YaBoi and the Rains.

The rains are a month late. YaBoi, my host mother, remarks on it everyday. Every evening as we sit on the mat in the middle of the compound, relaxing, listening to the radio, looking at the stars. She points to the stars and just mutters to herself..."Taw bi neekut fi wala mungee now, mungee now, The rain is not here but it is coming, it is coming." The power of positive thinking I suppose. Maybe she figures if she believes hard enough, the rains will listen to her plea and come ease the anxieties of thousands of farmers. Maybe she is just making conversation with me and knows that I understand these Wolof words, if not much else. For the rainy season she is growing the tiny red peppers that all women in my village plant in abundance every June. Since the rains have not come, she goes to the garden everyday and waters her plants by hand. Heavy work that is usually done by nature.

YaBoi is tired. It is hard to tell how old she is exactly. Like most people here, she has no idea when she was born and isn't even able to make an estimate. She has had nine children, six have survived and those children are doing well. They are fulfilling the desire that all mothers have for their children - to work hard and have an easier life than their parents before them. She does know that she was born in Senegal though and as a child the rains came in April. Here it is July and she is fetching hundreds of buckets from the well by hand to water the peppers each day. All of this in addition to her normal household tasks of cooking, sweeping, farming, fetching firewood, fetching water for the house, and the countless other tasks in a day that women here do without a peep of complaint. Even PaSaine has noticed that she is tired. He doesn't offer to fetch is own bath water, but still he notices. And that counts for something in a culture where most men wouldn't.

So YaBoi will go on being tired and go on worrying about the rain. Sometimes in the middle of the night the wind rushes in from the coast, rustling the trees and rousing YaBoi from her bed. Every night, she is sure that the gusts of wind signal the long anticipated rain. She rushes from her bed and eagerly puts buckets out to catch the rain water that will surely spill from the rooftops. She secured windows and doors. She covers the firewood. She is always disappointed when she wakes in the morning to find no water in her buckets, her wood bone dry. Yet with every midnight gust, she repeats the same rituals and she waits.

Another night in mid July, sitting out on the mat. Joking, listening, thinking. YaBoi looks at me, and me at Awa, one of my sisters. We are listening to the leaves rustle in the trees. I look at the clouds moving over my stars, the stars I have come to Africa to stare at every night. I say quietly, almost a whisper for fear the ancestors will laugh at this naive toubab who thinks she can predict the weather, "Tey ci gudi, dinna taw, Tonight, it will rain." YaBoi turns to me and chuckles, exchanging knowing glances with Awa. "Iyo" she responds in Sereer "inshalla". Yes, God willing.

That night I hear YaBoi awake with the wind, as she has many nights before. But tonight, the rains come. The next day, we go to the farm.

24, the 4th, and 1 year....

One year ago this week I was on a plane for 22 hours straight and arrived in The Gambia on my 23rd birthday. It was a weird way to spend ones birthday and even weirder to think that a year has gone by since then. If I look back on who I was that week and who I am this week, I think that a lot about how I think has changed, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse - hard to tell at this point. I am still the same person fundamentally but I have learned so much during my first year. I have been exposed to a lot of stuff that has drastically changed how I look or think about situations. How I approach a task, a person or life in general. While not all the changes that I have gone through in this past year may prove to be beneficial for me...at least I am going through them and will hopefully come out a more rounded person. And I don't want to make it seem like, those who knew me a year ago would see a radically different Becca today. I don't think that's true. It just small things. I am a little more wary of things people say, a little less trusting of things taken at face value. I'm a little bit better at staring at stars for a few hours. A little less freaked out if I only accomplish one task in a day. Still terribly freaked out by chickens but goats and donkeys are no big thing. I now understand at a deeper level those lovely buzzwords and what it means to say that "culture matters" or "cultural understanding is important" but I also understand that sometimes no matter how much you want to you can't change some cultural things that make the projects you are working on easier to do - you have to go the long way around them and sometimes that means lots of frustration and sometimes it means failure, but it does not mean that change can't happen someday. Ndanka, ndanka (Slowly, slowly) as we say here.

Some days I feel that all this change is happening really fast and other days I feel like the same old me, still confused about a lot of stuff in life and about life here in TG but willing to still try to figure it out as I go. I guess that is the thing about change, it tends to sneak up on you and before you know it you hear words or opinions coming out of your mouth that you couldn't have fathomed yourself saying a couple months ago. In all I think all this is good for me and it is giving me something to back up some of my opinions. And I'm sure to the delight of my family, maybe moving my views a little bit back to the center. It is a touch hard for "east-coast liberal innocent idealism" in the face of sometimes unmotivated and self-serving people (like people everywhere but yea...) and the knowledge that no one here is actually starving like they would have you believe in the media despite TG being listed as the 163 out of 177 countries on the UN poverty list. So yea, maybe I am just burnt out from the school year or maybe I am getting a bit jaded but my worldview is definitely getting a little more complex.



So for better or for worse, a year later in the Gambia and I am turning 24. I acknowledge that 24 is not old but with my sisters going to middle school next year a little cousins that are perpetually 12 in my mind going to college, friends from high school and college getting married and having babies....for the first time in my life I think I feel a little old. It prob doesn't help that Gambians constantly tease me about being soo old that I will never find a husband at this point or be able to have the 10 kids that Allah wants me to have. It has also occurred to me that at 24 I should prob be getting serious and you know, getting an actual paying job or something. But like my brother has told me "you are not ambitious or so much goal oriented, you are experience oriented" and I guess that is true and I am okay with a life like that.

<---The height of Gambian fashion....Dan in his American flag chaya and Colleen in her clown suit kaftan.

In honor of the Fourth of July the lovely Julbrew Brewery, The Gambia's only source of beer, is throwing PCVs and all you can drink party because we are such dedicated customers :). It should be a fun time and definitely a little ridiculous but we will all try our past to do our nation proud while not being terribly obnoxious in the process. On a more serious note about the 4th, a year ago my mom and I were sitting on the deck enjoying some lovely mid-Atlantic summer sun and leafing through the little book that PC gives to families to help them cope with their departing loved one. Mom came upon a passage that said something like "don't be alarmed if your loved one expresses critical views of American upon their return to country". My mom just chuckled and said "oh great, how much more critical could you get." After a year in country, contrary to that little books warning I think I love my country and have more respect for it then I did a year ago. I love that I am from a nation and a culture that encourages me to develop my mind and question things around me regardless of my gender or age, I am proud to be from a country that respected my rights as a child and now as a woman. Things in America is far from perfect, but we get to shout that from the roof tops any way we want and as often as we want! I am just thankful that I can speak my opinions and hold those in power accountable with out fear or anxiety. So as of right now I like America a whole lot.

Happy 4th! Enjoy the fireworks and America! Love you all!