Arrival in Training Village
Arriving in the village Friday we got a very early start and spent the morning working out logistics and loading up trucks and vans with all our stuff. On our way out to the villages we stopped at a market to pick up a bunch of kola nuts. Kola nuts are large, bitter, earthy nuts that are very important for any and all special occasions and ceremonies here. Interestingly, they are not grown in the Gambia, so they have to be imported from other West African countries, making them quite expensive (by Gambian standards). Upon our arrival in our village, we presented the cola nuts to our host mother (our host father was not there) and the head of the village (the alkalo).
Group picture before going off to training villages
Last glimpse of our bags being trucked off to our training villages
Kids going crazy when we dropped off the first trainees in their training villages
Our Host Family
Gambian villages are made up of many family compounds, which generally include a man, his wife or wives (polygamy is alive and well here), his sons and sometimes their families if they have them, his unmarried daughters, and his parents if they are alive. Our compound consists of our host father (who is a school headmaster a few kilometers away in Soma and lives there during the week), his mother, his two wives, his youngest son, his five youngest daughters (his second wife is mother to four of the five), and the daughter of one of his older daughters who he adopted (we aren't quite clear on why yet). Our host father speaks good English, as does his youngest son, which is hugely helpful for our language learning. In addition to intense language and culture lessons, over the past few days we have spent time getting to know our host family and adjusting to village life.
Our compound - our house is on the far left just outside the picture frame. Every night we ate dinner and hung out on mats on the platform in the middle of the compound.
Village Life
There is no electricity in our village and we have to pump all our water from a well and carry it back home in buckets. Really makes you aware of your water usage! Today I carried a bucket on my head for the first time (using my hands to hold it in place of course - I didn't spill a drop! Little victories :-) Since there is no plumbing in the village, we take bucket baths and do our laundry by hand and dry it in the sun. We filter our drinking water with Peace Corps-provided filters and bleach it as well. We use a pit latrine. We sleep under a mosquito net every night to keep out mosquitos, flies, earwigs, lizards, mice, and whatever else might try to crawl into bed with us when we're sleeping. Needless to say, the net is crucial for a good night's sleep! We sweep sand, dust, bugs, etc out of our house with a hand broom at least once a day. It is impossible to sleep past 6:30am because of very noisy roosters, donkeys, chickens, other birds, goats, women pounding rice and groundnuts (peanuts), and coos (millet), the incessant bike horn of the man selling fish off the back of his bike, call to prayer from the mosque, etc etc.
NOTE - After writing this entry, I found an uncannily similar but more poetic description of all this ruckus in Mark Hudson's book, Our Grandmother's Drums, written two decades ago: "Before dawn, the first cock would crow, immediately followed by the massive hooting and howling and honking of the other animals, and above it all, the braying of a donkey, like the grinding of a rusty iron door. Finally, beneath this barrage of noises...the voice of the muezzin, calling the faithful to prayer."
Picture of me carrying a bucket of water on my head, per my mother's request
Naming Ceremony
Yesterday morning, our village had a naming ceremony for the four of us in our training village. Normally this ceremony would be for a baby (similar to a baptism or a bris), but it is a long tradition for Peace Corps trainees to take local names in this way to promote acceptance into their new culture/community. The ceremony itself was quite short and involved a symbolic shaving of our heads and the announcement of our Gambian names. Jacob's Gambian name is Lamin and mine is Fatoumata. We later found out that Lamin and Fatoumata traditional Mandinka names for the first son and daughter. So now, when the little kids yell "toubob" (white person) at us, we can tell them that are names are Lamin/Fatoumata and NOT "toubob." Quite nice.
Women cooking pankatos (similar to doughnuts) for our naming ceremony
Finished product - delicious!
Symbolic hair shaving
Again
Village elders praying for us
Group picture after the ceremony
Goodies distributed after the ceremony - kola nuts, pankatos, and bags of juice (made from powdered drink mix)
Tailor
At the market in Banjul last week we bought fabric for curtains and some clothes. Yesterday we went to the village tailor and requested a door curtain, a window curtain, a shirt for Jacob, and a completo (wrap skirt, shirt, head wrap) for me. We ended up paying the tailor 80 delasis for all of it...around $3. The fabric cost us 265 delasis...around $11. We are very excited to pick up our new things this afternoon.
Other Assorted Items
1) Our host family has been hosting Peace Corps trainees for over a decade, so they are relatively familiar with Americans, which is really nice. For example, none of our host siblings have ever "toubobed" us, which almost all the other kids in the village love to do. One particularly cool experience was asking our host brother if he remembered the past volunteers. I didn't expect him to remember all of them since he was quite young when his family started hosting trainees, but he was able to list them ALL by their Gambian names!
2) In a period of 10-15 minutes yesterday, I had chickens attack me, a spider catipult out of a tree at me, and a lizard fall on my head!
3) We were warned before we came that the locals might compare me and Jacob but we hadn't experienced it until last night when our host mother made a comment about Jacob's brain being better than mine because he is having a slightly easier time with Mandinka than I am. I don't think she meant for our host brother to translate the comment into English and even if she did, I don't think she meant it in a mean way, but it still was a bit of a blow to my confidence. Just a reminder to keep thickening up my skin I guess...
I hate to end on a negative note, but I need to eat dinner and then join the New Year's festivities with my other trainees (almost official volunteers!), so you all will have to wait for tomorrow for more. Happy New Year!!!
