28 years and one month and one day. A funny thing happened on the way to the pump today. Strike that, it was to school, to class. This afternoon as I walked around my house, I saw the tin door to my window shut and thought “hey, I’m right here, it’s easier to prop open from the outside, might as well.” So with nalgene and Pulaar dictionary in hand, I open my window, the top of the door (or shutter) scrapes the bottom lip of the thatch roof as always and then something hit my face. I at first thought nothing of it. I’m used to birds and lizards living in my roof. Often I will find bird poop on my desk; termite mounds jetting out of my walls. I sweep twice daily to make sure frogs aren’t hiding behind my bags, trunk and/or bike but still wondering why, since technically they are guests in my house. Why they are not eating their fair share of mosquitoes, spiders, earwigs, beetles and various other creepy crawlers common indoors this Halloween season. But this afternoon, what hit me in the face was not my everyday piece of crumbled termite debris or bird/lizard shit, but instead judging by the intense stinging section on my lower lip and then a subsequent just as fast as the first time sting on the bridge of my nose, I determine these were angry Africanized wasps, not bees but wasps, just like the ones in my backyard some weeks earlier. This time they chose to live outside my bedroom window, a shotty thin screen separating me sleeping and them buzzing. In shock I got out of there and walked in a daze to my LCH’s house wondering if the sharp pain in my nose and lip were visible to all the passersby. Happy end of course, I’m not allergic to bee or wasp stings African or any other and redness aside, no swelling. As I look in my hand mirror I can’t tell the difference between the stings and my previous and fast growing zits. So all’s well that ends without swelling and an Epi-pen shot. I just did some re-con and sure enough there is a small hive. I’ll need to kill or displace. But tomorrow there is a 6 inch gecko eating bugs on my back screen door, my garden is half successful, half non-existent, and I am tired and still need to fetch bath water for tonight and sweep and do whatever else. That doesn’t compare to the chores my family and neighbors do to prepare each meal and give me the best portions and all I did today was get stung in the face and not have the foresight to take a picture of it. I have about a week left in my training village before I go to Kombo (the capital area) to have Thanksgiving, swear in, buy all my stuff for my permanent site and celebrate the 40th anniversary with the President and all the president’s men.
I spent all last week at Tendebah and sent my last journal entries and photo card home with A.O. who early terminated after 5 weeks. I wish him good luck and hope he seizes a better opportunity in the states than what the Gambia had in store for him. Tendebah was nicer this time around. I had only one bout with stomach illness on Friday where, no joke, I lost 5 lbs in one day but it wasn’t so bad. I got to sleep most of the day away and that was what really counted. The next day we did the marathon march where as 24 PCT’s and 3 guides walked 20 some kilometers though sharp, itchy 7 foot tall grass and sopping ankle high mud. We couldn’t complain about the weather though, it has cooled down substantially and I feel like I’m back in LA except today which is hot and humid and very Africa. I can’t help but sweat as I write and watch this lizard outside my door. I know it is raining in Portland and snowing in New York and 72 and sunny in California. All of which I am not shy to say sounds wonderful. I can’t help but constantly feel humbled here as I sweat and have an awful day with language as I did today. I watch the locals and my mind wanders. I don’t feel so on task as I used to. No one does. Our thoughts are drifting away from our training villages and onto our permanent sites, or at least, to the feeling of permanentness of our decisions. Not in a bad way, just in a readjusting way. We are constantly learning and comprehending, struggling, adjusting, thinking, reading, writing, studying, preparing, but not settling in. That comes in the next three months when we go to site and are challenge don’t get to leave for 90 days or at least no overnight stays or guests, so as to better integrate. That’s scary I think, in the way that we have no idea what to expect but are asked to expect everything. How will we stack up? Your guess is as good as mine, but I am up for the challenge. I long for the days where this language does not bog me down. This could be the hardest thing I do, ever, and/or the easiest, depending on how I handle myself. Probably with a smile and a stupid look on my face. Let them laugh; God knows I would if I were they.
Quick note, getting back to the marathon march at the last few kilometers we trekked though rice patties and at two points we had to stop, take off our packs and move up and slip down into the neck high, thick muddy swamp water flooding the surrounding rice fields. Uneasy going in I was also uneasy going out. We had to stagger out from bank to bank passing backpacks over our heads to the other side. Not a one fell in the water despite clumsy hands and sinking feet. Some folks were comfortable in the water, the kind of folks who cool off in Florida, I imagine, by jumping into stagnant everglade swamps. They swam and kicked around and dunked their heads underwater, but they are f*cking nuts and I, being used to water with heavy amounts of chorine, decided to get in and out as quickly as possible without my hands or head going beneath the water line. I was successful even though at some point as my foot was mashed in the mud and I was passing backpacks over my head, something long and heavy and hard (and no it was not a polish last name) slithered over my foot and stopped and rested there, occasionally wiggling as if it were trying to burrow into the muddy bank adjacent to me. You know how I know it wasn’t falling mud and my imagination (like some of you may think as I tend to overact) because it slithered and wiggled and weighed at least 5lbs as it sat on my foot. A dense 5 lbs, not like the hollow 5lbs I lost the day before.
This thing was real, whether it was a snake or catfish, the guide (Gambian) to my right, who was sure-footed on the bank was quick to pull me out of the water as my face went a little white and I nonchalantly said that a snake or large fish was making sweet love to the top of my foot. And if the local guide pulls you out of the water--- you get out of the water! The only problem was that I had to get right back in, to cross the rice and not step back onto the snake, catfish or Loch Ness monster and not get swamp water all up in my grill was no easy task. But I did it. That night A and I traded full body massages and I slept like a baby. The next day we went out for a boat ride down the muddy tributaries of the river Gambia. We saw a plethora of beautiful white cranes and birds and crabs with one giant claw and mangrove trees and even one crocodile that slipped beneath the water a few meters in front of our boat. I caught only tail end of the croc submerging itself but I’m sure it won’t be the last wild croc I’ll see. I have too many juicy, tasty appendages and after the Marathon march, I plan on making a long career out of opaque river and swamp exploration. But until then, the night calls. I have only a week more to enjoy my host families company. Plus so much more Pulaar to learn. I scored intermediate low on our second test, hoping for an intermediate mid, but it didn’t happen. We need that IM to score our 4rd test to swear in. I was hoping to get it early and after today I see why. My comprehension is too poor. It also takes me too long to form sentences, statements and questions, basically I am retarded and cannot break through this wall. I will slowly slowly, seeda, seeda.
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