Through my eyes...The Gambia : May 2015: Top Five Weekend Updates

I’ve heard spring has finally sprung in America, and I am here to report that not only has it sprung here in The Gambia as well, but it has leapt far past Easter hats and fresh grass, directly into a baking sauna, topped off by dusty tornadoes created from the intense gusts of wind. I never imagined I would live somewhere that necessitated sweeping a room three times a day just to keep the piles, yes piles of dirt from accumulating, but here I am. Dust aside, May brought some really great things. It was a busy month and while the weeks themselves went on business as usual, the weekends never failed to bring a bit of interest. So, here’s May at a glance.

5) Where’s my Thin Mint

The first weekend of May brought the Scouts to Sare Ngai. They didn’t have colorful uniforms or boxes of cookies, but they had charisma. Students, both girls and boys, young and old, from about ten neighboring villages, marched their way onto our school grounds. They moved some desks around, pitched a few tents outside, and spent three days learning crucial skills for surviving in the bush. Tim and I helped out by giving a one-hour presentation on HIV/AIDS prevention, and they thanked us by giving us beans and serenading us with their masterful scout band, which consists of a few drums, and an inexcusable number of recorders. The excitement went on late into the night as they built bonfires, put on dramas, and danced. While I never did manage to stay awake long enough to witness this portion of the entertainment, the exhaustion on their faces come Monday morning assured me that a good time was had by all.

4) Strike a Pose

As the rainy season nears, the rice fields are fast becoming tall, lush, and the most gorgeous shade of green I’ve ever seen. The past few months, I’ve taken my bike out to enjoy the scenery and observe the subtle changes each weeks brings. The second weekend in May, I rode out with my sister, Kadijatou, to take pictures and attempt to capture some of the many birds that gather there. We were joined by our neighbor, Isatou, and, as often happens when a camera is taken out in The Gambia, a photo shoot was set in motion. It was all I could do not to laugh, as Kadijatou had never worked in the fields before, and was squeamish about the gushy clay-like soil filling the paddies. She crawled up on Isatou’s back, avoiding the ground, but not wanting to miss out on a good photo-op, kept her head turned and her smile wide like a true professional. The two of them went on to give me various poses: The Sexy Pose, The Working-

the -Fields Pose, The Eat What You Grow Pose, and my personal favorite, the candid shot, the “No way am I touching that, this mud is gross” pose. Kadijatou and I already have a special bond, but seeing her like that made me laugh and realize that while Gambian women constantly impress me with their toughness, we all generally start out the same—as silly, playful little girls.

Women carry their supplies on their heads.

3) Slippery Little Suckers

My friend, Jess, also "Fatoumata" in our matching dresses

The third week of May brought a bit of work mixed with a splash of indulgence. It marked the third annual GAD training for volunteers in The Gambia. An acronym for Gender and Development, GAD is a special sector of Peace Corps which focuses on giving females equal opportunities for employment and education, and working with males to ensure they grasp the importance and necessity of gender equality as a means for economic development. All volunteers in attendance were permitted to bring one local counterpart to Kombo for two days. Friday and Saturday morning, we all met up early at the Peace Corps office and were bused in to the blissful atmosphere of the Ocean Beach Hotel’s business center; we had coffee, tea, snacks, and a temperature controlled environment in which we discussed team building, sexual harassment, classroom management and community development. It was such a joy to see the reaction of some of the Gambian counterparts, many of whom had never seen the coastline of their own country. We had a buffet lunch, complete with so many pieces of silverware most the Americans were even unsure of when to use them. Two of the women were even spotted using their hands to eat as they’d never before seen a fork and hadn’t the slightest inclination on how to go about using it to eat food. I brought Aminata, the teacher from my school who I most often work with, and she had a wonderful time. Although she insisted the bottled water tasted “very unusual”, she loved the air-conditioning and, upon seeing the pool, inquired if she could go in with her clothes on during the break.

2) The Heat of the Moment

As May progressed, the days not only continued getting longer and longer, but they were heating up. As the sun has more time to beat down on the roofs of our houses, sleeping inside these life-size ovens come nightfall proves next to impossible. To get around this problem, Gambians use these bamboo “thera-beds” to lie out in the middle of the compound and sleep until it cools off enough to go inside. This is done throughout the year to some degree as a kind of social hour, but now, it’s a serious matter. People bring their sheets and pillows outside and make a little nest for themselves to sweat away the night, usually waking when the strong winds roll in, sometime after midnight. When my dad came to visit, I preemptively purchased one of these thera-beds for him to use, knowing it would come in handy during the hot season. At first, I attempted to be “civilized” and make up a proper bed each night in the privacy of my backyard; it was honestly pretty nice. I had a small mattress, a little canopy mosquito net, matching floral print sheets. But, dragging the spare mattress in and out every day and attempting hospital corners on sheets three sizes too big turned out to be overrated—I’d soon had enough. So, the fourth Friday of May, I decided to bag civilized altogether; I schlepped the bed over my cement wall and into the front yard, threw down a pillow and the giant, wrinkled sheet, and claimed my new space. snoring

family members and a sky speckled with stars, I suppose the heat is a small price to pay for such unique moments.
I now sleep there every night, alongside my sister, Kadijatou, until I wake up either from the wind in my face or her knee in my back, and stumble inside for the remaining few hours of night. Surrounded by a yard full of

1) Take Me Out to the ~~Ballgame~~ Camel Slaughter

Right. So I don’t exactly know how to prepare any of you for this, as I myself have already seen it and feel unprepared, but here goes. Last Friday, the Quranic teacher, or Ustas, at my school and I decided to go for a bike ride. He, knowing I love riding out through the rice fields, suggested we do just that, but go a bit farther and survey the river for any hippos, which he’d never seen and was desperate to. So, out we rode, making it to the fields far past where I usually go. But soon, in the middle of the road, there was a large gathering, accompanied by a faint smell of something familiar, distinct—but it wasn’t earthy grasses or fresh air, it was meat—freshly butchered meat. Curious, we stopped our bikes and Ustas spoke with some locals to figure out what exactly we had stumbled upon. Then, he turned to me and explained. It was the weekly camel slaughter. “Oh”, I replied. “But..but..there are no camels in Gambia.” He stared at me, thinking about that for some time, then suddenly he responded, “They bring them here— they bring them, seven camels every week, and they slaughter them. Look at the bags of meat—see them? It is a thank you to the people.”

Saturday Night Fever Scare

I tried my very best to move on from this, to accept it as one of those things that happen in a foreign country that an outsider cannot possibly understand, but I just couldn’t, at least not without proof. Itwas so random, so utterly bizarre thatI knew if I tried to explain it to someone, I’d barely even be able to believe my own retelling of it. So, again helping with translations, Ustas made sure it was okay to photograph the scene before me. The guards in charge reluctantly agreed, but only on the condition that I would not capture any faces (aside, of course, from the camels’). A mysterious request, but I ran with it. So, behold, the massive piles of thank-yous to the people. The rest of the afternoon was nice; although we found no hippos, the fields were green, the sun was bright, and the birds were out in full force. Later that evening, as I lay outside, sunburned and exhausted, my host father came up to me with a bowl. “Here, try this. It’s a new meat. I think it must be that camel you were telling me about…” I pretended to be asleep. I may never know what exactly happened out there, or why camels, or why seven of them, but I do know one thing—I will never wander into any rice fields on Friday mornings ever again.