Hey all,
Just wanted to tell you I'm heading back to site the day after tomorrow, so expect another long gap in communication.
I'm now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! Don't forget to write PCV instead of PCT on anythign you send to me starting... well, probably three weeks ago but oh well. We were sworn in at the US Ambassador's house. He used to work for Peace Corps, as did his wife. Now he lives in an amazing beach front house with a swimming pool...
And I went bee keeping last night! We put on big suits and went out in the dark. African bees are a little harder to work with than American/European bees since they haven't been bred to be docile. We smoked them to get them kind of dopey, and then opened up the hives and looked at the honey. My group didn't end up finding any good honey to harvest in the two hives we looked at, but the other group did. It was probably the best thing I have ever eaten in my life.
Looking at the hives was really interesting. We were able to see where fresh and capped honey was, where the brood cells were, and the difference between drones and worker bees. We also saw some comb moths that were infecting one of the hives and the cells where new queen bees were laid. The whole time you could hear the bees buzzing around your ears and bumping into your head piece. When they landed on my gloves I could feel them vibrating. We watched one sting Andy's glove, which was interesting to see.
The main problem with African bees, and why they are deemed "killer," is that when one stings, it releases a pharamone that attracts other bees to sting also. So when you're beekeeping and you get stung, you have to either get the heck out or cover yourself in enough smoke to mask the pharamone. I didn't get stung in the bee suit, but once we took it off and were eating honey I got stung twice. I'm still standing.
My break in the big city (relatively speaking) has been nice, but I'm excited to go back and try to get used to my real life. Please keep up the snail mail, since it's been really nice to get your letters and packages. Lots of people have asked what might be good to send in a package, so here are just a few suggestions:
Dried fruit, magazines, anything just-add-water (soup mix, boiling bags, pasta, powdered sauce mix), any kind of bar (Lara, Cliff, Luna, Chewy, etc.), nuts, granola, juice powder, books, any kind of yummy snack you can think of that won't rot in the mail... Just nice notes from home are also really, really, really nice.
Fo wati do (Until next time).
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Picture Post
Typical breakfast: Rice Porridge
Food bowls
Marathon March
My henna-ed hand
My namesake's mom and siblings
Me and my namesake
The beach in Fajara Friday, January 9, 2009
The Konkuran
There is a circumcision camp going on in Wurokang right now. As a girl, I don’t get to see much of anything, but there are certainly some noticeable changes in the village. The first day of the camp all the women in the village wore pants and danced. Scott went to the bush to see the boys and he said they were sitting under a mango tree nursing their wounds. He thought some were girls before they were wearing headscarves. He gave them cookies and they said a prayer. At night you can hear drums and see a bonfire going in the bush.
But the really noticeable change in the village is the entrance of the konkuran. Today, as I was walking back from Kwinella with Scott we saw a parade of drumming, clapping boys coming toward us. One of them was dressed all in straw and wielding machetes. Scott turns to me and says “Seriously, you might want to run.” And I do, along with all the other women outside their compounds. This is a serious run, not a little jog. People want to get home. When I got back to my compound the women were standing at the gate peeking out, but soon Kombe hustled us all into the women’s house and locked the door. When Fatou went outside into the backyard, she got yelled at. This is serious business. If the konkuran catches a woman, people say he will beat you unless you give him money. But in practice you never really know what to expect, and it’s not worth messing with.
The konkuran came through the village several other times, and even if it was dark or the middle of dinner, all activity stopped to go inside and lock the door.
But the really noticeable change in the village is the entrance of the konkuran. Today, as I was walking back from Kwinella with Scott we saw a parade of drumming, clapping boys coming toward us. One of them was dressed all in straw and wielding machetes. Scott turns to me and says “Seriously, you might want to run.” And I do, along with all the other women outside their compounds. This is a serious run, not a little jog. People want to get home. When I got back to my compound the women were standing at the gate peeking out, but soon Kombe hustled us all into the women’s house and locked the door. When Fatou went outside into the backyard, she got yelled at. This is serious business. If the konkuran catches a woman, people say he will beat you unless you give him money. But in practice you never really know what to expect, and it’s not worth messing with.
The konkuran came through the village several other times, and even if it was dark or the middle of dinner, all activity stopped to go inside and lock the door.
Gambian Questions & Comments
Do you know 50 cent? What about Tupac?
Is America bigger than the world?
You walk like a soldier.
Are there stars and the moon in America too?
Is America bigger than the world?
You walk like a soldier.
Are there stars and the moon in America too?
My Name
My new Gambian name is Sarata. It was given to me by Kombe, passed through a man in sunglasses who prayed over me while massaging my hairline and blowing in my ears. All Gambian names are passed on, and my namesake is Kombe’s shy 3-year old neice. For the ceremony, I wore one of Kombe’s fancy prayer outfits, bright blue with a multicolored shawl. The men of the village sat around me on mats, eating kola nuts. The women and children sat behind. Once all five of the trainees had been given their names (the others were Bunang, Nfamara, Fanta, and Nyima), the men grabbed their fried pastries and mango-flavored juice and cleared out. The women stayed in the alkaloo’s compound to drum on plastic jugs and dance.
Since I’ve moved to Kafuta, I’ve taken on the last name of the family I stay with: Jatta. Most people call me Sarata Jatta-Njai, since Njai is traditionally associated with “friend of the toubabs.”
Since I’ve moved to Kafuta, I’ve taken on the last name of the family I stay with: Jatta. Most people call me Sarata Jatta-Njai, since Njai is traditionally associated with “friend of the toubabs.”
The toubabs at the naming ceremony (Fanta, Nyima, Sarata, Bunang, Nfamara)
Scott getting his name
Tobaski
For Tobaski, the celebration of the end of the Hajj, Wurokang just about doubled in size – all the bumsters came back to play. The city folk definitely stand out, with clean white sneakers and blue jeans. Also lots of 50 Cent clothing and one brand new Cannabis t-shirt. The night before Tobaski the village was humming with women pounding rice for the following day and the little girls getting mesh braided into their hair.
We woke up in the morning and I put on my nice dress and sat on the road with my family. After breakfast, my host mom handed me a pink salibayoo outfit. I guess my American dress didn’t quite cut it. I put it on with a headwrap and headscarf and followed most of the villagers to the mosque. Everyone sat in front of the mosque, outside, on mats with the men in front and the women and children behind. There was a group prayer and then the elder men of the village stood and draped themselves in a sheet and prayed for about 15 minutes. All of a sudden it was over and everyone shook hands and dispersed.
The rest of the day I wandered around kind of aimlessly, not sure what exactly this holiday meant. The men slaughtered a goat by slitting its throat and then dissected it for our lunch time feast. The women cooked fried rice with potatoes, onions, and eggplant. It was tasty. I avoided the goat.
Toward evening time, all the little boys and girls and the women got dressed up in fancy new clothes and walked from compound to compound asking for prayers and minties. One little girl had shoes that were way to big and had to waddle to keep them on. A speaker system was set up at the water pump by the mosque and people stayed up late into the night, dancing and drinking attaya and lait.
And I thought that was the end but it wasn’t. The next say was kind of like a giant hangover until the evening, when people did the whole thing all over again. And the next night. A little more of a holiday than I expected.
Little girls all dolled up for Tobaski
We woke up in the morning and I put on my nice dress and sat on the road with my family. After breakfast, my host mom handed me a pink salibayoo outfit. I guess my American dress didn’t quite cut it. I put it on with a headwrap and headscarf and followed most of the villagers to the mosque. Everyone sat in front of the mosque, outside, on mats with the men in front and the women and children behind. There was a group prayer and then the elder men of the village stood and draped themselves in a sheet and prayed for about 15 minutes. All of a sudden it was over and everyone shook hands and dispersed.
The rest of the day I wandered around kind of aimlessly, not sure what exactly this holiday meant. The men slaughtered a goat by slitting its throat and then dissected it for our lunch time feast. The women cooked fried rice with potatoes, onions, and eggplant. It was tasty. I avoided the goat.
Toward evening time, all the little boys and girls and the women got dressed up in fancy new clothes and walked from compound to compound asking for prayers and minties. One little girl had shoes that were way to big and had to waddle to keep them on. A speaker system was set up at the water pump by the mosque and people stayed up late into the night, dancing and drinking attaya and lait.
And I thought that was the end but it wasn’t. The next say was kind of like a giant hangover until the evening, when people did the whole thing all over again. And the next night. A little more of a holiday than I expected.
Me in my salibayoo
Killing the goat
Little girls all dolled up for TobaskiKamara Kunda
My training family was fairly small as far as Gambian family units go. My host mother, Kombe, is the head of the compound. Her husband lives in SerraKunda, along with many of her 9 children. Her husband’s brother, Ousman, lives in the compound in Wurokang along with two of Kombe’s children – Ibraima (14) and Nyominding (10). When I first arrived, this was it for the members of Kamara Kunda, but after Tobaski the compound filled up a bit. Two of Kombe’s son’s wives came to stay in the compound with their children – Ayiso brought her two daughters (Fatu and Nyima) and her toddler son (Mohammed), and Kaddie Toureh came with her baby, Fatu.
The compound itself is really clean, in part because Kombe doesn’t keep any livestock. There is a round central area with a cement bantaba, and several houses along the edge. I lived in a mud house with a corrugate roof, attached to the house where the women and children lived. My section of the house had two rooms, a front room with a desk and a chair, and a back room with my bed and a trunk. My own backyard is fenced off and includes a cement walkway to a latrine and shower area.
At night, we would lie outside on the bantaba chatting (mostly listening for me, since my Mandinka is still small small) or playing cards. Visitors usually come by after dinner, and since Kombe is the chairperson of the Village Development Committee, there is usually some official business to attend to like clearing balances with the flour mill. The sky is clear and starry and the nights are cool.
The compound itself is really clean, in part because Kombe doesn’t keep any livestock. There is a round central area with a cement bantaba, and several houses along the edge. I lived in a mud house with a corrugate roof, attached to the house where the women and children lived. My section of the house had two rooms, a front room with a desk and a chair, and a back room with my bed and a trunk. My own backyard is fenced off and includes a cement walkway to a latrine and shower area.
At night, we would lie outside on the bantaba chatting (mostly listening for me, since my Mandinka is still small small) or playing cards. Visitors usually come by after dinner, and since Kombe is the chairperson of the Village Development Committee, there is usually some official business to attend to like clearing balances with the flour mill. The sky is clear and starry and the nights are cool.
Me with some selections of my training family (my neice Nyima, siter Nyominding, brother Ibraima, wife Kaddie Toureh, neice Fatou, and mom Kombe)Training Village
I spent the past two months living in a very tiny village called Wurokang in Kiang Central. The whole village consisted of one row of compounds on either side of the main south bank road. I could probably walk from one end to the other in about 5 minutes. Wurokang has two pumps where the women go to get water, one mosque, and probably about 300 inhabitants. It has two small bitiks, where you can buy common necessities like soap and oil, and one tailor. On either side of the village fields extend back. This is the land where the people make their living growing groundnuts, rice, and coos. We lived in Wurokang toward the end of the groundnut harvest time, which meant that I had a pretty serious blister on my thumb from cracking peanuts on the concrete for long stretches of time. If you walk through the fields, the peanut plants have all been pulled out of the ground and piled in big bushels that the men guard from mischievous cows. They use thin wooden hockey-stick shaped tools to separate the nuts from the ground nut hay.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the work in the village falls to the women. They cook, fetch water, garden, keep the compounds clean, pound the rice and coos to extract it from its shell…
The kids put on their blue and white uniforms and walk to Kwinella for school, a larger village about 2k away. On Fridays and weekend nights they go to Arabic school, where they build a huge bonfire and sing late into the night. Everyone in Wurokang is Muslim, but bits of African animist culture still remain. The babies, and many of the grownups, wear jujus around their necks, waists, and arms to protect them from harm or evil. To pray, women wrap themselves tight in scarves but otherwise modesty applies only to the bottom half. It’s too hot and there are too many babies to feed for the women to worry about covering up on top.
As for the Peace Corps Trainees, the five of us meet every morning at our teacher’s house to learn language, and again for lunch, which is, like all meals in The Gambia, served in a communal food bowl. Usually it’s rice with some kind of sauce – peanut, leaf, or oil and tomato. We spend the rest of the day filling our time with chores – laundry, fetching water, studying, doing assignments, gardening – or hanging out with our families and each other.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the work in the village falls to the women. They cook, fetch water, garden, keep the compounds clean, pound the rice and coos to extract it from its shell…
The kids put on their blue and white uniforms and walk to Kwinella for school, a larger village about 2k away. On Fridays and weekend nights they go to Arabic school, where they build a huge bonfire and sing late into the night. Everyone in Wurokang is Muslim, but bits of African animist culture still remain. The babies, and many of the grownups, wear jujus around their necks, waists, and arms to protect them from harm or evil. To pray, women wrap themselves tight in scarves but otherwise modesty applies only to the bottom half. It’s too hot and there are too many babies to feed for the women to worry about covering up on top.
As for the Peace Corps Trainees, the five of us meet every morning at our teacher’s house to learn language, and again for lunch, which is, like all meals in The Gambia, served in a communal food bowl. Usually it’s rice with some kind of sauce – peanut, leaf, or oil and tomato. We spend the rest of the day filling our time with chores – laundry, fetching water, studying, doing assignments, gardening – or hanging out with our families and each other.
The Wurokang Health/Agroforestry Training Class of 2008.
I'm back!
Okay, after two months with no access to the internet, I am back in the land of computers, cold beverages, and food that does not include rice! So, what follows is a whirlwind adventure of my past two months. Read on.
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