What Better Place Than Here, What Better Time Than Now?: 2010

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Medicine

People constantly ask us for medicine here. This occurs partially because we are white people, and white people often come bearing medical supplies, and partially because I work at the health center, and therefore they assume I have easy access to medicine. Now, in reality, the only medicine we have is explicitly for our own use, and even if we had extra, we don't have the necessary medical training to feel confident we were giving out the right medicine. We have explained this countless times, but to no avail. For a long time, I found this incredibly frustrating, not least because Gambians can get basic medicines for almost nothing at the health center a few kilometers away.

However, recently, something finally clicked and it all makes a lot more sense. I now believe there are two main reasons we can't seem to get through to people:

1)I frequently see Gambian health workers going home with bags full of medicine (which they don't pay for, but that's another issue). In this culture, if you have access to something that your family wants or needs, whether it is money, food, or medicine, you are expected to help them out. Gambian health workers probably get as many or more requests for medicine than we do. We are trying to integrate, we want to become part of the culture...and we are getting exactly what we asked for.

2)While medicine is practically free at the health center, going there often involves quite a bit of walking and waiting, often adding up to a whole day's worth of time. Especially for older people with chronic aches and pains from decades of backbreaking work (most of the begging for medicine comes from this group), I absolutely can see why they don't think it's worth it to walk all the way to the health center and wait all day for the 6-8 tylenol they give out at a time. There are pharmacies around where they could get most of the basic medicines we take for granted (tylenol, advil, pepto, vitamins, etc), but they are just as far as the hospital and medicine is often prohibitively expensive for many people.

If every time I had a headache, my only option was to walk a few kilometers, wait all day, and walk a few kilometers home, all for a few lousy pills, I probably would start nagging my friend/sister/uncle/whatever who worked at the hospital to bring medicine home for me too!

Some interesting logic and food for thought (written Dec 9)

1) There seems to be a relatively widely held belief here that men have a non-negotiable biological need to have sex at least once every few weeks. If this need is not satisfied, people believe the man can become very sick. Now consider that women often have 6 or 7 children here (which is considered absolutely necessary to provide for one's own social security) and that there is a generally accepted practice of a man abstaining from sex with his wife when she is in the last trimester of pregnancy and for the first couple months after giving birth. Additionally, many men will abstain from sex with their wife when she is sick. Given these assumptions and practices, if a man only has one wife, sooner or later, he will have no choice but to cheat on her. Islam clearly discourages infidelity, so polygamy is the obvious answer.

2) Another seemingly relatively widely held belief here is that there are significantly more women in the world than men. As a result, men have a social and religious responsibility to take more than one wife to provide for all those extra women. Using the same logic, since polygamy is not widely practiced in the US/UK/Europe, there are large numbers of eligible young women there who can't find a husband and therefore would happily take a Gambian husband, get him a visa, and bring him to the US/UK/Europe. This explains all the beautiful American/British/European young women Gambian men find on internet dating sites.

Assorted pictures from November (continued)

Selections from impromptu photo shoot #1. Wonto and Aja.

Jonyi

Hawa

Aja and Mohammed

Mohammed, Aja, Seedy Boulo and Wonto

Me, Aja, Mohammed and Jonyi

Selections from impromptu photo shoot #2. Baanaa and her new baby.

Fatoumata and Mohammed. I like this one :-)

Selections from impromptu photo shoot #3. Look, I'm so African w/ my tikoo (head wrap)...

Amie, the one and only.

Great picture of Fatou

Mbinkoo. This kid is hilarious.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Assorted pictures from November

Artsy or corny? I never can tell...

Getting my hair plaited (sort of)

Ntandingdingding

Iso. Dirty and nutty but still adorable.

Iso playing hand games w/ Jacob

I happened to have my camera out when this goat walked by with a tassaloo (teapot used for hand washing) stuck on its head. Goats are not always the most intelligent animals.

Not the best picture, but I had to include it to get the full effect of Iso's outfit

Fatoumata plaiting Jonyi in preparation for Tobaski

Finished product

Jonyi and Meta with their matching hairstyles

Have I mentioned people LOVE Obama here??

These girls LOVE playing with our nalgenes. If only everything they liked to play with was as indestructible as nalgenes...

Jonyi keba (the elder)

Fatoumata, Jonyi and Meta, all ready for Tobaski

Divying up the ram meat. Mmmmm....

Jonyi working on Tobaski lunch

Iso looking clean and respectable for once

Efo in her Tobaski outfit, somehow managing to still look resplendent after walking several kilometers on a dusty road in the hot sun

Morocco!

Sorry for the long silence everyone...we just got back from a wonderful and refreshing trip to Morocco with Jacob's parents. We were thrilled that Debbie and Walter were able to come and spent a few days in our village before we all headed off to Morocco (via Dakar). I have way too many pictures to post here, so I'm just putting the link to my Picasa album here. Enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/sgardiner84/MoroccoNovember2010

Friday, November 12, 2010

HIV Education Bike Trek continued (written Nov 8)

Kids performing a drama

Kids watching the drama

Video of dancing after the drama

Kevin giving a thank-you speech before heading to the next school

Ready to head out

Janjanbureh team posing with our banner before our last day of teaching

Last day...go team!

Kids performing a drama at our last school

Welcoming the Barra team to Farafenni. Nice height Julia!!

Barra team with their banner

Maggie and Lucia presenting at the closing ceremony in Farafenni

The whole group (or most of us at least)

Konkerons!! (written Oct 25)

I think I've mentioned konkerons before, but I'll give a brief explanation of this unique cultural practice again. Konkerons are people dressed up in big furry or leafy costumes that run around screeching and chasing people with machetes. They often use hallucinogens and are believed to have magic powers, such as flying and projecting their voices over long distances. Many people are afraid of them, especially children. This fear is not unfounded, as occasionally they hurt and even kill people. Konkeron are usually associated with circumcision ceremonies, but they crop up at other times as well. I've heard a variety of explanations for the reasons behind the practice, including instilling respect for elders and driving away bad spirits. We recently had a group circumcision ceremony in the compound next to us, so we've had a LOT of konkeron activity lately. I caught one on film the other evening (from the relative safety of our backyard)...see below:

HIV Education Bike Trek (written Nov 8)

Last week I participated in an HIV Education Bike Trek where I went from school to school with seven other volunteers teaching students about HIV/AIDS. The trek actually consisted of around thirty volunteers, plus Gambian supporters, divided into three teams which convened at the end of the week in Farafenni. Our team worked our way from Janjanbureh (MacCarthy Island) to Farafenni, visiting schools along the way. It was really a great experience and it inspired me to start planning a mini bike trek in our region early next year. More to come on that later. I took a ton of pictures, so I'm going to break this into two posts: