Random Anecdotes Part 1 (written February 10)

Bread paper - Long story short, our stove is broken and has been broken since we moved out to our permanent site. Sarah will regale with that story shortly. Because our stove is broken we have been having peanut butter and jelly or banana sandwhiches for breakfast every morning. So every morning around 8:30 the baker bikes to all the bitiks (village stores) and delivers that day's bread. Shortly thereafter, I show up and buy a loaf of bread (sort of like french bread) for about $0.20. This bread comes wrapped in paper. Our favorite wrappings have been as follows: a page out of a cheesy romance novel; pages from the IRS tax preparation handbook; and a page from the monthly Peace Corps agriculture/environment newsletter. For a bit we were baffeled by how the bitik owner got his hands on these papers, but a few weeks later when we got the IRS booklets in the mail we realized that volunteers must be donating uneeded pieces of paper to the neighborhood bitik. What this country lacks in trash and recycling services, it makes up in reusing things...

UPDATE - On February 14 a very sad thing happened. We got our bread wrapped in either a page from a medical dictionary or a page from the glossary of some medical book. Someone somewhere in the Gambia I am sure could have actually used that book to study, but now it will be ripped up into bread paper.

Divebombing mouse - Yesterday afternoon we were sitting in our house and all of a sudden heard some skittering overhead. By now we have learned to tell the difference between a mouse and a lizard skittering across our rice bag ceiling. In this case it was a mouse. It went down one length of the house and then turned the corner and went down the width. It stopped and all of a sudden we saw a mouse head (with giant ears) poking out of the corner. It seemed to look around and sniff a bit and then promptly lept out of the ceiling towards (read dive bombed) our fridge and disapeared. Once we got over our shock we came over to that corner and looked around but could not find the mouse. This process repeated itself again last night, but this time we had forgotten to put the lids back on our water filters that happen to sit on top of our fridge. Thankfully the mouse did not land in one of our filters. The one good thing is we now know how the mice are getting into our house, that is after we fixed the hole in our door. Unfortunately, I don't know how we can plug up the ceiling hole. The really scary thing is we think a mouse might be trying to make a similar hole in the corner right above our bed. Although in theory our mosquito net should protect us, that still is a rather unsavory though. I hope my pounding the wall with the handle of our rake will scare it away. Regardless, our sitemate will be bringing back mouse traps from Kombo shortly, so hopefully if the rake doesn't work, they will....

Dengpatengo - A.K.A. rice krispies cereal. Seriously, this delicious treat tasted just like a bowl of rice krispies with milk. To make it, take a bowl full of rice (still in its husks) and soak that rice in water for three to five days. After this, roast the rice in small batches over a fire. As the rice gets properly roasted, spoon it into a mortar and watch as everyone comes running to quickly pound the rice (this is astonishing because normally you have few volunteers for pounding anything). Once the rice is pounded, toss it to remove the husks and mix it with some water, sugar, and evaporated milk. Magically, you now have rice crispies. Now if only this process was not so labor intensive, I would want it every morning.

Gambians not stocking up on household goods - At home if you need toilet paper you will go the store and buy a package of toilet paper. Maybe there will be 4 rolls, maybe 8 or 12, maybe even 24. Regardless of the number, you don't buy one roll of toilet paper or one candle in most cases. However, that is exactly what happens here. We were in a Gambian friend's house and saw the candle burning low. Sarah pointed this out and our friend's sister immediately ran out to the closest bitik to buy a new candle. The same thing happens with basic everyday ingredients like sugar, jimbo (boullion with MSG and Vitamin A), oil, tomato paste, vinegar, etc. Everything is packaged and purchased in single-use quantities in plastic bags (which then end up all over the ground until they are piled up with other trash and burned). In part not stocking up on household goods occurs because of the availability of money, in part because there is no discount for buying goods in bulk, and in part because it is very difficult to keep pests from getting into your food here, but I also think it is also in part a cultural value (see my post from a few weeks ago) that is not shared.

Despite Gambians great love for rice, some Gambians don't like to eat rice at night. The reason we have heard is that rice is too heavy to eat at night. One alternative is a sour milk and millet porridge. Go figure...

Termite battle in garden - The saddest of them all.... Since we enjoy fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs we have decided to have a garden. Unfortunately, no one seems to have told the termites living in two of our garden beds that they should move out. We planted maybe two weeks ago and every day since then we have placed wood ash arouond the termite mounds (apparently the wood ash scratches the termites bodies and they don't like that), we have made a tea out of neem leaves (natural bug repellant) twice and poured that on the termites, and we have tried flooding them out with liters and liters of water. Regardless of what we do, the termites are back in force by the next day. Fail.

Donkeys - Seriously, WTF...google donkeys and find a clip of donkeys braying. Perhaps the most ridiculous noise I have ever heard. There are a ton of donkeys here and they are LOUD! I hope it never grows old...