Written on January 30th, 2010
Dedicated to Beth Ritter
So I know in the US we all have our fair share of unpleasant travel experiences. I know that Beth in particular has had a lot of bad luck when it comes to trying to get from point A to point B. My experience today however might take the cake as far as absurdity in travel is concerned (and I know that I can only look forward to more experiences like this in the next two years.)
So today, Saturday, I decided that I was going to go visit my friend Erica who lives in a village that is about 20 km west of me.
I left my house after breakfast around 9 and headed out to the main road to wait for a car. Last weekend I had to wait about 15 minutes for a car so I wasn't expecting to have to wait for to long. Between 9 and 9:45 one car drove by and it was full. I talked to one of the other ladies who was waiting for a car and she explained to me that since it was the last Saturday of the month it was seet setall. Seet Setall is a nation wide campaign for everyone to spend the morning of the last Saturday of the month cleaning their villages and surrounding environs. This means that any public transportation on the roads faces a potential fine because this means that they are not in fact in their villages cleaning up. I was unaware of all of this so I had unwittingly decided to travel at the worst possible time of the month.
Finally around 10:30 a car came with space, I got on and breathed a sigh of relief assuming that I would make it to Erica's in about an hour. Oh how foolish of me. About 5 k down the road we got stopped at a police checkpoint. The driver explained that he was just bringing all of us to the neighboring town to go to the market. So we continued on down the road dropped off a bunch of people and then pulled over in the shade while the driver got out and walked back to the police checkpoint, for no reason that I could figure out.
Once the driver returned we continued another 10 k down the road and then around 12:15 the driver pulled over in the shade again, got out and walked away. I was able to figure out that we would now have to wait until 1 for Seet Setall to be over and then we could continue on. We had stopped in this particular patch of shade because just around the corner was another police checkpoint.
So 1 finally rolled around and we continued on. I got out of the car soon thereafter in Erica's village and four hours later had finally traveled the 20 k. We promptly ate lunch, got back on another car and went to Barra to get cold beers. It was really quite a Saturday. Now I know never again to try to travel on Seet Setall and I guess that's a lesson it's best I learned now rather than later.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Being Sick
Written on January 27th, 2010
Being sick is an inevitable, but unglamorous, aspect of life here as a PCV in The Gambia. Yet it is something that I feel like I would not really be compelled to write about due to its inherent messiness. Today was my first day being sick in village. Nothing serious, just a combination of a long bike ride in the hot sun, dehydration and eating of some questionable meat and rice. I woke up in the middle of the night every hour on the hour to go spend some quality time with my pit latrine. And once I woke up this morning I knew that my best option was really to just stay in bed. Six hours of lying in bed later I'm feeling better and as an indication I have begun to analyze the cultural aspects of being sick here.
In the US when you're sick its usually a given that people leave you alone, and allow you to rejoin the world at your own pace. I would not say that the same goes here. Notions of privacy are pretty non-existent. Though I had closed my front door as I lay in bed everyone and her mother from the village stuck their head into my open window to say matter of factly,
"Ramatoulie you are sick."
Yes that is generally what's happening when I'm sprawled across my bed with my arm flopped over my face. Not only did I have many visitors make astute observations of my invalid status, also at one point three small children were peering through the window at me as I tried to sleep, at another point one of my friends Ida came to my window beseeching me to buy panketos (small greasy doughnuts).
At around 3 my loud second mom Sarjo yelled at me through the window to: get up, open the door and eat rice. I opened the door, took the rice from her and sat in my backyard regarding the bowl for a while. I considered my options: take a couple spoonfuls, throw it down my pit latrine and pretend I had eaten or attempt to explain that I was the kind of sick where eating really only makes things worse. I decided to explain that today my stomach (not me mind you) didn't want food. She tisked and sent me back to bed. An hour later she tried to get me to drink strong sugary attaya but again I successfully bowed out by blaming my stomach.
Aside from being force fed while being sick the second interesting aspect of being sick here is the way you talk about being sick. In the US I would say "I feel like crap. I want to hurl." and you would nod and leave me alone.
Here people are so superstitious that even saying you are sick is kind of frowned upon. You say things like, "My head hurts," "My stomach is running," "My body is tired," or "I have a little malaria today." When someone asks you if your better you say you are, even if you really aren't/ This can make it all very confusing because I end up saying, "Yes I'm better, no I'm not sick my stomach is just running." and then flopping on my bed.
But I guess the best survival method is laughter and it is all pretty hilarious especially when you've made it out the other end.
Being sick is an inevitable, but unglamorous, aspect of life here as a PCV in The Gambia. Yet it is something that I feel like I would not really be compelled to write about due to its inherent messiness. Today was my first day being sick in village. Nothing serious, just a combination of a long bike ride in the hot sun, dehydration and eating of some questionable meat and rice. I woke up in the middle of the night every hour on the hour to go spend some quality time with my pit latrine. And once I woke up this morning I knew that my best option was really to just stay in bed. Six hours of lying in bed later I'm feeling better and as an indication I have begun to analyze the cultural aspects of being sick here.
In the US when you're sick its usually a given that people leave you alone, and allow you to rejoin the world at your own pace. I would not say that the same goes here. Notions of privacy are pretty non-existent. Though I had closed my front door as I lay in bed everyone and her mother from the village stuck their head into my open window to say matter of factly,
"Ramatoulie you are sick."
Yes that is generally what's happening when I'm sprawled across my bed with my arm flopped over my face. Not only did I have many visitors make astute observations of my invalid status, also at one point three small children were peering through the window at me as I tried to sleep, at another point one of my friends Ida came to my window beseeching me to buy panketos (small greasy doughnuts).
At around 3 my loud second mom Sarjo yelled at me through the window to: get up, open the door and eat rice. I opened the door, took the rice from her and sat in my backyard regarding the bowl for a while. I considered my options: take a couple spoonfuls, throw it down my pit latrine and pretend I had eaten or attempt to explain that I was the kind of sick where eating really only makes things worse. I decided to explain that today my stomach (not me mind you) didn't want food. She tisked and sent me back to bed. An hour later she tried to get me to drink strong sugary attaya but again I successfully bowed out by blaming my stomach.
Aside from being force fed while being sick the second interesting aspect of being sick here is the way you talk about being sick. In the US I would say "I feel like crap. I want to hurl." and you would nod and leave me alone.
Here people are so superstitious that even saying you are sick is kind of frowned upon. You say things like, "My head hurts," "My stomach is running," "My body is tired," or "I have a little malaria today." When someone asks you if your better you say you are, even if you really aren't/ This can make it all very confusing because I end up saying, "Yes I'm better, no I'm not sick my stomach is just running." and then flopping on my bed.
But I guess the best survival method is laughter and it is all pretty hilarious especially when you've made it out the other end.
Things I Did This Week that Count as Doing My Job
Written on January 24th, 2010
1) weighed adorable (and sometimes screaming out of fear of me) babies
2) went to a naming ceremony, held a 1 week old baby, watched its head be shaved, ate lots of food, danced
3) drank attaya (a strong tea served in a shot glass with lots of sugar)
4) shelled peanuts
5) took a beautiful bike ride on a packed red dirt road among baobab and tall grass
6) got mistaken for a former, male, tall and 1/2 Brazilian volunteer and had to explain in Wolof, while riding a bike, that I was not in fact Pateh
7) filled out birth records--probably not legal or helpful
8) ate lots of icees
9) sat under a big tree and read
10) went to the market
11) did I say drink attaya--I do that a lot
12) fetched water
13) went to a Gambian style track meet--one event was racing with buckets of water on your head
14) saw a man walking his goat on a leash while riding his bike
15) made french fries
16) eating oranges, bean sandwiches and drinking semi-cold Coke
1) weighed adorable (and sometimes screaming out of fear of me) babies
2) went to a naming ceremony, held a 1 week old baby, watched its head be shaved, ate lots of food, danced
3) drank attaya (a strong tea served in a shot glass with lots of sugar)
4) shelled peanuts
5) took a beautiful bike ride on a packed red dirt road among baobab and tall grass
6) got mistaken for a former, male, tall and 1/2 Brazilian volunteer and had to explain in Wolof, while riding a bike, that I was not in fact Pateh
7) filled out birth records--probably not legal or helpful
8) ate lots of icees
9) sat under a big tree and read
10) went to the market
11) did I say drink attaya--I do that a lot
12) fetched water
13) went to a Gambian style track meet--one event was racing with buckets of water on your head
14) saw a man walking his goat on a leash while riding his bike
15) made french fries
16) eating oranges, bean sandwiches and drinking semi-cold Coke
The Rabbit Hole
Written on January 15th, 2010
Sometimes living here things happen that I don't find particularly remarkable or funny but that cause me to pause and think "people back home would get a kick out of this." Today was one of those days. Since I moved into my house at my permanent site there has been a small hole in the corner of my small backyard. I didn't think much of it other then choosing to place my plastic lawn chair not next to it because you never know when a small hole might become big and I didn't want to deal with that or exacerbate it by sitting near it.
Anyways, the other day my host father was in my backyard for another reason and noticed it. He explained to me that it was a rabbit hole and then, as far as I could understand with my elementary Wolof, he said that he would fix it later.
Well later was this morning/evening. He began by pouring and entire bedong (jerry can) of water into the hole. Right at the end a rabbit popped out of the hole, I screamed and he dropped the bedong but we didn't catch it. The sighting emboldened my host father however and he proceeded to pour three more bedongs into the hole. This was in no way a successful approach for drowning the rabbit out--it merely enlarged the hole. At this point I was 45 minutes late to bike 10 kilometers for a batik making workshop so we had to leave the rabbit for the day. To ensure that it didn't leave the hole he stuffed it with two pairs of old pants. Upon my return this evening the rabbit operation recommenced. Our tactics didn't change much to begin with, we had just attracted more spectators. My backyard is small (probably 2 yards by 5 yards) but there were six to ten people crowded around a hole in one corner--like the Gambian version of a clown car.
Two bedongs later new tactics were introduced. Neem leaves (a bitter/semi-poisonous leaf used for many things here including mosquito repellent) were pounded and stuffed in the hole in the hopes that the "bitter taste" combined with the water would draw it out.
No luck.
Next a pick/stick was taken to the hole and it was significantly enlarged. Still no luck. Also, I failed to mention it but all of this happened after sunset by flashlight. Anyways, defeated my host father stuffed the hole with the old pants, filled it with dirt and we called off the search.
As I write now I sit at a a safe distance from the hole for fear that (1) it might all collapse as I doubt the structural integrity of two pairs of pants, (2) the rabbit might finally come out and I know it won't be happy. I know I wouldn't be six bedongs of water later.
Sometimes living here things happen that I don't find particularly remarkable or funny but that cause me to pause and think "people back home would get a kick out of this." Today was one of those days. Since I moved into my house at my permanent site there has been a small hole in the corner of my small backyard. I didn't think much of it other then choosing to place my plastic lawn chair not next to it because you never know when a small hole might become big and I didn't want to deal with that or exacerbate it by sitting near it.
Anyways, the other day my host father was in my backyard for another reason and noticed it. He explained to me that it was a rabbit hole and then, as far as I could understand with my elementary Wolof, he said that he would fix it later.
Well later was this morning/evening. He began by pouring and entire bedong (jerry can) of water into the hole. Right at the end a rabbit popped out of the hole, I screamed and he dropped the bedong but we didn't catch it. The sighting emboldened my host father however and he proceeded to pour three more bedongs into the hole. This was in no way a successful approach for drowning the rabbit out--it merely enlarged the hole. At this point I was 45 minutes late to bike 10 kilometers for a batik making workshop so we had to leave the rabbit for the day. To ensure that it didn't leave the hole he stuffed it with two pairs of old pants. Upon my return this evening the rabbit operation recommenced. Our tactics didn't change much to begin with, we had just attracted more spectators. My backyard is small (probably 2 yards by 5 yards) but there were six to ten people crowded around a hole in one corner--like the Gambian version of a clown car.
Two bedongs later new tactics were introduced. Neem leaves (a bitter/semi-poisonous leaf used for many things here including mosquito repellent) were pounded and stuffed in the hole in the hopes that the "bitter taste" combined with the water would draw it out.
No luck.
Next a pick/stick was taken to the hole and it was significantly enlarged. Still no luck. Also, I failed to mention it but all of this happened after sunset by flashlight. Anyways, defeated my host father stuffed the hole with the old pants, filled it with dirt and we called off the search.
As I write now I sit at a a safe distance from the hole for fear that (1) it might all collapse as I doubt the structural integrity of two pairs of pants, (2) the rabbit might finally come out and I know it won't be happy. I know I wouldn't be six bedongs of water later.
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