General Updates: Girls Club Sleepover, Wind Turbines and Observations

Greetings again from an increasingly hot and dry Gambia! It has been awhile since I have updated everyone about my work and general goings on in village so I will do my best to give a general overview of what I have been up to for the past couple of months in my work life without being to boring.

Girls Club:
This past weekend, a fellow PCV, Rachel, and I organized a sleepover extravaganza for our Girls Clubs at my school. We has about 60 girls come for a workshop on girls empowerment, with sessions on adjusting to senior secondary school, setting goals, career planning, appropriate relationships and supporting each other and being a good friend. At night we also had a big campfire and I convinced some of my rasta/bumster friends from Barra (the ferry crossing from Banjul town) to come up and drum. So everybody got the chance to dance and sing and wear fancy clothes, eat good food and also learn, meet new friends and hopefully be empowered. As I spend more time in village and working with the girls and also just interacting, I am finding that a majority of my time and energy is spent being somewhat of a gender activist. It is something I feel strongly about and think is really needed here so I am enjoying it even though it comes with a luandry list of annoyances and problems. Those who know me well know that I am noting if not outspoken about my opinions, which can be a fault or a strength at any given moment, so it is hard for me to stand by and listen or watch blatant discrimination based on sex without saying something or trying to provoke thought. I definitly try to do so in a culturally sensitive way and try to just pose questions or scenerios to get people thinking in a different way. There is definilty a women's rights movement going on here but it's power is largly confined to the city. I am lucky to know and be friends with some awesomely empowered Gambian women (the two I am closest to being my host sister Ansel - who operates her own business and owns property all while being illiterate and Haddy Choi - my counterpart for Girls Club and a Maths/Science teacher which is still very rare) so they give me the hope that these girls lives can be different then their mothers lives of endless farming, cooking, cleaning and birthing without any say in the matter.

Computer Lab:
Work with the computer lab has been at a virtual stand still for the past couple months and I didn't realize how long it had been until I went in there to find the place incased in dust when by some untimly will of Allah the school bought fuel. Interestingly, Allah's timing happened to conincide with the delivery of a VCR and DVD player the volunteer before me secured for the school for educational and income generation purposes (think outdoor movies with 500 people gathered around a 19' screen, charge a couple dalasi per head and it comes out to a nice profit for the school). So anyway, I have been unable to do anything with the computer lab because the school can never afford or is never willing to buy fuel to operate the generator. And I refuse to buy fuel on principal, plus it is expensive and our generator is about the opposite of efficient. So despite all these frustrations, I still have hope for the computer lab and have been working on the solar grant, which is finally finished and ready to be stamped and sent. We recently had a British ex-pat visitor to the school who came to give us an estimate on a wind turbine to provide alternative power (as opposed to solar power) and he made it seem like a pretty feasible option since Njongon is so close to the coast and is windy throughout the year. The estimate he gave us also has the total cost working out to less then that of a solar power system, plus this guy lives in Gambia and is the friend of a teacher so he volunteered to help us with the installation and maintence. In light of that visit, I need to edit the grant a bit to include the wind power option. Inshalla (God willing), I will get the grant written and delivered before I leave for Ghana on Friday.

Library:
The library is going well, nothing to drastically different or exciting to report on here. Just endless amounts of encouragment and reminders to the Librarian, my counterpart, Gasu to check in books properly and make sure things are left orderly; books stacked or on shelfs and chairs pushed in at the end of the day. I also am still doing the read alouds for grades 2, 3 and 4 when they come to library class with the goal of having them hear correct English spoken and learn to appreciate books and how they are to be read. Its going well but in the beginning it kind of backfired. After I read them the story I told them to go ahead and look at the books for the rest of the period. More then one child proceeded to open a book and hold it up to the side and present the pictures to those around here, I guess thinking that is how it was done or just playing an innocent game of imitate the teacher. It was cute, but they have since caught on a bit more about how books are to be read. They love the pictures, reading is a bit tough though because they can only read by memorization and have no idea how to go about sounding words out. I am going to try and start doing some phonics training with the teachers at the school in the hopes of lessening that problem but it is really deep seeded so I don't know how sucessful I will be. Can't hurt to try though! We only have one term of school left for the year, and throughout the year a good number of books have been lost to the homes of grade 3 students who thought they were clever by trying to return a book they never borrowed in the first place or have been loved a little to much and thus destroyed. The majority of the books are pretty old and beat up when we get them so its not suprising that they fall apart. I am hoping to get some books from the Book Drive Mama Spotts and Linds and Lauren have headed up back home to replenish. This summer I am hoping to spruce up the library a bit and do some painting of teaching aids on the walls to make it a more pleasant place and more educational.

Stay Green Foundation:
I haven't been to the office in a couple of weeks because of schedulng conflicts but I hope to get back soon. I hooked the NGO up with some Enviornment volunteers who are in a better and more qualified position to help them with their extension work in villages but I hope to still go once a week to continue training the secrataties in computer applications and to help Baboucarr (the Director) with organizational and manegerial stuff.

Teacher Training:
I continue to do informal teacher training at my school, St. Michael's and at a nearby school, Mbollet Ba. Recently I have been doing follow up on the workshop material I presented at the begining of term on integrating games and activities into the classroom. I have been doing observations of teachers in the classroom to see if they are actually implemented some of the ideas. So far nobody, except for one grade 2 teacher who had the kids act out an awesome drama based on an Englsih story they read, have really shown that they are implementing anything. I am only half way through the teachers though so I am holding out hope for the upper grades. It is still good to see how they are teaching and make some one on one suggestions. I observed one teacher and had to sit through a lesson where she was trying to get the kids to do subtration with borrowing. She was calling kids up to the board to solve, which is fine, but then when a student got it wrong she had them move to the side and another student came up to try. When a student finally got it right, the reward was that he or she got to beat the students who got it wrong three time on the hand with a switch! It was rather hard to sit through and hard to get through to the teacher that is not an okay classroom management technique and that perhaps maybe the students are clamoring to participate just so they can beat each other on the hand. That was by far one of the worst classroom displays I have seen, and the majority are not nearly that exciting or horrifying, but are rather just boring. Thankfully there are those grade 2 teachers that come up with a great activity for their students that is fun and educational all at the same time, completly on their own. We just started our spring break, but when third term gets going I want to try and implement a quiz competition of sorts to encourage students to study in a positive way. Hopefully, it will work out as planned, fingers crossed.


So that is the big work picture over the last couple of months. But enough thinking about work for now, I am officially on vacation and am heading for 10 days in Ghana on Friday!

Wonderland at last: Dakar Craziness

A couple weeks ago I head north to Dakar, Senegal to play some good ol' fashioned softball at the West African International Softball Tournament (WAIST). The event is hosted by the large ex-pat community in Dakar and PCV's from Mali, Gambia, Senegal, and Mauritania as well as several teams of ex-pats gathered for a big weekend of American-style fun. We stayed at the homes of ex-pats and it was nice and a little surreal to be back in an American-like house, thinking in American prices and being a tourist again. The weekend was a lot of fun and I got to do a bit of sightseeing in addition to playing softball (Team Gambia A came in 4th!) and meeting other PCV's and people working in the foreign service and at NGO's.

I thought Dakar was an awesome city and I loved being back in the hustle and bustle of a big city. Dakar, and Senegal in general, is a pretty stark change from The Gambia even though the two countries share the same geography and essentially the same culture. French and infrastructure seem to be the two major differences. As soon as we crossed the border into Senegal (a mere 12 k from my village) you immediately notice the smooth, lined roads with electrical lines everywhere as opposed to the Gambian side with it's huge, crater-like potholes in the roads or dirt paths to the side of the original road that drivers have carved out as a better option then destroying their cars on the hopelessly uneven pavement and vast darkness only to be interrupted by dots of light on the horizon from private generators. To be fair, Gambia is gearing up a rural electrification project and slowly paving roads and I am sure rural Senegal is darkness as well. It was a five hour ride to Dakar from the border so I got the chance to see a lot of the countryside of Senegal, which is essentially the same thing I see everyday now that it is the dry season - endless expanses of brown grass with few trees highlighting the dangerous levels that deforestation has reached in this region. Related to the infrastructure disparity, I noticed that Senegal had towns much more frequently with actual concrete buildings, where Gambia just has a lot of small villages and no big regional cities like a Koalack - a city we passed through on the way that rival's Gambia's national capital in size comparison. Seeing how large Koalack alone was, was a bit of a shock since I have been living in such rural conditions for the past 7 months, despite only living 10K from the country's capital.

Koalack has nothing on Dakar though - the population of Dakar alone is more then the entirety of The Gambia! The traffic in Dakar was crazy and it took us almost an house to navigate through the city to our destination along the coast. As disorienting as it was, it was also great to be back in the big city atmosphere I love so much. I don't know what my fascination with cities is - maybe the vibrancy, architecture, sharp contrasts, culture, non-stop pace, diversity - who knows, I just know I thrive being in that environment. I actually enjoyed sitting in the traffic as it let me absorb more of what was going on around me, then having it all whizz by. The city was teeming with people - most trying to hauck their wares off on tourists like me. Dealing with the same sort of interaction almost everyday in The Gambia allowed me to be a lot more patient with them hen I probably would have been and I even got to joke with a few in Wolof - which thoroughly confused them: a white person that can speak Wolof but not French?! Some actually laughed at me when I said I didn't hear French.

While in the city, I got to see a lot of cool colonial architecture, eat delicious non-African food (including french pastry and bread!) and feel a bit more American then I have been had the chance to in recent months. It was a nice break from my reality here and a good re-charge. Even though I loved my time in Dakar, I was glad to return to my village and the peace and quiet. It was also nice to see everyone in village again, as I had been gone the week before traveling to Dakar to attend a workshop for the NGO I work with. It was a nice feeling to be missed by my host-family, kids at school and teachers - it makes me feel like maybe I am actually a part of this community and not always an outsider. I shift between moments of feeling fully included and fully isolated - it's a strange existence, confusing and it's unlikely to be remedied any time soon, if ever. One of the goals of being a PCV is, of course, cultural integration but sometimes cultural and racial (value being placed on you because of the color of your skin) differences seem so vast I think true inclusion s just a naive fantasy. A great goal but not something I will ever achieve because I can't change the privilege that my country of birth and skin color has granted me in this world. Despite this feeling, I still think that what I am doing in the village and in this country as value and is a worthy endeavor. Just slap a sticker on my forehead that says "Idealist", I'm okay with that. Plus, nothing worth doing is ever easy.....right? I am learning a great deal and also teaching a great deal about realities of life in the West and here and how the two worlds collide. An almost nightly ritual in my compound is to play "20 Questions about America/The World" as we sit around the fire and chat. Even though we play this game on almost a daily basis, the answers I give never cease to amaze and shock the listener whether I am insisting that Americans do indeed work for their money or that the Earth rotates around the sun and while it's dark in The Gambia, it is still daytime in America. I don't think the people asking these questions are unintelligent, I just think the misconceptions or misinformation stems from years of speculation and tall takes. On the contrary, the majority of the people I know here are extremely intelligent and I am humbled over and over again by the fact that 7 year-olds can speak three languages fluently (adults usually six) while I still struggle to form coherent sentences in Wolof after 7 months! And my heart is overcome with warmth when my host-father returns from the village bantaba proclaiming to me that today he was a teacher, clasping a scrap of paper with french scribbled on it. Today, he taught the other old men of the village about how HIV/AIDS is transmitted. Hearing him explain the methods of transmission to me in his broken by Gambian English, I almost hugged the man but resisted as that would break about 7 taboos. His recent leap into the non-formal education sector is also great in light of the recent news in from the The Gambia's fearless commander in chief. Google for details, as it is to political to get into here.

So, all in all, Gambia continues to be awesome, confusing, challenging, growth-inspiring, fun, and enlightening experience and I'm thankful weekly, if not daily, for my oppurtunity to be here, doing this work, meeting awesome, inspiring people and experiencing life.

Jamma rek/Peace only!

Behind the Tats: Fula Scars

I don't realy know what we were thinking; fresh wounds when the Harmattan winds were blowing down off the Sahara - rendering everything and everyone a red and dusty blur. I don't know that the rainy season would have been better - nothing heals because of the perpetual dampness that settles over the entire region. Wounds just fester until even the tinest knick gets infected. So it's a toss up between which season is more favorable and the season in which you are in always seems the most unforgiving.

Despite this, the five of us converged on Wassu, CRD almost exactly six months to the day that we arrived in country. Our hair-brained scheme seemed simple enough - go to Wassu, track down the woman who will cut our skin open with a bitik (corner shop) razor blades and then shove peanut ash in the fresh wound, bond over shared experiences then continue traveling up country to visit Basse. Simple right? Well, like everything in this country, the process turned out to be a little less bullet proof then we had envisioned - especially since we had no idea what the woman's name was, where her compound was or really how to communicate effectively despite having all three languages represented in our little band of explorers.

Eventually we figured out where the probable location was and managed to get a small-girl to show us the way to the compound. When we arrived we were greeted by two old men who were very excited to see PCV's as they no longer have one in Wassu. The men were extremely helpful and the compound we were looking for was right across the path from theirs. One of the men sent a child into the fields to fetch the woman and later helped us translate as most of the words for requesting scars was out of our vocab range. While we waited for the woman to return from the fields, we sat under the mango tree and nervously chatted while about 30 children stood around staring at us. As we waited, I started to grow more and more nervous about the upcoming scarification and my stomach had begun to swirl thinking about the whole endeavour. I convinced the guys that I should go first so I wouldn't have to watch anyone else been sliced and diced figuring this would make the pain easier.

Shortly, Fatou Cessay, our scarer to be, arrived back at the compound and began to make preperations for the process. It was a little awkward at first, none of us really knowing how to behave in the situation. Eventually Fatou told us to come into her house so we piled into the back of the mud hut and I sat next to her on the straw mattress. We negotiated price and then she said "Let's get started", but in Pulaar, and all of the sudden I found myself sitting in front of her with my shirt off with lines drawn on my back. Brian sat in front of me be my hand squeezer - fufilling our pact during our first week in country to get tattoos together. Since I was going first I tried really hard to be tough [also because I was the only girl and wanted to show the boys up :)] and not scream or make any noises associated with ripping skin and pain. By the third (out of four) cuts I gave up and let out some whimpers because the flimsy blade was starting to become dull and the cutting started to feel more like ripping. Some older PCV's warned me that the pain is pretty bad but I tried to just brush it off. Turns out they were right, it was pretty painful and I was no where near prepared for what it feels like to have your sliced open by flimsy razor's bought for less then a penny at a corner bitik. Just when I was bracing myself for more cuts, the guys announced that I was done. I was overcome with relief then all the sudden, I felt a rough, dirty old rag being drug across my fresh wounds to sop up the blood. Nice. The dirty rag probably rendered the sterilizing of the razors and the latex gloves pretty useless. It turns out that this is only appropriate in this country cause just when you think you've got things figured out and planned for, you are proven wrong and naive for imagining you could actually control your surrondings. After the rag was drug across my back, Fatou emptied some ash from peanut shells that was stored in a hallowed out bull horn (it's true, you can't make stuff like this up) and packed my cuts with the ash, instructing me not to bathe for three days or the ash would wash away. Jim bandaged my back with gauze and tape and I settled down to watch the rest of the guys get their scars.

The whole process was surreal and Fatou was very speedy, scarring five of us in under an hour. Brian and Jim won the prize of more hardcore because Brian has six curved lines on his chest and Jim has three huge gashes across his rib cage that makes it look like a tiger attacked him. After everyone was scarred, and in a fair amount of discomfort, we thanked Fatou profously for sharing her cultural tradition with a bunch of crazy toubabs and each paid her 100D for her trouble (about $2.75) and set off back to the carpark to continue our journey upcountry. Turns out the carparks, bumpy gele-gele rides and waiting for three hours are even less fun when you are in pain and bleeding, but we all survived and lived to tell the tale.

A little background: The scarring is a traditional practice mostly attributed to the Fula (or Pulaar) tribe, a once nomadic tribe of cattle herders who can be found throughout West Africa. Other tribes, such as the Jola and some Sereers (the tribe I live with), do the scarring as well but sometime placement and meaning differ among different groups. The reason for getting the scarring done is sometimes for beautification but it also has traditional medicinal purposes and is related to traditional animist beliefs. It's hard to get a detailed history from people as they either aren't sure or aren't willing to talk about the in-depth traditional aspects with an outsider. One woman I know got three small scars on her chest because she had insomnia and she swears as son as she has it done her sleeping problems went away. Who knows, the power of belief right? I think that if it is done for medicinal purposes their is more ceremony and ritualistic stuff then what we had. Most Fulas that I have seen have the scars on their face, next to their eyes or mouths and a lot of the Sereers in my village have them on their chest of backs.

So all said and done, it was a great/crazy experience. The scars are all healed and look pretty badass and plus I will literally have a little bit of Gambia in me for the rest of my life to help remember this whole adventure. Check out the Flickr accounts for pics!