Thoughts at the halfway point...

So, it has indeed been one year (and a week) since we left Minnesota one chilly March morning. I have to admit I've been feeling homesick and down-in-the-dumps recently, but everyone assures me the second year just gets better and better, so hopefully I'm due for a revival of enthusiasm and purpose! 

Here are a few things I've been up to: helping a group of nursing assistant trainees work on their health education skills, helping out at reproductive/child health clinics (a.k.a. - the place where we make babies cry) and doing health education there, trying to help out the peer health education club at the senior secondary school, as well as the youth group at Gambia Family Planning...and trying to see more of the country and visit other volunteers when possible.

Two days ago our host sister, Bintou, got married. The first I heard of it was only about 3 days before that, when she casually told me that the lucky guy was headed to the other compound to give her mother kola nuts (a highly significant act here in the Gambia!). Pa, her new husband, is a police chief...and a very nice man.

Women watching health talk while waiting to have their babies vaccinated.

Students giving health talk on prenatal services.

An excellent class of nursing assistants!

Students demonstrating proper handwashing technique as part of a presentation to people waiting in the hospital's outpatient department.

Cows relaxing on the beach in the village of Kartong.

-Mama Suso (Colette)

Approaching Peace Corps year one...

In exactly 9 days it will be 1 year since we made our way from Washington D.C. to Dakar, Senegal to begin our Peace Corps training. In the next few months we will be celebrating several milestones in our Peace Corps service: 1 year from our arrival in Senegal, 1 year since we started our training in The Gambia, and 1 year in village as official Peace Corps Volunteers. These are the periods by which Peace Corps volunteers measure their time. Those markers, and perhaps the mosque's call-to-prayer every morning, afternoon and evening...

At this point most volunteers from our group are pretty adjusted and comfortable. We consider many things normal that seemed foreign a year ago: 

• random bouts of digestive illness 
• strangers yelling things at us from a distance 
• children constantly running after us, calling us "toubab" and demanding candy
• eating rice and fish for most meals
• greeting everyone we meet
• being perpetually sweaty
• curious skin infections
• always having insect bites
• washing clothes by hand
• everyone constantly asking us to buy them things, give them money, or a U.S. Visa
• living in harmony with rats, bats, and insects (even naming them) 
• pooping in a hole and using water and your left hand instead of toilet paper
• waiting hours for transportation, getting in and being unconcerned if the vehicle breaks down
• roaming goats, cows, chickens, guinea fowl, donkeys, sheep, dogs, cats, and horses
• sand everywhere including on your bed and in your food
• cutting our own and other people's hair
• eating with our hands
• being a minority

This list goes on, and to stress how normal many of those things seem it took me a really long time to think of all of them (more than an hour!). With this list, you may be thinking that it must take a lot of endurance to continue living and working in an environment so different from the U.S. It does, and many volunteers at the year mark start to question if they should continue their service. They get very tired, irritated, frustrated, angry etc. They look back at the past year and don't feel like they fit in, can't speak the language and that they haven't accomplished anything, myself included.

The important thing to remember is that these feelings pass. Just as many other things in life that are transient, patience leads to change. As Peace Corps Volunteers we may endure a lot of things we normally wouldn't, but everyone who grew up in The Gambia endures much more than we do. It's definitely not easy here, but it's not easy anywhere else in the world either. We all have our struggles, but the significance of Peace Corps service is a better understanding of someone else's struggles.

Much time in the Peace Corps is spent by listening and observing. With these two skills you connect with humanity in a way that transcends superficial things like whether or not you use your hands to eat or whether you use a hole for a toilet. We continue serving because we want to understand. We continue because we want to connect with the people we share this tiny planet with. We want to know, understand and support our neighbors.

The big question for service is how to support your neighbors. For many volunteers they were requested by a village. The community gathered, determined why they wanted a volunteer, how they will make them feel safe, and where they would live. They wrote a letter to the Peace Corps office in country with the explanation. With determination and perhaps recommendations from previous volunteers, a village obtains its own volunteer.

When the volunteer arrives their job description is very vague, because the village may not know how they want to be supported at first. It takes about a year to get to know a volunteer and for a volunteer to get to know the village. After that there may or may not be a defined way to support the community.

In my case a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) wanted a volunteer, wrote the letter and got me. The skills they requested in a volunteer matched the skills I had. I feel lucky in that regard, because I have an actual written job description and a defined place to work. What I have incorporated into my service is this feeling of working to support rather than just doing. I am not here to change things, I am here to support others in their plans to change. So you may be thinking, "What do you do for work?" Well, a couple of things that I am working on are a biodiversity project and a youth beekeeping project:

1. Biodiversity project at St. Joseph's Family Farms Centre (the NGO I volunteer at).
The goal of the project is to increase biodiversity (variety of plants/trees) in our district, reduce the use of wood for cooking fires, and improve live fencing for women's gardens. To do this a tree nursery is being created using used plastic water bags as polypots (tree seedling starter bags). These water bags are basically trash found along the streets. We told community members that we would pay them the equivalent of 3 cents for 4 of these bags. We also told them we need about 23,000 of them.

Children and youth quickly got on board and started gathering this "trash" and bringing it to us in exchange for money. Some children gathered up to 1,000 bags by themselves as an after school job and earned about $8. This amount is the equivalent to one months apartment rent in our village. Good money for the youth, the streets are cleaner and we get to recycle this trash to grow trees. Not too bad! Below are some pictures of the place I work and our tree nursery:

The front entrance to the Non-Governmental Organization that I volunteer at: St. Joseph's Family Farms Centre.

 

                  Illiasa (a forestry extension agent) planting Mahogany tree seeds for the St. Joseph's tree nursery (background). 

                             

                                 Saikou, a beekeeper, farmer, and caretaker preparing to water the nursery.

 

                              A partial view of the tree nursery beds with recycled water bags and the seed storage shed.

2.Youth Beekeeping Project

Over the past months I have been approached by two beekeepers in Bwiam and one in Sangajor village who wanted my assistance in expanding their apiaries (beekeeping areas). Since there are many youths in Bwiam we planned a project that would allow the beekeepers to increase the number of bee cases and resources that they have while introducing youths of their choice to the profession. Over the next year and a half we will be planning beekeeping training with the youth, the experienced beekeepers will be working with the youth at their own apiaries and the youth will be able to start their own apiaries at St. Joseph's Family Farms. Following are pictures of the group.

Most of the youth beekeeping group that I am working with.
                The men second and fourth from the left (Saikou and Salifu) are experienced beekeepers .

Wuyeh, the beekeeper on the left has been experimenting with local bee hives for the past year.
His student is on the right.

               This is me acquiring a therapeutic bee sting from an experienced beekeeper.
I requested to be stung so I am more relaxed around bees.

This year will be filled with more learning opportunities and more chances to connect with people-if we just let it happen and if we are patient with ourselves and the culture. We have really become comfortable in our community and prefer it to the urban area where there are many more people, tourists, vehicles, and supermarkets. Bwiam has become our second home and although challenging at times, I wouldn't trade our current living situation for any other. Except maybe having a thatched roof to reduce the temperature in our home!

The road entering our village. 

                                

                                  The area near our village that leads to the rice fields.

This is a 'moon rise' at the river by our village. Yeah,. we actually live here!

Up country

Many volunteers live further east (inland) than we do, but we didn't have a chance to venture in that direction until this past month. Both Darrin and I travelled to Janjanbureh mid-January to help out with a week-long camp Peace Corps volunteers were running for some senior secondary school students in that area. After spending a few days there, we travelled up to Basse, where Peace Corps Gambia has its second transit house (a place where volunteers can stay when travelling through or doing business in town). We spent a fun few days in Basse with our friend Kathy. We occupied ourselves with cooking, playing games and exploring the town a little bit. The market there had far more veggies than we are able to get in Bwiam, so we went a little crazy eating salad, stir-frys and the like.

We headed back to Janjanbureh to celebrate the "Triple Birthday" on January 12th. My fellow volunteers Jen and Daniel have birthdays on the 13th and my own is on the 14th, so a large group of us met up for a boat cruise on the river and a night at one of the lodges. In typical fashion we met with a few snags in the plan - some German tourists had been given the boat that Jen had reserved well ahead of time, but we managed to find a different lodge with a similar boat and eventually get out on the river. I saw a few baboons, but no hippos. Maybe next time.

-Mama



Darrin in the kitchen at the Basse house. It's just like a children's playhouse. It even has a (tiny) oven! We would love to have something like that at our house...

Kathy, hanging out in Basse



People crossing the river.



View from the boat as the sun was beginning to set.

 







Packing Lists continued!

As Mama (Colette) has previously posted modifications to her packing list, I thought I would share a few of mine as well.

Here are the things I am really glad I brought

• Rechargeable beard trimmer and hair clipper combination (my first one was destroyed by a power surge, but one was sent to me and I couldn't be more thankful for it. I cut my own hair in village)
• Small rectangle travel pillow (Click here for Example pillow) the common pillows here are not comfortable, so if you like to sleep bring your own. 
• Decent dental floss (Oral B, etc). 
• A flash drive (8GB minimum)
• Quality underwear like this: (Click here to see Exofficio underwear) They are expensive but last a really long time and are very comfortable in the Gambian heat. Also, they don't lose their fit with multiple washings.
• Comfortable lightweight pants that adjust at the waist (Click here to see Prana pants) because most likely you will be losing weight.
• Two water bottles
• Vegetable peeler
• Crossword puzzle book
• Multiple bandanas/handkerchiefs
• MasterLock padlock (Bring two, you'll use one at the Peace Corps house and one for your door)
• Duct tape

Wish I brought:

• More AfterBite bug bite relief
• An external hard-drive for picture, movie, music storage
• Games like scrabble, bananagrams, etc.
• Favorite books! (For some reason I didn't bring any, but the Peace Corps house has tons anyway)

Glad I didn't bring:

• Cell phone 
• Jeans
• A whole bunch of fancy gadgets 

Would just as soon have not brought:

• Hammock (we don't have any trees around our home to hang it from, nor is their shade to sit under)
• Umbrella 
• A watch and travel alarm clock (cell phone is good enough)
• Flashlight (cell phones here have flashlights on them and headlamps are good enough)
• Dress shoes (Worst case scenario you buy them here for reasonable prices, the ones I brought now smell like mold from the rainy season and I hardly ever wear them)

Hope this helps my future Gambian PCV's!

Fo natoo-Until later,

Kawsu (Darrin)

Obligatory cute kid picture with Awa, Senabu, Mami, Binta, and Muhammed

Packing lists!

I know that when I was waiting to leave for our staging, I was obsessed with our packing list. I wanted us to be prepared, but not too prepared. I wanted to travel light, but to have essential items available... So, here are my thoughts (after nearly 10 months) on what is appropriate to bring to West Africa when you plan to stay for 27 months:

First, and most importantly, Peace Corps training involves a lot of moving around. The smartest thing to do is bring 2 bags - one larger, hard-sided, lockable suitcase with wheels and one smaller bag (we had duffel bags - some people prefer mid-size backpacks). This way you can shut all the stuff you don't really need up in the suitcase, which will be relatively secure (and rodent proof), and carry your essentials in a smaller, lighter bag.

Secondly, you can get most stuff here. The quality might be questionable in some cases or the price might hurt your budget a little, but there's no need to bring a 2 year supply of anything unless you're very picky.

So, in hindsight, I would bring only enough shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, soap, etc. to get through the first few months. I would bring a small amount of American dollars (even $20 would be fine) to supplement your training allowance, because it is nearly impossible to afford the absolute essentials on what they give you, let alone anything extra. Once you are a volunteer, no problem.

Here are the things I am really glad I brought:

Diva cup.

Decent dental floss.

A flash drive.

Converter for outlets.

Camera.

Leatherman.

2 nice quality cotton double or queen size sheets and a pillowcase.

Nalgene bottle (or 2).

1 or 2 sharp knives (the Victronix paring knives are great).

prints of photos from U.S. to show host family.

tote bag
bathing suit.

a sweatshirt.

long PJ pants and also short ones.

nail polish in cool colors. (you can buy remover in Kombo)

headlamp and a collection of decent quality batteries to go in it.

enough long skirts, t-shirts and nice-ish clothes to get through training.

smallish travel pillow.

a few pairs of capri length tights for wearing under skirts/dresses.
plastic accordian file to organize ridiculous amounts of paperwork in.

Wish I brought:

laptop. (Mine wasn't working so well when we left and I didn't want to worry about it, but most volunteers have them and use them a lot!).

small things to give as a gifts during training (people had birthdays and no one had money or the means to buy them gifts) - some U.S. candy would be good for this.

more bras and underwear (especially quick-dry material).

a few more t-shirts and nice-ish clothes. This is tricky though, because I lost a lot of weight and ended up giving away many items I brought which no longer fit.

more decent pens.

set of different colored Sharpie markers.

more AfterBite.
mascara and lipstick.

Glad I didn't bring:

giant amounts of food/snacks (though a few bags of a favorite candy or tea are nice to have).

raincoat.

fancy gadgets, including solar charger (they're pretty easy to buy off volunteers who are on their way out and, in my personal experience, a lot of them just don't work that well)
cell phone (Peace Corps gave us ours and they are fine)

Would just as soon have not brought:
umbrella (lost it- and they're easy to buy here)
towels (smell really bad during rainy season - a wrap skirt works much better)
too may pairs of shoes
a watch and travel alarm clock (my cell phone is good enough)
flashlight (cell phone and headlamp are good enough)

-Colette (Darrin can weigh in on this one in a seperate post)


What We Brought.



How is the work?



We know that everyone is eager to know what we are doing with ourselves (other than reading, cooking and sleeping), so here are a few things we've been up to recently. Incidentally, the two of us generally work separately, but we have had some great opportunities to team up on special projects and events lately. Here are a few:

Bwiam's Youth Action Movement group had a short parade and a program to observe World AIDS Day in early December. Our sister Mamie is holding the banner in this picture (on the left). We attempted to give some inspirational speaches about how youth have the power  to stop the spread of HIV.





Darrin has been assisting an elementary school in another village with their tree nursery. We recently went and helped them plant a few hundred seeds in beds and polypots the students had helped prepare.

We did a family planning talk in a nearby village. Here Hyatou and I show off a poster I made that compares birth spacing to crop spacing. Darrin and Yaya were talking to the men, while Hyatou and I talked to the women. I've used this same poster to do health talks at reproductive and child health clinic. The main point is that families and farms grow better and are healthier with proper planning. On the left you can see "Fatou's family" and on the right "Binta's family" (or, as one woman called it, "the seven kids in seven years family").

 

 

Our friend Kaddy (American name: Kathy) undertook the task of painting many health-themed murals at a large regional health center near her site. Darrin and I spent one weekend helping with the project and we worked on this mural, which shows the importance of infant vaccination.





A Day in the Life

Maamaa's Day

• Get up at about 7, although the rooster has been crowing at an annoyingly close range for at least 3 hours and call-to-prayer has occurred at around 5:45.
• Brush teeth, wash face and comb hair outside in the bathroom area.
• Go out of the house and greet family, then water plants (okra, watermelon, squash and basil) - this requires several trips to the tap with a bucket.
• Bring some water inside to boil so I can have tea. Make oatmeal, to which I add sugar (or honey if we have it), raisins (if we picked some up in the big city) and peanut butter. Read for awhile and enjoy my tea.
• At 8:45 get dressed, say goodbye to Darrin and walk over to the hospital where I help out at the reproductive and child health clinic. 
• On Mondays it is in Bwiam - a few other days a week everyone piles in the ambulance (actually a Landrover) and travels to an outlying village's health center to weigh babies, dispense medications, give immunizations and do prenatal exams. 
• I have been trying to help the staff to do short health talks at each clinic - right now we have been doing a family planning one. I made a poster comparing birth spacing in families to crop spacing on farms and talk about how plants and families grow better and healthier when they are planned/"well-spaced." This can get complicated because we usually translate the talk into 2 or 3 langauges - English, Mandinka, Wolof and sometimes Jola or Fula. I'm not ready to do the Mandinka talk yet - maybe I never will be, because people might miss something due to my accent. I instead greet the women and introduce myself in Mandinka and then switch to English, which involves speaking very slowly and clearly, because many people here who speak English can't understand it when you speak fast or use too large a vocabulary.
• If it is not too late when I get done with clinic, I will try to buy some vegetables or other things at the market. It's tricky because the market is usually over by 1 in the afternoon. 
• I have one friend, Sirrah, who sells at the market and is always very nice. I try to buy from her, although she doesn't have much for sale. Sometimes there is nothing for sale but onions and okra...but once in awhile there are cucumbers or green peppers. 
• I buy a lot of groundnut paste (it's like unsalted natural peanut butter, in a small plastic bag), garlic and pepper corns, which we pound. Sometimes I buy a smoked fish for the cat. I have learned the hard way not to put a fish in my tote bag (even if it's wrapped in newspaper!)...too smelly!
• After the market I go home and take a bucket bath and change my clothes because I am inevitably very hot and sweaty. I may rest for a bit in the house or do some laundry.
• Around 3pm I head over to our family's other compound for lunch. Darrin usually meets me there when he is done with work and we eat - I am always hoping for durango, which is a peanut-based sauce over rice. I dislike supa konja, which is a slimy okra, greens and fish goo over rice. We sit with whichever family members are there (often some of the women or girls are busy braiding hair under a tree) and maybe play with some of the kids.
• Around 4:30 or 5 we usually make our way home.  On the way home we might stop at the biddik (corner shop) for bread, flour, eggs or a cold drink. We also sometimes stop to chat with a friend or two, though I try to avoid being offered attaya (the strong sugary tea drink people love to sit and brew and serve in little shot glasses) at this time of day because it is so caffienated it will make sleep difficult later.

• Once we get home we relax, take a quick bucket bath to cool off, then read or work on things around the house or yard. I like to prep something for dinner before the sun goes down, because without electricity we must rely on headlamp and candles at night, which are fine for reading, etc., but sometimes it is hard to prepare a meal that way. Recently I helped with peanut harvesting, so here I am shelling peanuts and preparing to roast them with our sister Awa.

Awa and Mama shelling groundnuts ("tio" in Mandinka).

• Some days, if our site-mate (other Peace Corps volunteer in our area), Dylan, is in town, we bike over to his side of town and walk down to the river to watch the sunset on the dock. If we aren't in a hurry to go home, we have supper at his family's compound.

Another beautiful sunset at the Bwiam/Kankuntu dock. Yeah, we live here.

Kawsu's Day

• Get up at the same time as Maamaa, but then stay in bed and snooze until 8:30 because the rooster has kept me from getting a proper rest all morning. He usually stands directly in front of our screen door and crows (4 a.m.). Some days I want to eat him for lunch, but we can't because he is good luck for our compound (meaning he was purchased solely for that reason).
• Officially get up at 8:30, wash my face and put our small solar panel out in the sun to charge - takes about 3 days of full sun for a full charge (good to have in case we need emergency cell phone charge on weekends). 
• Head to the "kitchen area" and make some tea with powdered milk and sugar. Prepare a small cup of meuslix mixed with oatmeal (to stretch the meuslix because it's expensive) and reconstituted powdered milk. Usually during breakfast I just sit in a plastic lawn chair, think about our life here and sip my tea.

Our kitchen area was created with the help of our local carpenter Sheik Nyang

• Feed the cat a small amount of cat food or dried fish. She has been eating lizards lately so we don't feed her much. Hopefully our cat will never catch this gecko which stays in our home and munches on beetles and mosquitoes. We are very fond of it.

Resident gecko in our front room. We named it Tom Thumb.

• Greet the family outside with any of the following phrases: "I saama" (good morning), "Somandaa be naadi?" (how is the morning?) or "Kori I sinoota" (I hope you slept).

• Wash dishes in a little bucket by our door and set them to dry on a board in the sun. Then I usually sweep the front room and bedroom because over night much sand and dust has accumulated on the floor. 
• At this point I may do some laundry in a bucket depending on the clothes situation, whether Colette has done them already or whether or not our sisters are doing laundry for the whole family. If this happens there's usually no space for our clothes on the line, so we just wait.
• 10 a.m. get dressed for work, spray my limbs with insect repellent (many mosquitoes at work), take my bicycle outside, lock our door, and tell any present family member the following:  "Nka ta dokouwo (I am going to work), fo tilibulo (until the afternoon)."

• Ride my bicycle about 2 kilometers to St. Joseph's Family Farms Centre and greet everyone in the organization.
• Proceed to the office and work on any of the following: editing grant proposals, preparing reports for World Food Programme, or reading about appropriate technology/projects for the community.  Lately we've been organizing old files, so I read about many previous community projects.
• 2:30-4pm wrap up my work, say "Fo saama" (until tomorrow) to my co-workers and bike to our families large compound. On this bike ride I usually meet many children walking back home from school so it's inevitable that a couple will shout "Toubab(white man)! Any minties (candy)?" To which I usually stop my bicycle suddenly, dismount and try to locate said children and introduce myself, or maybe run after them to get some laughs. 

• Reach family compound and greet family with "Tilibulo be naadi?" ("How is the afternoon?") and proceed to find the most shade in the compound to eat under.
• 4:30-5pm head home and buy any necessary food items to prepare our evening meal.
• Take bucket bath immediately, bring in solar panel, check on all plants, pet cat and ask her about her day (or look for dead lizard presents around the compound).

Takaa our cat relaxing (fonyonding) on our window sill.

• Rest a bit, prep some food and either read or do a crossword puzzle, or give a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer a haircut:

Dylan (our site mate) at "Kawsu's Barbing Saloon" prior to one of the last storms of the rainy season in Bwiam.

• 10pm take a small bucket bath again to cool off before bedtime, get into bed, tuck in mosquito net, turn off headlamp and sweat ourselves to sleep until the cool harmattan winds from the desert come during the cold season.

The first harvest of ginger I planted 4 months ago.

Yusupha our youngest sibling starting to walk.

This ginger will be ready to harvest in 5 months.

The Work

     We haven't posted much about our work activities, mostly because they are not that exciting or varied so far! However, here are a few photos of a short workshop my host sister, Mamie, and I did during a camp for youth leaders that was held at the senior secondary scool in Bwiam. The kids were camping out in some school rooms without mosquito nets and they asked us to help them make homemade mosquito repellent to use during the evenings.

      Neem cream is a product the Peace Corps loves to endorse...it's cheap to make, people say it's effective and it can be a good product for people to make and sell for a profit. It uses the leaves of the neem tree (which can usually be found somewhere around any village), soap and oil. The soap must be grated or shredded with a knife (Mamie made homemade graters by poking holes in old sardine tins - pretty neat!) and then mixed with water that you've boiled neem leaves in, then oil.  After a lot of vigorous mixing, it's ready to go!

     This group was particularly fun to work with because they were so enthusiastic. I asked them to review some facts on malaria and malaria prevention while they were working and lots of shouting and arguing ensued...but I think everyone had fun.  

                                                                                                           -Colette (Maamaa)



Girls gathering neem leaves.





Shaving soap with our homemade graters.

 



Everyone is excited that it's almost ready!



We ran out of containers to put it in, so this young man is holding a plastic shopping bag full of neem cream. Good thinking!

 

Snapshots II

Our friend Abdul, and our brother Saikou. Saikou was awarded the position of Deputy Headboy at his school!

The young women in our families other compound. From left to right: Tida, Mamie, Oussman, Awa, Senabu, Fatoumata, and Binta (who's obviously a joker).

Enter: The MOST annoying rooster in the world & our families cassava field.

Yeah, our back yard is nice to look at!

Foreground: the banana "sucker" that I planted. Background: a large ridge of soil containing ginger root.

Nap time!

The road to our home.

Our brothers graduation from 10th grade.

Our brother and his friends, he's the one peeking, third from the right.

Our brother Sam

This lizard fell into our water bucket.