brush and nothing of floss. I have now started flossing all the time, because I can see many people have black lines of dying gums and teeth in the spots where a brush can’t reach. Anyhow, my host mother in an attempt to help pulls out the “medicine” (in wolof is the same word as fruit, translated literally as “child of the tree”) which consisted of assorted pills, some with labels other not. Amongst the heart burn pills and menthol drops meant as an inhalant, I realized that had I not been there, random pills some not even being edible would be consumed to fix a tooth ache. This is because people in the village are used to treating their illnesses with sticks that have been blessed from the local marabou (traditional healer). Our medicine is often treated in the same magical way, but no one has every really explained how it should be used. Here is an example of the discrepancy between intention and application in Africa. There are thousands of these examples from every Peace Corps volunteer speaking to this.

A pile of mittens from America being sold on the side of the road, on the bright side it seems clothes do stimulate the local economy.  Each pair there will go for maybe 10-20 dalasi or about 60 cents.On a 90+ degree day I do not know why anyone would want mittens though???

When we send money to Africa, the intention is good, but there is often no real direction to the money. The money is passed down from hand to hand, but no one take the time to figure out how to make an impact, and when it is received markets are built in the wrong place or it goes into the wrong pockets.  The key is education, "teaching a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime," is never more true than here.  Renewable technology, medicine, used clothes, all of it gets misused here, we need a way to teach and train people how to do it for themselves.  Furthermore it has created a culture of corruption and expectation.  They expect the white man has come here to hand out money or exploit them for money.  Never to teach them or be apart of their culture.  

Education is the key, education requires man power and cannot be fixed with books, money, clothes, or aid.  Figuring out how to educate Africa so that Africa can help it self is the only way for what we perceive of as poverty, hunger, and disease to disappear. We must be there to teach them or have dedicated people from Africa come here on our dime to learn it from us so they can go back and explain in the local language why it is not good to feed someone with a tooth ache vapor drops. 

My Work:

Currently, garbled skype calls to India have been the norm. I am constantly trying to pester cashew equipment supply companies in India to get back to us with their bids. Then trying to negotiate bids and set up reference checks. This is because IRD is setting up to buy a massive order of processing equipment which it hopes to give to 4 different villages in Gambia. I have been to each of these villages, danced, ate with the families, and sat under the tree brewing atia (a super strong green tea). I am undertaking things that I never thought I alone would undertake, and feel shocked that this NGO can actually use much of the help I can give. Hopefully, we will have ordered roughly $80,000 of equipment soon. I am just dreading doing the reference check which will further include me calling various African and Indian numbers over garbled skype lines.

Another captured geko from inside my house, shortly before his relocation.  This one looks much more life the GEICO Geko.

My Day to Day: My list of general day to day activities

• Read

• Do Yoga

• Meditate

• Go to the gym

• Play Frisbee at a British based research center with some British people and locals

• Go running on the beach

• Go to games night on Saturday and play board games with above mentioned brits

• Watch a traditional African band at the local theatre where many come to play

• Spend the night entertaining Peace Corps friends who are constantly coming into town to treat various amebas, bacteria, worms, or fungal problems they acquired in village.

• Hang out with random people I meet

• Have dinner with the house across from me (a nice Wolof family)

• Go to the market

• Of course work

• Visit friends up country to dig holes for trees

• Give counseling to friends on cashew trees

• Practice Wolof

This is currently my standard day to day life all of this mixed in.

 

Ferry of Doom

One of the many patrons waiting for the ferry. He subsided of trash and an apple core that I fed him.

There is no way to describe the Banjul to Barra Ferry. Chaos and purgatory come close, but waiting a combined 14 hours for a 3 day weekend trip going and coming is not fun. Our ferry adventure included: pushing a broken down van onto the ferry which we were stuck behind as cars attempted to and did cut us off, loud arguments with officials for not watching cars cutting us off, the asking for and passing of money, food, and even some cashew seeds to get into "VIP line" (the only one that moved) in order to get the vehicle I was riding in onto the ferry, large cattle which were borderline anorexic wandering through the lines of waiting cars, a man carrying an upside down adolescent hog tied goat in each hand onto the ferry, ferries pushing other broken ferries across the river, and 100 degree heat.

After eight hours of waiting, this is the ferry I finally made it on.

The only bright side was that a wonderful games weekend was had on the North Bank where I reunited with many friends I made during training. Frisbee, a mango eating contest, kayaking on the River Gambia, and settlers of catan were some of the wonderful games we played. I also bought 19kgs of cashew seeds in hopes to distribute them to all of my friends wanting to start cashew orchards in their village.

That is just a brief update, I have been putting off calling references in Tanzania and think that that is my next task for the day.

Me and some volunteers playing a game of spoons

Mango eating competition. How fast can you eat a plate of mangoes without your hands?

Thanks

My thoughts against a royal wedding...

A typical classroom in Gambia.  Taken by me as I visited on trek with my NGO.

Somewhere in a vault with glass cases, in a castle that stands as a remembrance to the world as the height of imperialism, is a bunch of ornate golden silverware referred to as the crown jewels.  I have seen this absurd spectacle complete with a massive golden royal punch bowl. 

I watched a few minutes of the royal wedding.  The TV was in a hollowed out shack across from my work.  I ordered a small bread and egg sandwich for a whopping 23 dalasi (75cents) and as it was being made on a dirty gas burner I thought of the golden punch bowl and what a disconnect with reality this spectacle represents!

And say you were to sell that punch bowl.  Well no one ever would because of its history and tradition.  But with the price of gold, if you were you could fund teachers and food programs that could boost the welfare of 100,000 kids in Africa at least.  I live in a country where the adult literacy rate is 40%, it is maybe 1/5 of that in the villages.  I live in a country where people have trouble affording food and there is a time consistently called “the Hungry Season.” Most of my friends are surviving off no vegetables, coos, and onion sauce because there is not enough water for a garden.   You get the idea that this is an impoverished country.

Our country also happens to be a former British colony.  Slavery as a foundation, this land was looted and plundered of people and wealth, and now it is forced to learn English and has practically been abandoned by the first world.  So here are my thoughts on a royal wedding, you cannot embrace the only the parts you like about the past and throw the others away.  The royal wedding stands as a symbol of tradition, but only the tradition that can be locked away like a golden punch bowl and presented as royalty at opportune times.  But the counties that were invaded and imperialized are not saved or cherished they are thrown away. 

So please royal family, sell your punch bowl to balance the damage you have done to cultures and peoples around the world, in the name of humility and progress.  Get married, but donate the multi-millions of your family fortunes to balance out the ancient serfdom on which those fortunes were founded.  This may only mean you drive BMW instead of a Rolls Royce, or the dress costs less but is still as beautiful.  Because if you really want to embrace tradition and the past in a true light, you can’t just have a beautiful spectacle, you would need to invite some of the small naked children from across my street to run up and down the aisles of Westminster Abby kicking trash as they would soccer balls.  

WMD - Weapons of Mass Diarrhea

I am still visiting my village family and it is a true joy, but I think I will intersperse humor with serious things.

My little sister Bosay offering me a WMD. One that she has partially munched : )

(my1000 things list) Experiences of culture that Americans must hear about, both serious and funny:

1. Perhaps 90% of women here have no pleasure during sex.  Essentially, most women here have a ceremony at an early age similar to the coming of age manhood circumcision ceremonies.  Some practice partial circumcision where just the clitoris is removed, others have the entire outer labia removed.  This is a practice that men from the outside like me do not get to hear much about, but my good friend Ian who has been here for almost three years has written a little on FGM- Female Genital Mutilation and has put some light on to this negative and oppressive practice. 

http://ousmancham.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-are-reasons-behind-fgm.html

Fatu and Malik attempting to retrieve a ripe mango from our family's tree that I often sit under.

2.  Mangos = WMDs Weapons of Mass Diarrhea.  With the arrival of mango season, everyone can eat all the mangos they can dream of. But… take your average Gambian who eats practically no fiber between rice, fish, and the occasional boiled onion and then feed them 5-10 fiber loaded mangos a day and….well you get the idea.  The mangos here are wonderful here in fragrance and taste every one is a true joy.

One of the many jellys to wash on shore

3.  Bobbing in the ocean on a deserted African beach with friends you haven’t seen in months.  This Easter weekend, I had a wonderful time vacationing down to Yundum and Gunjur to spend time with friends who were celebrating both easter and a birthday. I had the most wonderful time easting an easter meal, holding and petting the rabbits which were available in large quantities from the homes I visited, and journeying to a deserted beach to relax and swim.  Jellyfish are now starting to abound though

.

4. Defending yourself in a language that sounds like Klingon.  Yes, the deep H sounds give you a sound like you are hacking in your throat and the short syllabic vowels sound like I am about to return fire on Captain Kirk, but usually I am telling bumpsters, hustlers, scammers, and merchants that they are trying to steal, swindle, or overcharge me and that I know what is up.  My best example was a tirade that I responded with when someone came to a crowded van and after asking for money from everyone looked at me and in a condescending tone said hey tubob.  Before he said another word I challenged him to a Kilngon duel.  “Bul ma def tubob.  Yow fognga tubob yip amna halis bubuddi wy yow hammullo. Yow hammullo ma. Balla ma wy duma la jox dara.” Which translates to, “don’t white skin me.  You think all tubobs have tons of money, but you don’t know.  You don’t know me.  Forgive me, I will not give you anything.”  This ended the battle immediately, it is hard to explain how responses like this come about, but I think it is an overflow of frustration of being thought of as rich and ignorant 24/7 and then having to be prepared constantly to defend myself.

Final example, the other day a seemingly well meaning man comes up to me and says it is good to see me again, and asks me how I am doing.  I look sheepishly because I am constantly forgetting all of the hundreds of people I meet.  He sees this and asks “Oh, you don’t remember me?  How is the hotel?” Such anger came to me in that moment wondering how many tourists he catches with that line.  I am often tired of the continual cultural isolation and lack of intimacy that comes with white skin here.  I simply shook my head, looked at him and said in Wolof “You don’t know me!” and walked away. 

A local Cashew farmer with a knock off Obama hat

5. Obama Obsession.  It is hard to explain the love for Barack Obama here.  There is a certain love and passion here that drives a healthy part of the economy.  Obama bags, fabric, hats. rugs, skirts, and even a new brand green tea with a picture of the continent of Africa and then in big letters OBAMA over it.  I have seen so many logos and pictures of him on knock off merchandise I know just find it creative to see where his name or face will show up next.

A five day old baby goat near my family's house.

6. Cruelty towards animals.  Please look at and read another post here by Ian, but the way they treat animals is horrible here, and shows a lack of empathy in realizing suffering outside the human race. http://ousmancham.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-are-gambians-cruel-to-animals.html

7. Dancing to lady playing a large hollow gourd like drum with shotgun shells on her fingers.  Absolutely magical.  I have a video of this dance that I am trying to upload.

8. The love and affection the mothers show their children here.

9. Polygamy.  I have had many answers to this question from the attempt at a rational explanation.  There is a belief here that there are far more women than men in the world because that is the natural birth rate.  Really there are more women than men here because many men leave to try and work in the city or abroad.  But another good report has been given by Ian who spent much of his time upcountry. 

http://ousmancham.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-do-gambians-tend-to-marry-more-than.html

10. Feeling at home in Africa.  After almost four months.  Countless hours studying language and culture, assembling my house, learning about cashews, and making friends both foreign and domestic, this place finally feels like home.  I went on trek again last week.  I danced and made many connections with local cashew farmers.  I am finally starting to work in a meaningful way. Also, my body has finally adjusted to the chemistry of the local water. 

Thank you for reading; I am trying to bring more enlightening posts to you about the culture of West Africa.  My friend Ian is leaving the Gambia soon after three years of hard work, please read his posts (above) as he has much knowledge on these difficult subjects.

Thank You,

Alexander Kent