A year at site

Obama comes to The Gambia (in poster form). Jackie (a SUPER good friend) worked on the Obama campaign in Alaska and sent me this poster. Everybody you meet over here has heard of Obama and are SOOOO excited that he is the president now.




The fulas (my language and ethnicity) are the cow herders over here. And they too support Obama.


The rainy season had ended and now the harvests are in! And after the ground nut harvest, we collect the ground nut hay. The nuts grow underground and the green, leafy part of the plant is what we call "the hay". Above you see the hay being hauled back to village on a donkey cart to feed the horses and donkeys (and a few lucky sheep and goats).




Youssifa, Mussa, Allison and Adama all had horrible, infected hands from working in the fields separating the groundnut hay from the ground nuts. They use sticks to separate the material, and developed blisters from the work. They did not clean the wounds well and ....got nasty infections. So I took them to the hospital and now do their dressings in village every other day. The picture was taken the day we went to the hospital to drain the puss from Youssifa's hand



Youssifa and Mussa after I bandaged up their hands one morning. I guess all those years of being around my mother (the nurse) had finally rubbed off! Thanks mom.

Tabaski is here!! This is like a Muslim version of Christmas. If you have enough money, you buy a ram. If not, you go for a goat. The streets of town were lined in sheep 3 days before the festivities waiting to be purchased ...........and then slaughtered.

The cold season is officially here!!! This is Fulo sporting his wool jacket in the morning. Yes, it has gotten to about 65 degrees at night and even I am putting on my fleece jacket in the morning AND evening brrrrrrr.

The BEST advertising I have to seen to date. I got this picture on the ferry on the way to the capital. Best to read it out loud. All the vehicles in the Gambia are second hand, so this van probably originated in England, and then was shipped over to Gambia.

Amadou, the man in purple spotted me at our market and INSISTED on taking me and my bicycle back to village, despite the fact that the horse cart ride is 1.5 hours and i can bike the distance in 45 minutes. But what the hey! Me and my bike got a free ride back to village.

And a few more Obama photos.......

Fatou, a lady that makes American style dognuhts at the 'luumo' (weekly market).

Mariama, the first baby named after me (now there are 5) also supports Obama. She can now WALK!!!!

read all about Brian

Brian is a fellow PCV in my group who needs to get a real job and write professionally. Go read his blog. Time well spent.

One of my favorite entries:

http://thegambiaisreallyhot.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html

To Toubabadou and beyond

In late August, three Gambian PCV's and myself headed up to Dakar, Senegal to do a 4.5 km swim called Traverse Dakar-Goree. The objective is to swim from the mainland (Dakar) to the island of Goree. It was AWESOME!! There were about 20 PCV's from Senegal and the four of us from Gambia that made up the Peace Corps team. About 500 people participated total. Here we are on the beach getting ready for the event to begin.

Stripes is in the pink suit and I am the one to her right adjusting my swim cap.

The start of the swim. Again you can see Stripes and myself getting our feet wet. In the background you can see the LARGE cargo ship to the left of the island of Goree. The small boat and canoe are support for the race. The girl that organized all the PC team won her division and has an elaborate trophy for her efforts. Congrats Megan!

October was an incredible event-filled month. I returned from 'Toubabadou' (where the white people - Toubabs) live. I got to visit Croatia and Germany with my mom and aunt. We visited with people we have not seen in 20 years. We got so see our old house, former classmates, neighbors and friends. It was nothing short of amazing. To be back in my old 'stomping' grounds and eating things like 'chivapcici' was the best way to celebrate the year mark in my PCV service.

The day of mom & Aunt Kathy's arrival. We had quite the official welcome for them. On the right is Brigitta, the most wonderful lady ever! She organized the welcome effort and got half of the town to show up for my moms arrival. (I arrived a few days prior to my mom....that is why i look so clean). My mom is on the right of me, and my aunt is on the left.

Croatia is beautiful!! I now fully realize why it is such a tourist destination. Take a look at Picasa for the rest...

Reuniting with my old best friend, Katica in one of the many coffee shop/bars in Vrboska. She is also the only one with out husband/kids just like me! Right behind us is our old school. It is embarrassing, but quite true that I have lost my ability to speak Croatian. Thank goodness all of my old classmates can speak EXCELENT English. I had the chance to hang out with 5/6 of my old classmates!

Our old house. It is hard to describe what it was like to see it again. Sad, happy, nostalgic - all rolled up into one. The house is still in remarkably good shape for being vacant for the last 20 years. We used to live on the level with the arched doorway. The guests lived above, in the back, and below.

One of my most favorite spots when I was a kid. I would spend hours trying to 'fish' right here with a hook and stale bread as bait. Never caught any fish, but would always try!

Visiting Germany with mom & Brigitta. It was so incredibly cold. I had to borrow almost all the clothes I had on!

Then after an incredible 3 weeks in Croatia and one week in Germany it was time to return to my second home, The Gambia. Returning was more difficult than I expected. Not because I did not want to go back, but because I missed my flight in Germany. I took a bus to the correct airport and finally left Germany, then took another series of buses to travel trough Spain, finally making it to Madrid just in time for my flight to Morocco. Whew! Made it. Then I had to wait overnight in the Dakar airport swatting away the mosquitoes, so I could pay a 'normal' fare to the car park, because at night they charge outrageous fares. Then I traveled 7+ hours in a hot, dusty, cramped 'set-place' or station wagon back to Gambia. Now I really made it back. Soooo happy to be back with my family, back in my familiar hut. Two girls in my compound spent two hours helping me clean everything up (a lot of debris collects from the thatched roof). After everything was spic and span we had dinner and I went back to my hut because a gentle rain started to come down. After dark, I went to bed, excited to get a real nights sleep in a real bed. This was going to be fantastic! In the middle of the night I wake up to a very loud crash. I reach for my flashlight to see what the noise was. At first all I see is a lot of dust in the air, so I get out of my mosquito to get a better look. I survey the scene and I realize that two of my four walls have crumbled. Luckily they fell toward the outside, otherwise I might have been under some rubble! Then I wondered what to do. It was 2:30am and I know my whole compound is asleep. But I know that if I wait until morning, everyone is going to be able to see me sleeping in my bed! So I put on some clothes and open my front door. My brother happened to be walking back to his house! I asked him to come into my house to have a look. He was quite surprised and woke my mother up immediately. He told me I could not stay in my house, and that we would move my mattress into my mom's house and I would sleep there. So I did as he said. the next morning we surveyed the damage, and all the men in my compound went to work cleaning up the debris. It is very common for houses to fall in the rainy season. There are 6 other houses in my village that have crumbled this year. Including another house in my own compound. This year the rains were much heavier than normal, so we had more houses come down.

Bocar in blue on the left, my bed behind him, Usuman with the shovel, Issah and Hablai looking on.

Then the PC housing crew came out a few days later and re-built my house in about a week! While they were working on my house, I continued to live with my mom in her hut. So now I can say that I am 30 years old, and still living with my mother! I have always wanted to be able to say that.

My re-built house!!!!

After my house was re-built things went back to normal. The rains are over and it is time to harvest! The coos (millet) gets laid out to dry in the sun before it gets put into 'storage'. They keep the millet on the heads until you want to eat it. Then you have to pound it 3 times. Once to get it off the stalk, the second time to take the hull off of the seed, and a third time to pound it into a powder. Then it is mixed with a gel made from tree sap and 'steamed'. This process usually takes 2-3 days to complete.

Sarjo laying out the coos to dry. At this stage we call it "goudje"

While the coos lays out to dry, chickens, goats and donkeys come by to sneak a snack. It is every ones job in the compound to 'shoo' the animals away. You do this by yelling 'ACHAAA' loudly.

My field corn! Corn is primarily a snack food. It is the first crop that is harvested after the rains. Corn breaks the 'hungry season' everyone is overjoyed to have some good food to eat! In late afternoon all the 'small boys' from your compound run out to the corn fields grab a few ears off of the stalk and run back to the compound. Then they gather some hot coals and place them on a tin container. Then they place the corn right on top of the coals to 'cook'. This process blackens and heats up each kernel. Then you eat!

Corn is also used to a lesser extent for the coos. When the women in my compound prepare coos or "lechery" they use 3/4 coos and 1/4 corn powder. They pound the coos and corn separately, and then when both are a fine powder, they mix them together for dinner & breakfast.

The peanuts, the main cash crop of the Gambia are also being harvested right now. This is my mom, Jabu, in Salif's field pulling up peanuts.

Hablai leaning on the peanuts and my brother Salif on the right.

Here you can see the big heap of peanut plants with the peanuts still attached. They are placed here to dry and will be separated later. This is my brothers only source of income for the whole year, he supports 7 people.

Upon my return from Europe, I have started a new activity for the kids in my village. Some really great friends sent me a coloring book and some 'twistables' crayons. Kids in Gambia have never seen a crayon before, let alone know how to use it! So I now invite one child per day into my hut and let them choose one page out of the coloring book, and then they get to color and keep the page. Here you see Salimina with his completed page. You can see that every square inch gets covered with color. They LOVE IT! Now the adults have started to ask if they can have a turn too.




For Halloween a few of us got together at Stripes' place. I biked the 40km to her site. She lives in a big town that had a functioning peanut factory back in the colonial days. The old factory is right on the river and has a big boat dock. She organized a dinner, haunted peanut search in the factory and camp out on the dock. We even dressed up a little, here is my best cow-girl stance. The shirt came all the way from Kansas!

Pirogues, Mice & Pigeon Pea

I will do my best to bring you up to speed on my life for the past few months. As some of you may know, my personal life back in the states has taken a dive, so I was concentrating on other things for a while. But now I'm back and ready to tell you some stories.

Pirogue Ride
The most dramatic item is I (possibly) got pick-pocketed! I was not hurt, and did not know that it even happened till much later. Josiah (a sitemate) and I were headed in to Kombo because one of our friends was COS'ing (Close of Service). We reach Barra, (where the ferry takes us to the south bank), to find out that the ferry was not running. We heard about this on the radio, and the ferry was supposed to be out of commission several weeks ago. Needles to say it was not a surprise to see that they finally got around to doing the work now. We follow a crowd of Gambians to find several pirogues waiting to take people across the river. Josiah and I survey the scene: Concrete dock, 4.5 foot drop down to the boat, waves pushing the boat up and down against the concrete dock. People being lowered down into the boat by other people. Sketchy to say the least. Seemed very unsafe. If you missed the boat, you would get pinched between the boat & the concrete dock. We decide to examine other options. We follow other people to the 'beach' where we find 2 pirogues about 15 yards out in the water. This seems like a much safer bet, we just have to get wet. No problem. There are several bumsters (young men calling you "hey boss lady, I will help you") trying to get you to get on their shoulders and they will wade out to the pirogue so you don't have to get as wet. (Most Gambians are very afraid of the water) We insist that we are OK and will wade out to the boat. We have to carry our bags over our heads because the water is chest deep. This is where it gets difficult. There are about 4 bumsters with Gambians on their shoulders trying to climb up to the ledge of the boat, this ledge as about 3in wide and 14in long, just over my head. So I get clobbered trying to get up on that small ledge, people are kicking and pushing and shoving because there is limited space on the boat, and many, many people trying to get on the boat. Luckily, Josiah gets on and takes my bag so I have two hands to try to pry myself up onto the boat. Eventually, I succeed, with only minor bruises. Later I realise that my wallet is missing from my pants. Before wading out, I separated my money because if I lost my bag, I wanted some cash on me, and if I lost what was on me, I had some in my bag. So I still don't know if my wallet innocently swam away in the confusion, or if someone pickpocketed me. We get on to the boat and feel a sense of accomplishment. I look around and notice that there are 46 people on the boat when we realize they can't get the motor started. 20 minutes later a police dingy boat trades engines with us. Then one of the men pour diesel into the gas tank, but also manage to pour some on the spark plugs as well, so the second engine is a no-go. Ten minutes later the men in our boat talk a second pirogue into towing us across. Yay! It works and we are on our way.....until the second pirogues engine stops about halfway across the river (it is 2-3 miles across) then they get it working again and we complete the crossing of the river only to discover twice the number of bumsters on the Banjul side of the river all trying to get us to jump on their shoulders. Since this is Gambia, single file lines do not exist, and everyone wants out of the boat immediately. So instead of stepping out on to the ledge we used getting on to the boat, everyone rushes to one side of the boat, and it almost capsizes. The boat was at a 45 degree angle - no joke! No matter how many times we told the bumsters "NO", they would not move out of the way so we could jump down. Eventually Josiah jumped down and kicked a bumster in the head on the way down. Luckily for me they moved out of the way a little so I could jump into the chest-deep water after handing Josiah my bag. By the time that we got to the shore we were feeling like we accomplished something that day. And only two people vomited in the boat on the way over!

A pirogue loaded down with vegetable oil in front of the ferry (on a day the ferry was running)

Battle of the Mice
In true Gambian fashion, when constructing the floor to my hut, the men in my village used one bag of cement instead of the required 2 that PC supplied them. They chose to add twice the amount of sand, so someone else can use the 'leftover' concrete. This causes the cement to be be very brittle, and break easily. The mice in my village have done extensive testing of the concrete in my hut, and have decided they like it ALOT! Each time I leave my house for a day or two - I find a new mouse hole! It is really fun to find their new home each time I come home. To date I have patched 14 holes, and counting! So in an effort to help her daughter, my mother sends me some mouse traps. That should help! Weeeelllll the mice over here weigh less (just like the children) and were not heavy enough to trip the spring. My strategy? I keep feeding them peanut butter in the mouse trap until they gain enough weight so they trip the spring! So far I have caught one. I think I need to come up with a new strategy, so I am considering getting a cat. The problem will be to convince my family not to throw things at it. (they tend to kick the dogs and throw things at the cats to get them to go away).

First DEAD Mouse!!!! and the hole he built in my house.

The President Comes for a Visit
His excellency, Dr. Alhagi YaYa A. J. J. J. Jammeh visited my work place on his yearly tour called "Dialogue with the People" He arrived in his stretch H2 Hummer from Silicon Valley, CA. Upon his arrival he thew cookies from his oversize sunroof and greeted the people with a smile and a wave. His entourage of people included about 250 cars, a military convoy including 45 soldiers, several machine guns, AK-47's and riot helmets. He was escorted into the 'garden' section and was told about all the trees in the nursery. He took a liking to my pigeon pea (a tree used as a windbreak, is nitrogen-fixing and produces lots and lots of beans) and upon the completion of the day asked one of his men to take me to my village so I could give him some pigeon pea. It was a hair-raising experience being driven at 70kmh up the sandy road up to my village, but I made it, and gave Jammehs' men some of my pigeon pea seed!

The Presidential Hummer (he has 3 of them)

Nell came for a visit!
My first visitor in the Gambia!!! Nell braved the heat & the local food and made the trek up to my village to see my site after spending a few months in Senegal. Unfortunately she got a little sick at my site, but she made it out OK. Good luck up in PDX!

Nell checking out the gardens at the Stodge.

Traverse Goree 2008
Thanks to the other Nell in my life, I have developed a really liking for open-water swim events. As of now, I am planning to travel up to Dakar for a 3k swim out to the island of Goree in late August. There are 2 or 3 other PCV's who will do the adventure with me. Stay tuned.....

Rice/Food Crisis
As you may have heard, there is a serious rice shortage thanks to a series of reasons attached to the western world. This is really affecting The Gambia. PC has even had regional meetings to help us develop strategies to deal with the shortage. To give you a frame of reference, a bag of rice was 500 Dalasi when we arrived in country last September. Now it is 750. The president is currently subsidizing the price of rice and promises that it will not be more than 1,000 through this September. After September he will no longer subsidize it. PC is estimating that it will triple by next September. My brother makes about 1000 Dalasi a month at a really good job. Some people think that there might be riots next year at this time. I am fairly lucky to be leaving with the Fulas because we eat millet (coos) for 2 of our meals a day and we only eat rice for lunch, but other groups like the Mandinkas tend to eat rice 3 times a day. Maybe it will not be as bad as people think... PC is encouraging us to show intercropping (corn, beans, squash) and telling people to plant rice, and then sell it.

Buy a Man
Nurse Sarah & Nurse Kelly (two PCV's) have been on overdrive last couple of weeks getting ready for their fund raiser. They held a male auction (with a free dinner attached) to raise money for stethoscopes and books for nursing students. They even auctioned off the PC Director Mike!!! They raised close to 18,000 Dalasi in one night.


Jon, the MC for the evening (in Gambian drag) with our big boss Rodney. Rodney made the best enterance of the evening on his motorcycle!



Bjorn, one of the men for sale....trying to get a better bid.

Photo quickie 2

No I did not go to the moon, but we did just complete IST, or in service training. Including beekeeping. Here is Lindsey posing as a moonwalker. A few of us got stung, but not me!!! Yay.

<<<<<>>> Peace Corps Volunteers are NOT CIA Agents. Be sure to tell your friends! After ariving in country, we were told that it is a wide-heald belief by country nationals that PC is CIA.

A couple of weeks ago I travled to Ndugu Kebbe, that has a rockin' Lumo (market). That is me at the end in the ball cap. Chris got us all organized so we could see all the volunteers in the area. I traveld about 2.5 hours to get there.
So guess what? There is only one functioning well in village, and it goes dry every two weeks or so. I would go to the well in the morning, and there would be no water, so we wait an hour or two and some of the water comes back. It has been like this for about a month and a half. So the village decided to send two men down there for 6 hours to dig a little deeper. In this photo you see the village tailor preparing to go down. The well is curently 46 meters deep. After they finished it is about 48 meters. I'm excited to go back to village and see how the work turned out. (they dug the day before I left for Kombo) Don't worry abou me running out of water completely, I keep a small reserve in my hut, and can easily ride my bike 45 minutes to a major town that is closer to the river and has a MUCH higher water table.









Take a peek into my water supply.....46 meters is a long way to pull up the water. It takes 3 women working a pully to get the water up. You should see the caluses on my hands! I'm very proud of them.

No blog post would be complete without a little skin disease! It has gotten hot here, really hot, and with the heat come fun skin problems! A volunteer in the area diagnosed me with SCABIES! It itched like HELL! It woke me up at night, and calamine lotion did not faze it. So I purchased some scabies medecation, and applied it. Then I called the PC nurse who promptly chastized me for 'self medicating'. She ordered I come in to Kombo so she could take a look at it. Well, she did not think it was scabies, and niether did the Embasy doctor. So they sent me to MRC (medical reserch council run by the Brits) to get a skin culture done. 72 hours later, the tests turned out negative for fungus (PC Nurses guess). As it turns out the scabies medication I applied also kills fungus!! So I might have killed it off before I had the test done. Till this day it remains a medical mistery, but I am happy becuase it is gone now!

The new Health group arrived in country and had their swearing in last week. Here is Buya (from Washington) and I getting back from the festivities. Check out my new gambian compolet!

Photo quickie

Stephanie (most recently from Bend!) and I with a tuna we purchased for 180 Dalasi, or 7 Dollars!

Jon (from PDX), his handelbar mustache, and a wrap skirt celebrating St. Patty's day.

Mark (from Iowa) to my left and Brian (from New Hampsure) below me. More St. Patty's fun.

This is an RCH Clinic (Reproductive and Child Heath) I sit at the bench you see here and help Andrea (from Maine), my sitemate, out with these events every two weeks. All the women dress up in their best compolets (or outfits). Here the babies 1.) get weighed 2.) get shots like Polio, DPT, and supplements like Vitamin A. She speaks Mandinka, and I speak Puular - so between the both of us we can ask questions like: When was your baby born, what is your husbands name, what village are you from, where is your ID card..... becasue no one speaks English here!

Yay for SOLAR power! Here you see my back door and my I-Pod charging off of the sun.... THANK YOU KELLY!!!

new Pictures!

Take a look at Picassa for new photos!