Reflections (written March 2)

DISCLAIMER - This post is not overly culturally sensitive or politically correct. Remember, these are only my views and do not represent the views of the US Government. Also, please do not run off thinking I am depressed or jaded or hate it here or anything like that. We try to keep our posts relatively upbeat, but we also want to present a realistic picture of our experience, complete with all the ups and downs associated with Peace Corps service. So here goes:

So, I have been thinking lately that there are quite a few things about life here than really bother me. Some (hugely generalized) examples are:

-The lack of freedom/control women have over their lives and their futures.
-The fact that almost all work stops for the day at 2pm, and closer to noon on Fridays to allow for prayers (I'm all about being respectful of religion, but this is a poor counry and think about the productivity loss!! There has to be a better way. For example, in some Muslim countries the weekend is Friday and Saturday instead of Saturday and Sunday.).
-The low work ethic and/or pride in their work I see in many people here (for example, it is completely out of the question to expect people to work beyond normal work hours or attend attend extra meetings or workshops without significant compensation).
-The use of corporal punishment for EVERYTHING, as mentioned in an earlier post.
-The lack of value placed on indiduals' time, as mentioned in an earlier post.
-The complete lack of basic business sense, resulting in inefficient use of already scarce resources, again, as mention in an earlier post.
-The way mothers try to imitate the way nurses give children medicine by lying them on their backs and pouring medicine and/or water down their throats, essentially waterboarding their children.
-The fact that all school here is taught in English, regardless of whether the children have any knowledge of the language. This results in children who can recite entire paragraphs in English but have no idea what they are saying.
-The relative absence of abstract/theoretical thought (such as difficulty envisioning how something might be done better, what might be tbe best solution to a problem, rather than just what has been done in the past, difficulty grasping the concept of placing yourself in someone else's shoes, etc etc)
-The fact that screaming "toubab" over and over at any white person you see is not considered rude (even for adults).
-The complete lack of shame in asking a white person for money/food/medicine/their bicycle/etc.

That's just a small sampling to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. There are certainly exceptions to each of those broad statements - they are observations based on overall impressions. While feeling upset/angry/frustrated/indignant/depressed/etc about these sorts of things certainly is not pleasant, I feel very strongly that as a human being, these things SHOULD bother me. In talking with some volunteers who are nearing the end of their service, it seems that at some point over the two years, many people start to become numb to these sorts of things and just resign themselves to it all, saying this is just how it is and there is nothing they can do about it. I am afraid of this happening to me and I intend to fight it with all the strength I have.

We feel so loved! (written March 1)

Our much-awaited mail run finally came today and let me tell you, it felt like little kids on Christmas morning!! Chocolate and cookies and cake and magazines and three kinds of tea and dried fruit/veggies and cheese(!) and tortillas(!) and jerky and pictures from home and oh so very much more :-) Most of the chocolate was pretty melted and some of the cookies were broken, but I guarantee that will not detract one bit from our enjoyment of them! With the exception of a small amount of mold on one of the tortillas, amazingly, everything else made it here intact (yes, including the cheese, somehow). We want to send a HUGE thank you to all of you that sent packages...they are appreciated far more than you know.

Our wall of happiness (written March 2)

We had been sticking pictures on our wall with duct tape, but as it gets hotter, the pictures have been falling off with increasing frequency, so we decided it was time for a new approach. Our lovely sitemate has an amazing "wall of happiness," which provided us with just the inspiration we needed. Last week we purchased some concrete nail (nails that you can actually effectively hammmer into strong concrete - very cool) and 10m of string, so with the arrival of a few more pictures and a box of safety pins on mail run yesterday, we had everything we needed to create our very own wall of happiness. See the result below:



As you can see, we left ourselves plenty of room to expand, so if you have pictures/quotes/poems/etc you think might be good additions to our wall, please send them!!

More on gender roles (written February 28)

Today I got my hair braided again (this time with really fun colored fake hair), and while I was getting it done, several people came by and asked me who bought the fake hair for me. I responded that I bought it myself and didn't think anything of it. Afterwards, my friend who was doing the braiding chastised me and said that if that ever happens again, I need to say my husband bought it for me. I asked why, and she said that once a woman gets married here, her husband provides everything for her, and it is respectful and appropriate for her to acknowledge that. I explained that Jacob and I both make money and we share a bank account, so it's really not accurate to say that either of us is buying anything for each other. She completely dismissed that, saying that we are in Africa and I need to be respectful of their culture.

This puts me in quite a difficult situation because I am being told that I am expected to stretch the truth to conform to gender norms I completely don't agree with. We are supposed to integrate and avoid offending people (or making people think Jacob is a bad husband, in this case), but we also are supposed to maintain our American identities and teach Gambians about American culture...how am I supposed to do both here? This particularly concerning to me because it easily could be extended to apply to questions like "who cooked this food," "who did the laundry," "who swept the house," "did you ask your husband's permission before going on your work trip," etc, etc. Am I expected to lie to conform to Gambian gender norms when responding to those questions too?? Where do I draw the line?

On a somewhat related note, one of our friends (the sister of the girl who braided my hair) married her boyfriend a little over a year ago, but he lives a couple hours away and she still lives with her mother, grandmother, sisters, and young brothers (their father lives in Kombo, which is not unusual here). Despite the fact that her parents are relatively progressive, support girls education, let her choose her own husband, etc, she still has to call her husband and ask his permission before leaving her village for any reason. If he says no, she cannot go...non-negotiable. Currently she sees him once every month or two, but soon she will leave to go live with his parents' family in Kombo. Once that happens, she will be basically cut off from her mother/grandmother/sisters/brothers, with the exception of very brief visits for special occasions. She is extremely close to her two sisters that are around her age, and when I asked one of them if/when she would be leaving to go live with her husband's family, it was a visibly painful subject for her.

From my work at CARE, intellectually I already knew a lot about the role of women in many other cultures and logically expected to have to deal with these sorts of challenges during my Peace Corps service, but experiencing these issues on a very personal level with people I care about has given me a very new perspective. I truly empathize and identify with the young women here and their situation tugs on my heartstrings far more than I ever expected it to. It makes me hurt and angry and enraged and frustrated and indignant, to the point of choking up when I try to talk about it. But...changing a culture is extremely extremely difficult and raises a host of moral issues, especially when you bring Islam into the mix, so I haven't figured out yet what, if anything, I can or should do with these emotions.

What if I want to go to University? (Written Feb 21)

Many Gambians want to go to Europe or America to go to university (many also want to go because they think life will so much better and easier in America or Europe. The thought is if you make it to America or Europe you will never have to worry about anything again). There is one Gambian in particular who we met when we first came to The Gambia who until the other day we thought would be perfectly qualified for university (he is intelligent, motivated, spoke good English, has good grades, and isinvolved with the Scouts group in his village in a leadership role). However, yesterday I noticed a minor problem. Math. He is about to graduate from the Gambian equivalent of high school and has been asking us questions about graphs. This a topic that will be on his final exam in one month, but he has not been taught anything about graphs. The final exam is called the WAS (West Africa something something) and is the standardized test that all students graduating from high school in English speaking West Africa must pass if they want to go to university in Africa. It also functions, we think, as a graduation certificate. As we were discussing graphs I noticed several other basic math concepts (exponents, algebra, etc.) that he just did not know. This is not because he is stupid or unmotivated. It is because he was never taught them. Imagine trying to take the SATs without knowing what exponents are or much about algebra. It won't work well at all. After some further investigation it turns out that math and science education are a significant weakness in The Gambia. There are few teachers who are skilled at teaching these subjects and often if a teacher is not good at a subject he/she will just quickly gloss over it and not really teach the subject. Unfortunately that makes it really hard to be accepted to and succeed in a western university. Sad.

Culinary School (written Feb 21)

If I had told you that I was going to The Gambia for two years and was going to help teach cooking classes you would have laughed at me right? Well guess what...we might help teach some cooking classes. Today we went to the Soma Scouts Skills Training Center with the intention of watching another computer class. However, class was canceled because the students had taken an exam on the previous day. Instead we talked with the person who taught that class about the many other activities he is involved in, one of which is a culinary school for girls that is attached to the Scouts center (both are supported by a Danish Scouts group). It is a two year program that trains students to work in the hospitality industry teaching skills such as basic math, english, and cooking. Apparently we had impressed this man with our cooking when he happened to be over for dinner the other night and he has been encouraging us to teach the students how to cook ever since. At first I was not incredibly excited by it, but then we realized the income generating potential of teaching new dishes to these students. Think a bake sale. There is minimal diversity in the market. If you want to buy a ready to eat snack you are basically limited to a couple kinds of sandwhiches, an orange, a banana, or panketos (fried balls of dough). If we could help several Gambians learn how to make a new dish that other Gambians would like, then we would create a great opportunity for income generation if these new creations were sold in the market. The funds raised would be used to support the Scouts program and the school fees for the particpants (many of these youth come from very poor backgrounds so paying school fees is often an issue). So assuming we can rustle up all the relevant supplies, we might work with the culinary school and teach them how to make some of our favorites and work with them to test them in small focus groups (our Gambian friends idea) and then sell them as a small income generating activity. For the record - never expected to teach cooking in The Gambia but income generation and skills development is a huge issue so I am actually quite excited by this potential project.

Picture update

Carribbean group dinner - rice and beans, jerk chicken, pineappple mango salsa, sauteed onions, cabbage and sweet potato with jerk spices. Not shown is our attempt to steam a chocolate cake, which was in progress at the time. It resulted in more of a chocolate pudding than a cake, but it was still delicious.


The sweaty chefs


Our ingenious method of hanging a single-bed bednet from the roof and fenceposts in a way that gets it to cover two people (thus allowing said people to sleep outside, where it is at least 10-15 degrees cooler, without taking down their indoor set-up). Exhibit #2 of how clothes pins and nylon cord are invaluable here (Exhibit #1 is our technique for hanging our door and window
curtains). We will drape a large piece of fabric over the bed to keep creepy crawlies from crawling up through the bamboo and a smaller piece over the air mattresses to act as a sheet, and install a hook to allow us to lock our back screen door from the outside, and voila, we will have two complete sleeping set-ups...one inside and one outside!