Thursday, September 25, 2008

Written on Monday, Sept. 22nd

Andy and I had a pretty relaxing weekend spent around the compound. On Saturday I had a really trying day of fasting, because I was incredibly hungry. The reason I was hungry was because of something somewhat out of my control. During Ramadan a lot of people here break fast with French bread. At the local batiks around 6:30/7 o’clock there is a rush of people buying bread for their families to break fast a little after 7pm. Andy and I usually don’t eat bread then, we just eat what our family cooks. But we do buy bread at that time because it is when it is available during Ramadan, for our breakfast in the early morning. So on Friday, Andy went to the bitik to buy bread for Saturday morning, but after going several places, he found out from other people that there is some kind of “baker strike”. Apparently instead of 4 Dalasis a loaf, “they” (not sure who, I’m assuming government of some kind) wanted the bakers to sell their bread even lower than the already low price. Buying flour here is expensive and the price of the bread has remained the same for many years, going lower would mean for them to loose money, or at the very least, not make any profit.
So for early am breakfast Saturday morning, Andy and I had gathered up 3 smallish potatoes, and had that with our usual eggs. Apparently that was not nearly as fulfilling as the normal loaf of bread with eggs on it. Because by late morning I already felt very hungry. Since it was Saturday, there was not much to do, I wandered around trying to busy myself so that I wouldn’t think about how hungry I was. But I think my brain was refusing to engage, or was in some sort of deep fog, because I literally was pacing through the house, then would decide to see what was going on outside, stand on the porch, would get tired, then would go inside again.
When I did manage to settle down to do something like read, I found myself giving the task about thirty percent of my attention, while the other part was thinking about food, and how my stomach was telling my brain it was “dying”. So I would get frustrated and antsy and get up to try to find something else to do that would hopefully keep my attention. This of course led to more aimless wandering until I landed on something else to do.
This sort of schedule went on for most of the afternoon. The amount of activities I tried for small amounts of time did not eat away at much of the day. Each time I would move on to something else, I would check the clock, only to find very little time would have past, “what!? Its only 1 o’clock? But I’ve done this, this and this!?”
Of course eventually the time came to break fast for the day, but it was one of the weakest days I have ever had. Most of the time with our regular breakfast of bread and eggs, I don’t feel too hungry, especially with work and keeping busy.
On Sunday, because of this bakers strike, I decided to take it into my own hands and break out the solar cooker. Rain has still been coming sporadically, but I thought I would wake up in the morning, judge how the sun would be then, and if sunny, go to the market to get flower to make bread. And that is just what I did. The only thing is…..
I’m not a meteorologist. And the day had good blocks of time with sun, but also had large slow moving clouds that would cover it. Because of this situation, the bread was out there all day, and when we finally had to bring it inside, it was still a bit doughy. This, of course, did not matter to Andy and I, and we were eager to dig in as soon as the call to break fast came.
Because we like to share whatever we make in the solar cooker with the family, I gave them some large chunks of bread. I had pre-warned them that it might not be cooked all the way because of the weather.
Later that night, MoLamin came over, and of course as usual, he had some kind of food in his hands. At first glance we thought it was a pankako (a sort of doughnut) but then we noticed it looked a little different and MoLamin said it was mburro (bread). When Alhagie came in with a fistful of bread too we finally devised upon closer inspection that the bread they were eating was the bread we gave them from the solar cooker…but it definitely looked different…. Apparently they had fried it!
This was just hilarious because we always joke about how they fry everything here in oil. We eat fried everything (fish, onion, eggplant, etc.) on top of rice every single day. But also the fact that the shear principle of the solar cooker, to not use firewood to cook, was totally defeated. Oh, well.
We have had three new takers on the compound library in the past two weeks, three of which are adults, and one is a mid-teenage boy Muhammed, he lives in our compound with our family for the year to go to school here. Andy saw him looking at everyone else's book when they came out of the house and through encouragment got him to come check one out. Yah! And the other two adults are both women, one of which was a former teacher. Lately the women in the compound have been bugging me more to teach them English, but I am reluctant to say yes, because right now I don't know when I would have the time. But I would like to, so we shall see.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The weather has been changing. The humidity is still high, but now there is no relief from the heat sent in the form of rain storms..yesterday I asked Fatou M. if rainy season was over, and the sad thing is, she said yes! :( But I try to console myself by remembering all the good things I am going to cook in the solar cooker in the dry season. But I guess the real reason I am more sad about the change this year is that the end of the rainy season means end of mangoes, and if we are lucky we will get some more before we move back to the states, but you never know next years rainy season might be late, and this years could possibly be our last. We are also at the turning point in our service where we can say, "this is our last _____(insert month) in the Gambia" And that is just sad. Andy says he keeps having dreams that he leaves without saying goodbye to MoLamin.
We are beginning the moving process already. It is always on my mind now. It is going to be a difficult year, it will be like living two seperate lives, and towards the end of our stay here, it will be like I will already have a foot in America and one foot all the way across the ocean in Gambia. I will start making lists of things to do before we leave here, job/accomodation deadlines in America, things to sell, give away here, etc. It will kind of be like the "Gambian me" is writing her will, "I want my radio to go to Jalika, my jewlery to Fatou B....."
Fasting has been a whirlwind of emptying our stomachs, stuffing ourselves, sleeping at random intervals. When fasting stops we will have to remember to listen to our bodies signals again, because right now we are getting pretty used to ignoring them.. eating when we are so full already, not eating when our stomachs are shrinking during the day, etc. This is going to be one of my accomplishments here do to it the whole time, when last year I only did it for a week. I think that on the first day when I can eat during the day, I might forget. When I remember I will be so excited, "Hey! I can eat now if I want to! Isn't that great!?" We will both being working back into our routines our respective workout routines, and that will be nice, because vacationing (eating pretty good food) and then fasting all without exercising has made my body feel so... so yucky!
The primary, secondary, schools have started but the college still has not,.. we are looking at possibly the 6/7 th of next month,.. making for the shortest term ever. But I am trying to look into other options rather than teaching a class again. We shall see I can convince the people that matter.
The library at home is going great! Thanks for those who have sent books, we are building real book culture here! :)
Well, signing off for now...

Thursday, September 4, 2008

We're back!


“Blue sky is all the more beautiful with a few clouds”

We got back from our three week trip to Mali on Monday, September 1. Because of the sheer amount of things we saw and experienced it is going to be quite a task to write a comprehensible blog about it. But, of course, I will try. And though what I describe may sound like we sought out torture, I assure you we knew what it would be like ahead of time, it was how we spent a majority of out “vacation” time, and actually we enjoyed it. It wasn’t a sit on our butts and sit strawberry daiquiris by the pool type of vacation. No way, it was a sit in a people frying hot bus, as it bounces along a pot holed road, eating street food, dodging rain storms and herds of cattle, kind of vacation. Also be warned that all of the statements written below are just maybe a little less than the average ignorant observations of an American tourist-traveling in an African country they don’t live in-so would have absolutely no idea what really goes down.

Route:
Our trip route went from Brikama (our home base), across to the north bank of the Gambia by ferry, and all the way to Bassee, in the far east end of Gambia. From Bassee we went up through some points in Senegal, staying for a night, before crossing into Mali, where we visited places like, in no exact order now, Bamako, Kayes, Sevari, Sedou, Bandiagara, Dogon Country, Mopti, etc… On the way back we pretty much retraced our steps. I believe this is a common route.

Transportation:
Because this is Africa, transportation is of course… a little more interesting to get from place to place. Even when we thought we were getting on a decent vehicle, circumstances always reminded us where we were. In Gambia, transport was typical, get the car, wait forever for it to fill up with people, cram yourself in the back seat with absolutely foot room-the sun blaring on you, diesel fumes tainting the only air you are getting, that is if the person in front of you so considerately closes the window because they are getting “too much air”, and then of course go through a million check points (I think it was affirmed as 15 just along the north bank). Once getting to Bassee, we had to get a car to another car park, in order to get a car to Senegal, and the description of the car park in the guide book was along the lines of,… this car park has the most decrepit cars you’ll ever see, it is amazing that they still run…is this a junk yard or a car park? etc. If you saw it, you might think it was one of those pictures where junky broken down cars from the old days are tossed in an empty grass lot under a nice tree. We checked with this particular car park the night before coming to leave from it as to what time we should be there, they first said 7 am, then changed that and insisted we should come at 6. After we got there, got our tickets, we of course waited the mandatory 3-4 hours, during this time, we amused ourselves with the car park “attendants” doing their morning car checks. You know, like before you go on a road trip, AAA, recommends you do some odd number check on your car. Here, these checks may include: 1) checking if there is water behind your door panels, (and when you do the panel falls off, so you have to figure out how to finagle it back on) 2) somehow pushing all the rain water out of the back where all your luggage will get put 3) fishing out the string that hooks onto the door lock so you can open the door 4) finding the string that enables you to lower the window, then rehooking the string through something else so it will stay put 5) taking a metal bar, opening the hood and banging relentlessly on some part of the engine, and so on..and when you finally get through all those mandatory checks, you have to load all your passengers luggage in the back, tell them to wait while you have your attendants push your car until it starts, take off down the road, while your passengers look on, wondering if they made it too easy for someone to take off with their baggage,.. until the driver turns the car around without braking and heads back towards the car park where you are all waiting, and without turning off the engine you all pile in and off you go! On a wonderfully pot holed dirt road with giant lakes, mud holes, etc.
Entering Senegal and Mali, transport changed somewhat, in that instead of fighting your way for a seat on a seriously decrepit car, you waited civilly until you bought a ticket, where they even gave you a seat number, (you will be in seat 8, you know that comfy corner spot in the back..) The roads were considerable better, and there weren’t nearly as many checkpoints. We discussed that Gambia may have a “small country complex” in thinking it may be so important to warrant so many checkpoints on a road that goes east and west, and of which there are basically only two of in the whole country, one on the north and one on the south sides of the river. In Mali there were also bus companies that ran somewhat more organized operations, but we inevitably got the bus that had gigantic windows, that, did not open, and as the only sources of air the emergency exit on the roof propped open a little with plastic bottles, and the entrance door open the entire journey. One such bus we caught, luckily (we thought) when our taxi driver taking us to the bus station spotted a bus in route and flagged it down for us. Not long after getting settled, headed for Bamako at an alarmingly high rate of speed, the driver approached an intersection, I guess found it a little confusing as to which side of the road to be on, and braked hard, veering to the extreme right of the road, where they shoulder was very soft from rain all the previous night, and skillfully slid our charter bus into a grassy, muddy, ditch. I only realized the angle at which the bus was leaning, until I approached the door to exit. Everyone filed off, and the genius men of the passengers and bus workers, put their minds together to formulate the plan to all stand on the tilting side of the bus, “hold” it up, while the drive first goes forward into the mud more, then backwards into the ditch and mud more, all the while we are standing their thinking, man, what is going to happen when the bus makes that final tip and falls on all these men? Eventually, thank goodness, someone came by with a industrial size tow strap, and a little while later a truck that could pull us did so. Everyone got back on the bus, and we were blasting our way down the road again. Sometimes I think I may feel safer on the old decrepit vehicles, because they can’t go fast enough really to get into any real trouble, but with newer vehicles, and no roaming police force enforcing speed laws, and country roads with lots of cattle and donkey carts, it definitely is a dangerous mix.

Food:
On to a very important topic (especially now that fasting has started). We delighted at the wonderful array of food you could buy at all the stopping points our transport route. And because these stopping points were numerous, I sometimes felt like we were eating our way through the country. Having vendors shove any and everything in your face while on transport is nothing new to us here, because it happens in the Gambia too, but the new array of choices got us excited. We would inexplicably stop for a little while, people would start to get hot, and we’d all get up and go outside where there would be tons of people selling. We would all Becca, Andy and I would pile back on the bus each with a new food item for everyone to try. Food choices included things like, shea fruits (shea butter is made from it, it is a nice and creamy fruit), peanuts, many shapes and sizes of breads, cold drinks (that’s right I said cold! Amazing!) already brewed attaya, yogurt packets, ginger juice, and lots of meat being grilled up. This is a noticeable departure from the Gambia, where we tend to eat 99% fish. Meat was everywhere it seemed, and so was dairy. They seemed to have a lot more cows, goats, etc. (hence more meat and more dairy).
A noticeable difference in the food taste from Gambia is that it lacked the usual salt content that we are used to here. (not as much magi (msg) cube prevalence) The peanuts needed salt, the sauces with the rice needed salt. Though this was probably more pronounced to us because of our “need for dehydration” while traveling in the above described conditions, it was apparent that I may have a salt addiction from living here. And the abundance of meat caused uncomfortable but not serious gastrointestinal issues for me. My body is just not used to digesting meat as protein anymore (just peanuts and fish) and it would just get stuck right below what felt like my ribcage and stay there for days, during which my stomach would bloat and cause me to look several months pregnant. I stopped eating meat and it went down after a few days, and thank goodness for me that was the only issue with health that I had.
One more note on food, several times I found myself thanking the influence of the French on the food here, patisseries were such a treat, and the French bread was great.



Accommodations:

Our first night of our trip we spent in the Peace Corps transit house in Bassee. And for all of us this was a torturous night. No mosquito nets could be found, so we got so many mosquito bites that our skin felt on fire, not to mention the vast array of other unidentifiable bugs berating us all night long. Though covering up with a sheet could have helped alleviate the problem, the sheer amount of heat and sweat this caused made it impossible. The night was sleepless for all, and when a rainstorm came we couldn’t bring ourselves to close off our only air flow, so rain kept being blasted in. That morning we had to wake up to be at the car park at 6,.. so we were off to a good start.
Other memorable nights included our first arrival in Bamako, it was late at night, we got a taxi to the mission we were going to stay at, and were surprised to find that they were full, so we were taken by a boy to another “hotel”. While walking there through unknown streets, we nearly got taken out by being in the vicinity of men fighting, throwing fists and chairs, and then we see that it is just outside the gate of the place we are supposed to stay. We go to talk to the person there, and he proceeds to ask us if we have a reservation (what!? This is Africa!, reservation!?), we say no, then he says he doesn’t have any spaces left, as we go to leave through translation we figure out that he suggests we could sleep on the terrace of one of the rooms, so, giving little other choice, we take it. There was just room for three people across on mattresses we laid down, and rigged a mosquito net, and hoped it didn’t rain (it didn’t).
The time we spent in Dogon country we stayed at camps, that were actually just another building among the tightly arranged village buildings-where tourists stayed. The first night we stayed on the rooftop of a mud roofed house. To get to the roof you had to carefully climb a log with notches cut in it and was laid against the side of the building at an angle. Getting up and down this “ladder” with your pack is a little tricky, and forget about going down to pee in the middle of the night. Our guide thankfully told us before sending us up to bed, “you see those spouts for the rain water coming off the side of the roof, well, just pee into those” Which we did, and it was pretty funny, to get up in the middle of the night, glance up at the moon and stars, and pee into the spout, and listen as you hear it fall from the spout to the ground. Ahh… Africa. Waking up from this first night (of course at the crack of dawn, because we were fully exposed on the roof top) I realized it was my birthday!
While staying in Sevari, we stayed at a wonderful bed and breakfast place, Mac’s Refuge. Mac’s turned out to be a great staging point for many of our excursions, and the fact that he served great course dinners if you wanted and an amazing breakfast was included in the price we didn’t have a hard time deciding if we wanted to stay there more than a night. Comfortable beds, relaxing atmosphere, and good prices made it a perfect choice.

Communication:

When we crossed into Senegal we immediately had to start trying other forms of communication. French was the majority and we had little to no practice. This always made things interesting, and we usually just ended up negotiating to the best of our ability in a mixture of French, Mandinka, and English. Mandinka helped us considerably throughout our travels because Bambara is spoken widely in Mali, and it is close to Mandinka. These negotiations usually started out like this,.. “Bonjour, Ca va? Uh….paso mu jelu? Uh… how much is the bus ticket?” until we hit one that worked. Each time we eventually got the right bus ticket, and actually made it on the right bus, we were immensely proud of ourselves! Hehe, lots of fun.

The People:

In Mali, traveling through I found that people all together bothered us less about giving them free stuff (money, empty bottles, minty etc.). When people did approach us it was with something to sell a majority of the time. And it wasn’t some cheap plastic good that was imported from China, a majority of the time it was something that they had made, and even though it may have been specifically geared towards selling to tourists, locals are abundant users of the local products as well. We were discussing why that may be the situation, and thought that perhaps, just because of the shear sizes of the comparing countries (Mali vs. Gambia) people just don’t have the first hand experiences of getting so many hand outs, and dealing directly with so many NGO’s that they wouldn’t think that every white person is there to give them something. What they would think is that that white person is a tourist, and tourists like to buy souvenirs, so I’m gonna make something for them to buy, and because tourists may be discriminating when buying, I will have to make a good product, something people will want to buy, and because it will be good, locals will find it useful and good too, therefore creating a market… and all that good stuff….
The general health of people that we saw was better, more toothpaste, toothbrushes, healthier constitutions from meat and dairy consumption, fatter babies. But we also did see people peeing, pooping, washing (clothes then body), then drinking the river water, all at the same edge. I would just love to gather a sample of this water and send it to my environmental engineer brother-in-law, he’d have a heart attack! We saw people enjoying a hearty breakfast of a cup of river water, a hunk of French bread (thank goodness for the French influence of food!) and then proceed to dip the bread in the river water till it was dripping and slightly soggy, then wash it all down with the rest of the water…yum.

So, I hope through those topics you can get an idea of our trip, and of course, through the pictures we will post. Now a short bit on coming home…

We turned to walk down our street and right away saw everyone was out selling their usual (ebbe- a fish type stew), out in front of the compound gate, as we were walking up closer, Adama saw me, and with a sort of reprimanding look on her face, didn’t say anything, just raised up her arms in hug-position until I picked her up, everyone was happy to see us and we immediately had a brood of kids following us in the door. Ndea came over to chat with us for a minute, so did Sanusse, then we had to close the doors, because we had to get to cleaning. Several things were covered in mold, and the musty smell of the house was strong. Andy went around knocking down all the termite trails and spider webs. After we finished cleaning we were ready to relax outside on the porch, it was so nice to be back!
The day after we got back, (Tuesday) started fasting, so we had to get up early (5am) to eat as much breakfast as we could. After that we got back to bed around 6 (30 minutes making then eating breakfast, then 30 reading while sitting up) until 8: 15. Then no food again till fast is broken at around 7:30 or 8. Last year we were learning how this all works, now I feel a lot more comfortable because I know what to expect. I know now that the first dish they bring is not the only thing we are having to eat, so I can take my time, and not get beyond full before they bring the next thing. I also more fully understand that Andy and I in the morning, rushing around trying to make and eat breakfast as fast as we can so we can get back to sleep often has some mishaps along the way, this due to our state of confusion, our anxiety to eat as much as we can, and the fact that we didn’t even clear any sleepiness from our eyes before trying to operate open flames, and fragile things like eggs. Case in point: the first morning of fasting, making eggs for breakfast, we each had two eggs, Andy set his on the edge of the stove and of course, one fell off the edge and exploded open on the cement floor, I swear he almost cried. This being because we can’t buy breakfast items in the morning (we buy it the night before), for one the bitik is not open, but also we are usually minimally clothed, and I wouldn’t want to waste any eating time running around looking for an open bitik at 5 in the morning, that would cause me to be a little too awake, and ruin my going back to bed chances even more than my extremely full stomach. All in all though, we had a good first day of fasting, the weather wasn’t too harsh, therefore making you sweat out precious fluids, we had a chance to go to the market to buy a flat of eggs and other supplies to prep us for the mornings to come, I took a nice afternoon bath to cool off after the market, and then had a good long nap, after which we only had a couple more hours to go before breaking fast, which was a delectable dish of spaghetti noodles, onion mustard sauce, fried fish, fried potatoes, and slabs of mayonnaise.. delicious!
The first day of fasting, was Tuesday, and Tuesday of course is library night, as Alhagie so readily reminded me of. I was happy that after we broke fast and were sitting on the porch sipping our break fast tea, waiting for the next dish, two of the kids came up with books in hand, ready to get a new ones. After they showed up, everyone else showed up all at once, all eager, and I just sat there directing the chaos, sweating, but with a smile on my face. Library night is back!
The second day of fasting we resumed work. I went to the nursery school for a little while, but was very happy to see they were/had been working on prepping the classrooms, making number lines, rules posters, they had cloth set aside for cloth pocket calendars, Tolu had a book out I lent them, making items from it, Mary had proof read the curriculum, and had done some work on the schedule. They definitely did the work I outlined for them before I left, and I was really proud of them. Most importantly they seemed to have a clear idea of what they were doing, where they were going with what they were doing, and all this while I was gone! Meaning, on their own terms, through their own initiative. Yaay!