50 Cent, Green Tea, and Mesh Tank Tops...

Hello from Gambia!!!! I am finally back from two months in the bush and can have contact with the outside world! Training was great and I learned a lot and got oriented and comfortably with the country and the people and myself in this country but I am glad that it is over. Over the past two months I have learned that the youth of the Gambia are obsessed with 50 Cent, green tea with loads of sugar (called attaya here) that they spend hours brewing and mesh tank tops in various shades. I am serious they just can't get enough of any of them, it's great! I have been asked a hundred times if I personally know 50 Cent and there are rumors that there is actually 50 Cent embellished underwear somewhere in this country. I look for it every time I got to market but have yet to spot it. Hopefully by the end of two years I will have got my hands on some. Aside from my deep cultural immersion, I get sworn in as a volunteer this Friday at the US Ambassador's place and then I am off to my permanent site for the 3 Month Challenge (new PCV's cannot leave a 10K radius of their site - encourages you to bond with your site and all the people). My site is the small town (which is larger than a village here) of Njongon in the North Bank Division. It is right on the road that connects Banjul to Dakar, Senegal so I will need to get used to the sound of cars again. More on my permanent site in the next update, now for glossed over recap of the past two months:

Training and Village:
Training was great and I learned a lot of valuable stuff that I am sure will come in handy in the future but I am glad it is over. I can see what people meant when they said training is the worst part of your PC service. Training in Gambia is community based which means that we live in training villages with host families and then we also travel to a resort type place for sessions every couple of weeks. I was in the tiny, very rural village of Sare Samba. S/S was 7k off the main road and was very isolated. It is in the Lower River Division right on the border of Senegal and the closest major town is Soma. But don't be confused by major town - that just means it has a some sort of commerce.

My host family in village was amazing and I miss them already. The family consisted of a father (Katim), two mothers - both named Xadi and about 20 kids in all ranging from 26-in the womb. About 3 or 4 of the children were under the care of the host family because it was a "middle-class" Gambian family and we actually had solar power and lights at night. I did not have lights in my hut but they did in their house. The father is a marabout which is a hard profession to describe but basically boils down to that he is a holy man of sorts with a blend of Islam and West African animism. Google or Wikepedia marabout to find out more about it. All of my siblings were awesome and the little ones were adorable and I got quite attached to a lot of them so it was sad to say goodbye.

Days in training village were spent learning language for four hours in the morning, food bowl at my teachers house everyday (that's right I can skillfully eat with my hand) and then hanging out under a tree drinking attaya (green tea that is absurdly concentrated with loads of sugar) and chatting and practicing language with people in our village. Evenings consisted of either a yoga session with some fellow trainees and our awesome language teacher, Haddy Sowe, or ultimate Frisbee with the village kids. Needless to say the people of the village loved it when we did yoga and we always had an audience. Village life is slooooooooooooow or 'ndanka ndanka' as we say in Wolof. The first couple of days it was hard to adjust from DC life to Gambian village life but I did adjust and ended up loving my training village immensely.

During training I would be in Sare Samba for a week or two and than at Tendaba (a resort right on the river) for a week or two doing endless days of technical training sessions and model school. The weeks at Tendaba were definitely the toughest because a) the mosquito's are insane and I have bites all over myself b)training sessions get tedious and boring day in and day out c) I can't think of a C. It wasn't really that bad because there was a pool (when it wasn't green) and my fellow PCT's were all together so we amused each other. And their was beer, so that is always good. Funny saying providing by our ever entertaining 3rd term PCV, Steve:

Peace Corps Volunteers that go to Asia come back religious.
Peace Corps Volunteers that go to Latin America come back political.
Peace Corps Volunteers that go to Africa come back alcoholics.

It's a joke but I can definitely see where it comes from, after you've been in the bush with no electric and no contact with the outside world, a cold beer is about the best thing in the world.

During training I also went to a visit a fellow volunteer in Janjanbureh (formerly Georgetown) and had a blast hanging out with her friends and even learned some drumming - definitely a hobby I hope to take up! Janjan is an island in the middle of the Gambia River and is awesome. I hope to visit semi-often even though it is a bit far so I can visit friends on the island and chill out.

The past 4 days I have been visiting my permanent site - Njongon and meeting my host family and the staff of my school, St. Michaels Basic Cycle School. I love my compound and I have two mango trees and one orange tree which both make up for the super tiny size of my house (no lie it is 15 ft wide and 10 ft deep). I will update my blog later in the week since this entry is ridiculously long.

Love you all and miss you like crazy!!!!!!!! I am crazy happy, and love everything about Gambia. I have also been suprisingly healthy and very pleased that my permanent host family does not each much coos. More later! Check out my FlikerPics - they have been updated!

Jamma rek! (Peace Only)