Gossiping In Gambia

Written on April 21st, 2011

I am a fan of gossip. For better or worse this is a well known fact about me. When I began gossiping, in Wolof, to Gambians, this is when I knew that I had truly arrived here.
Last Saturday the Pulaar baker who rents the hut next to me came out of his house around 9 am and it was clear something was wrong. He looked up at the sky blankly and when we asked him what was wrong he didn't respond. He promptly left the compound but it didn't take long for word to get back to us that he was wandering around the village, walking around in circles, being followed by a pack of children like the Pied Piper. My host mom turned to me and very frankly said, "He's crazy now now." About an hour later he was finally escorted back to my compound by a group of men from the village. They got him into the house and quickly about fifteen people were crowding around the door, peering over each other heads trying to get a look at him. So--basically--in the span of a few hours my neighbor had gone crazy. I left soon after taht to attend a program in a nearby village but heard when I got back that he wandered about the compound all day and night. By Monday morning his older brother had come to pick him up and take him back to their home village. I haven't been able to come up with a logical/scientific explanation for what happened, maybe he took the wrong combination of traditional medicine and was on a really bad trip. But the explanation that everyone has been giving is that one of his brothers, who lives in Guinea Conakry, wanted him to come and help him farm and since he refused the brother set a voodoo spell on him. Seems just as likely an explanation as anything.
So where has the gossiping come in. I found myself telling my story to anyone who would listen, with my punch line being "Isn't that so strange!" So lets consider me publishing this story on my blog as an act of cross cultural and continental gossip.
xoxo Gossip Girl in The Gambia