How Did I Get Here?

Recently, I've been asked by a few people back home about what it's like to be the only foreigner in my village.  They want to now what the other people here think of me, why they believe I'm here, and how I ended up in this particular village in the first place.  Some of these questions are answered easily, some even I'm dying to know, and still others, I can only offer my best guess, but I will try to at least shed some light on the Peace Corps process, to give a "behind-the-scenes" glimpse at how our villages are chosen and prepped to house a toubab (translated to a "white"/ a foreigner) of their very own.

Bill meeting his kids for the first time.

Because Gambia is such a tiny country-their entire population hovering just below 2 million-and because Peace Corps has had a presence here since the 1970s, the organization has made quite a name for itself here.  Villages feeling that they could benefit from housing a volunteer submit an application or put in a request through the Ministry of Education; from there, the papers may sit for months or even years before the request is answered.  (My host father worked with a volunteer from another town back in 2002, and it was then that he submitted a letter requesting a volunteer in Sare Ngai!)

Before serious consideration of an application, Peace Corps site development visits the village in question in order to assess various aspects of the town in order to determine if it could work as a potential site.  They tour two or three compounds, conduct interviews with the families, and do a security survey to check for possible problems.  If a hut-window faces the main street, creating a temptation for theft, if a backyard seems too small to install a pit latrine, or if the family simply lacks the spirit or interest necessary for housing a volunteer, the village is discounted, and they move on. If the guidelines are met, however, Peace Corps comes in to begin grooming the site into a future home for a volunteer.

A map plotting the sites of all the 2014 Education Volunteers.

This process takes both time and a lot of energy on the part of the Peace Corps staff.  They conduct meetings with the Alkalos, or village Mayors, during which they sensitize the community for the arrival of the Americans.  They discuss our culture, our purpose for coming to the country, and prepare them for any potential issues or misunderstandings. While this can only go so far, it is useful in clearing the air and starting a dialogue for our differences.

My rather romantic facilities in Sare Musa.

On the other side o the coin lie the logistics.  Peace Corps has a certain standard that our houses must meet while staying within reasonably similar living conditions to those of our community members. In the Gambia, these standards include having two locking doors with screens, a window for air flow, cement floors, and a private pit latrine with cover.  (I know, I know, fancy!) All of these things take a good deal of time to build, so oftentimes they are completed while the volunteers go through their training, which, as you might recall from my first few posts, does not begin in our permanent villages, but in those closer to the Peace Corps training facility called Massembeh.

Because Gambia houses so many ethnic groups and languages, a small group of volunteers is picked to live in a village where the culture majority matches their assigned tribe.  I, for instance, was chosen to be a Fula, so I lived with three other volunteers in a Fula village about 30 minutes drive from Massembeh.

My LCF demonstrating how to use THE P

Here, we each lived with a host family, attended daily classes led by a Peace Corps staff member also staying in the village, and got our first taste of life in Gambia while still enjoying the cocoon of other English speakers to curl into while we transitioned.  Every few days we were taken to Massembeh and reunited with our fellow trainees living in other places, learning other languages, and all participated in larger, broader-scope classes.

These villages used during training are a bit easier for Peace Corps to chose as they must be within a reasonable distance of Massembeh and they must house specific ethnic groups to accommodate the tongues learned by the trainees.  However, since my training village of Sare Musa had never even had one pit latrine before Peace Corps arrived, the construction team had their work cut out for them in preparing it to host four volunteers and a teacher.

Hawa teaching us gals how to tie our scarves

These teachers, or LCFs (Language & Cultural Facilitators) in PC-speak, help trainees learn local language and cultural norms, but also serve to field questions on the part of the locals, for it is not only the Americans digesting a new culture, but the Gambians as well. Some common inquiries include: Why does the toubab stay inside their house so much? Aren't they terribly lonely?  Why don't they enjoy it when I serve bits of broken pasta and dried fish stuffed inside of bread and soaked in oil? And the equally puzzling, Why does the toubab seem so angry when the children look through the windows and watch them sleep and get dressed in the morning? As you can imagine, these staff members are endlessly crucial for both parties and it would prove nearly impossible to conduct training without their cultural sensitivity and patience.

So, after ten weeks in our training villages, volunteers are bused back to the city and readied for The Big Move while the final touches are put on our permanent homes.  Construction is finished up, meetings are held with both the host families and schools to prep them for our arrival, and the children are given a heads up to allow some space and privacy for the American stranger who is soon to arrive.

Tim's little sister in training village who was terrified of me.

When the time comes for us to move in, our families are pretty well-prepared, but it remains up to them to assist the community at large to understand our place, and this can often prove more difficult than it sounds. Throughout my year here, I've heard the following theories as to why Peace Corps places volunteers in The Gambia (ranked according to their level of hilarity):

1) We are spies.  Our mission is to collect highly sensitive political information and bring it back to America.  

2) We are learning other languages so that we may teach all the toubabs back home how to greet one another in languages from around the world.  (While I secretly wish this were true, I can only imagine the reaction. "This is Amurica! We speak Amurican here!"

3) We cannot find any other job whatsoever.  Because Peace Corps is known for its philanthropy, it is thought that positions as volunteers are given to us out of pity as we just have no.other.option.

4) We are here only to save money.  Because the Gambian currency stretches so far in comparison to the US dollar, some believe we come here to avoid spending the millions of dollars we've obviously saved up back home so that upon our return, we'll be richer than ever before.  (I also wish this were true, but you'd be hard pressed to find a volunteer whose main motivation for living without a paycheck and showering with a bucket for two years was to become a millionaire.) #tryagain

These conspiracy theorists aside, many people do appreciate that we are here to help--in the schools, in the clinics-in any capacity which brings our cultures together.  There will always be questions or ridiculous ideas as to why we're here, and even I may never exactly know The How of my ending up in Sare Ngai, but I do know The Why. I am here, Peace Corps is here, to make the world a little smaller, a little less mysterious, and one hell of a lot more colorful.

My brother, Falie (right) and his friend.