Last Saturday we were heading back from Basse after a short trip visiting friends. We arrived at the car park around 8am and tried to find transport back to our village. The fact that the market was closed should have been our first clue - last Saturday was Setsetal in Basse, which meant a) that no vehicles would leave until 1pm and b) that everyone was supposed to be cleaning up the city.
Living in the Gambia one thing I have noticed is that there are no trash cans and no real waste management system. When you are done with something, for example the plastic bag your panketos (think donut holes) were in, you toss the bag on the ground. This very quickly results in a lot of trash lying around. To combat this, the Gambian government has said that every month each village should have a Setsetal day. In theory, this should happen on the same day all over the country but in reality its implementation is a bit random and haphazard. Once people collect the trash it is burned - I know this is not good but I have yet to come up with a better solution.
Back to Basse - if we were waiting for 5 hours for the geli to leave because the entire city was busy cleaning then it would have been ok. We at least would have been delayed for a good reason. Instead, we saw a few trash fires in the distance but even after walking through a good part of the city, I didn't see anyone cleaning. Grrr....
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Trip to Basse (written March 28)
We have been meaning for a while to make a trip up to Basse the largest village upcountry (eastern portion of the country). Everyone kept warning us that it gets really hot up there in the hot season so we wanted to make sure we made it up there before IST (In-service training) on the coast in April. We got an early start Wednesday morning (although not as early as we would have liked) and easily found a geli going directly to Basse. As an added bonus the geli was one of the more "colorful" gelis we have seen (see picture below).
The trip up was uneventful (smooth and travel can never be used in the same sentence here) and we made it up to Basse around 4pm (6 hours of driving time). We spent the evening and the next day hanging out and exploring Basse with friends in the area. It was great to see them! Conveniently, we were able to stay at the Peace Corps Basse transit house, which eliminated some of the stress of finding a volunteer to house an extra two people for three nights. The Basse region is primarily Fula, so Mandinka is not nearly as widely spoken as in our area. It really made us appreciate our ability to communicate (albeit on a basic level) in Mandinka areas.
Friday we decided to borrow bikes from the Basse house and head out to visit another friend (a fellow Wisconsonite!) in a small village maybe 20-30 kilometers from Basse. Her village is on the northern bank of the river so we needed to cross the river to get there, something we had not yet done. It was supposedly a relatively straight shot for the first half so our plan was to meet our friend halfway before it got really complicated. After getting detailed directions from several people we headed out and unfortunately got lost before even leaving Basse. After being rescued by a more seasoned volunteer, we got back on track and successfully crossed the river with our bicycles in a small metal boat. The rest of the ride was relatively simple and we successfully met up with our friend at our predetermined meeting point. As she led us down winding and ever-forking roads, weaving through villages, we quickly understood why we did not attempt the second half of the ride on our own! Once we got to her village we spent a pleasant day walking around her village and meeting her friends and family, before heading back towards Basse on our own, armed with detailed directions and our cell phones, of course. Amazingly, and mostly thanks to excellent directions, we were somehow able to retrace our path and made in back to Basse well before dark.
Saturday morning we woke up early and headed to the car park to catch a geli back to Soma. As we walked through market to get to the car park, we noticed that the market seemed very empty, but we chalked it up to the early hour. Upon reaching the car park, we were happy to find a geli that was already partially filled, and didn't expect to have to wait more than an hour or so before leaving. After an hour plus of waiting, however, we were informed that it was "setsitol" (see Jacob's post on "setsitol"), so no cars would be leaving before 1pm. Great. So after several more hours of waiting (during which we observed no signs of anyone cleaning the trash-littered area around the car park), our geli finally rolled out of the car park around 1, as promised. `Despite the fact that the geli was supposed to be going directly to Soma, we stopped in a village about a third of the way there and squeezed the people from our no half-empty geli into another half-empty geli going to Soma. Unfortunately this new geli was in much worse condition than the previous one and needed people to get out and push to start it. Never a good sign. Not unexpectedly, after only an hour or so, the geli broke down. After an hour or so of waiting, a third geli going to Soma came by and thankfully was able to squeeze us all in. The one blessing in all of this was the drivers of the various gelis all worked out the fares among themselves, so we didn't end up having to pay any more than we should have. We finally made it back to our house around 9pm, a solid 13 hours after leaving the Basse transit house (~200 kilometers away). Whew!
The trip up was uneventful (smooth and travel can never be used in the same sentence here) and we made it up to Basse around 4pm (6 hours of driving time). We spent the evening and the next day hanging out and exploring Basse with friends in the area. It was great to see them! Conveniently, we were able to stay at the Peace Corps Basse transit house, which eliminated some of the stress of finding a volunteer to house an extra two people for three nights. The Basse region is primarily Fula, so Mandinka is not nearly as widely spoken as in our area. It really made us appreciate our ability to communicate (albeit on a basic level) in Mandinka areas.
Friday we decided to borrow bikes from the Basse house and head out to visit another friend (a fellow Wisconsonite!) in a small village maybe 20-30 kilometers from Basse. Her village is on the northern bank of the river so we needed to cross the river to get there, something we had not yet done. It was supposedly a relatively straight shot for the first half so our plan was to meet our friend halfway before it got really complicated. After getting detailed directions from several people we headed out and unfortunately got lost before even leaving Basse. After being rescued by a more seasoned volunteer, we got back on track and successfully crossed the river with our bicycles in a small metal boat. The rest of the ride was relatively simple and we successfully met up with our friend at our predetermined meeting point. As she led us down winding and ever-forking roads, weaving through villages, we quickly understood why we did not attempt the second half of the ride on our own! Once we got to her village we spent a pleasant day walking around her village and meeting her friends and family, before heading back towards Basse on our own, armed with detailed directions and our cell phones, of course. Amazingly, and mostly thanks to excellent directions, we were somehow able to retrace our path and made in back to Basse well before dark.
Saturday morning we woke up early and headed to the car park to catch a geli back to Soma. As we walked through market to get to the car park, we noticed that the market seemed very empty, but we chalked it up to the early hour. Upon reaching the car park, we were happy to find a geli that was already partially filled, and didn't expect to have to wait more than an hour or so before leaving. After an hour plus of waiting, however, we were informed that it was "setsitol" (see Jacob's post on "setsitol"), so no cars would be leaving before 1pm. Great. So after several more hours of waiting (during which we observed no signs of anyone cleaning the trash-littered area around the car park), our geli finally rolled out of the car park around 1, as promised. `Despite the fact that the geli was supposed to be going directly to Soma, we stopped in a village about a third of the way there and squeezed the people from our no half-empty geli into another half-empty geli going to Soma. Unfortunately this new geli was in much worse condition than the previous one and needed people to get out and push to start it. Never a good sign. Not unexpectedly, after only an hour or so, the geli broke down. After an hour or so of waiting, a third geli going to Soma came by and thankfully was able to squeeze us all in. The one blessing in all of this was the drivers of the various gelis all worked out the fares among themselves, so we didn't end up having to pay any more than we should have. We finally made it back to our house around 9pm, a solid 13 hours after leaving the Basse transit house (~200 kilometers away). Whew!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Picture update
Our first ripe mango...mango season is officially here!
Group during our getaway weekend while Lisa's sister was visiting (minus Josh and Kelsey, who hadn't arrived yet)
Delicious dinner #1...masaman curried chicken with veggies and lentils, salad with ginger lime dressing (tomatoes are hiding under the lettuce), chocolate cake with melted chocolate on top
Josh with birthday surprise #1...pizza!
Huge papaya, freshly picked off a tree outside
Delicious dinner #2...amazing thai coconut curry with chicken and veggies (made possible by a "A Taste of Thai" brand red curry paste packet sent from home...apparently they make several kinds of curry paste and excellent soup packets as well...the packets are small and light, perfect for care packages...hint hint ;-))
They're twins...can you tell?
Ellie and Maggie
Gambian poses (Ellie desperately trying not to laugh)
And another
Love this pic of us :-)
The birthday boy with birthday surprise #2...chocolate cake with chocolate amarullo frosting and banana cake with amarullo frosting
All smiles
Rural Role Models Film Screening (written March 22)
Last night we helped put on a screening of a short film focusing on the role of women in development of The Gambia. The film was produced by Peace Corps/The Gambia and The Gambia YMCA and a team has been touring the country showing the film for the past couple weeks. We were the last stop of the tour, so we wanted to make sure the project ended with a bang. In the week or so leading up to the event, we extended invitations to the local branches of Scouts, Red Cross, and Operation No Back Way to Europe (referenced in our potential project list we posted earlier), as well as the students and staff of the Community Health Nursing School, the Rural Development Institute, and Girls Guide Hospitality School (also explained in earlier posts) and of course, our other friends that we thought might be interested. The Rural Development Institute kindly agreed to host the event and a local radio station split the cost of airing a radio advertisement in English and the three most common local languages (Mandika, Wolof, and Pulaar).
We told people to show up around 6pm, knowing that the power does not come on until 7pm, but also knowing that it is very rare for any kind of event to start less than an hour late here, so people don't bother to show up until at least an hour after the scheduled time. Given that, we started right on time...around 7:15. Around thirty people showed up, with relatively equal representation of men and women. Most people were between the ages of 15 and 25, with a few older teachers mixed in. The film was a little less than 30 minutes long and featured interviews with a variety of inspirational Gambians, including teachers, community leaders, and even a woman alikalo (village chief). The film raised some interesting questions, not only about the role of women in development, but more specifically, about topics like how women can manage to balance work and women's numberous daily household responsibilities in a culture with inflexible gender roles and responsibilities. After the film, the touring team led a discussion about some of the issues the film raises, with a focus on defining terms like "role model" and "gender equality" in this cultural context. They also asked probing questions about where the participants would like to be in five years personally and where the direction they would like to see their country go (the participants were told to imagine that the people in the room were the government, and talk about what changes the group would make).
There were several threads of conversation that we found particularly interesting. One man raised the issue of religion and culture in empowering women. According to him, there are many instances in Islamic law where women are considered not equal to men. The one we remember is inheritance - in dividing an estate among surviving children, female children are explicitly allocated a smaller share of the estate than male children. Understanding potential religious and cultural barriers is essential in grappling with women's empowerment. Further discussion brought forth another cultural barrier - strict gender roles that are at the core of the culture here. One man asked why when men emigrate to America or Europe do they not bring their wives? His answer was because the men do not want their women to "betray" them. He felt that if Gambian women moved to a society where they had equal decision making power to men, they would want to leave their husbands (presumably for American or European men who would give them greater freedom). We found this particularly poignant because it revealed the difference between supporting women's right to education, employment, etc, and supporting equal liberty and decision making power for men and women, particularly in the home. There was much support for access to jobs and education for women (assuming, of course, they still do all their domestic duties) but there was significantly less support for women having any decision making power. Men still expect to have complete control over their wives, even if women are educated and have jobs. This is a very interesting distinction that we did not expect. A few of the young men also expressed frustration over the fact that girls education is heavily subsidized by the government here, while boys education is not, and the fact that some job advertisements explicitly target women. One young man even went so far as to say that since The Gambia has a woman vice president and some women ministers, women's empowerment and gender equality have been achieved, and if the above activities continue, very soon it will be men who are being marginalized. From the perspective of American volunteers who are constantly frustrated by watching women pounding/cooking/doing laundry/chopping firewood/fetching water/etc while men sit in the shade sipping attaya and occasionally pray, it is shocking to hear that anyone can think that women's empowerment and gender equality have been achieved here.
Cultural change of this magnitude is a long term project. For now, we can be happy that there is support for equal access to education and jobs. While actual equality is still a long ways away, this first step is a very important start. Through our presence here, we have the opportunity to provide a concrete example of a very different sort of relationship between a husband and wife. In our relationship there are no gender roles. We share all of our work and decision making power and we are in a happy, fulfilling relationship. While we do not expect Gambians to adopt this sort of relationship, particularly because they would have to turn their culture upside down to do so, we still believe it is valuable for them to be exposed to an alternative way of doing things.the two villages we were visiting were significantly closer than the previous two, and also, this time we were heading east, to an area where the roads are much better (portions are even paved!). Jacob had some other things he needed to get done, so he sat this one out, which allowed the rest of us to spread out a bit in the back seat :-)
A third year Peace Corps Volunteer introducing the film to the group (sorry for the white circles - it's the flash reflecting off the dust in the air and, as far as I know, there's nothing you can do about it)
Watching the film (we turned off the lights right after I took this picture, which made the film show up much better)
Discussion
We told people to show up around 6pm, knowing that the power does not come on until 7pm, but also knowing that it is very rare for any kind of event to start less than an hour late here, so people don't bother to show up until at least an hour after the scheduled time. Given that, we started right on time...around 7:15. Around thirty people showed up, with relatively equal representation of men and women. Most people were between the ages of 15 and 25, with a few older teachers mixed in. The film was a little less than 30 minutes long and featured interviews with a variety of inspirational Gambians, including teachers, community leaders, and even a woman alikalo (village chief). The film raised some interesting questions, not only about the role of women in development, but more specifically, about topics like how women can manage to balance work and women's numberous daily household responsibilities in a culture with inflexible gender roles and responsibilities. After the film, the touring team led a discussion about some of the issues the film raises, with a focus on defining terms like "role model" and "gender equality" in this cultural context. They also asked probing questions about where the participants would like to be in five years personally and where the direction they would like to see their country go (the participants were told to imagine that the people in the room were the government, and talk about what changes the group would make).
There were several threads of conversation that we found particularly interesting. One man raised the issue of religion and culture in empowering women. According to him, there are many instances in Islamic law where women are considered not equal to men. The one we remember is inheritance - in dividing an estate among surviving children, female children are explicitly allocated a smaller share of the estate than male children. Understanding potential religious and cultural barriers is essential in grappling with women's empowerment. Further discussion brought forth another cultural barrier - strict gender roles that are at the core of the culture here. One man asked why when men emigrate to America or Europe do they not bring their wives? His answer was because the men do not want their women to "betray" them. He felt that if Gambian women moved to a society where they had equal decision making power to men, they would want to leave their husbands (presumably for American or European men who would give them greater freedom). We found this particularly poignant because it revealed the difference between supporting women's right to education, employment, etc, and supporting equal liberty and decision making power for men and women, particularly in the home. There was much support for access to jobs and education for women (assuming, of course, they still do all their domestic duties) but there was significantly less support for women having any decision making power. Men still expect to have complete control over their wives, even if women are educated and have jobs. This is a very interesting distinction that we did not expect. A few of the young men also expressed frustration over the fact that girls education is heavily subsidized by the government here, while boys education is not, and the fact that some job advertisements explicitly target women. One young man even went so far as to say that since The Gambia has a woman vice president and some women ministers, women's empowerment and gender equality have been achieved, and if the above activities continue, very soon it will be men who are being marginalized. From the perspective of American volunteers who are constantly frustrated by watching women pounding/cooking/doing laundry/chopping firewood/fetching water/etc while men sit in the shade sipping attaya and occasionally pray, it is shocking to hear that anyone can think that women's empowerment and gender equality have been achieved here.
Cultural change of this magnitude is a long term project. For now, we can be happy that there is support for equal access to education and jobs. While actual equality is still a long ways away, this first step is a very important start. Through our presence here, we have the opportunity to provide a concrete example of a very different sort of relationship between a husband and wife. In our relationship there are no gender roles. We share all of our work and decision making power and we are in a happy, fulfilling relationship. While we do not expect Gambians to adopt this sort of relationship, particularly because they would have to turn their culture upside down to do so, we still believe it is valuable for them to be exposed to an alternative way of doing things.the two villages we were visiting were significantly closer than the previous two, and also, this time we were heading east, to an area where the roads are much better (portions are even paved!). Jacob had some other things he needed to get done, so he sat this one out, which allowed the rest of us to spread out a bit in the back seat :-)
A third year Peace Corps Volunteer introducing the film to the group (sorry for the white circles - it's the flash reflecting off the dust in the air and, as far as I know, there's nothing you can do about it)
Watching the film (we turned off the lights right after I took this picture, which made the film show up much better)
Discussion
Trekking with the Rural Development Institute (written March 18)
We've mentioned before that we hope to work with the Rural Development Institute that trains Community Develoment Assistants, located in a nearby village. We observed several classes there shortly after we got to site, which we found very interesting, then about a month ago, the students went off to do two-month "practicals" (postings in other villages where they complete assignments that help them learn how to apply what they learned in the classroom in the field). Interestingly, their practicals are not hugely different from the two months Peace Corps Volunteers here spend in training villages. While they are all Gambians, many of them are from different parts of the country and are far from family and friends, and small groups of students are placed in a village where they generally do not know anyone, and they are supposed to know the community, meet/interview all the important people, evaluate the community's strengths and weaknesses, complete assignments, etc. The biggest differences between our training and their practicals are they do not have instructors living in their villages and teaching them daily classes on language and culture (since they generally are not learning a new language and they are significantly more familiar with the culture than we are), and the students in each village all live together (men and women separated of course), rather than splitting up and living with families. Before the students left for their practicals, we had arranged with the staff to accompany them when they went on trek to visit and evaluate the students at the one and two-month marks. True to their promise, when the one-month mark rolled around, we checked in and RDI assured us that they had saved us a spot in their trekking vehicle.
RDI was supposed to pick us up at 9am, so given GMT (literally "Greenwich Mean Time," but it is generally referred to here as "Gambian Maybe Time"), we assumed they would not show up until at least 10 or 11am. However, in making that assumption, we were forgetting that while GMT generally pushes things forward, occasionally, and always at the most inconvenient times, it goes the other direction. A few minutes after 8, we had just rolled out of bed and were getting ready to walk our friend out to the main road (he spent the night after being stranded in Soma - see our ingenious bed net set-up below), when RDI's truck pulled up outside our house.
We quickly sent our friend on his way, threw on some clothes, grabbed sone water bottles and clif bars, squished into the back seat of the truck, and we were off. Our first stop was a village maybe 20k west and just off the main road, not far from the village where we did our training. All the students had been assigned to keep both individual and group daily activity diaries, as well several other more involved assignments. The main objective of these visits was to ask each student to read a couple diary entries aloud, then the evaluation team (3 RDI staff, plus myself and Jacob) was to score the student various aspects of the entries on a scoresheet and give verbal feedback. We were pleasantly surprised to find that not only was the students' work quite thorough, but the RDI staff also really encouraged us to give the students feedback. The students had conducted a wide range of activities, including the obligatory group visit to the village alkolo, a visit to the village seed store, and observation of a literacy class, among others (they split up for many of the activities, allowing them to do more than the other three groups, which did everything together as a group). We made a variety of recommendations, most of them focusing on encouraging the students to go beyond just making observations and indentifying problems/challenges to doing more in-depth analysis and making recommendations for possible solutions. We emphasized that the students should always be asking "Why?," "So what?" and "How does this affect how I move forward?." Difficulties with this type of critical thinking seem to be a common theme across the board here, and the RDI staff seemed to be receptive to and supportive of this approach. After a quick breakfast, we departed for our second village, which everyone kept telling us was "very far," but seeing as "very far" can be used for distances as short as a couple kilometers, we didn't think much of it.
As it turns out, the second village actually was quite far...as in, another 70-80k west, about 40k of which was on very bad roads through relatively dense bush (most of which is actually a national park). Approximately halfway there (maybe 1/3 of the way down the bad portion of the road), our truck broke down. After an hour or two of trying to fix it, we finally got a tow to the nearest village. Noteably, while being towed, the truck towing us had to slam on its brakes to avoid a collision with an oncoming vehicle and we came within inches in rear-ending the truck towing us. Fun stuff. We made it to the village though, and after determining that no one nearby could help us, we set up camp under a big mango tree to wait for another vehicle from RDI to come save us. Several hours and two lunches later, RDI's other truck showed up with a team of mechanics. We got into the new truck, leaving the mechanics to work on the broken down one while went on to the second training village to meet with the students. We finally arrived a little after 5pm to a very warm welcome (visitors aren't common out that far in the bush and, after being there a month, familiar faces were a very welcome sight), took a break for five o'clock prayers, ate lunch #3 that the students had prepared for us, and got down to business. The students in this group had also done a great job, although we saw some of the same challenges around critical thinking as the previous group. We helped them brainstorm potential areas for further research regarding the local school garden (such as how to improve water access, how to motivate students to water the garden and keep them from stealing fruits and vegetables when corporal punishment is technically forbidden, how to work more closely with the agriculture extension officer regarding pest control, how to deal with people's goats getting into the garden and eating plants, etc), and one of the RDI staff members doled out new assignments for each of the students on those topics. Despite the students pleas that we stay longer, night was falling and we had a long drive ahead of us, so we headed out.
After brutal hour of being tossed around on the terrible road (which frustratingly had large piles of dirt sitting next to the holes, ready to fill them in, but somehow it just never happened), we arrived at the village where we had left the team of mechanics and found that they had been unable to fix the truck (apparently the starter was beyond repair). After waiting for thirty minutes while people transferred gas from the broken down truck into the working one, the mechanics decided to hitch a ride back home in the bed of the working truck and send someone to retrieve the broken truck the following day. Another 20-30 minutes of bad road followed, which was even more concerning than the previous hour because not only was it completely dark now, but now there were also people perched in the bed of the truck. However, somehow they hung on, and when we finally emerged onto the main road, we thought it would be smooth sailing from there on. That is, until our driver put the pedal to the metal (potentially literally). We spent the next hour hurtling through the darkness at god only knows what speed (god quite literally is the only one who knows what speed we were going because the spedometer was broken...but I assure you, it was fast), swerving wildly to avoid the biggest of the potholes. Jacob apparently found this whole situation less terror-inducing than I did, and managed to fall asleep. I distracted myself by staring out my window at the big dipper that was conveniently framed in the car window. Amazingly, we all made it home only slightly worse for the wear, and we fell into bed to rest up for Day 2.
The second day of the trek was much less eventful, mostly because the two villages we were visiting were significantly closer than the previous two, and also, this time we were heading east, to an area where the roads are much better (portions are even paved!). Jacob had some other things he needed to get done, so he sat this one out, which allowed the rest of us to spread out a bit in the back seat :-) The students in the third and fourth villages had similar challenges to the other groups, particularly around critical thinking. For example, in one of the villages, there is only one agriculture extension officer for the whole region and he is receiving almost no assistance from the government, but none of the students mentioned that it would be valuable to try to determine why this is the case. Additionally, the students in both villages completed their group diaries before their individual ones (unlike the first two groups, which did them afterwards), which resulted in strikingly similar individual diaries. The teachers had not given specific instructions about which diaries to do first, so this was a good lesson learned for them. They advised the students to do the group diary last in the future.
All in all, we both were very glad we were able to participate in the trek. We really enjoyed being able to give the students feedback on their work, and we also appreciated the opportunity to spend some time with the RDI staff. RDI has been around since the 70s and every Community Development Assistant in the country has gone through the program, so the school really does have very far-reaching impact. We look forward to the students returning to RDI in a month so we can start observing classes again.
RDI was supposed to pick us up at 9am, so given GMT (literally "Greenwich Mean Time," but it is generally referred to here as "Gambian Maybe Time"), we assumed they would not show up until at least 10 or 11am. However, in making that assumption, we were forgetting that while GMT generally pushes things forward, occasionally, and always at the most inconvenient times, it goes the other direction. A few minutes after 8, we had just rolled out of bed and were getting ready to walk our friend out to the main road (he spent the night after being stranded in Soma - see our ingenious bed net set-up below), when RDI's truck pulled up outside our house.
We quickly sent our friend on his way, threw on some clothes, grabbed sone water bottles and clif bars, squished into the back seat of the truck, and we were off. Our first stop was a village maybe 20k west and just off the main road, not far from the village where we did our training. All the students had been assigned to keep both individual and group daily activity diaries, as well several other more involved assignments. The main objective of these visits was to ask each student to read a couple diary entries aloud, then the evaluation team (3 RDI staff, plus myself and Jacob) was to score the student various aspects of the entries on a scoresheet and give verbal feedback. We were pleasantly surprised to find that not only was the students' work quite thorough, but the RDI staff also really encouraged us to give the students feedback. The students had conducted a wide range of activities, including the obligatory group visit to the village alkolo, a visit to the village seed store, and observation of a literacy class, among others (they split up for many of the activities, allowing them to do more than the other three groups, which did everything together as a group). We made a variety of recommendations, most of them focusing on encouraging the students to go beyond just making observations and indentifying problems/challenges to doing more in-depth analysis and making recommendations for possible solutions. We emphasized that the students should always be asking "Why?," "So what?" and "How does this affect how I move forward?." Difficulties with this type of critical thinking seem to be a common theme across the board here, and the RDI staff seemed to be receptive to and supportive of this approach. After a quick breakfast, we departed for our second village, which everyone kept telling us was "very far," but seeing as "very far" can be used for distances as short as a couple kilometers, we didn't think much of it.
As it turns out, the second village actually was quite far...as in, another 70-80k west, about 40k of which was on very bad roads through relatively dense bush (most of which is actually a national park). Approximately halfway there (maybe 1/3 of the way down the bad portion of the road), our truck broke down. After an hour or two of trying to fix it, we finally got a tow to the nearest village. Noteably, while being towed, the truck towing us had to slam on its brakes to avoid a collision with an oncoming vehicle and we came within inches in rear-ending the truck towing us. Fun stuff. We made it to the village though, and after determining that no one nearby could help us, we set up camp under a big mango tree to wait for another vehicle from RDI to come save us. Several hours and two lunches later, RDI's other truck showed up with a team of mechanics. We got into the new truck, leaving the mechanics to work on the broken down one while went on to the second training village to meet with the students. We finally arrived a little after 5pm to a very warm welcome (visitors aren't common out that far in the bush and, after being there a month, familiar faces were a very welcome sight), took a break for five o'clock prayers, ate lunch #3 that the students had prepared for us, and got down to business. The students in this group had also done a great job, although we saw some of the same challenges around critical thinking as the previous group. We helped them brainstorm potential areas for further research regarding the local school garden (such as how to improve water access, how to motivate students to water the garden and keep them from stealing fruits and vegetables when corporal punishment is technically forbidden, how to work more closely with the agriculture extension officer regarding pest control, how to deal with people's goats getting into the garden and eating plants, etc), and one of the RDI staff members doled out new assignments for each of the students on those topics. Despite the students pleas that we stay longer, night was falling and we had a long drive ahead of us, so we headed out.
After brutal hour of being tossed around on the terrible road (which frustratingly had large piles of dirt sitting next to the holes, ready to fill them in, but somehow it just never happened), we arrived at the village where we had left the team of mechanics and found that they had been unable to fix the truck (apparently the starter was beyond repair). After waiting for thirty minutes while people transferred gas from the broken down truck into the working one, the mechanics decided to hitch a ride back home in the bed of the working truck and send someone to retrieve the broken truck the following day. Another 20-30 minutes of bad road followed, which was even more concerning than the previous hour because not only was it completely dark now, but now there were also people perched in the bed of the truck. However, somehow they hung on, and when we finally emerged onto the main road, we thought it would be smooth sailing from there on. That is, until our driver put the pedal to the metal (potentially literally). We spent the next hour hurtling through the darkness at god only knows what speed (god quite literally is the only one who knows what speed we were going because the spedometer was broken...but I assure you, it was fast), swerving wildly to avoid the biggest of the potholes. Jacob apparently found this whole situation less terror-inducing than I did, and managed to fall asleep. I distracted myself by staring out my window at the big dipper that was conveniently framed in the car window. Amazingly, we all made it home only slightly worse for the wear, and we fell into bed to rest up for Day 2.
The second day of the trek was much less eventful, mostly because the two villages we were visiting were significantly closer than the previous two, and also, this time we were heading east, to an area where the roads are much better (portions are even paved!). Jacob had some other things he needed to get done, so he sat this one out, which allowed the rest of us to spread out a bit in the back seat :-) The students in the third and fourth villages had similar challenges to the other groups, particularly around critical thinking. For example, in one of the villages, there is only one agriculture extension officer for the whole region and he is receiving almost no assistance from the government, but none of the students mentioned that it would be valuable to try to determine why this is the case. Additionally, the students in both villages completed their group diaries before their individual ones (unlike the first two groups, which did them afterwards), which resulted in strikingly similar individual diaries. The teachers had not given specific instructions about which diaries to do first, so this was a good lesson learned for them. They advised the students to do the group diary last in the future.
All in all, we both were very glad we were able to participate in the trek. We really enjoyed being able to give the students feedback on their work, and we also appreciated the opportunity to spend some time with the RDI staff. RDI has been around since the 70s and every Community Development Assistant in the country has gone through the program, so the school really does have very far-reaching impact. We look forward to the students returning to RDI in a month so we can start observing classes again.
Palm Oil (Written March 23)
So for a while I have been complaining to Sarah that most of the time our food tasted like soap. I thought it tasted like soap when we ate imported rice and it was not soapy when we ate domestically grown rice. Last night I decided that it was actually probably the palm oil that is in every meal we get from our host family. Smartly, Sarah pointed out that palm oil is a major ingredient in many soaps. I wonder if the two are related....
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Girls Guide (Written March 17)
This past Monday we went to the Girls Guide program. For those of you who remember hearing about our culinary class aspirations - it would be with this program. We came with the desire to observe and see what the students were being taught. Instead, we are informed that the teacher called in sick and that we should teach the class. Huh? I thought we had made it clear that we do not want to teach we just want to observe. Apparently, it was not to be the case. Not wanting the day to be wasted for the students we figured we might as well use the opportunity to learn more about their program and what they study.
The program has three elements - math, English, and home economics. After covering the basics of the two year course, which essentially culminates with an internship at a hotel and then hopefully a job, we decided to talk in more depth about a few topics. First we discussed nutrition. The entire class knew about the importance of eating a variety of food - protein, carbs, fats, vitamins, and minerals and were good at identifying good sources of these nutrients and also understood the basics of why different types of nutrients are important. That was an exciting realization.
Moving forward, we decided to talk about budgeting. Most vendors do not seem to track their costs and sources of revenue and thus have no idea how much profit (if any) they are making. We walked through an example of budgeting to make panketos (think donut holes) to examine how much profit one could make selling them. Again, the concept was not incredibly foreign and the girls basic arithmetic skills were impressive and we relatively quickly were able to develop a simple budget, calculate costs, minimum price per bag of panketos, and profit at the current market price. Again so far so good with our first real teaching experience...
Finally we moved on to English. Here we developed significant respect for anyone teaching a foreign language. Even with a language you are fluent in, it is hard to explain grammatical concepts to a group of students. We briefly discussed the conjugations of a few verbs and then broke for breakfast. Breakfast tends to happen in the middle of the morning between 10 and 11. After this break, another teacher was supposed to take over and continue teaching English.
At last we had the opportunity to observe the program in action. Well so we thought. In actuality, the teacher kept disappearing for meetings and we ended up teaching again. He started the "lesson" which consisted of writing a paragraph on migratory birds on the board. There were supposed to answer twenty multiple choice questions to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately to do this correctly you had to know words like mortality, migratory, immigration, emigration, suicidal, murderous, risky, risking, etc. Completely words that should be emphasized when teaching English. Of course we raised this issue with the teacher after the class and he responded, "You need to challenge the students." 100% you need to challenge the students but please challenge the students with something reasonable. Don't challenge students with a paragraph where we had to define 90% of the words for them.
I now completely understand why some people are not very excited about the World Food Program's School Feeding Program (the goal being get students to come to school by feeding them). The concept of food for education is a good one assuming you actually have a decent education system. If the entire class is taught in a language that most of the students don't really understand or is using vocabulary so advanced that even people with decent English skills cannot understand most of the words then it strikes me as a bit of a waste.
I have the utmost respect for people who are trying to reform the education system. I am sure it takes more patience and dedication than I possess...
The program has three elements - math, English, and home economics. After covering the basics of the two year course, which essentially culminates with an internship at a hotel and then hopefully a job, we decided to talk in more depth about a few topics. First we discussed nutrition. The entire class knew about the importance of eating a variety of food - protein, carbs, fats, vitamins, and minerals and were good at identifying good sources of these nutrients and also understood the basics of why different types of nutrients are important. That was an exciting realization.
Moving forward, we decided to talk about budgeting. Most vendors do not seem to track their costs and sources of revenue and thus have no idea how much profit (if any) they are making. We walked through an example of budgeting to make panketos (think donut holes) to examine how much profit one could make selling them. Again, the concept was not incredibly foreign and the girls basic arithmetic skills were impressive and we relatively quickly were able to develop a simple budget, calculate costs, minimum price per bag of panketos, and profit at the current market price. Again so far so good with our first real teaching experience...
Finally we moved on to English. Here we developed significant respect for anyone teaching a foreign language. Even with a language you are fluent in, it is hard to explain grammatical concepts to a group of students. We briefly discussed the conjugations of a few verbs and then broke for breakfast. Breakfast tends to happen in the middle of the morning between 10 and 11. After this break, another teacher was supposed to take over and continue teaching English.
At last we had the opportunity to observe the program in action. Well so we thought. In actuality, the teacher kept disappearing for meetings and we ended up teaching again. He started the "lesson" which consisted of writing a paragraph on migratory birds on the board. There were supposed to answer twenty multiple choice questions to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately to do this correctly you had to know words like mortality, migratory, immigration, emigration, suicidal, murderous, risky, risking, etc. Completely words that should be emphasized when teaching English. Of course we raised this issue with the teacher after the class and he responded, "You need to challenge the students." 100% you need to challenge the students but please challenge the students with something reasonable. Don't challenge students with a paragraph where we had to define 90% of the words for them.
I now completely understand why some people are not very excited about the World Food Program's School Feeding Program (the goal being get students to come to school by feeding them). The concept of food for education is a good one assuming you actually have a decent education system. If the entire class is taught in a language that most of the students don't really understand or is using vocabulary so advanced that even people with decent English skills cannot understand most of the words then it strikes me as a bit of a waste.
I have the utmost respect for people who are trying to reform the education system. I am sure it takes more patience and dedication than I possess...
GMT (written March 17)
What is GMT? My guess is most of you reading this immediately thought Greenwhich Mean Time. This is accurate, but is not what I am getting at. In our context for the next two years GMT means "Gambian Maybe Time."
A short example...
Yesterday we went on trek with RDI to visit some of their students on practical. We were supposed to get picked up at 9am. Normally, this means anywhere from maybe 9am to noon. However, in our case it ended up meaning getting picked up at 8am. We had just woken up, had not changed, had not eaten breakfast, and by no means were we ready for the day. Of course when this happened the two Gambians waiting for us were thoroughly unexcited to be waiting for us to get ready. Regardless of how annoyed Gambians will get when they show up and we are not ready for them, whenever they are three hours late for a meeting no one so much as says sorry.
Gambian Maybe Time. How I loathe you...
A short example...
Yesterday we went on trek with RDI to visit some of their students on practical. We were supposed to get picked up at 9am. Normally, this means anywhere from maybe 9am to noon. However, in our case it ended up meaning getting picked up at 8am. We had just woken up, had not changed, had not eaten breakfast, and by no means were we ready for the day. Of course when this happened the two Gambians waiting for us were thoroughly unexcited to be waiting for us to get ready. Regardless of how annoyed Gambians will get when they show up and we are not ready for them, whenever they are three hours late for a meeting no one so much as says sorry.
Gambian Maybe Time. How I loathe you...
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Picture update
Moroccan dinner to welcome the new VSO volunteers in Soma
The hot and sweaty group (typical gambian photography skills at work here)
Second attempt at french toast, this time with strawberry apricot "compote" - delicious!
Current picture of our garden, which is doing surprisingly well, despite the intense heat, complete lack of rain, termite infestation, and goat invasion...
Happy acorn squash (well, two of the four are happy at least)
Close up
Basil and one lonely little tomato in the top middle of the screen. We planted a second round of basil and tomatoes a couple weeks ago but they couldn't take the sun/heat. We're trying starting more basil in seed boxes in our back yard, which we can transplant into this bed later - hopefully that will work better.
Two plantings of edamame (the ones in the right-hand row were planted over a month ago but had to recover from a goat invasion).
Look, they even have little pods!
Slightly blurry banana tree. It looks a bit sickly, but 1) it looks better than it has looked since we planted it over a month ago, and 2) everyone here says that's how they're supposed to look and not to worry.
Funky tan lines
In case there is any doubt that I've been wearing my wedding band...
World Food Program School Garden Training (Written March 13)
Last weekend we went back to our training village to participate in a World Food Program (WFP) led training to support the creation of school gardens. The WFP already provides oil and rice to schools across The Gambia and now they are funding a pilot project to include vegetables in school meals. The goal is for each student to have at least one hot and nutritious meal per day. Fourty schools were selected by the WFP (20 to be funded by the WFP and 20 by other institutions) to receive training, seeds, and tools to create new gardens or expand existing gardens. Students and staff from each school as well as community members received training on important factors in site selection (proximity to water source, smooth not rocky ground, etc), the creation of seed boxes (essentially mini nursery beds), the creation and use of local pesticides and compost, the importance of vegetables in a healthy diet, and how to properly account for and report on the progress of each garden. They concluded the training by creating an action plan for each school and distributing tools (all of this occured in one long action packed day).
Overall Sarah and I were impressed with the training. Personally we benefited from the section on local pesticides and have found that a combination of onion, garlic, hot peppers, and laundry water left in the sun makes an effective termite deterrent. We also briefly discussed the problem of corruption in school gardening. Because the WFP does not want excess food to rot, they allow schools to sell surplus produce. What will keep schools from selling all the produce? What will keep schools from only putting vegetables in the teachers food bowl and selling the rest? Unfortunately this is a very serious concern. While we as Peace Corps Volunteers cannot actually be involved in monitoring the schools and reporting on those engaging in corrupt practices, we helped the WFP leader of the workshop brainstorm some potential tactics she can implement. Hopefully at least some of them will be successful and most of the produce will actually go to the hungry students.
Overall Sarah and I were impressed with the training. Personally we benefited from the section on local pesticides and have found that a combination of onion, garlic, hot peppers, and laundry water left in the sun makes an effective termite deterrent. We also briefly discussed the problem of corruption in school gardening. Because the WFP does not want excess food to rot, they allow schools to sell surplus produce. What will keep schools from selling all the produce? What will keep schools from only putting vegetables in the teachers food bowl and selling the rest? Unfortunately this is a very serious concern. While we as Peace Corps Volunteers cannot actually be involved in monitoring the schools and reporting on those engaging in corrupt practices, we helped the WFP leader of the workshop brainstorm some potential tactics she can implement. Hopefully at least some of them will be successful and most of the produce will actually go to the hungry students.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Picture Update Part 2
Posed picture from the circumcision ceremony I wrote about earlier. Sorry for the poor quality - it's a picture of a picture.
The two boys honored in the circumcision ceremony
New tri-color braids
Side shot
Community mapping exercise (we had the women draw with charcoal on the ground because they were more comfortable doing that than using a pen and paper)
Finished library (view from the front door)
View from the back left corner
Team amazing mexican dinner
Amazing mexican dinner...chicken and onions with southwestern seasoning, toasted tortillas, refried beans, spanish rice, plus all the other self-explanatory toppings and chocolate cake for dessert (meal made possible by several key items sent from home...you know who you are...thank you from all of us!!)
Happy people
Another happy person
Picture Update Part 1 (in which it appears that all we do here is cook and eat)
We cooked ebey ourselves! (with some assistance from host sisters)
Masaman chicken curry with sweet potatoes, irish potatoes and bell peppers - our guest of honor loved it!
Key lime pie
The chefs with our guest of honor
Jacob explaining composting at a practical skills day we helped teach at the Community Health Nursing school. We also covered making neem cream (local insecticide), bed net dipping, making oral rehydration solution, and making moringa powder (from the leaves of a local tree).
Action shot
We even got a girl to help with the digging!
We made cake!! Using locally available ingredients and a makeshift dutch oven, we successfully made cake for a 1 year-old girl's birthday. I assure you it tasted better than it looks...
French toast, drowning in yummy peanut butter and jelly sauce. We slightly misjudged how much sauce we would need and couldn't let it go to waste...my dad will be proud ;-)
Mosquitos LOVE my left knee. Keep in mind this is the dry season, when the mosquitos supposedly don't have anywhere to breed, and in the interest of being culturally appropriate, I keep my knees covered at all times!
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