Thursday, December 4, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Email: thanksgiving, it's strange
really quick, I awoke from a delicious American food coma at 3 am and
came down to find an empty computer room, so I want to be able to wish
everyone a HAPPY THANKSGIVING AND BLACK FRIDAY. I tried explaining the
American tradition of thanksgiving weekend to a gambian, she
understood the family getting together and sharing a lot of food, and
chatting and catching up and all that. But then I explained that the
day after, everyone goes shopping! Like crazy shopping. It was wierd.
She looked at me like, how strange, they have a day where everything
is on sale and they dont go to work b/c they are shopping. In a place
that's still warming up to the idea of a supermarket, a day of
shopping is like suddenly landing on the moon.
Which brings me to another point. I got a lot of cool emails about how
happy everyone was after the election. Like there was this vibe of
happiness and joy. One friend wrote "I felt like I was seeing the
political equivalent of the moon-landing." And I felt so empty. Being
abroad lessens those shared experiences. Like being in Berlin for
Katrina, being in Africa for the election has left me thinking it is
real, but unreal. that shared excitement is lost on me. I came here on
the 4th to watch the cnn coverage, saw the dumb hologram, saw the New
England returns, then went to bed. Woke up, Obama was president. I
went to site, and literally haven't thought about it since. That
disconnection is so strange. Like, moon landings don't come around
everyday. Am I missing another one?
Of course I am having my own experiences. I still have little idea how
I can properly articulate the feeling of 'being here'. It strikes me
the most when ppl's parents or friends come to visit from the states,
I meet them and kept help but feel like they are looking at me and
thinking, he's so strange.
all is good. November has been a good month for me, hope the same for you,
dick
came down to find an empty computer room, so I want to be able to wish
everyone a HAPPY THANKSGIVING AND BLACK FRIDAY. I tried explaining the
American tradition of thanksgiving weekend to a gambian, she
understood the family getting together and sharing a lot of food, and
chatting and catching up and all that. But then I explained that the
day after, everyone goes shopping! Like crazy shopping. It was wierd.
She looked at me like, how strange, they have a day where everything
is on sale and they dont go to work b/c they are shopping. In a place
that's still warming up to the idea of a supermarket, a day of
shopping is like suddenly landing on the moon.
Which brings me to another point. I got a lot of cool emails about how
happy everyone was after the election. Like there was this vibe of
happiness and joy. One friend wrote "I felt like I was seeing the
political equivalent of the moon-landing." And I felt so empty. Being
abroad lessens those shared experiences. Like being in Berlin for
Katrina, being in Africa for the election has left me thinking it is
real, but unreal. that shared excitement is lost on me. I came here on
the 4th to watch the cnn coverage, saw the dumb hologram, saw the New
England returns, then went to bed. Woke up, Obama was president. I
went to site, and literally haven't thought about it since. That
disconnection is so strange. Like, moon landings don't come around
everyday. Am I missing another one?
Of course I am having my own experiences. I still have little idea how
I can properly articulate the feeling of 'being here'. It strikes me
the most when ppl's parents or friends come to visit from the states,
I meet them and kept help but feel like they are looking at me and
thinking, he's so strange.
all is good. November has been a good month for me, hope the same for you,
dick
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Email: mass email November 08
I came in to town to watch the elections via satellite at some embassy
lady's house. Have I expressed how happy I am that I am not in the
states to deal with the election bombardment. Sure, I feel like an
uneducated voter. (However I did vote, absentee already, who for…I'll
never tell.) (Ok. It was Obama). It just makes sense from my point of
view. The republicans, or at least the ones in Congress, keep cutting
Peace Corps' budget and putting it somewhere else. The war? Maybe, who
knows. Education and public parks, probably not. In any case, Obama
and McCain are both pro-national service, but I think Obama is more
keen on Peace Corps, or even if he isn't, I'm confident him being
elected will do more for America's international image and hopefully
make my job, and people's jobs like mine, a little easier. Although
everyone in the Gambia is an Obama supporter, my neighbors in village
like McCain. Although they cant say why. (Or I cant understand them
correctly.) On one hand, they like having a black, Muslim named guy in
office, BUT, have trouble dislocating the idea that America is the
land of White Old men. And that a white old man must therefore hold
the power. Some Muslims say that once Bush is out, no matter who takes
office, terrorism against America (either in thought, prayer, or
action) from the Islamic community, will cease. This optimism is much
welcomed.
The rainy season is over. It's been a few weeks since any real
precipitation. However most of my garden is still alive and producing
despite me being too lazy to adequately water it. For that I am
thankful, but it will not last. I will soon grow strong from all the
buckets of water that I will carry. Work is going well. I am keeping
busy. For whatever reason, I have been devouring books lately. We have
an everlasting supply at Peace Corps. From Oct 8th to the 30th I read
6 books, over 2,200 pages, which for some is not a lot (like my Mom),
but for me is astounding. Something like a hundred pages a day. And
these aren't Where's Waldo books either, like I know some of you
(Zack) are thinking. They're real books, with real authors. Highly
recommend 'the Power of One' about a young kid in South Africa around
World War 2 who wants to be a boxer. Or 'the Beach' which Jessica
Stockton recommended to me ten! years ago, but finally just got to. I
have a bad habit of grabbing books from the PC office and taking them
to site. One interesting thing I happened to notice, of the 18 books I
have on my bookshelf, 11 of them have been made into movies and 9 of
those movies I have seen. The other two were released in the last year
while I have been away and therefore could not possibly have seen. But
I thought that was weird, I don't usually go after books that I've
seen the movies of but maybe subconsciously my craving for films has
spilled over into the literary fold.
What else. It's hard to think of all the things happening to me, and
how to write them in a way that they might be interesting to you guys
who are all getting married and having kids and pursuing new jobs and
new homes. I'm just reading and gardening. Biking and sweating. Eating
millet three times a day now. But they make this kick-ass pumpkin
peanut sauce, so at least I'm enjoying it. Been finding all sorts of
creatures in and out of my hut, got some videos, so those will come
soon, I'll let them speak for themselves. Been journaling
consistently, every evening for the last few months. I have not
transcribed them yet because so far they're just me complaining about
being a toubab and not fitting in. Maybe one day I'll write a big fat
book about it all.
toodles, dick
ps
the election just concluded and obama is the man with the plan. CNN
holograms gave me the news last night, and somehow, the world seems no
different.
lady's house. Have I expressed how happy I am that I am not in the
states to deal with the election bombardment. Sure, I feel like an
uneducated voter. (However I did vote, absentee already, who for…I'll
never tell.) (Ok. It was Obama). It just makes sense from my point of
view. The republicans, or at least the ones in Congress, keep cutting
Peace Corps' budget and putting it somewhere else. The war? Maybe, who
knows. Education and public parks, probably not. In any case, Obama
and McCain are both pro-national service, but I think Obama is more
keen on Peace Corps, or even if he isn't, I'm confident him being
elected will do more for America's international image and hopefully
make my job, and people's jobs like mine, a little easier. Although
everyone in the Gambia is an Obama supporter, my neighbors in village
like McCain. Although they cant say why. (Or I cant understand them
correctly.) On one hand, they like having a black, Muslim named guy in
office, BUT, have trouble dislocating the idea that America is the
land of White Old men. And that a white old man must therefore hold
the power. Some Muslims say that once Bush is out, no matter who takes
office, terrorism against America (either in thought, prayer, or
action) from the Islamic community, will cease. This optimism is much
welcomed.
The rainy season is over. It's been a few weeks since any real
precipitation. However most of my garden is still alive and producing
despite me being too lazy to adequately water it. For that I am
thankful, but it will not last. I will soon grow strong from all the
buckets of water that I will carry. Work is going well. I am keeping
busy. For whatever reason, I have been devouring books lately. We have
an everlasting supply at Peace Corps. From Oct 8th to the 30th I read
6 books, over 2,200 pages, which for some is not a lot (like my Mom),
but for me is astounding. Something like a hundred pages a day. And
these aren't Where's Waldo books either, like I know some of you
(Zack) are thinking. They're real books, with real authors. Highly
recommend 'the Power of One' about a young kid in South Africa around
World War 2 who wants to be a boxer. Or 'the Beach' which Jessica
Stockton recommended to me ten! years ago, but finally just got to. I
have a bad habit of grabbing books from the PC office and taking them
to site. One interesting thing I happened to notice, of the 18 books I
have on my bookshelf, 11 of them have been made into movies and 9 of
those movies I have seen. The other two were released in the last year
while I have been away and therefore could not possibly have seen. But
I thought that was weird, I don't usually go after books that I've
seen the movies of but maybe subconsciously my craving for films has
spilled over into the literary fold.
What else. It's hard to think of all the things happening to me, and
how to write them in a way that they might be interesting to you guys
who are all getting married and having kids and pursuing new jobs and
new homes. I'm just reading and gardening. Biking and sweating. Eating
millet three times a day now. But they make this kick-ass pumpkin
peanut sauce, so at least I'm enjoying it. Been finding all sorts of
creatures in and out of my hut, got some videos, so those will come
soon, I'll let them speak for themselves. Been journaling
consistently, every evening for the last few months. I have not
transcribed them yet because so far they're just me complaining about
being a toubab and not fitting in. Maybe one day I'll write a big fat
book about it all.
toodles, dick
ps
the election just concluded and obama is the man with the plan. CNN
holograms gave me the news last night, and somehow, the world seems no
different.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Journal Entry 7.17.08
I have never in my life seen lightning and heard thunder at the same time. I have been through only a handful of storms and seen some close calls but tonight takes the cake. The wind is calm but the rain is heavy and the lightning so frequent one doesn’t need a flashlight. The thunder roars and rolls and startles oneself. "A" said that when the lightning is so bright and the thunder makes that horrific or beautiful clap at the end, then indeed the lightning bolt has stuck the ground. As I sat to write just now, I was shaken. My heart actually shook in my body and a sharp light flashed in my house and the sound of a hundred Oregon storms made me exclaim out loud, though no one is here. “Holy Shit!”
Today was quite an odd day. I woke up tired and sore. "A" left yesterday morning and I rode to Burreng afterwards. It wasn’t hot, too hot, but hot enough. I didn’t eat and after 3 or so hours going to the lumo and back, I was quite tired. I woke up this morning, chilled a little, my shoulder hurt from sleeping weird and my pillow that I made out of local fabric and the cottonesque filling from the seedpod of a white silk cotton tree, stuck between my legs. I fiddled around in the morning, made tea and pulled some weeds out of my bitter tomato bed. Let me do some exposition.
Some weeks back as the “rains” began (it only rains a few times a week, if that, but when it does, tis chubasco galore). My big garden had begun to sprout grass and weeds and I spent countless hours weeding it until it was nothing but dirt and clay. I went to Kombo or Kiang for about 10 days. When I returned (with "A") my garden behind my house had shot up and was doing well--toppled over but doing well.
There must have been a great many rains when I was gone for everything was doing better than expected and my big garden out back, which I so painstakingly weeded, and dug only a few beds, but had to do American beds! And I transplanted some bitter tomatoes in them. Well, I couldn’t see any of it the grass covered it all. All that work, gone. So this morning was my first day back at “work” since "A"is now gone and I have little to keep me from pulling weeds and digging ditches which I have somehow grown to love. So I pulled a bunch of weeds that were choking the bitter tomatoes and lined the bed with some dirty clothes that I found in one of the many trash piles around town. The clothes are worn beyond repair, believe me or else they wouldn’t have thrown them out. When one has one pair of pants and no money for another, they tend to mend every hole, or not, so the clothes they toss, are not to be resurrected. Unless you’re Peace Corps, then you use it to mulch a garden, as if any one cares or is even interested, which it seems they are not.
But onwards and upwards. I went to the forestry station today in the afternoon to charge my cell phone and buy a scratch card for African credit. My host mother slipped me some cash and her phone and wanted the same. Is it strange for my host family to be without electricity and some times food, but to still have a cell phone that they can’t really operate because they can’t read? Yes, it is. But I’m used to it and so I went to the forestry station. It’s about 3k away and I have gotten to know the forest man posted there. They have solar power and make their money charging cell phones, not necessarily planting trees. It’s not like they don’t want to plant trees, they do. But supply and demand, demands that they should rather charge cell phones at 5 dalasi a pop. I should think they clean up. MC was watching a DVD (solar power means also that they have a TV, DVD and refrigerator). The DVD was pirated as all are here. They have these 20 movies in one! DVD’s from China. They are often of shitty quality or they skip or the sound is out of sync, or the movie you wanted doesn’t play at all. Sometimes they have 40 or 60 in one which only means they break 6-7 movies into 5-6 or more “parts”. The packaging is slick however. One I saw said “10,000 BC vs Rambo 4” meaning those were the two big hits on the DVD.
This one had nothing in particular. MC was watching “The Condemned” staring Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vinnie Jones. It’s a remake of Battle Royale about prisoners on an island who have to kill or be killed and the twist, it’s all filmed live for an internet reality show. I walk in and don’t really want to watch but there is nothing else to do but wait for my phone to recharge so I watch. It’s MC and me and some other guys and a bunch of little kids. The movie is full of violence and swearing, none of which the kids understand but still. Am I getting older? I used to love bad action films as a kid. I don’t want to be a prude, but when it comes to the beating and raping of a female prisoner and one of the little cute African children looked at me and smiled, boy did I feel uncomfortable. Hopefully they didn’t understand. It’s not like they filmed the rape, but they filmed the beating and that was weird to watch with kids. When I was a kid I saw movies of that sort with my mom or dad or grown up or whatever. I also felt weird about it, so maybe the same applies.
My phone finished charging but my host mother’s phone didn’t, so I waited until about sundown. That’s when the storm came in. I rode the 3k back home in the dark, hard rain and wind and hail. The sand soft beneath my tires, the lightning as my only light sometimes, and I loved every minute of it!!! I love storms, love ‘em, love ‘em, love ‘em. Hate having a leaky roof but love storms. I took a bucket bath in the rain, always fun. I bought some soap today called Aesepso Soap. (Say that 10 times fast) It’s for prickly heat rash which I have about 80% of my torso and neck and arms. Never did have heat rash to this extreme until a few weeks ago. Thanks, humidity!
So I got to bathe with the new soap. It’s black, the soap, which is also neat, and I got to rinse off in the rain, and then I had to number two so I squatted there as huge drops of rain poured onto my naked back as I hovered over my pit latrine. Nothing like it.
I didn’t think dinner would come because I didn’t see anyone cooking in the rain, but it did. Rice with that gross black sauce. Good thing I already started boiling water (yes, rain water I just fetched some from the sky) and made ramen and peppermint tea. The mint being from my garden and the honey being from Gambia, and the lemon concentrate, somewhere in Italy (I think). But how quaint this evening is. I shall crawl into bed and read. I am currently reading “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norelle” it’s a huge book. I don’t know who brought it into the country. It’s hardcover and some 700+ pages. I am using it to write this journal on. But that’s it. If I think of more, I’ll probably forget it later. Toodles for today!
Today was quite an odd day. I woke up tired and sore. "A" left yesterday morning and I rode to Burreng afterwards. It wasn’t hot, too hot, but hot enough. I didn’t eat and after 3 or so hours going to the lumo and back, I was quite tired. I woke up this morning, chilled a little, my shoulder hurt from sleeping weird and my pillow that I made out of local fabric and the cottonesque filling from the seedpod of a white silk cotton tree, stuck between my legs. I fiddled around in the morning, made tea and pulled some weeds out of my bitter tomato bed. Let me do some exposition.
Some weeks back as the “rains” began (it only rains a few times a week, if that, but when it does, tis chubasco galore). My big garden had begun to sprout grass and weeds and I spent countless hours weeding it until it was nothing but dirt and clay. I went to Kombo or Kiang for about 10 days. When I returned (with "A") my garden behind my house had shot up and was doing well--toppled over but doing well.
There must have been a great many rains when I was gone for everything was doing better than expected and my big garden out back, which I so painstakingly weeded, and dug only a few beds, but had to do American beds! And I transplanted some bitter tomatoes in them. Well, I couldn’t see any of it the grass covered it all. All that work, gone. So this morning was my first day back at “work” since "A"is now gone and I have little to keep me from pulling weeds and digging ditches which I have somehow grown to love. So I pulled a bunch of weeds that were choking the bitter tomatoes and lined the bed with some dirty clothes that I found in one of the many trash piles around town. The clothes are worn beyond repair, believe me or else they wouldn’t have thrown them out. When one has one pair of pants and no money for another, they tend to mend every hole, or not, so the clothes they toss, are not to be resurrected. Unless you’re Peace Corps, then you use it to mulch a garden, as if any one cares or is even interested, which it seems they are not.
But onwards and upwards. I went to the forestry station today in the afternoon to charge my cell phone and buy a scratch card for African credit. My host mother slipped me some cash and her phone and wanted the same. Is it strange for my host family to be without electricity and some times food, but to still have a cell phone that they can’t really operate because they can’t read? Yes, it is. But I’m used to it and so I went to the forestry station. It’s about 3k away and I have gotten to know the forest man posted there. They have solar power and make their money charging cell phones, not necessarily planting trees. It’s not like they don’t want to plant trees, they do. But supply and demand, demands that they should rather charge cell phones at 5 dalasi a pop. I should think they clean up. MC was watching a DVD (solar power means also that they have a TV, DVD and refrigerator). The DVD was pirated as all are here. They have these 20 movies in one! DVD’s from China. They are often of shitty quality or they skip or the sound is out of sync, or the movie you wanted doesn’t play at all. Sometimes they have 40 or 60 in one which only means they break 6-7 movies into 5-6 or more “parts”. The packaging is slick however. One I saw said “10,000 BC vs Rambo 4” meaning those were the two big hits on the DVD.
This one had nothing in particular. MC was watching “The Condemned” staring Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vinnie Jones. It’s a remake of Battle Royale about prisoners on an island who have to kill or be killed and the twist, it’s all filmed live for an internet reality show. I walk in and don’t really want to watch but there is nothing else to do but wait for my phone to recharge so I watch. It’s MC and me and some other guys and a bunch of little kids. The movie is full of violence and swearing, none of which the kids understand but still. Am I getting older? I used to love bad action films as a kid. I don’t want to be a prude, but when it comes to the beating and raping of a female prisoner and one of the little cute African children looked at me and smiled, boy did I feel uncomfortable. Hopefully they didn’t understand. It’s not like they filmed the rape, but they filmed the beating and that was weird to watch with kids. When I was a kid I saw movies of that sort with my mom or dad or grown up or whatever. I also felt weird about it, so maybe the same applies.
My phone finished charging but my host mother’s phone didn’t, so I waited until about sundown. That’s when the storm came in. I rode the 3k back home in the dark, hard rain and wind and hail. The sand soft beneath my tires, the lightning as my only light sometimes, and I loved every minute of it!!! I love storms, love ‘em, love ‘em, love ‘em. Hate having a leaky roof but love storms. I took a bucket bath in the rain, always fun. I bought some soap today called Aesepso Soap. (Say that 10 times fast) It’s for prickly heat rash which I have about 80% of my torso and neck and arms. Never did have heat rash to this extreme until a few weeks ago. Thanks, humidity!
So I got to bathe with the new soap. It’s black, the soap, which is also neat, and I got to rinse off in the rain, and then I had to number two so I squatted there as huge drops of rain poured onto my naked back as I hovered over my pit latrine. Nothing like it.
I didn’t think dinner would come because I didn’t see anyone cooking in the rain, but it did. Rice with that gross black sauce. Good thing I already started boiling water (yes, rain water I just fetched some from the sky) and made ramen and peppermint tea. The mint being from my garden and the honey being from Gambia, and the lemon concentrate, somewhere in Italy (I think). But how quaint this evening is. I shall crawl into bed and read. I am currently reading “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norelle” it’s a huge book. I don’t know who brought it into the country. It’s hardcover and some 700+ pages. I am using it to write this journal on. But that’s it. If I think of more, I’ll probably forget it later. Toodles for today!
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Email: Parasites
I came into Kombo briefly because there were these dots on my hand,
like pimples or heat rash, and they itched like crazy. I would wake
myself up at night scratching at them. Then I noticed. They were
moving. I couldn't "feel" them move, no more than the itching, but I
could see the tracks or paths they were making in my skin. It's like
that Snake game on Nokia cell phones. They move around and leave a
trail, and the trail is all curved and wrapped within itself.
Naturally, I sought treatment. I guess I got them from working in the
dirt, which, as a farmer/gardener, means I will undoubtedly get more
of these. I have been applying some topical medicine to suffocate and
kill them and I think it's working. They don't itch and are now hard
little cysts.
If this is not the good morning from Africa you expected then I'll
skip the descriptions of the parasites in my stomach. I'm doing well
now and about to head back up country but there was a few days where I
literally couldn't eat. I would look at food, good food, American
food, and could not make myself eat it. That, is something new for me.
I LOVE to eat. For the first time in my adult life I cracked the 160lb
benchmark, albeit Im at 159. But now that I'm retaining water, that
will shoot back up. It's just neat to come to town and see myself in a
mirror for the first time in a month. I have a small hand mirror up
country, but there are days where I actually forget to look at it,
because I don't have to. Think about it, how often do you look in a
mirror? Once, twice, a billion times a day. Or catch yourself as you
walk by dark glass, or a car window, you see yourself all the time.
But for a month, I see myself only occasionally, I have to make an
effort to look at myself, then I get here and there's wall mirrors, I
just stand there with my shirt off looking at my bones. It's so funny.
You have an idea of who you are in your head, and then you look at
yourself and say, "who the hell are you?"
Yes, I have been farming. A lot actually. I have cassava and rice and
sweet potatoes all going well. I planted a bunch of trees and melons
and salad fixings before I came down here so I'm curious if any
germinated. The rainy season is a tough time to direct seed I guess.
No rain for two or three days and then it comes down like a mack
truck. I'm kind of a design freak and spend hours shaping my garden
beds, only to have them destroyed by the rain.
It's gorgeous here right now. The reds of the soil against the greens
of the foliage against the blues of the sky against the whites of the
clouds, and then some black figure walks into view and the whole scene
paralyzes itself and it all seems to become perfect. Right now Africa
is a crayola box, everywhere you look. Not a bad place to be.
Parasites and all.
like pimples or heat rash, and they itched like crazy. I would wake
myself up at night scratching at them. Then I noticed. They were
moving. I couldn't "feel" them move, no more than the itching, but I
could see the tracks or paths they were making in my skin. It's like
that Snake game on Nokia cell phones. They move around and leave a
trail, and the trail is all curved and wrapped within itself.
Naturally, I sought treatment. I guess I got them from working in the
dirt, which, as a farmer/gardener, means I will undoubtedly get more
of these. I have been applying some topical medicine to suffocate and
kill them and I think it's working. They don't itch and are now hard
little cysts.
If this is not the good morning from Africa you expected then I'll
skip the descriptions of the parasites in my stomach. I'm doing well
now and about to head back up country but there was a few days where I
literally couldn't eat. I would look at food, good food, American
food, and could not make myself eat it. That, is something new for me.
I LOVE to eat. For the first time in my adult life I cracked the 160lb
benchmark, albeit Im at 159. But now that I'm retaining water, that
will shoot back up. It's just neat to come to town and see myself in a
mirror for the first time in a month. I have a small hand mirror up
country, but there are days where I actually forget to look at it,
because I don't have to. Think about it, how often do you look in a
mirror? Once, twice, a billion times a day. Or catch yourself as you
walk by dark glass, or a car window, you see yourself all the time.
But for a month, I see myself only occasionally, I have to make an
effort to look at myself, then I get here and there's wall mirrors, I
just stand there with my shirt off looking at my bones. It's so funny.
You have an idea of who you are in your head, and then you look at
yourself and say, "who the hell are you?"
Yes, I have been farming. A lot actually. I have cassava and rice and
sweet potatoes all going well. I planted a bunch of trees and melons
and salad fixings before I came down here so I'm curious if any
germinated. The rainy season is a tough time to direct seed I guess.
No rain for two or three days and then it comes down like a mack
truck. I'm kind of a design freak and spend hours shaping my garden
beds, only to have them destroyed by the rain.
It's gorgeous here right now. The reds of the soil against the greens
of the foliage against the blues of the sky against the whites of the
clouds, and then some black figure walks into view and the whole scene
paralyzes itself and it all seems to become perfect. Right now Africa
is a crayola box, everywhere you look. Not a bad place to be.
Parasites and all.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Journal Entry 5.24.08
It’s been a long time since I’ve journaled. One reason it’s hard to find the time. You’d be amazed at how time flies when there’s only hobbyish things to do like gardening and chatting, and this and the other. I have re-established my addiction to Sudoku thanks to my mother sending me a one-a-day calendar of Sudoku puzzles. My peanut butter addiction is still in full effect. I’m on my second 200 dalasi tub. I’m just glad other addictions haven’t made their way up country such as alcohol and slothfulness. I reserve those for my trips to Kombo.
The last few days have strayed however from the normal as my host brother has taken his first wife. The celebration lasted for four days. But it wasn’t one of these four day fiestas that I’ve always read about from exploits in South America. Everyone is Muslim here so there is no booze, so no out of control escapades. Just many people gathering and chatting and cooking and sometimes drumming and laughing. When I was told about this I have to admit, I wasn’t looking forward to it. And now that it’s over, I can’t say if my mind was changed much.
The first day a bunch of people came, and me being my antisocial self I did my best to sit and chat, but then got bored and went in my house to do some work. Even whittling dried mango husks to get out the seeds was more entertaining than trying to sit and be berated by strangers who want stuff from me because I am white.
That has easily reached number one on the Jon Dick pet peeves in Africa list. Numbers 2 – 5 are variations that, from being call “toubab” to being treated like a tourist (who are fat, ugly and British and their kids try and look African and it doesn’t work; or they’re here for a prostitute/guide). Any way you slice it, tourism is gross here and has caused an ugly bumbster mentality in the locals. I get that I’m white and therefore I am different. And this type of racism is more ignorant than the American violent and deep seated racism that plagues and has plagued the U.S. Therefore this type is just annoying not hurtful.
Still, the last three days have tested my patience more than any other incident thus far. From how the villagers describe these ceremonies you’d think it would be just that, a ceremony. But from my American perspective it was hard to find. I kept waiting for my host brother to get married, and although he now has a wife, I never saw anything that resembles a wedding. We spent a day sitting around here, as locals brought my family loads of rice, oil, onions, and MSG, which makes benecin, which I’ve eaten every meal for three days now. It’s a treat, really, but too much of a good thing….
The second day we were supposed to go the bride’s village, spend the night and come back on the third day. My host brother asked if I’d come to the bride’s village and so I did. But it wasn’t until late in the afternoon after more sitting and waiting. The musicians came so I was able to kill some time with them B.S.ing with them, showing them my guitar and them showing me their violins and drums.—all locally made out of gourds, lizard leather, horse hair and all was good.
A vehicle, a really nice gele van took people to the bride’s village but so many waited to get on that the driver started to get angry. And it was getting darker and darker and hotter and hotter in the van with 30 people and more on top. And we were going nowhere. Everyone at one point lost it and yelled and/or cried and got off the van then got back on. Of course I couldn’t understand a word, I just sat there with my guitar on my lap until they finally took it and replaced it with some young woman. I’d rather have had the guitar. She killed my legs by sitting on the edge of my thighs.
A half hour later we got going. Arrived in a village I’ve never been to before and it’s pitch black. I don’t recognize anyone. Finally I find my host brother and sit by him. I thought he would be partying or something this being the night before his wedding. But he didn’t. I realized that without alcohol all these parties or “programs” as they call them are just extended good nights. Regardless of age, everyone cliques together, boys with boys, girls with girls and each listen to music and try to look cool and occasionally flirt or drink too much sugared tea and get “crazy”. But for me, it was just another realization that once again, this experience is just another reflection of my high school experience. I was once again uncomfortable in large groups, anti-social, a wallflower. I cannot, for lack of language and interest have a conversation. If I am not working, clearing a field, cutting branches, planting, weeding, whatever; if I am not focused on a task I have no interest and my mind wanders and escapes.
The whole night at the bride’s village I heard the music and laughing and dancing and had no inclination to do anything but dream about my bed back here in my little mud house. It rained a few drops, exciting!!! And there was distant lightning and I fell in and out of terrible sleep on a filthy mat on an uneven ground next to my host brother who was as tired as I was for once. For a pillow he gave me his bag of ceremonial beads and jewelry. His pillow was a broken radio. So it could have been worse, but he had a blanket, I had the mosquitoes.
I did my best to pack as light as possible because I am always over packing . It feels like Gambians pack next to nothing. I had my guitar in its case, harmonica and holder, water bottle, spoon, socks, toothbrush and camera shoved into one of packs of the case. I thought I did well then noticed that it was still 90% more than what everyone else brought, which was nothing. The musicians had their instruments and that was it. And still that was more than most. The clothes on their back was it. Who goes to an overnight and doesn’t even bring a spoon? Oh yeah, they eat with their hands. Or toothbrush, oh yeah, they use their finger, or water or a coat or anything. Oh yeah, they either don’t have it, or don’t care.
The only thing they don’t leave home without is their cell phones. For those who have one, it is the single most coveted item of status. Most are illiterate and can’t navigate the menu or type in messages but still have phones. Long story short, I barely slept, cause anytime I fell asleep, I would wake up to people yelling and laughing with friends inches away with no regard for those sleeping. How rude. Then when morning came I found that the new pants Frank had sent me was stained from the dirty, greasy mat I slept on. Then I didn’t want to be rude but I had to piss and didn’t want to piss somewhere inappropriate so I asked and it’s a big deal. I have to be taken to the compound that has a pit latrine. I should have just peed behind a fence which I ended up doing. I missed the first gele back to my village but thought that was okay because I wanted to see the wedding.
Hours passed, it gets hotter, more sitting, more not fitting in, low dirty and tired and bored and have a bunch of work I want to get back to, and I can feel a volcano zit on my forehead. I have a “fresh cold” by now and can hardly breathe right. I just want to go home or see a wedding. Finally we go to the bride’s compound everyone sits. My host brother in all his traditional garb is on a mat facing the bride on her mat but she is covered by a large piece of fabric and the elders take turns giving speeches and praying. We sit, I take some photos. It gets hotter, and then that’s it. Everyone disperses and nothing happens. We wait for the gele.
When I first saw my host brother the day before getting done up in his beads and such he didn’t look happy. Now I know why. It’s three days where people get together and have a great time, for bride and groom, nothing. They stay separated and sit around and wait for people to get their act together. When the gele finally came it was another big ordeal. I guess the driver only wanted to make one more trip and there were all the people who needed to go home, like me, and then all the bride’s family that had to come back. And they were some of the most stubborn bossy women I have met so far. If the night before was bad, then this afternoon was ten times worse. A half hour ride took four hours what with all the yelling, arguing , and not problem solving. It was hot and sweaty and I kept my mouth shut but all I wanted to do was stand up and tell everyone what to do, but they would have stared blankly at my English so what was the point. I took it and tested my patience once again.
Get on, ten feet and stop. Yell, get off, over and over. By the time we got back to my village I didn’t stay back with the parade of new bride and groom. I was fed up. I just wanted to go inside my house and splash water on my face and drink some clear water and change. And as I tried going through the gauntlet of people saying obvious things like “you’re back” “you left and now you’re back”. “there were mosquitoes there” as indication that yes indeed there were mosquitoes there
They saw that zit on my forehead and everyone and their mother had to point and tell friends and stare right in front of me like I was a freak. I do not go around pointing out people blemishes, snot, goiters, etc. So I can’t help but feel it’s a little rude for them not to return the favor but to point it out like I was oblivious to it. Every child, strangers, even my host family which I desired more sensitivity from; so an oddity I already was, now more odd. I blew them all off and went inside and tried to blow-off steam but instead I sat down and almost lost it because I found as I took my guitar out of its case that wood on the front panel had cracked as if one of many people riding on the top of a van decided to use my beautiful and cherished guitar as a seat.
It’s my fault really. I shouldn’t have brought it. I shouldn’t have gone in the first place. That’s the thing. I stay inside and read about how to garden and then try and practice and its solitary work for the most part. When I try to integrate I get hassled and berated and so I seek refuge in my solitary work. I feel guilty that I should be sitting doing nothing so I go out and try to integrate and the vicious cycle begins.
I want to play guitar by myself but that’s rude so I go outside and have to deal with people trying to touch the tuning pegs or telling me I should give them the guitar even though they don’t know anything about it but I have it so they need it and want it and when I get tired of this sometime which never ends, they say they’re joking. But if I gave it to them, they would not give it back; so how is that funny?
In any case the guitar was now damaged, not broken or totaled, just cracked-- too little damage to get fixed, too much to be a beautiful flawless guitar which I had taken so much care with until a gele got too full and it just had to go the most unsafe place in Africa, the roof of a bush van.
Royally pissed off but with no one to vent to I went to the musicians. They looked at me with sympathy but the truth was I still had a foreign brand new-looking instrument that they could never afford. One of them sat down with me and tuned it better than I ever could. He probably never even held a guitar before but he could tune it by ear. I still need my electric tuner.
And this is where things change for a moment. They say in Oregon if you don’t like the weather then just wait ten minutes. Although the weather never changes in Africa, moods are known to swing like pendulums. One minute as I stared at the crack in my guitar and my host mom came to my door to share with me the shock of the “mosquito bite” on my face and feeling the dirt in my tired eyes, I felt so close to just saying f__ it and getting the first gele to Kombo and have some ice cream and beer and mingle with some of my own culture before I went f__ing nuts.
But then five minutes later with the three musicians, me blowing on my harmonica and wildly strumming my guitar trying to find a chord anything that would compliment the screeching of their fiddles, trying to find the beat of the drummer, I never found either but no one cared. I played as loud as I could and they smiled and laughed and didn’t care. We were a loud and sweating crowd moving through the village. People handing money to me and the musicians and kids dancing. Suddenly there was no crack, no zit, no fatigue, I could have played forever and it felt like we did over and over.
It’s so strange to have such polar opposite moods within minutes and it happens all the time here. I just get pushed and bullied by these people daily and I take it cause I “don’t want to be rude”. But f__ if they don’t push my buttons until I get to that breaking point and then out of nowhere some old lady gives me a mango, or a kid smiles and laughs and tries to eat the white skin off my hand, or I get to finally play with other musicians and do it as badly as possible But somehow without anyone hearing any of the mistakes because no matter how you play it, it’s music and that’s more important than a silly crack (that I’m still pissed off about) or a zit (that went away) or the bucket bath and night’s sleep that I finally got. I guess that’s just life. To be pushed around until you can’t take it and then something stupid happens and you say “okay I’ll give one more day”, “one more month”, “one and a half more years”.
The last few days have strayed however from the normal as my host brother has taken his first wife. The celebration lasted for four days. But it wasn’t one of these four day fiestas that I’ve always read about from exploits in South America. Everyone is Muslim here so there is no booze, so no out of control escapades. Just many people gathering and chatting and cooking and sometimes drumming and laughing. When I was told about this I have to admit, I wasn’t looking forward to it. And now that it’s over, I can’t say if my mind was changed much.
The first day a bunch of people came, and me being my antisocial self I did my best to sit and chat, but then got bored and went in my house to do some work. Even whittling dried mango husks to get out the seeds was more entertaining than trying to sit and be berated by strangers who want stuff from me because I am white.
That has easily reached number one on the Jon Dick pet peeves in Africa list. Numbers 2 – 5 are variations that, from being call “toubab” to being treated like a tourist (who are fat, ugly and British and their kids try and look African and it doesn’t work; or they’re here for a prostitute/guide). Any way you slice it, tourism is gross here and has caused an ugly bumbster mentality in the locals. I get that I’m white and therefore I am different. And this type of racism is more ignorant than the American violent and deep seated racism that plagues and has plagued the U.S. Therefore this type is just annoying not hurtful.
Still, the last three days have tested my patience more than any other incident thus far. From how the villagers describe these ceremonies you’d think it would be just that, a ceremony. But from my American perspective it was hard to find. I kept waiting for my host brother to get married, and although he now has a wife, I never saw anything that resembles a wedding. We spent a day sitting around here, as locals brought my family loads of rice, oil, onions, and MSG, which makes benecin, which I’ve eaten every meal for three days now. It’s a treat, really, but too much of a good thing….
The second day we were supposed to go the bride’s village, spend the night and come back on the third day. My host brother asked if I’d come to the bride’s village and so I did. But it wasn’t until late in the afternoon after more sitting and waiting. The musicians came so I was able to kill some time with them B.S.ing with them, showing them my guitar and them showing me their violins and drums.—all locally made out of gourds, lizard leather, horse hair and all was good.
A vehicle, a really nice gele van took people to the bride’s village but so many waited to get on that the driver started to get angry. And it was getting darker and darker and hotter and hotter in the van with 30 people and more on top. And we were going nowhere. Everyone at one point lost it and yelled and/or cried and got off the van then got back on. Of course I couldn’t understand a word, I just sat there with my guitar on my lap until they finally took it and replaced it with some young woman. I’d rather have had the guitar. She killed my legs by sitting on the edge of my thighs.
A half hour later we got going. Arrived in a village I’ve never been to before and it’s pitch black. I don’t recognize anyone. Finally I find my host brother and sit by him. I thought he would be partying or something this being the night before his wedding. But he didn’t. I realized that without alcohol all these parties or “programs” as they call them are just extended good nights. Regardless of age, everyone cliques together, boys with boys, girls with girls and each listen to music and try to look cool and occasionally flirt or drink too much sugared tea and get “crazy”. But for me, it was just another realization that once again, this experience is just another reflection of my high school experience. I was once again uncomfortable in large groups, anti-social, a wallflower. I cannot, for lack of language and interest have a conversation. If I am not working, clearing a field, cutting branches, planting, weeding, whatever; if I am not focused on a task I have no interest and my mind wanders and escapes.
The whole night at the bride’s village I heard the music and laughing and dancing and had no inclination to do anything but dream about my bed back here in my little mud house. It rained a few drops, exciting!!! And there was distant lightning and I fell in and out of terrible sleep on a filthy mat on an uneven ground next to my host brother who was as tired as I was for once. For a pillow he gave me his bag of ceremonial beads and jewelry. His pillow was a broken radio. So it could have been worse, but he had a blanket, I had the mosquitoes.
I did my best to pack as light as possible because I am always over packing . It feels like Gambians pack next to nothing. I had my guitar in its case, harmonica and holder, water bottle, spoon, socks, toothbrush and camera shoved into one of packs of the case. I thought I did well then noticed that it was still 90% more than what everyone else brought, which was nothing. The musicians had their instruments and that was it. And still that was more than most. The clothes on their back was it. Who goes to an overnight and doesn’t even bring a spoon? Oh yeah, they eat with their hands. Or toothbrush, oh yeah, they use their finger, or water or a coat or anything. Oh yeah, they either don’t have it, or don’t care.
The only thing they don’t leave home without is their cell phones. For those who have one, it is the single most coveted item of status. Most are illiterate and can’t navigate the menu or type in messages but still have phones. Long story short, I barely slept, cause anytime I fell asleep, I would wake up to people yelling and laughing with friends inches away with no regard for those sleeping. How rude. Then when morning came I found that the new pants Frank had sent me was stained from the dirty, greasy mat I slept on. Then I didn’t want to be rude but I had to piss and didn’t want to piss somewhere inappropriate so I asked and it’s a big deal. I have to be taken to the compound that has a pit latrine. I should have just peed behind a fence which I ended up doing. I missed the first gele back to my village but thought that was okay because I wanted to see the wedding.
Hours passed, it gets hotter, more sitting, more not fitting in, low dirty and tired and bored and have a bunch of work I want to get back to, and I can feel a volcano zit on my forehead. I have a “fresh cold” by now and can hardly breathe right. I just want to go home or see a wedding. Finally we go to the bride’s compound everyone sits. My host brother in all his traditional garb is on a mat facing the bride on her mat but she is covered by a large piece of fabric and the elders take turns giving speeches and praying. We sit, I take some photos. It gets hotter, and then that’s it. Everyone disperses and nothing happens. We wait for the gele.
When I first saw my host brother the day before getting done up in his beads and such he didn’t look happy. Now I know why. It’s three days where people get together and have a great time, for bride and groom, nothing. They stay separated and sit around and wait for people to get their act together. When the gele finally came it was another big ordeal. I guess the driver only wanted to make one more trip and there were all the people who needed to go home, like me, and then all the bride’s family that had to come back. And they were some of the most stubborn bossy women I have met so far. If the night before was bad, then this afternoon was ten times worse. A half hour ride took four hours what with all the yelling, arguing , and not problem solving. It was hot and sweaty and I kept my mouth shut but all I wanted to do was stand up and tell everyone what to do, but they would have stared blankly at my English so what was the point. I took it and tested my patience once again.
Get on, ten feet and stop. Yell, get off, over and over. By the time we got back to my village I didn’t stay back with the parade of new bride and groom. I was fed up. I just wanted to go inside my house and splash water on my face and drink some clear water and change. And as I tried going through the gauntlet of people saying obvious things like “you’re back” “you left and now you’re back”. “there were mosquitoes there” as indication that yes indeed there were mosquitoes there
They saw that zit on my forehead and everyone and their mother had to point and tell friends and stare right in front of me like I was a freak. I do not go around pointing out people blemishes, snot, goiters, etc. So I can’t help but feel it’s a little rude for them not to return the favor but to point it out like I was oblivious to it. Every child, strangers, even my host family which I desired more sensitivity from; so an oddity I already was, now more odd. I blew them all off and went inside and tried to blow-off steam but instead I sat down and almost lost it because I found as I took my guitar out of its case that wood on the front panel had cracked as if one of many people riding on the top of a van decided to use my beautiful and cherished guitar as a seat.
It’s my fault really. I shouldn’t have brought it. I shouldn’t have gone in the first place. That’s the thing. I stay inside and read about how to garden and then try and practice and its solitary work for the most part. When I try to integrate I get hassled and berated and so I seek refuge in my solitary work. I feel guilty that I should be sitting doing nothing so I go out and try to integrate and the vicious cycle begins.
I want to play guitar by myself but that’s rude so I go outside and have to deal with people trying to touch the tuning pegs or telling me I should give them the guitar even though they don’t know anything about it but I have it so they need it and want it and when I get tired of this sometime which never ends, they say they’re joking. But if I gave it to them, they would not give it back; so how is that funny?
In any case the guitar was now damaged, not broken or totaled, just cracked-- too little damage to get fixed, too much to be a beautiful flawless guitar which I had taken so much care with until a gele got too full and it just had to go the most unsafe place in Africa, the roof of a bush van.
Royally pissed off but with no one to vent to I went to the musicians. They looked at me with sympathy but the truth was I still had a foreign brand new-looking instrument that they could never afford. One of them sat down with me and tuned it better than I ever could. He probably never even held a guitar before but he could tune it by ear. I still need my electric tuner.
And this is where things change for a moment. They say in Oregon if you don’t like the weather then just wait ten minutes. Although the weather never changes in Africa, moods are known to swing like pendulums. One minute as I stared at the crack in my guitar and my host mom came to my door to share with me the shock of the “mosquito bite” on my face and feeling the dirt in my tired eyes, I felt so close to just saying f__ it and getting the first gele to Kombo and have some ice cream and beer and mingle with some of my own culture before I went f__ing nuts.
But then five minutes later with the three musicians, me blowing on my harmonica and wildly strumming my guitar trying to find a chord anything that would compliment the screeching of their fiddles, trying to find the beat of the drummer, I never found either but no one cared. I played as loud as I could and they smiled and laughed and didn’t care. We were a loud and sweating crowd moving through the village. People handing money to me and the musicians and kids dancing. Suddenly there was no crack, no zit, no fatigue, I could have played forever and it felt like we did over and over.
It’s so strange to have such polar opposite moods within minutes and it happens all the time here. I just get pushed and bullied by these people daily and I take it cause I “don’t want to be rude”. But f__ if they don’t push my buttons until I get to that breaking point and then out of nowhere some old lady gives me a mango, or a kid smiles and laughs and tries to eat the white skin off my hand, or I get to finally play with other musicians and do it as badly as possible But somehow without anyone hearing any of the mistakes because no matter how you play it, it’s music and that’s more important than a silly crack (that I’m still pissed off about) or a zit (that went away) or the bucket bath and night’s sleep that I finally got. I guess that’s just life. To be pushed around until you can’t take it and then something stupid happens and you say “okay I’ll give one more day”, “one more month”, “one and a half more years”.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Email: To all those feeling independent, happy independence day. To all those feeling codependent, seek therapy.
Sometimes being upcountry is like being in a time warp. I was in Kombo
two weeks ago and now I'm back again and yet it feels likes its been
two month, or two years. Lately, everyday is a long series of ups and
downs. I have no idea how I can possibly relate it all without boring
the socks off you or sounding pretentious or arrogant. There's a
mantra that goes around amongst Gambians when referring to travel,
work, football, marriage, anything and everything, and that is, "it's
not easy." An understatement to be sure. But it's NOT easy. The
simplest things are hard. I feel like I'm beyond all that "pumping and
fetching water" stuff, now it's a bombardment of delicacy between
doing what's "right" and doing what "feels right". A small (and rather
long) example is my latest project, building a demonstration garden.
My family gave me a plot of land, some oblong shape of a quarter
hectare, directly behind my house and my host father went out with me
several months ago and we cut down branches and limbs and built a
sturdy fence and now the rains have begun and now is the time for
farming. Everyone is out in the fields plowing and sowing and the
women are building their fences to their gardens and at first I was
all excited, I've been at site for seven months or so and I couldn't
get one person to do one thing, but now it's like they've all woken
from a slumber and bam! they've hit the ground running. But with the
rains come the grasses. It's beautiful seeing a sand trap turn slowly
into a driving range, but when you realize that you have to somehow
clear that field of grass and weeds to farm and sow, Christ, it's like
you're looking down a barrel of a gun. I saw the grass begin and I
raked my quarter hectare. People came by and greeted me and
acknowledged me and told me directly what I was doing. ("You are
farming." "Yes, I am farming.") The charm of it all wore out after
about an hour, which is the point where one usually notices how hot
the sun really is and laborious one's tasks really is and how futile
it all really is because in the end, nature wins. You can hoe and hoe
and hoe, but the grass always grows back. I went to Kombo and when I
came back the grass had grown out of control. I set myself to work.
"You are farming." (Always a statement more than a question, even
though really, it is a question.) "Yes, I am farming." Over and over.
Then members of family came over to watch, not help mind you, but
watch. But then they say they want to help so I give them a chore,
they laugh and walk away, OR, I'm busy, bent over, and sweating, "You
are farming." "Yes, I am farming." And then without an invitation they
try and wrestle the hand hoe away from me to either a) show me how I'm
doing it wrong, or b) show me how they would do it. In the end, it's
the same thing really, because even though, "You are farming." "Yes, I
am farming," they don't think I know what I'm doing (whether I do or I
don't) and often times I actually DO know what I'm doing. I'm doing
something specific, like trying to clear weeds so they don't grow back
in two days, (removing the roots) and I'm pushed aside of my own work
on my own land to be shown the half-assed way to clear weeds (not
removing the roots). I get so frustrated that I don't even let them
take the hand how away from me. I get feisty and I get irritated and I
hate it because I don't want to lose my temper, I know they are just
being friendly, and I know they don't understand how it is rude to
walk up to someone doing begrudgingly hot and repetitively grueling
work and say, "No, like this." And then walk away. I know the "right"
thing to do is to just shrug it off and sit back and say, "Yes, you
are farming" and learn from them. But what "feels right" is to yell
and get angry and vent, because after all, even if I wanted to explain
to them the why's and what-for's behind my methods vs. theirs, my
language skills are a barrier. It's like being a baby, you want to
articulate your needs, you want to explain yourself like you've been
doing for twenty odd years, but you can't. You just can't, and it's
annoying. It's not like I feel like my way is 'better' (even though
it's supposed to be), I've only been doing this for only a short
amount of time, they their whole lives. But I also have the benefit of
specific training and reference materials that stress the idea of
making their lives more efficient, generating more income and
nutrition out of their yields. But I can't explain that yet! Not
properly anyways. Some of my counterparts speak English and have
traveled to other parts of West Africa, they're more learned and open
and with them it is starting to get exciting because I can see the
wheels moving. I can talk to them about live fencing and
multi-cropping and they nod and want to try it. They get the idea of
experimentation. They know and have seen that when aid workers come in
and show new farming techniques, those techniques work, 9 times out of
10, at least for the farmer willing to put in the initial work. But
then I go home, to my own village, to my own backyard, to my own host
family, and I'm met with this strange blend of smiles and resistance.
That's why I'm so bent on making this demonstration garden. I want to
demonstrate what I am trying to say because I can not say it. But I
can show it. I can dig two garden beds, one double-dug with green
manure and mulch and orderly plant spacing and variety, the other just
like all the other Gambian gardens, the top soil loosened up, no
mulch, no real order, and put them to the test, which one produces the
better harvest. My money is on the aerated and nutrient rich garden
bed. But to be honest, I don't know. In the states, that's the
standard practice, but this ain't the states. I went to a small
village and the wife of the Alkalo has a bitter tomato farm (of sorts)
and when I first saw it, I was skeptical, her nursery was a mess and
her fields weren't much better (by our standards), but, she earns
15,000 Dalasi a year on average (so she says, I didn't check her
books) and that's a shit ton of money. So she's obviously doing
something right. I just don't know what it is. She said she would give
me some bitter tomato plants to transplant to my garden and I went to
her nursery, which was an unorganized, she was stepping on the soil
and pulling the transplants out in the heat of the day as if they were
weeds, stuck 'em in a rusty tomato paste tin and that was that. No
care for the roots, no tender love and care, all the general rules of
transplanting, right out the window, but you know what. I rode my bike
back home 8k, in the sun, (up hill, both ways,) and put them in my
house and didn't water them or anything and later as the sun set I
out-planted them and the next day, they were still alive. Three days
later with on again off again rain, 90% are still there, still
kicking. Now, these are BITTER tomatoes, not hot house or big Burpee
tomatoes, these are hearty, West African produce. They're used to
being abused, by God and gardener alike; they're not the pampered
vegetable plants we're used to in America. So there's the rub. They do
like they do because it works. They farm millet even though they'd
rather eat rice but millet can grow in drier soils. Great. They
figured out how to work just hard enough to get their basic needs. But
that's the problem, right? But at the same time, problem solved. As
the world changes, so will they, slowly slowly. We come in to add an
extra boost, like protein powder in a Jamba Juice. Chances are, you
don't actually notice the difference, but it you think you do, well
maybe that's enough. However, me being the protein powder, I've got to
go through a blender and get all mashed up for their own benefit and
sometimes, that doesn't "feel right." Even though, and I know, it's
the "right" thing to do.
My site-mate Elyse is leaving home. Or going home, I can't tell which.
She knows she's going home, back to Alaska and then grad school in a
state West of Virginia. I can't ever remember the name of it though,
oh yeah, West Virginia. Elyse was a real saving grace for me. When we
saw each other it was great fun, great to vent to someone with more
experience than me but who never talked down to me or compared
journeys with me or gave bullshit advice to me (which are all things
that I do), she just shared. She really made me feel at home and I'll
always be grateful to her for that. She did however also put the image
of me, or us, Peace Corps/aid workers/white people, being like zoo
animals to the locals here and that image has stuck in my mind and has
added extremely to the frustration of working and digging and sweating
and grunting like an exotic beast behind my man made fence as kids
pass by calling my name, trying to get me to turn and acknowledge them
even though they have nothing to say, not even "You are farming," and
nothing to gain other than to get a rise out of me, just like one does
to a polar bear, taunting it, innocently, because they came all the
way over to see it and the least the polar bear can do is turn around
and show it's teeth. I know the kids don't mean anything by it, but it
stops being fun after a while. When you can no longer control your
image, your perception (or how people perceive you,) it's like not
being able to control yourself. I love the kids and most of the
adults, and I really do like sitting around and playing with them, (I
don't know how I'm going to go back to the states and NOT pick up
strange kids and twirl them around in the air without getting
arrested,) and if I could converse more, I'd like to do that, but
right now I have this overwhelming feeling that there is work to be
done, and that takes precedence over being a spectacle to be laughed
at and/or to be feared, (depending on how old you are,) and that image
of a polar bear keeps creeping up and I see the kids and I see the
bars that separate us and I feel the distance, between African and
American, white man and black man, educated and uneducated, hopeful
and content. Elyse is going home and for her, that distance will
shrink (or grow wider, depending how you look at it, she is going to
West Virginia after all.) In either case I wish her the best of luck.
I will miss her. She will undoubtedly forget my name as soon as her
plane reaches international air space.
Not much more to report other than the rains have arrived! It's nice
to be up at night, reading a book by candle light with the wind and
rain blowing against my grass roof (once again, thank God I don't have
a corrugate roof, super hot in the sun and super loud in the rain,)
with lightning flickering outside and maybe one or two bellowing rolls
of thunder with huge claps at the end like punctuation marks. I love
storms. Somehow I feel safe in a storm, protected. Even though my roof
might blow off (it didn't, almost everyone else's in my district has,
another downside of corrugate,) or my earthen walls might collapse
(slowly are, but nothing too bad yet,) I feel like I myself am
impervious (knock on wood) to the dangers of the mighty Gambian rain
storm. The season has just begun and so far huge trees (the big big
big kind) have been knocked over, cell phone towers are down, the
villages look a sight, and some guy got beheaded or something by a
flying piece of debris, (corrugate roof actually, another downside,)
but no matter, it's time to plow and sow and bundle up at night (it's
been in the 80's!!! so nice, all day long, so, so nice,) and "You are
farming." "No, I am not farming." I am taking a break, looking at the
sky and seeing the sun set behind large billowy cumulus clouds, the
likes of which I never see during the dry season, and the yellows,
reds, and oranges, battle each other in the fading light against a
deep azure summer sky and the baobobs, and the big white silk cotton,
and the now green landscape that rolls onto the horizon with horses
quietly grazing, and am I the only one appreciating this? Am I the
only one who sees this? No one else is stopping to look. Is it all so
normal for them. Am I really the only one? This country, this land, it
is like the devil cracking his knuckles. But some days, some days are
like the assemblage of God's perfection, and believe me when I say it,
I am glad to be here. I am glad to see it.
Happy 4th of July,
Light something on fire, something explosive, just for me.
two weeks ago and now I'm back again and yet it feels likes its been
two month, or two years. Lately, everyday is a long series of ups and
downs. I have no idea how I can possibly relate it all without boring
the socks off you or sounding pretentious or arrogant. There's a
mantra that goes around amongst Gambians when referring to travel,
work, football, marriage, anything and everything, and that is, "it's
not easy." An understatement to be sure. But it's NOT easy. The
simplest things are hard. I feel like I'm beyond all that "pumping and
fetching water" stuff, now it's a bombardment of delicacy between
doing what's "right" and doing what "feels right". A small (and rather
long) example is my latest project, building a demonstration garden.
My family gave me a plot of land, some oblong shape of a quarter
hectare, directly behind my house and my host father went out with me
several months ago and we cut down branches and limbs and built a
sturdy fence and now the rains have begun and now is the time for
farming. Everyone is out in the fields plowing and sowing and the
women are building their fences to their gardens and at first I was
all excited, I've been at site for seven months or so and I couldn't
get one person to do one thing, but now it's like they've all woken
from a slumber and bam! they've hit the ground running. But with the
rains come the grasses. It's beautiful seeing a sand trap turn slowly
into a driving range, but when you realize that you have to somehow
clear that field of grass and weeds to farm and sow, Christ, it's like
you're looking down a barrel of a gun. I saw the grass begin and I
raked my quarter hectare. People came by and greeted me and
acknowledged me and told me directly what I was doing. ("You are
farming." "Yes, I am farming.") The charm of it all wore out after
about an hour, which is the point where one usually notices how hot
the sun really is and laborious one's tasks really is and how futile
it all really is because in the end, nature wins. You can hoe and hoe
and hoe, but the grass always grows back. I went to Kombo and when I
came back the grass had grown out of control. I set myself to work.
"You are farming." (Always a statement more than a question, even
though really, it is a question.) "Yes, I am farming." Over and over.
Then members of family came over to watch, not help mind you, but
watch. But then they say they want to help so I give them a chore,
they laugh and walk away, OR, I'm busy, bent over, and sweating, "You
are farming." "Yes, I am farming." And then without an invitation they
try and wrestle the hand hoe away from me to either a) show me how I'm
doing it wrong, or b) show me how they would do it. In the end, it's
the same thing really, because even though, "You are farming." "Yes, I
am farming," they don't think I know what I'm doing (whether I do or I
don't) and often times I actually DO know what I'm doing. I'm doing
something specific, like trying to clear weeds so they don't grow back
in two days, (removing the roots) and I'm pushed aside of my own work
on my own land to be shown the half-assed way to clear weeds (not
removing the roots). I get so frustrated that I don't even let them
take the hand how away from me. I get feisty and I get irritated and I
hate it because I don't want to lose my temper, I know they are just
being friendly, and I know they don't understand how it is rude to
walk up to someone doing begrudgingly hot and repetitively grueling
work and say, "No, like this." And then walk away. I know the "right"
thing to do is to just shrug it off and sit back and say, "Yes, you
are farming" and learn from them. But what "feels right" is to yell
and get angry and vent, because after all, even if I wanted to explain
to them the why's and what-for's behind my methods vs. theirs, my
language skills are a barrier. It's like being a baby, you want to
articulate your needs, you want to explain yourself like you've been
doing for twenty odd years, but you can't. You just can't, and it's
annoying. It's not like I feel like my way is 'better' (even though
it's supposed to be), I've only been doing this for only a short
amount of time, they their whole lives. But I also have the benefit of
specific training and reference materials that stress the idea of
making their lives more efficient, generating more income and
nutrition out of their yields. But I can't explain that yet! Not
properly anyways. Some of my counterparts speak English and have
traveled to other parts of West Africa, they're more learned and open
and with them it is starting to get exciting because I can see the
wheels moving. I can talk to them about live fencing and
multi-cropping and they nod and want to try it. They get the idea of
experimentation. They know and have seen that when aid workers come in
and show new farming techniques, those techniques work, 9 times out of
10, at least for the farmer willing to put in the initial work. But
then I go home, to my own village, to my own backyard, to my own host
family, and I'm met with this strange blend of smiles and resistance.
That's why I'm so bent on making this demonstration garden. I want to
demonstrate what I am trying to say because I can not say it. But I
can show it. I can dig two garden beds, one double-dug with green
manure and mulch and orderly plant spacing and variety, the other just
like all the other Gambian gardens, the top soil loosened up, no
mulch, no real order, and put them to the test, which one produces the
better harvest. My money is on the aerated and nutrient rich garden
bed. But to be honest, I don't know. In the states, that's the
standard practice, but this ain't the states. I went to a small
village and the wife of the Alkalo has a bitter tomato farm (of sorts)
and when I first saw it, I was skeptical, her nursery was a mess and
her fields weren't much better (by our standards), but, she earns
15,000 Dalasi a year on average (so she says, I didn't check her
books) and that's a shit ton of money. So she's obviously doing
something right. I just don't know what it is. She said she would give
me some bitter tomato plants to transplant to my garden and I went to
her nursery, which was an unorganized, she was stepping on the soil
and pulling the transplants out in the heat of the day as if they were
weeds, stuck 'em in a rusty tomato paste tin and that was that. No
care for the roots, no tender love and care, all the general rules of
transplanting, right out the window, but you know what. I rode my bike
back home 8k, in the sun, (up hill, both ways,) and put them in my
house and didn't water them or anything and later as the sun set I
out-planted them and the next day, they were still alive. Three days
later with on again off again rain, 90% are still there, still
kicking. Now, these are BITTER tomatoes, not hot house or big Burpee
tomatoes, these are hearty, West African produce. They're used to
being abused, by God and gardener alike; they're not the pampered
vegetable plants we're used to in America. So there's the rub. They do
like they do because it works. They farm millet even though they'd
rather eat rice but millet can grow in drier soils. Great. They
figured out how to work just hard enough to get their basic needs. But
that's the problem, right? But at the same time, problem solved. As
the world changes, so will they, slowly slowly. We come in to add an
extra boost, like protein powder in a Jamba Juice. Chances are, you
don't actually notice the difference, but it you think you do, well
maybe that's enough. However, me being the protein powder, I've got to
go through a blender and get all mashed up for their own benefit and
sometimes, that doesn't "feel right." Even though, and I know, it's
the "right" thing to do.
My site-mate Elyse is leaving home. Or going home, I can't tell which.
She knows she's going home, back to Alaska and then grad school in a
state West of Virginia. I can't ever remember the name of it though,
oh yeah, West Virginia. Elyse was a real saving grace for me. When we
saw each other it was great fun, great to vent to someone with more
experience than me but who never talked down to me or compared
journeys with me or gave bullshit advice to me (which are all things
that I do), she just shared. She really made me feel at home and I'll
always be grateful to her for that. She did however also put the image
of me, or us, Peace Corps/aid workers/white people, being like zoo
animals to the locals here and that image has stuck in my mind and has
added extremely to the frustration of working and digging and sweating
and grunting like an exotic beast behind my man made fence as kids
pass by calling my name, trying to get me to turn and acknowledge them
even though they have nothing to say, not even "You are farming," and
nothing to gain other than to get a rise out of me, just like one does
to a polar bear, taunting it, innocently, because they came all the
way over to see it and the least the polar bear can do is turn around
and show it's teeth. I know the kids don't mean anything by it, but it
stops being fun after a while. When you can no longer control your
image, your perception (or how people perceive you,) it's like not
being able to control yourself. I love the kids and most of the
adults, and I really do like sitting around and playing with them, (I
don't know how I'm going to go back to the states and NOT pick up
strange kids and twirl them around in the air without getting
arrested,) and if I could converse more, I'd like to do that, but
right now I have this overwhelming feeling that there is work to be
done, and that takes precedence over being a spectacle to be laughed
at and/or to be feared, (depending on how old you are,) and that image
of a polar bear keeps creeping up and I see the kids and I see the
bars that separate us and I feel the distance, between African and
American, white man and black man, educated and uneducated, hopeful
and content. Elyse is going home and for her, that distance will
shrink (or grow wider, depending how you look at it, she is going to
West Virginia after all.) In either case I wish her the best of luck.
I will miss her. She will undoubtedly forget my name as soon as her
plane reaches international air space.
Not much more to report other than the rains have arrived! It's nice
to be up at night, reading a book by candle light with the wind and
rain blowing against my grass roof (once again, thank God I don't have
a corrugate roof, super hot in the sun and super loud in the rain,)
with lightning flickering outside and maybe one or two bellowing rolls
of thunder with huge claps at the end like punctuation marks. I love
storms. Somehow I feel safe in a storm, protected. Even though my roof
might blow off (it didn't, almost everyone else's in my district has,
another downside of corrugate,) or my earthen walls might collapse
(slowly are, but nothing too bad yet,) I feel like I myself am
impervious (knock on wood) to the dangers of the mighty Gambian rain
storm. The season has just begun and so far huge trees (the big big
big kind) have been knocked over, cell phone towers are down, the
villages look a sight, and some guy got beheaded or something by a
flying piece of debris, (corrugate roof actually, another downside,)
but no matter, it's time to plow and sow and bundle up at night (it's
been in the 80's!!! so nice, all day long, so, so nice,) and "You are
farming." "No, I am not farming." I am taking a break, looking at the
sky and seeing the sun set behind large billowy cumulus clouds, the
likes of which I never see during the dry season, and the yellows,
reds, and oranges, battle each other in the fading light against a
deep azure summer sky and the baobobs, and the big white silk cotton,
and the now green landscape that rolls onto the horizon with horses
quietly grazing, and am I the only one appreciating this? Am I the
only one who sees this? No one else is stopping to look. Is it all so
normal for them. Am I really the only one? This country, this land, it
is like the devil cracking his knuckles. But some days, some days are
like the assemblage of God's perfection, and believe me when I say it,
I am glad to be here. I am glad to see it.
Happy 4th of July,
Light something on fire, something explosive, just for me.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Email: Weblog
does everyone know about this...my family is kick ass and they have
put a bunch of my embarrassing journals and videos online for y'all.
But I guess the website changed, I'm sure you all have the link...but
in case...http://jon-dick.blogspot.com/
not much is happening here. I'm going to harvest some honey tonight
and shoot some footage of it for a beekeeping video for the locals.
It's not easy to teach people over here because not only are you
teaching them something they might not have any idea about, or only
misinformation about, but most of the time they dont even have those
skill sets of basic learning and problem solving. So I figure, if we
can make some videos and they can see exactly what to do, it can make
it a lot easier for the trainers than just charades or basic
illustrations. We'll see.
The rainy season is fast approaching. I don't know what it's going to
like, I hope to get some cool videos and blogs out of it. And maybe
some kick ass bike rides in the mud, I can't wait.
missing everyone and everything,
put a bunch of my embarrassing journals and videos online for y'all.
But I guess the website changed, I'm sure you all have the link...but
in case...http://jon-dick.blogspot.com/
not much is happening here. I'm going to harvest some honey tonight
and shoot some footage of it for a beekeeping video for the locals.
It's not easy to teach people over here because not only are you
teaching them something they might not have any idea about, or only
misinformation about, but most of the time they dont even have those
skill sets of basic learning and problem solving. So I figure, if we
can make some videos and they can see exactly what to do, it can make
it a lot easier for the trainers than just charades or basic
illustrations. We'll see.
The rainy season is fast approaching. I don't know what it's going to
like, I hope to get some cool videos and blogs out of it. And maybe
some kick ass bike rides in the mud, I can't wait.
missing everyone and everything,
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Video - 3.1.08
Here is a day in the life of Jonathan. He had 27 short clips of his day in Africa. Joe edited them all together so it's now a 15 minute movie. Thanks so much for all your hard work Joe!
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Journal Entry 2.18.08
Dakar afternoon, in some courtyard in a stranger’s compound.
Not much has changed. My roof still has holes and when traveling the other day to Kombo, it rained!!!! Briefly, but still it smelled like rain and that’s good enough for me. I was on the road so I don’t know how my roof held up. I think it was a pretty light rain up country, so I’m sure my place is fine. We’ll see. My family is still in this strange limbo of my perception of them. I over think everything they do. Why this when they’re nice to me and why that when they’re sneaky and untrustworthy or grabby might be the better word. It will all get better with time, I’m sure. For now, it’s just work, work, work. My first month was spent digging garden beds. My second, planting. And now in February, my third month, I am transplanting and planting again, more local varieties.
Not much has changed. My roof still has holes and when traveling the other day to Kombo, it rained!!!! Briefly, but still it smelled like rain and that’s good enough for me. I was on the road so I don’t know how my roof held up. I think it was a pretty light rain up country, so I’m sure my place is fine. We’ll see. My family is still in this strange limbo of my perception of them. I over think everything they do. Why this when they’re nice to me and why that when they’re sneaky and untrustworthy or grabby might be the better word. It will all get better with time, I’m sure. For now, it’s just work, work, work. My first month was spent digging garden beds. My second, planting. And now in February, my third month, I am transplanting and planting again, more local varieties.
Journal Entry 1.7.08
Certain misgivings and streams of consciousness
It’s a cold day in Africa. I don’t think hell has frozen over, and I think a snowball still has a chance, but sure enough it is cool, or at least a cooler day than most. It’s not like you wouldn’t sweat if you labored under the sun, or that this day could still be compared to August in Portland, but comparatively, and everything being relative, I woke up clinging to my sleeping bag, socks on still, not wanting to face the cold morning air or freezing bucket of water that awaits a shocking pour over my head. Like a trooper I got out of bed and the Hermasten winds have been blowing hard. It’s a t-shirt and jeans day but everyone is a little extra bundled and complains of the chill. It’s like an Indian summer to them, but instead of snow drifts on the horizon it will soon be the hot season.
This is the apex of West Africa’s cold season, dry, windy heat, instead of dry, still, penetrating heat. My area is known to reach temperature of over 40 degrees C in April and May. I am enjoying every second of this weather as best I can. The mornings and evenings being cool means getting a biting shock every time I shower outside, even my solar shower, soaking in the sun all day, offers little relief to the grip of that first liter of bucket water I use to rinse and wet myself. The precious warm solar heated water is the finishing rinse. Treating myself to its warmth like dessert, like Tres Leches after a plate of sour beans.
I can and have been working almost daily morning and evening in the garden. This has really been my pride and joy. Since the integration part has been the real kicker this first month opposite that of training where all my focus was, or I remember it to be with my family and sitting and sharing meals with them. This family is different, the compound is different, there are no walls, their row of “houses” or rooms is detached from my free standing two bedroom hut, a mansion compared to theirs. And for whatever reasons it seemed to them to serve me my meals in a small bowl for me to eat in the privacy of my own home. This is a nice treat that I didn’t like at first because I wanted to integrate with them like my training family. But these families are different from each other. So I eat alone, which causes me to spend the little time around meal time to also be alone, either with my thoughts, which are many, or my work, which is also many, or with reading or stretching two daily activities which have become like clockwork for me.
After sunset I bathe, then come in and lay out my prayer mat to the east of course and do the minimal amount of yoga that I learned so long ago, along with some bastardized Pilates and sit-ups and push-ups. Despite digging and lifting and fetching water and pumping water and more digging, I still want to keep diligent on things like push-ups if only to normalize a routine. Then the food bowl comes and I eat, return the bowl, crawl into bed and read. I have been here four weeks and have read just as many books. A first for me. I am not a diligent reader. But with no beer and no TV…and so with the majority of the day I am alone, working and reading and thinking. I can’t shut my brain off it makes me dizzy sometimes and I can’t sleep some nights. So integrating has been difficult. They speak differently than I learned. Certain words and the dialect is blurred and fast and instead of explaining to me what I don’t understand, they just repeat the same thing over and over, confused why on the 12th time I still don’t understand a word I have never heard before. Showing me or drawing a picture in the sand or using a different word or hand gestures seems to be all but beyond them. So it’s up to my ear to decipher and that, for me, sucks ass. My ears don’t like other languages, and outside the classroom structure, where I “excelled” in Pulaar, I am now at a disadvantage and sinking slowly and to combat the frustration of trying unsuccessfully to communicate, I am left to retreat into my work. I should be writing things down, consulting my notes and staying hard fast at tying to communicate but it’s just so very hard at times that I want to just escape into my house, into my backyard, into a book. That I do. I give in and find comfort instead of rising to the challenges of communication.
Even now, right now!! there is a girl talking to me and playing with my hair and I am ignoring her so I can finish this sentence. But during that elipse I just spoke and played with them, one little cute girl was biting on a rusty nail. I took it out of her hands and put it out of reach and now she’s crying. These kids cry at a drop of a hat and I assume it’s because deep down, they must realize how shitty they have it. Playing with rusty cans, filling it with dirt, sand, biting on tetanus nails. They can’t imagine the world where I come from where sandboxes are now exiled from schools because they carry germs and replaced by plastic playground made from recycle shoes and other rendered excess. Here, their lives are filled with germs and beatings and scraps of tin and holey clothing and they don’t know any better, not at these young, young ages.
But they must know something because it’s all smiles and laughing and then at a moment’s notice as some other kid smacks them a little hard or someone takes away some piece of trash which they happen to be coveting at the moment, it’s like a dam bursting, the yells and tears and crying from both girls and boys, from birth to even 14/15 years old is so painfully obvious and obnoxious and riddled with the hardships of generations past. It’s like they cry not from the pain or unfairness of what just happened but from the ghosts of their ancestors whispering in their ears all the sadness and knowledge of sadness that came before them and will surely follow their lives until they die.
I have not been to a funeral yet but I’ve been told that the wailing appears in adults during this occasion when it is socially acceptable to grieve and vent and exhaust the emotional torture and stress that builds up everyday. The kids must cry for this build up because their tears cease just as fast as they begin. Once they’re reminded of the cruelty and unfairness of their lives and let it wash away and slowly they realize the futility of crying and then stop and are happy again. The girl with the nail has forgotten that it was taken away and now she laughs and plays and I have drawn a star on her hand. This seems to please her. But sometimes it’s the crying which I’d love to console, that drives me back indoors and I begin to escape again. Sometimes being here it’s like watching a forest fire that was created by lightning, standing helplessly by with buckets of water and resources but having the inability to use them because this fire was not begun by man but by God, and if a fire is what God wants, then that must be the way. And who am I to interfere. Nature sometime must burn. If this village is representative of Africa then all of Africa is on fire. It is contained and it is controlled, but it still burns. Watching it from afar, even now as I am in the throws of it I am still not here, protected from the flames somehow as if my white skin is a retardant of some sort. Their afflictions are not yet my afflictions, but similarly, their joys are not mine either. Much like the dancing of the flames, bright and colorful, my whiteness can only reflect, not absorb.
For every celebration I am an observer, same with every illness. I know not my place yet and am uncertain if I ever will. I am afraid to share all I have because I know they will ask for more and I will not have enough. At the same time, at sometime, they have to live with me and it must be hard to do so, seeing my pens and books and what oddities they must be. To illiterate communities that knows the worth of such tools but has only the jealousy of wanting them and I not the skills yet to properly teach them the difference between wanting what I have and needing. Of course they know the difference, I am fooling myself to think that I have the answers that will serve and determine their lives. I was not here a month ago, and one day I’ll be gone. Why not give them a pen, some children are in school and need them but who gives them the pen when I’m gone? They need to get the pens themselves. That’s what we’re taught and what we believe. That’s why this fire still burns, we’re all waiting for them to put it out themselves, just as nature intended. A bolt of lightning may strike a tree and burn it down. Maybe even take down a whole forest. But it won’t burn down the whole world, that’s not in its design.
Leave man to start that fire. Only man is capable of burning down the entire world and where will we be then? Probably not too different then they are here in this village. Poor and with nothing sometimes not ever food, even though it can grow all around them, they just don’t know how to do it, how to keep it, and sustain it. And so the fire continues on a slow burn. And maybe that’s the trick. With all of the “civilized” world thrusting its power into this continent, it remains little if changed. And when the “civilized” world burns out, which it most likely will, here it will be the same. Little will change. Our lives are drastically altered when the power shuts off. Theirs when it suddenly turns on.
My mind has been going on a lot of these tangents lately. Escaping to philosophizing as if ideas will help me learn Pulaar. All that will help me is time, and so, I’m taking a break from the book learning of language comp and I’m trying to just sit here and let the language filter into my brain, through dams and roadblocks of English daydreaming and Agfo manuals and Cormac McCarthy and ipods and the other auditory barriers that I give myself to combat my days.
Work was working. My backyard was like the rest of my house, in shambles. They “fixed” the holes in my roof, my thatch roof by throwing more dried grass up there, but I can still see sky when I’m inside and that means water in the rainy season.
It’s a cold day in Africa. I don’t think hell has frozen over, and I think a snowball still has a chance, but sure enough it is cool, or at least a cooler day than most. It’s not like you wouldn’t sweat if you labored under the sun, or that this day could still be compared to August in Portland, but comparatively, and everything being relative, I woke up clinging to my sleeping bag, socks on still, not wanting to face the cold morning air or freezing bucket of water that awaits a shocking pour over my head. Like a trooper I got out of bed and the Hermasten winds have been blowing hard. It’s a t-shirt and jeans day but everyone is a little extra bundled and complains of the chill. It’s like an Indian summer to them, but instead of snow drifts on the horizon it will soon be the hot season.
This is the apex of West Africa’s cold season, dry, windy heat, instead of dry, still, penetrating heat. My area is known to reach temperature of over 40 degrees C in April and May. I am enjoying every second of this weather as best I can. The mornings and evenings being cool means getting a biting shock every time I shower outside, even my solar shower, soaking in the sun all day, offers little relief to the grip of that first liter of bucket water I use to rinse and wet myself. The precious warm solar heated water is the finishing rinse. Treating myself to its warmth like dessert, like Tres Leches after a plate of sour beans.
I can and have been working almost daily morning and evening in the garden. This has really been my pride and joy. Since the integration part has been the real kicker this first month opposite that of training where all my focus was, or I remember it to be with my family and sitting and sharing meals with them. This family is different, the compound is different, there are no walls, their row of “houses” or rooms is detached from my free standing two bedroom hut, a mansion compared to theirs. And for whatever reasons it seemed to them to serve me my meals in a small bowl for me to eat in the privacy of my own home. This is a nice treat that I didn’t like at first because I wanted to integrate with them like my training family. But these families are different from each other. So I eat alone, which causes me to spend the little time around meal time to also be alone, either with my thoughts, which are many, or my work, which is also many, or with reading or stretching two daily activities which have become like clockwork for me.
After sunset I bathe, then come in and lay out my prayer mat to the east of course and do the minimal amount of yoga that I learned so long ago, along with some bastardized Pilates and sit-ups and push-ups. Despite digging and lifting and fetching water and pumping water and more digging, I still want to keep diligent on things like push-ups if only to normalize a routine. Then the food bowl comes and I eat, return the bowl, crawl into bed and read. I have been here four weeks and have read just as many books. A first for me. I am not a diligent reader. But with no beer and no TV…and so with the majority of the day I am alone, working and reading and thinking. I can’t shut my brain off it makes me dizzy sometimes and I can’t sleep some nights. So integrating has been difficult. They speak differently than I learned. Certain words and the dialect is blurred and fast and instead of explaining to me what I don’t understand, they just repeat the same thing over and over, confused why on the 12th time I still don’t understand a word I have never heard before. Showing me or drawing a picture in the sand or using a different word or hand gestures seems to be all but beyond them. So it’s up to my ear to decipher and that, for me, sucks ass. My ears don’t like other languages, and outside the classroom structure, where I “excelled” in Pulaar, I am now at a disadvantage and sinking slowly and to combat the frustration of trying unsuccessfully to communicate, I am left to retreat into my work. I should be writing things down, consulting my notes and staying hard fast at tying to communicate but it’s just so very hard at times that I want to just escape into my house, into my backyard, into a book. That I do. I give in and find comfort instead of rising to the challenges of communication.
Even now, right now!! there is a girl talking to me and playing with my hair and I am ignoring her so I can finish this sentence. But during that elipse I just spoke and played with them, one little cute girl was biting on a rusty nail. I took it out of her hands and put it out of reach and now she’s crying. These kids cry at a drop of a hat and I assume it’s because deep down, they must realize how shitty they have it. Playing with rusty cans, filling it with dirt, sand, biting on tetanus nails. They can’t imagine the world where I come from where sandboxes are now exiled from schools because they carry germs and replaced by plastic playground made from recycle shoes and other rendered excess. Here, their lives are filled with germs and beatings and scraps of tin and holey clothing and they don’t know any better, not at these young, young ages.
But they must know something because it’s all smiles and laughing and then at a moment’s notice as some other kid smacks them a little hard or someone takes away some piece of trash which they happen to be coveting at the moment, it’s like a dam bursting, the yells and tears and crying from both girls and boys, from birth to even 14/15 years old is so painfully obvious and obnoxious and riddled with the hardships of generations past. It’s like they cry not from the pain or unfairness of what just happened but from the ghosts of their ancestors whispering in their ears all the sadness and knowledge of sadness that came before them and will surely follow their lives until they die.
I have not been to a funeral yet but I’ve been told that the wailing appears in adults during this occasion when it is socially acceptable to grieve and vent and exhaust the emotional torture and stress that builds up everyday. The kids must cry for this build up because their tears cease just as fast as they begin. Once they’re reminded of the cruelty and unfairness of their lives and let it wash away and slowly they realize the futility of crying and then stop and are happy again. The girl with the nail has forgotten that it was taken away and now she laughs and plays and I have drawn a star on her hand. This seems to please her. But sometimes it’s the crying which I’d love to console, that drives me back indoors and I begin to escape again. Sometimes being here it’s like watching a forest fire that was created by lightning, standing helplessly by with buckets of water and resources but having the inability to use them because this fire was not begun by man but by God, and if a fire is what God wants, then that must be the way. And who am I to interfere. Nature sometime must burn. If this village is representative of Africa then all of Africa is on fire. It is contained and it is controlled, but it still burns. Watching it from afar, even now as I am in the throws of it I am still not here, protected from the flames somehow as if my white skin is a retardant of some sort. Their afflictions are not yet my afflictions, but similarly, their joys are not mine either. Much like the dancing of the flames, bright and colorful, my whiteness can only reflect, not absorb.
For every celebration I am an observer, same with every illness. I know not my place yet and am uncertain if I ever will. I am afraid to share all I have because I know they will ask for more and I will not have enough. At the same time, at sometime, they have to live with me and it must be hard to do so, seeing my pens and books and what oddities they must be. To illiterate communities that knows the worth of such tools but has only the jealousy of wanting them and I not the skills yet to properly teach them the difference between wanting what I have and needing. Of course they know the difference, I am fooling myself to think that I have the answers that will serve and determine their lives. I was not here a month ago, and one day I’ll be gone. Why not give them a pen, some children are in school and need them but who gives them the pen when I’m gone? They need to get the pens themselves. That’s what we’re taught and what we believe. That’s why this fire still burns, we’re all waiting for them to put it out themselves, just as nature intended. A bolt of lightning may strike a tree and burn it down. Maybe even take down a whole forest. But it won’t burn down the whole world, that’s not in its design.
Leave man to start that fire. Only man is capable of burning down the entire world and where will we be then? Probably not too different then they are here in this village. Poor and with nothing sometimes not ever food, even though it can grow all around them, they just don’t know how to do it, how to keep it, and sustain it. And so the fire continues on a slow burn. And maybe that’s the trick. With all of the “civilized” world thrusting its power into this continent, it remains little if changed. And when the “civilized” world burns out, which it most likely will, here it will be the same. Little will change. Our lives are drastically altered when the power shuts off. Theirs when it suddenly turns on.
My mind has been going on a lot of these tangents lately. Escaping to philosophizing as if ideas will help me learn Pulaar. All that will help me is time, and so, I’m taking a break from the book learning of language comp and I’m trying to just sit here and let the language filter into my brain, through dams and roadblocks of English daydreaming and Agfo manuals and Cormac McCarthy and ipods and the other auditory barriers that I give myself to combat my days.
Work was working. My backyard was like the rest of my house, in shambles. They “fixed” the holes in my roof, my thatch roof by throwing more dried grass up there, but I can still see sky when I’m inside and that means water in the rainy season.
Journal Entry 12.28.07
TOO MUCH OF NOT ENOUGH, the journals and thoughts of a man not accustomed to having them.
I should have known when I couldn’t find it on a map as they handed out our assignments and locations of service for the next two years. The 24 of us rushed ourselves to a map. I remember feeling lethargic that afternoon and made a slow attempt to see my name on that piece of paper hung above the water cooler at Tendeba, less enthusiastic to find out where exactly Malikunda was and when I couldn’t find it on the map and the other volunteers there and LCHS had little information about it, slightly I began to worry. Where was I going? What was I doing? Training had been a very humbling but coddled experience. As long as we were with other Americans, everything felt very normal still. Even throughout site visit, I knew I’d only be there for a few days, then back to Kombo and the fighting 24 and the idea of safety and normalcy and comfort. As long as we weren’t there, then it wasn’t really real yet, and we could all still believe in the dream of Peace Corps, instead of the reality. The reality being something, three weeks in, I still can’t quite comprehend.
After Bakary arrived during site visit I felt a load come off my shoulders, as if seeing a Gambian, who I could speak English to, was just as good as seeing an American, I could speak to him my thoughts that were more complicated that “I am sitting” “I am reading”. I had no idea how badly I want to express myself until the option is wholly stripped away. The feeling of leaving a place, even temporarily is, it seems, symmetrical to arriving. The switching off of lights echoed by the switching on, or here with the emotional weight of coming transforms into the blissful relief of walking away. As I just spent Christmas further up country with fellow newbies coming back, even with Amber accompanying me, there’s a loneliness type feeling especially today now that she went back to site, that I can only describe as sad. Not having the time yet to make strong connections in the village, and having one too many bad tastes in my mouth, I can’t honestly say that I am excited to be back, as I was in training village or of even leaving the states.
The job essentially starts now, today. Right now. No more holidays or jaunts or visitors or visits until February when hopefully I will be able to go to the softball tournament in Dakar for all West Africa PCV’s who’d wish to attend. And I would. But today as Amber got onto the Gele-gele, in a hurry, unexpectedly as we had waited three hours and were resolving our thoughts, preparing for the idea that she would just have to spend one more night, prolonging the inevitable, I guess. But no, she jumped on at the last minute gele and we said our goodbyes and an emptiness sure did pour over me. A 30 minute bike ride home from the main highway and I step inside my abode and wonder again as I did the day I couldn’t find Malikunda on a map and still can’t-- what the hell am I doing here? Moreover, what the hell am I GOING to do here?
I should have known when I couldn’t find it on a map as they handed out our assignments and locations of service for the next two years. The 24 of us rushed ourselves to a map. I remember feeling lethargic that afternoon and made a slow attempt to see my name on that piece of paper hung above the water cooler at Tendeba, less enthusiastic to find out where exactly Malikunda was and when I couldn’t find it on the map and the other volunteers there and LCHS had little information about it, slightly I began to worry. Where was I going? What was I doing? Training had been a very humbling but coddled experience. As long as we were with other Americans, everything felt very normal still. Even throughout site visit, I knew I’d only be there for a few days, then back to Kombo and the fighting 24 and the idea of safety and normalcy and comfort. As long as we weren’t there, then it wasn’t really real yet, and we could all still believe in the dream of Peace Corps, instead of the reality. The reality being something, three weeks in, I still can’t quite comprehend.
After Bakary arrived during site visit I felt a load come off my shoulders, as if seeing a Gambian, who I could speak English to, was just as good as seeing an American, I could speak to him my thoughts that were more complicated that “I am sitting” “I am reading”. I had no idea how badly I want to express myself until the option is wholly stripped away. The feeling of leaving a place, even temporarily is, it seems, symmetrical to arriving. The switching off of lights echoed by the switching on, or here with the emotional weight of coming transforms into the blissful relief of walking away. As I just spent Christmas further up country with fellow newbies coming back, even with Amber accompanying me, there’s a loneliness type feeling especially today now that she went back to site, that I can only describe as sad. Not having the time yet to make strong connections in the village, and having one too many bad tastes in my mouth, I can’t honestly say that I am excited to be back, as I was in training village or of even leaving the states.
The job essentially starts now, today. Right now. No more holidays or jaunts or visitors or visits until February when hopefully I will be able to go to the softball tournament in Dakar for all West Africa PCV’s who’d wish to attend. And I would. But today as Amber got onto the Gele-gele, in a hurry, unexpectedly as we had waited three hours and were resolving our thoughts, preparing for the idea that she would just have to spend one more night, prolonging the inevitable, I guess. But no, she jumped on at the last minute gele and we said our goodbyes and an emptiness sure did pour over me. A 30 minute bike ride home from the main highway and I step inside my abode and wonder again as I did the day I couldn’t find Malikunda on a map and still can’t-- what the hell am I doing here? Moreover, what the hell am I GOING to do here?
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