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.
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