Isn't There an App for That?

     A while back I wrote about the first time I visited my permanent village of Sare Ngai.  I was given the chance to meet the people who would make up my Gambian family and was able to sneak a peak at the surrounding area.  During that visit, I also had the opportunity to see my host-father's peanut farm and "assist" in the fertilizing of the small buds.  (Read: I threw handfuls of pellets at the ground asking "is this too much?...is this enough?"  secretly hoping I wasn't killing the crops and setting the family up for starvation.)  This was in August.  Now Fall has arrived, bringing harvest season with it, and I have found myself having a go at farming once again.
     These past couple of months have been pretty full, so I'd only seen the growing plants a few times between that day in August and that day in late November, when I, alongside my three brothers, first mother, and a mysterious elderly woman made way back to the peanut fields.  So much had changed. We worked for many hours to collect, pile, separate and bag all of the groundnuts from this years' harvest.  There were so many steps involved, so much information to process.  Firstly, the day was chosen, I was told, because the wind conditions were just right, as it must be blustery for the process to work.  I didn't understand why, but then I saw.
     The unnamed woman stood tall in the crook of a small tree, its limbs fixed together into a sling-shot shape by my brother.  Hawa and I gathered up piles of nuts that had already been thrashed by the men in order to separate them from their stems and leaves.  Then, one at a time, we lined up to hand the old woman large metal bowls piled high with groundnuts, dirt, sticks and prickly plant bits. I watched as she waited carefully.  She stood thoughtfully, her bare, wrinkled feet clenched firmly around the branches, then, when the wind finally blew, she raised the bowl up high above her head and let the forces of nature carry the pieces of earth and debris back behind her, as the groundnuts-still in their shells-fell down heavy in a pile at my feet.

A billboard in the capital area showing local women harvesting their groundnuts.

     It was absolutely beautiful.  To watch them fall, to hear the loud cracking of the shells against one another, and to smell the freshness of the soil being blown away was all so spectacularly organic.  In our world where machines do all of the separating, scooping, sorting, it doesn't matter if the day is windy, rainy or still and baking hot.  But here, the people are so deeply in touch with nature simply because they must be-their livelihoods depend on it.  They have figured out ways to use the breeze, the rain, the sun, to work for them, with them, and it's incredible to realize how little else is actually needed to survive.  That said, at the end of the day, I looked down at my hands-they were filthy, scratched and bleeding.  Exhausted, I sat down with my brother and jokingly suggested that next year, we should really try and find a machine to help lighten the load.  He laughed and replied that yes, I can find the machine, but only in my dreams...When I wake up, maybe instead I can find some gloves.

Top 5 Gambian Moments: November 2014

5) Mother Plucker

 Shortly after coming back from Halloween, I was told that there was another Gambian holiday called Tamarec to be celebrated on the 3rd and 4th of November.  Without school in session, I stayed home to help cook and fix the meals for the day.  I should have known it was going to be an interesting experience when my host father walked across the compound holding a live chicken and a knife.  I watched, curious to see if it would run around post-decapitation as I've heard chickens often do, but unfortunately, there was no running.  It did, however, give me a bit of a rush as it jumped about three feet in the air after laying dead for some time.  This of course brought about a yelp from me, followed by mocking laughter from my whole family.  In need of redemption from my unwarranted fear, I decided to offer that I be the one to prepare the chicken.  Amused, my host mother smiled and said, "A wawi?" (you can) to which I replied, "Uh...me etto" (I try).  

With this, I marched over and picked up the carcass, mentally preparing myself for it to have another death-rattle while in my hands, and placed it into a large pot.  I dumped scalding hot water over it and tried not to stare at the head or feet, which are so severely hideous, I may have backed out altogether had I given them a good look.  So now, under Hawa's instruction, I began to de-feather it. I sat there and plucked clumps of feathers from this bird, amazed at the large pores left behind.  Embarrassingly, it had never occurred to me that chicken skin is dimpled from the feathers (yet another lesson for the books).  Now feather-free and scrubbed thoroughly with more boiling water, it was time to cut.

Without cutting boards, Gambian women butcher in tandem; one woman holds the body of the animal, while the other pulls at the appendage ready for removal and saws at it until it's liberated from the rest of the body.  I proceeded to hack up every square inch of this thing, taking orders from my sous chef, Kumba, who is maybe five and lives next door.  She giggled at me a I continued to avoid the feet and head, and she also apparently tattled on me as Hawa soon came over and asked why am I so afraid of the neck.  I explained that "the feet are not nice and also I don't like the head looking at me".  She chuckled, walked me through how to shove the legs and feet up inside the head to make one big easily avoidable package; then, as an extra kindness, she took my knife, sliced open the anus and cleaned it out before adding to the pot.  Well then.  I was grateful, but she told everyone in sight for the next 48 hours how "Fatoumata is very afraid of necks and heads and <insert something I could not understand> Now, I can't be entirely sure what else she said, but, if I had to guess what, it'd be chicken butt.

Either way, I finished the meal according to Hawa's recipe, using onion, garlic, MSG, tomato paste and no less than the 6 cups of oil in nearly all Gambian cuisine.  While this may not have been my preferred preparation, the experience alone gave me confidence that if stranded on a desert island and presented with the opportunity to hunt chicken, I now feel fully up for the task.  Minus the anus.

4) Fatoumata is Having Many Strangers

The second Saturday of November all of the Peace Corps volunteers in my region of The Gambia called CRR, Central River Region, had a meeting.  It was held in Janjanburreh, the "tourist island-city" about a 40 minute bike ride away.  For me, the travel was low-maintenance, but others had to make the journey from much father away.  My friend Scout decided to break the travel up into two days, so she came to stay with me Friday night.  Tim also had someone staying with him, so we cooked homemade lentil burgers for lunch before Scout and I retreated to my hut to design and apply henna to our feet in my backyard  (the Gambian equivalent to painting each other's toes).  We relaxed, ate Jello pudding made with fresh cows' milk gifted to us by my neighbor, and watched Orange is the New Black in my bed, which felt so blissfully normal it hardly felt like I was in Africa at all.  The next morning, we set out for Janjanburreh, where we would cook a spaghetti dinner and sleep at a lodge after an afternoon meeting.  All went according to plan and we even managed to score a crate of cold beer and some poker chips, attracting a couple of new friends from Holland who were passing through and keen for some friendly competition.  It was an awesome night away with good company.

The next morning, I rode home and was accompanied by Eloise, another friend wanting to rest a day on her way home.  She too lives in a Fula village and as she has been here almost two years, her Pulaar is pretty damn good.  My family was thrilled and continues to remind me that my Pulaar should be more like hers.  The other villagers are also very interested in all my recent company. They've come up to me asking, "Who is your stranger?"  I had yet another visitor stay overnight and was told by several people the next morning that I must be very lonely now that my strangers have all gone. As Americans, it seems so intrusive and nosy to be asking about my house guests, but in a village where everyone knows the bathroom habits of entire generations of people, I guess it's understandable.  So, although I do enjoy playing hut-hostess, I also love the feeling of coming home to a quiet space and having time to relax, or presumably just daydream about the next stranger-convention for all of us desperately lonely people.

3) Baby's First Bike Trek

Last month, I attended a training on how to teach a two-day HIV/AIDS awareness class for 8th and 9th graders.  Tim and I wanted to practice, so mid-November we taught for four days in his school in Fulabantang.  Every morning I rode my bike the 3K to his house, made oatmeal, and drank "coffee". The best part was, I had actual goosebumps every day on the ride over as the early morning chill still lingered in the air now that the cold season has arrived.

Aside from a few blunders like inadvertently grabbing at myself every time I said the word breast-milk or Tim pointing to his pants when he said penis, things went really well.  Feeling prepared, we set off to our assigned schools, loading bikes and baggage atop the buses as we made our way across the country.  For two days I taught with nine other volunteers in a village called Somita, sleeping outside under a pavilion near the school with mattresses and mosquito nets provided NAS (National Aids Secretariat).  Tuesday evening we set off and rode to one next destination, Sibanore, where we set up camp in a couple of empty rooms at the school.  At night we listened to music by candlelight, played cards, ate loads of watermelon, and took baths in the garden.  I even killed a snake with a hunter's knife while remaining surprisingly composed.

Once we finished on Thursday, we rode on to Bwiam where we joined up with the other 10 volunteers teaching in different villages.  We stayed the night there, had a closing ceremony and exchanged stories from the week.

Many of us experienced similar challenges; having too many students per class, not sleeping well, and feeling incapable of saying things like "remember to leave room for the semen" to a bunch of kids during condom demonstrations without feeling a bit creepy.  However challenging, though, the whole things felt like a success.  Hundreds of kids learned important things like how one should not attempt to wash and re-use latex, how you cannot get pregnant from oral sex, and above all else-how those with HIV/AIDS are not to be feared or shunned by society.  As I slowly settle into life and work in Gambia, it's times like these that make me feel useful and competent; I truly hope this was just the first of many successes to come.

2) Gobble in Gambia

Thanksgiving came up quickly this year.  I can hardly believe I've lived here for five months already. Perhaps the lack of below freezing temps makes it difficult to imagine that the holiday season is upon us, but Turkey Day arrived whether I was ready or not.
While many volunteers went to the capital area, Kombo, I opted to stay closer to home and cook in Basse, where the other PC house is.  There were 11 of us, and among the lot, we pulled off a pretty legitimate meal. I made make-shift green bean casserole using powdered soup mixes and cornflakes, we used chicken pieces in lieu of turkey, and I cut up an enormous squash which was transformed into savory sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and something we decided to name "pecan bake".  It was a lovely holiday and although it did make me miss my family back home, it also gave me an appreciation for my family here--a unique group of people who provide the friendship and support necessary to live so very far away from home.

1) Half Nelson, Full Monty

As I spent so much of November away from site, I wanted to put in some face-time with the family. Ordinarily, I retire to my hut much earlier than the other adults as it's commonplace for the Gambians to go to bed around two, wake up at 5:30 for prayers, and begin their days' chores.  Those of you who know me also know this is simply not the life for me, They can laugh and call me a child all they want...I'm sleeping nine hours and I'm loving it.  That said, my family requested that I drink my "foreigner coffee" in order to stay awake Friday night and attend a wrestling match.  This is not really my idea of fun, but I felt guilty enough for being away that I agreed.  Boy, oh boy am I glad about this life choice.  Wrestling in The Gambia is not what I'd envisioned.  Actually, it's a tribal-themed Chip N' Dales show in held in the bush.  We're talking minimal clothes, maximum bodies, topped off with drums and dancing competitions.  Basically, it's fantastic.  The crowd goes wild and shoves money into the skimpy loin cloths of the men as they prance by showing off their dance moves and muscles.

My first mom, Hawa was shrieking like a school girl at a Justin Bieber concert and getting up to dance alongside these gorgeous wrestle-beasts.  I however, just sat staring--amazed that I had quite nearly skipped this glorious event in exchange for a solid nights' rest.  Moral of the story? Next time the villagers ask me to stay awake for something, I'm going to have to think long and hard about how tired I really am.