It's been way too long since I made a "real" blog post about our life in The Gambia. My apologies for the long absence. A quick look at the pictures I linked to in my last post will explain it :-) After our wonderful and much-needed vacation with my parents in France, we spent the better part of a week readjusting to the climate and pace of life here, catching up on laundry and other housekeeping things, preparing and planting our wet season garden, and most of all, just hanging out with our host family and friends in our village. After almost three weeks away from site, following closely on the heels of Jacob's time in South Africa, this was much appreciated all around. Oh and the first rains since Sept/Oct came while we were in France, which, among other (less gross) things, created an explosion of creepy-crawlies. Here are some pictures of what we've been up to. Proceed at your own risk!
Delicious homemade pesto pasta we made right before we left for France (it's a tough job eating up a lot of basil so it doesn't go to seed, but someone's gotta do it!)
We also did henna again right before we left (this time Jacob did it too)
Close-up of my palm
We came home to a termite infestation in our window. Lovely.
This is what we saw when we moved our trunk from under the window.
This is what I swept out of our house after the termite massacre that ensued. In addition to the sheer volume of dead termites, notice how much dust accumulated in our little house in three weeks!
Someone was asking about lizards. This is one of several that live in our backyard. They eat the bugs, so we let them stay :-)
This is one of several nocturnal species we find in our house sometimes. They are quite a bit smaller and VERY fast.
Have I mentioned that we have a fly problem in our backyard? Mom gave us some sticky tape and this is what we caught in 24 hours. Ok, that's the end of the creepy-crawly pictures, I promise!
A new style of hair braiding. Looks pretty cool from the top..
The side view is another story. Hold the mullet comments please :-)
Jacob hard at work frying up eggplant for a group dinner
Lucy and Lisa pushing on despite the smoke created by the previous picture...
Finished product. Tabbouleh, hummus, fresh veggies, fried eggplant, falafel, bread, and a local creamicle-flavored drink. A couple PC staff happened to be passing through and joined us for dinner...I think they were thoroughly impressed! Thanks for making this possible by sending the Mediterranean mixes Mom!
It's hard to capture in a picture, but when ever since we arrived in The Gambia, the only green have seen anywhere has been trees and a few particularly well-fenced gardens...everything else was rust brown. Now that the rains have come, the hard, dry, dusty ground has suddenly been transformed into a green carpet. Pretty amazing.
Our adorable host brother, Mohammed
Again
Our newly dug, planted, and fenced wet season garden. We transplanted our basil (all that remained of our dry season garden) and planted two kinds of squash, edamame, sweet peas, various herbs, various greens, and several kinds of bell peppers. Our poor banana tree just visible on the bottom right has been eaten by goats literally every day for months now. We're cautiously optimistic about it making a recovery now. We also planted some moringa and pigeon pea seeds along the outer fence for nutritious live fencing. Everyone says the goats are going to be tied for for the season any day now (to protect people's crops), so we may have to replant those once that finally happens.
A particularly delicious breakfast of french toast with fresh mango sauce. So sad that mango season is almost over :-(
Also, unrelated to the above, we had a cool experience earlier this week that I wanted to share. As we have explained, gender roles here are very rigid and often result in the women and girls working extremely hard while the men and boys do a lot of sitting around and brewing attaya (tea). From the beginning, we made it very clear that that is not how things working in America and especially not how they work in our relationship. Everyone finds it very funny when Jacob helps with traditionally women's work like laundry or sweeping or cooking, but the generally women are quick to point out that his conributions are "very good." The incident I'm about to describe showed us that people have noticed, understand, and possibly even respect our radically different views on gender roles.
After working all day around the compound, one afternoon, Jacob and I were sitting on a mat in our compound. Jacob was lying down reading and I was doing some mending. After a few minutes, our 11-ish year old sister came over and exclaimed with disapproval that I was working while Jacob was resting!! We explained that it was ok because we both had worked hard all day, but we were surprised and happy see that not only did our host sister recognize the apparent inequity of the situation, but she also felt comfortable enough with us to voice her concern. The situation she so disapproved of is exceeding common among Gambians, but we have never seen a Gambian call out a man on that issue before, much less a young woman girl calling out an older male. Very cool.
