Written Nov. 11

Study program:
Some of you know that for a long time I have been contemplating how I would start a structured study program for the children in the compound. Well, we started the program about three weeks ago. We have had to make some adjustments to the routines, but the program is well underway! The children are motivated to study and I am able to assist them in their trouble areas with one-on-one time, especially with English and reading. Just by studying with them (Andy helps Fatou M. with economics mainly), in which we ask them to work hard in a different, more complex way, than what is demanded at their schools, is making a difference in their learning already.
Even though they are not extrinsically motivated we have had the ability to reward them for their efforts (thanks to some donations from family) by providing small rewards. They earn the rewards by coming to do study work. When they do this they earn points and at certain levels they can attain a reward based on their points. The thing is because of their sharing culture, no matter who gets what reward, they all share it anyhow!
Case in point
The other day Alhagie was completely excited to achieve the 10 point mark. He looked in the box and squirmed with excitement. After digging through and reviewing the choices he said he would be right back and went outside to confer with our host mother what he should get. He came back inside and choose four packets of juice that you add to water.
Andy was sitting on the porch talking to the children that were waiting for their turn (they get a rock with a painted number on it and go and get the next person after their turn). Alhagie rushed back to tell Andy that he had given one to Ara (our neightbor), one to Ndea (our host mom) one to Sanussei (our host dad) and the kids all shared one.
Though Andy and I were a little afraid they would not like them he let us know he did and when Jalika looked in the prize box, she pointed out with a frown that there was no more juice!
Well, just in the fact that Ndea has been encouraging MoLamin to “go study!” in the evening, Alhagie and Alieu have made progress in reading and all the children are experiencing new ways of learning! (rather than their listening to lectures, or memorizing a text, in a language they understand very little of)


Random notes: This morning on my way to the corner near our house to catch a gelley to the nursery school a horrible thing happened. There were two dogs wandering around the road and one of them got squarely hit by a speeding vehicle.
I was watching it aimlessly wander around the road, I looked at the other dog, and that’s when I heard the horrible sound of car making contact with a body. I looked at saw the dog squirming on its back and howling in pain. After a few seconds of that, he tried to get up, his leg was clearly broken, he then ran crazily ran off the road and down a dirt side road with the other dog following. What bothered me most was of all the people standing around the road when it happened; I was the only one that looked like something bad had happened. It made me even more upset to hear the young men chuckle to themselves about the situation then move on in their conversation.
Now I realize that attitudes towards animals are different here, but I don’t think they even thought of the possibility and danger of the situation because it could have easily been a child that was hit because of reckless, uncaring, speeding drivers.
Because I am currently in the process of getting ready to apply for jobs in the states as a teacher I have been reading texts on teaching more vigorously. I am having these bad thoughts that I have somehow “absorbed” the teaching practices of people I have worked with here. This is because their style of teaching, treatment of students, and school system is the antithesis of what we strive for in the states. Because I am working within the school system here and now as a volunteer, I have to find a difficult balance between helping the educators themselves improve their work and still recognize cultural differences that I cannot encourage them to change. Some days I think it would be easier to say, “here, let me see your class, I will show you…” and then take it over for a few weeks. But that is not the solution and even though I know it, it sometimes enters my mind.
When I am sitting in classrooms where teachers are directly insulting children that sit idle for hours on end, I squirm. I think I will take a huge breath of relief when I see classrooms in America again. It may even bring tears to my eyes when I see the beautiful sight of colorful, thoughtfully designed classrooms that have enough desks and chairs for students and so much more! And I may even get hysterical at watching a teacher and students interact with a deliberate focus on positive learning experiences and environments.
Somehow, I think the more teacher articles, books, etc. I read about from an American perspective the more it will help me keep the “bad” thoughts and influences of working within a deformed school system at bay.
On that note, I will be leaving Sunday for a week long trek to the furthest region in the country to do student teacher observations! Wish me good luck!

election fever

Since moving to The Gambia in June 2007 locals have asked, “which do you support?” referring to the top two presidential candidates. I always paused and wondered to myself, what do they care? Why would it matter to them? A local businessman opened a new stationary store about 6 months ago. He proudly displayed his stores sign out front, “Barack Obama stationary and bookstore”. As he sits outside he enthusiastically waves to us and shouts out “Obama!” as we zoom by on our bikes.
Election day finally came and the questions got more concise, “You support Obama right? And admonishing us, “Borry. Obama is the best one!”. I still played my cards close and reminded them there were more than two candidates and we would wait for all the information before deciding.
Jalika and Adja were over one day and I showed them the ballot we received in the mail. I showed them the top runners names and all the other peoples names in the presidential race. It was unique for them to see a U.S. presidential ballot and to realize that we could vote even though we weren’t even in our country.
On the day of the election we made plans to go in the evening to an embassy workers house so we could pull an all-nighter to watch it all unfold on CNN in real time.
I packed my bag before going to work and after work stood on the side of the road until I got a car to town.
The whole ride there sitting among the people that were so interested and pushing for me to vote for Obama, I had an unwelcomed, though slightly absurd thought…How will these people react to us as Americans if we collectively vote for McCain to be the next president?
As results came in slowly at first in which McCain was showing more support, I think the collective PC volunteer population had theset thoughts. They were expressed by some later after the results became clear, as “Wheew! Now we don’t have to evacuate the country!”
After more than 24 hours without sleep our gelley ride back to Brikama at 6:30 am was surreal, with Andy’s head precariously wobbling back and forth.
We entered the compound to see the usual morning bustle around the tap. As we approached we heard the women talking about the election, the word Obama as usual, jutting out from the conversation in Mandinka. They turned around to see us and I proclaimed the winner to which our host mother excitedly exclaimed, throwing her arms up over her head, “Obama wins!”
We stumbled through a backwards morning routine that was the usual night time routine. Taking showers, brushing teeth, closing doors. Then fell into a fitful sleep due to the normal daytime heat.
Awakening in the late afternoon we had to look at the pictures from the night before to assure ourselves it was all really real.
We don’t have to evacuate after all!

Time Warp

So, lately my part time job has been gathering information for my various employment requirements state-side. Often that means that I have to use my "connections" here at the college to call America through voice over ip calling. Then, through that, it feels kind of like a time warp, all of the sudden I am supposed to talk regular, non-Gambian English and speak to people in A-M-E-R-I-C-A! Which, the longer your over here, the more it becomes some kind of fantasy land, where everyone is rich and everything is wonderful.
Our pastime on "lazy" Sundays has been to plan various minute aspects of our move back home. Though this is good and makes us feel more proactive and excited about going back, it at the same time makes it sad that we are spending our time here doing that.
Today, being one of those Sundays, we have already made a detailed list of costs for moving back, moving to a new location, getting settled etc. Though for some it seems a long way off, only 8 more months of living here will go by so quickly because our weeks just disappear. We spent more than a year planning to come here, so moving somewhere else new is not far off in our minds. Always looking to the next thing. Sometimes we laugh, because I think if we weren't already married people would be wondering when we were going to settled down and live in one place for a while. I wonder too if I will ever have that desire!
Today we also made squash bread. I am becoming an expert in cooking with children. But I only always invite Fatou Bintou and MoLamin to help because they now know the ropes. Today, though Adama invited herself and added an extra spice to the mix. Andy did a good job wrangling her when needed and helping keeps things under control. Fatou Bintou holds the measuring cups over the sifter, MoLamin shakes the sifter (sometimes getting a little crazy). All the while we count out loud the amouts. Then after the squash was cooked I handed each of them a fork and they went to town smashing it in the bowl. All along the way MoLamin is taste testing everything sticking his finger in it all. Adama took the spoon that had cinnamon residue on it and stuck it to her mouth, then made a disgusted face. I smeared butter on her and MoLamins mouth. It was fun... It was carefully orchestrated chaos and we had a good time. After it was mixed I added a few raisins on top (MoLamin actually didn't like these) we put it out in the sun and a little over two hours later we had a delicious sweet squash bread. Man, gotta love the solar cooker. Fatou Bintou and MoLamin were the first to taste it and then we spread the wealth around the rest of the compound. Now... I wonder what we'll cook next week.
Oh, check out the new pictures of Andy putting in the solar system for our friend.

blog coming soon I promise

Hello people, I have been spending a lot of time working on state side job stuff, so I was going to write a blog today, but now I am sort of on computer burn out, so I will will write one this weekend and then post it up Monday! Have a nice weekend!

Mold glorious mold!

It sounds like this might be a tribute to that wonderful taste experience called cheese, but it is far from it…
This mold is the kind that has fairly rapidly invaded the household and which has overrun the surface of everything from leather bags, sandals, shoes, necklaces, even a wood mortar. In some cases the variety is white but in others it is a ghoulish green but in all instances is does an amazingly thorough job of encompassing the object. On my incense scented “jelly” (it is like a necklace for your waist women wear here) it went from being brown to a rainforest floor green.

The take over has even crept into my dreams. Last night I dreamt of Andy and I wandering around the house finding mold at every turn, and then not so mysteriously getting deathly ill from it. I specifically remember saying, “Andy it’s the mold, it’s killing us!” Now that’s just scary.
Now to shift slightly. Let’s talk about Fungus. Specifically, people fungus. The wet season creates such an environment where being dry (which in terms of bodies, I mean not sweaty) is something that never happens. And because of this my upper shoulder and back have been plagued by fungus. As it is right now, the transition to dry season is probably the worst time, because you still have the humidity hanging around along with blaring sun, but no relief in the form of rain, and the dry winds have not come yet. Even with an array of antifungal products, creams, powders, etc., it does not keep it at bay. In fact I think it is a lost cause, until dry season comes, or I move.
This may be one reason why many PCV’s from here move to someplace cold and dry afterwards. This is exactly what we are planning to do!

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.

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...