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.
1 comment:
This entry was very interesting.
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