Naming Ceremony!

I finally attended a naming ceremony that wasn't my own! Fatou, my host sister, gave birth about a month ago and held the naming ceremony the day before I left for in-service training and Christmas. If the baby had been a girl, she would've been Binta, but Musa is a fine name, too.

Here's how it went:

• I wear my nicest compelet (the trilobite-patterned Tobaski one) and walk over to the alkalo's compound.
• Someone directs me into a room where I sit on the bed and greet some people.
• I move outside and watch the men of the village sitting and praying on a large mat.
• Some guy walks around shouting stuff into a megaphone.
• I look around for Fatou, so I can greet her, and find her in a room surrounded by women.
• Someone hands me a bag of panketos.
• I leave for a couple of hours to help teach an introduction to computers class at the school. I return home, eat some lunch at my compound, and then return to the ceremony
• A bleeding goat's head is lying on the ground
• I wander around, not entirely sure where I belong. I photograph a lot of children.
• Fatou hands me the baby and leads me behind the alkalo's house, where I sit and watch some of the women cook. One woman informs me that if I do not give her fifty dalasi, she is going to take the baby away. She says, "You didn't hear me, I said give me fifty dalasi or I will take the baby away." I say, "If I give you fifty dalasi, you will not take the baby away?" She says, "Yes." I say, "Okay." She says, "You don't hear Pulaar!" Then she tells all the other women that I don't hear Pulaar yet and they all talk about how wonderful my sitemate's Pulaar is.
• The baby starts crying, so I return him to Fatou and sit outside of her house for awhile, drinking juice and watching people brew ataya.
• Someone brings a big bowl of benichin. It tastes DELICIOUS even though I burn my fingertips and tongue eating it.
• I photograph some more children, before leaving the ceremony again to do more things that needed doing.
• I return at night for the "program."
• The program consists of drinking heatened sweetened condensed milk and dancing.
• I don't dance.
• But then I do!
• Of course, by "dance," I mean stomp around for a few seconds and laugh hysterically. I am then told to sit down because my legs will hurt the next morning. I was tempted to tell them I wasn't worried about my legs and continue dancing, but I thought maybe "your legs will hurt tomorrow" actually meant "I don't want to watch anymore of your painfully awkward stomping."
• I go to sleep, almost wishing I weren't leaving for the Kombos tomorrow (reminder: I'm using the present tense because I like it more than the past tense, however, this story happened in the past, before Christmas. Just in case you thought I was heading back to Banjul again. Sorry I'm not skilled enough to convert my blog into an interactive timeline).

4

I do not have a lucky number, but I have decided to make 4 my unlucky number. Here's why: when I was studying Mandarin (which was so long ago and for such a short period of time that I barely remember "hello") our teacher told us that the Chinese consider 4 an unlucky number because it sounds so similar to the word for "death."

One day a few weeks ago, I realized IT'S THE SAME IN PULAAR, whether or not the Fulas themselves realize it. "Nayi" means "four." "Maayi" means "dead."

Coincidence? Probably. But I'm not taking any chances.

TOSTAN!

Sometimes I attend the TOSTAN (Google will tell you more about the organization than I could, but one of its goals is to teach people how to read in the local language) meetings in my village so I can learn to say words like "knowledge" and "human rights" in Pulaar. The first few times I went, I did not know that the teacher spoke any English (he hides this fact very well) and Julia, my sitemate, was not around so he could not translate the Pulaar into French for her, which she could then translate into English for me. But one day a student came by for mathematics help, and I convinced him to translate the TOSTAN words for me. Some of the translations were straightforward, but most were amusingly complicated:


darnde: if you stand up it's where you are

ndaranaade: it does not look it

goongiyankeejo: gather and come for meeting

Renndinoowa: the one calling people to gather them

pellital: you agree you want to go someplace and you don't go back

nippude boneeji: removing bad things with people

ndol nddaaju: when you come and force someone to do something they don't like

muuseeki: when you do something and it is affecting someone else

munyal: when someone does something to you, you keep quiet, you don't fight back

nyiiba: when someone does something to you, you keep it inside your heart

bural: you have something someone else doesn't have

lewlewendu: the light coming from a candle (I asked, "only the light from a candle? what about a lightbulb?" and the reply was, "from anything, even the moon!" Then he drew a picture of a circle with lines coming from it)

diisnondiral: the person you go to explain your problem

*I later learned "pellital" means "decision" and "munyal" means "patience."

Julia has since returned, so the translations have gotten less long-winded, for the most part.

Merry Day-After-Christmas!

I'm at the Basse transit house and tomorrow I return to site, so it will be awhile before I'm in front of a computer again.


Here's how the rest of Christmas Eve went:

On my walk back from the office to the Stodge (the transit house in Kombo) I bought a lychee juice box and then drank it while watching the end of Kill Bill, unless it was Kill Bill 2. The good part about walking in on a movie so close to the end is that even though you will be incredibly confused, you will not be incredibly confused for long because the movie will shortly end. Then we watched Catch Me if You Can and then we started watching Pulp Fiction but then I stopped because...I don't remember. Then I played poker.

Here's how Christmas went!

I woke up and (still in my pajamas) sat on a couch and finished reading A Christmas Carol until breakfast. A Christmas Carol, by the way, is hilarious and I highly recommend it, but not as much as I recommend watching A Muppet's Christmas Carol, which is more hilarious and stars Kermit the Frog. Breakfast was: pancakes, bacon, some sort of fritatta/quiche-like deliciousness, fruit salad, watermelon, and a cup of orange juice. Afterwards there was a White Elephant gift exchange that I didn't participate in because the probability of unhappiness happening (unwrapping the perfect gift and having someone else steal it, being the person who steals the perfect gift from someone else, unwrapping the lame gift that no one wants to steal from you) is greater than the chance of happiness (unwrapping a lovely gift that only you find lovely and therefore no one wants to steal from you and you don't have to steal from anyone else). But I enjoyed observing the proceedings.

Then we watched Home Alone!

Then we ate frosted gingerbread cookies and played Rummikub, or however that game is spelled. It's like rummy, but with tiles, and actually it's not like rummy at all.

Then (sorry I'm using "then," a lot, but I'm not feeling creative in my transitions) we went out to dinner and I ate a DELICIOUS chicken cordon bleu (or however it's spelled) containing the last chicken, cheese and ham I will eat in a long time.

Then I finished packing in time to watch the A Christmas Story from the scene with the pink bunny suit before I went to bed.

Today I woke up early, traveled from morning to afternoon, and spent the rest of the day recovering from having traveled from morning until afternoon.

Merry Christmas Eve!

I'm walking back from the Serrekunda market, but I decided to stop by the Peace Corps office and cool off in the air-conditioned computer room.

Notes on my market adventure:

• Outside of the Africell office building is a large, green cone with a silver star on top
• The Kairaba Shopping Center (the grocery/furniture store) has decorated the banisters with glittery garlands and expanded their selection of clown and Easter-bunny shaped candles to include nutcrackers. Actually, I think they've always sold nutcracker-shaped candles. You can also buy Christmas cards, ornaments, and Santa hats with white, yarn braids attached.
• I bought a stale, chocolate-glazed donut from the Shopping Center and it nearly threw me into a panic. Here's why: I have the horrible habit of thinking everything that happens must have some reason or meaning behind it, and I could not figure out why fate decided to send me a stale donut. Is it a reprimand for purchasing and consuming too many sugary foods this past week? Or is it an omen, foretelling a terrible, horrible, Alexander-type day? Seriously, did a fabulous day ever begin with a stale donut?
• I work hard to shake off my bad feelings as I buy some stamps at the post office (I need to stock up because the post office here sells 18D, 15D and 25D stamps but the one nearer to my site only sells 5D and 6D ones, which forces me to squeeze 3 oversized stamps into one tiny corner of the envelope or postcard) and when I reach the market I need to concentrate so fully on dodging taxis, wheelbarrows, fellow shoppers, overflowing baskets of vegetables, plastic mats full of fresh fish, small children, motorcycles, shouting shopkeepers, etc. that I forget all about the day's ominous beginning.
• Using the mosque and the Maggi seasoning building as my main landmarks, I bravely explore the main roads and side streets WITHOUT GETTING LOST. Seriously. Not once.
• I bought fabric! I had not bought fabric since training (not counting the Tobaski asobi I had no decision-making power in) and my compelets are starting to look a bit ragged. One fabric is peach and black with a pattern of an old-fashioned bathtubs. Another is beige, orange and blue with a pattern of Scandinavian-looking birds. But my absolute FAVORITE, the fabric I wanted to buy months ago (but had forgotten to bring enough money to market), is patterned with shiny pink and purple guinea hens.
• A little boy runs after me, trying to sell me diapers. I tell him I don't have a baby. He says I can buy them for my neighbor. I tell him my neighbor doesn't have a baby, either. He looks disappointed.
• I stop by the restaurant that I once bought honey-flavored ice cream from, but today they only have vanilla, strawberry and chocolate, so I buy an orange Fanta instead. The lady pours it into a glass and directs me to sit at the bar. So I sit on the swivel stool and stare at my gross, sweaty face in the mirror and try to gulp down my soda without gulping.
• I make it to the present moment, sitting at the computer. In addition to writing this post, I am also looking at the New York Times slideshow of Swedish desserts because I didn't want to read "Terror Fears put Mumbai on Alert," "Militants Launch Attacks in Pakistan," or "Darfur Rebels Clash with Sudanese Army Troops."

Yuna!

I remembered  I promised to announce every time I was sitting in front of a computer writing the post, and you were supposed to assume that if I made no such announcement, it meant I had scheduled the post to be published at a future time and that the events read about had not occurred on that day. However, for the past week I have actually been in front of the computer and forgotten to announce that fact, so that plan for eliminating temporal confusion has failed. Did I use the word "temporal" correctly? I don't even know. The more Pulaar I learn, the more English I forget.

In a few sentences, you will read about events that happened earlier today. Starting...now:

I spent the day with my training village host family! I left in the morning with the two other volunteers who had host families there and we stayed until late in the afternoon.

WARNING: Today was wonderful in a uniform, wandering-the-aisles-of-a-flower-shop kind of way. Or a walking-along-the-beach-collecting-seashells kind of way. Wonderful to experience, difficult to write about, and boring to read about.

• We zigzag and loop around our destination and add maybe an extra 45 minutes to our journey, but I am a horrible estimator, so maybe we wasted 5 minutes or maybe an hour and a half.
• After we step off the gelly in Yuna, a group of women who are sitting under a nearby tree call out our names and greet us excitedly and we excitedly return their greetings even though we don't remember who they are.
• We walk over to the alkalo's compound (if you've forgotten, the alkalo is the guy in charge of the village, basically) to greet the woman who had cooked all of our lunches.
• We marvel out how big all of the children have gotten.
• Before parting ways to go to our host families, we stopped by the compound where our language and culture teacher had stayed, where we went for all of our language lessons.
• "Binta arriiii!" "Eyi, mi arriiiii!!!" "Binta's come!" "Yes, I've come!!!"
• Neene! Baa! Sarjo! Sainey! Ousman! In case the exclamation marks didn't make it clear, I was super-excited to see them all. Although I didn't get to see them all--my namesake was at her husband's compound in another village and Howa and her new baby were also elsewhere.
• And I could talk to them! Here's what we talked about:
• The journey to Yuna from my permanent site
• How much I miss Yuna
• The new volunteers arriving soon
• The weather
• Mangoes, and how they are not in season yet
• Groundnuts
• After I say, "I went by car, I think the river has hippopotamuses," and they tell me I hear Pulaar now!
• But then a few minutes later (after replying to several questions with confused stares) I'm told actually, I don't hear Pulaar yet...
• Groundnut sauce with chicken for lunch!
• Some lady who I cannot remember AT ALL comes by and gives me a hug and sits close to me and talks excitedly about how glad she is that I've come to visit.
• I meet up with the other two volunteers, we say goodbyes, we journey back to the transit house
• Oh, and sometime after meeting up with the other volunteers and saying goodbye I'm handed a large plastic bag full of oranges.

The end of the photos, for now, maybe

Since most of the other photos on my camera are more of the same (swarms of children), plus a mother hen and her soft, oh-so-edible chicks and since I'm feeling impatient and have not written much in awhile, there won't be any more photos today. I still have Tobaski photos I want to share, but the last few times I tried uploading them, the computer refused.

Then again, to write about today would also be more of the same. An in-service training isn't the most exciting event to write about. Neither is standing in line at a bank, buying yogurt and soap, or retrieving letters from the office.

I went to the dentist again, re-read the Time magazine from last year, and replied to his "Merry Christmas" with "God Jul."

I dipped french fries in mayonaise for the first time, and it was dangerously delicious. Luckily there is a scarcity of french fries at site, so it won't develop into a habit.

And...yup, that was pretty much my day. All those boring events to write about, though, like buying yogurt...I'm going to miss them whole lot in a few days when I return to site. I love my village, but transitioning back  after nearly two weeks of running water, chocolate bars, ice cream, electricity, speaking rapidly in English...it's gonna be a challenge. And by the time I return, there won't be Christmas to look forward to.

And more!





A lot of children I'd never seen before (except for Pippi and Adama, who are on the right)

 until they tugged my shirt and begged for a photo.







Pateh! In photos he looks like the saddest child in the world.
Don't be fooled!



Rugi!



From left to right: Kid I've Never Seen Before, Musa, and Omar



The map that's missing Switzerland!



More photos!

Probably you're tired of seeing photos, now that there's nothing special about them because I've been uploading them for the past three days. But considering that each of the past few days has been pretty much the same (in-service training for most of the day, lazy-ing about in the evening) there's really not much to write about anyway. But yesterday I did go to a REAL bookstore that smelled just like Barnes and Noble or Borders and it was fantastic! The smell, not the selection of books. Which was fine, because I didn't want to buy a book anyway.

Before all the corn was harvested and the stalks shriveled up and died,
this was the view of the land behind my backyard.

This is the view of the back of my house.
I forgot to photograph the front, or the inside, but at least
now you have some idea of where I'm living.

I'm at a naming ceremony, and the kids haven't
noticed that I've taken out my camera again or
they would all be swarming.

Do I have more patience today? Nope, but the internet is faster.

Here's me with most of the members of my host family on Tobaski.
Left to right: Mamadou, Neene, Pateh, Kairaba, Me, Amadou.

Salio!

Buba!

Isatou! (but in my mind she's Pippi)

The girl on the right is Mariama, but I'd never seen the other girl before.

I don't know this lady.

Hawa!

Fatoumata!

Originally, I thought I would only have the patience to upload five pictures because the internet is being really slow. Instead, I only had the patience to upload one picture. Fatoumata is the girl in the center, she was one of my neighbors until she returned home to a nearby village. I'm hoping I can visit them someday, because her village is only a short bike ride away, and Fatoumata and her younger sister Hawa (not pictured) are some of my favorite people. I have a hilarious picture of Hawa too, but it'll have to wait for another day.

The boy in the photo is Cherno, who I'm sure I've mentioned before, unless I mentioned him in posts that I've set to published at a future date. He claimed he was going to style his hair in dreadlocks for Tobaski. The girl next to Fatoumata is Mariama, but she's not a regular visitor to the compound, so I don't know her too well.

Awesome-possum-ness

Today I rushed around like crazy accomplishing many semi-important tasks and feeling productive. So I felt very American. And despite all the rushing around, I never felt stressed out because awesome stuff kept happening! For example:

• In the morning I re-visited the free pile of clothes and junk that volunteers (mostly the ones leaving the country) contribute to. And I found a pair of fleece pajama pants exactly like the ones I left at home. The pink ones from Old Navy with a reindeer pattern. I left them at home because I didn't realize The Gambia would actually get legitimately cold at night, or that I would really wish I would be able to wear them for Christmas morning, which is what I had been wishing yesterday. Yay!
• I went to the dentist. Normally, this would not be cause for excitement, especially considering the last time I went to the dentist he took half my money and four of my teeth. But this time the dentist was Swedish! There was a Swedish flag hanging outside of the door and the waiting room table was stocked with last week's Swedish newspapers (which made me really wish I could understand Swedish, because the only English reading material was an issue of Time from exactly a year ago), and those little plastic beads that you put on the plastic board and then melt with a hot iron, except they weren't melted so you could mindlessly rearrange the patterns as you were waiting. And probably only a handful of this blog's readers understood what I meant by those meltable plastic beads, for which I'm sorry, but can do nothing about. Oh, and the name of the dental clinic was Swedent.
• I ATE MUFFINS. NO LIE. While wandering one of the many supermarkets I wandered today I found a package of chocolate-chip mini muffins. I couldn't believe it. I bought them, of course. They could have cost a thousand dalasi and I would have bought them (but luckily they were only fifty-five or something like that). I bought a bottle of milk, too. The only supermarket disappointment was the absence of the white chocolate hippopotamuses that the KinderEgg company makes. I never bought one when I saw them in September because they were expensive and I just assumed white chocolate hippopotamuses would still be there when I returned. But if I don't find them before it's time for me to return to site again, I'll buy a package of "Little Skateboarders." At least that's what I'm assuming the French translates too. Some knock-off brand is selling their interpretation of the "Little Schoolboys" that I used to always eat with my mom, but changed the schoolboys to skateboarders. Any chocolate can make you smile, but it's a special chocolate that makes you laugh hysterically.

I just adjusted my posture in my chair and my skirt slipped down below my knee and I moved to push it back... then remembered that no one here cares if my knees show. But they will care if I'm smelly. So I'll go take a shower now.

P.S. I did not spot any oppossums today. But today is my sister's birthday, so this title is for her.

Update!

[yup, actually in front of the computer, again]

I have eaten ice cream since the last time I posted and it was delicious and I took a hot shower and it was also delicious.

And now I return to writing more posts of things past for reading in the future.

Twix!

So I said I'd stop writing one-word, exclamation point titles, but...I lied.

I am in front of the computer right now, and it is even better than when I was in front of a computer yesterday because this time I'm the room has air conditioning, and my stomach is full of chicken, fries, Coke and a Twix candy bar. The morning was a rough day of travel that involved waking up with the call to prayer and dragging my suitcase to the car park. Then we piled into the car and didn't unpile for...hours. First it was cold and dusty and later it was hot and less dusty (not less dusty because the air became warmer, less dusty because we changed to the paved North Bank road) and all the time I was squished in the middle.

Also, there was a chicken. Our driver shoved it in back with the backpacks, and it squawked and pretended like it wanted to scratch my eyes out, but actually just roosted on someone's bag for awhile.

Eventually we arrived at the craziness that was the ferry terminal and I was excited because it meant we were almost done, but unexcited because boarding and deboarding the ferry is a generally horrible experience for people who don't like crowds of shoving and shouting people.

But then we ate lunch and that made everything better. I haven't eaten any ice cream yet, and that is because I was kidding when I said I wanted to eat ice cream until I puke, so I'm going to wait until I'm less full to buy some.

I'm tired of exclamation points

Not that this post won't be exciting, but limiting my titles to one-word exclamations was...limiting.

Also, I'm in front of a computer right now! And tomorrow I'll be in the Kombos! (See, this post is exciting). I've got lots of posts to write and time to write them--right now I'm the only person in the transit house, so I'm not paranoid that everyone secretly despises me for hogging the computer. Also, it's morning, so I'm likewise not paranoid that swarming bugs are planning to eat me alive.

So, as a reminder: the posts I'm going to be writing now I will be posting for your reading pleasure in the future. This means you will be reading about Tobaski in January, even though it happened in November. And the naming ceremony I attended yesterday, you'll also have to wait until January to read. Patience, young padawan.

But today you can read about today!

• Waited for the gelly.
• Boarded the gelly.
• Crammed between two large men, one of whom steps on my foot.
• A foul smell fills the gelly. The men sitting across from me plug their noses. Two of them tuck their heads into their shirts.
• Someone opens a window. A cold wind blows through the gelly. The smell goes away.
• The cold wind is still blowing. It was cold in the gelly before the window was open, so it is not pleasant.
• I shiver. I tuck my hands into the sleeves of my sweatshirt.
• No one closes the window.
• The driver turns off the main road because he's taking a different route to Basse. One of the guys gets really mad because he's not going to Basse, he's going to some other town. He complains about "time wasted"
• The gelly arrives at the car park. Because of the alternate route, the gelly comes to the car park without driving by the intersection with the mosque that I normally get dropped at. The distance I now need to walk has been doubled.
• I remember that I never received my change, but the driver and his apprentice have left the gelly and disappeared into the swarm of people shouting and asking where I'm headed towards.
• I struggle to put my suitcase (it's a small one) on my head. Two guys laugh at me. In Pulaar, I command them to help me. They obey.
• I attempt carrying my suitcase on my head for awhile, but my arms tire and I worry that everything will come crashing down. I attempt to roll the suitcase along the crumbling asphalt road, but even though the suitcase has wheels, it feels like I'm dragging it.
• I reach sand. I put the suitcase on my head again.
• I come to the transit house. The gate won't open. I bang on it, hoping someone will open it. 
• No one hears.
• I bang on the door some more.
• No one's coming.
• By the way, the gate is made of metal and the banging makes a very loud sound.
• I sit on my suitcase and eat some peanuts.
• I text people for advice.
• I'm told to push the door really hard so that whatever's turned at the bottom (if I were a door manufacturer I would know the word) to keep the door closed will move.
• It works!
• I wander the house, admiring its cleanliness and emptiness.
• I wait for power.
• I hear a fan running.
• I rush the computer, even though I don't need to rush, because I'm the only one around.

And later I'll probably go to the market.

Chickens!

Things I like about chickens:

• if you call, "kuur, kuur, kuur!" they all come running
• they have dinosaur legs
• and beedy little eyes
• sometimes the fluffy yellow ones will hop on their mother's back and balance there
• the mother hens look like they should be made out of ceramic and sold in a gift shop
• the roosters look like gentlement in waistcoats, with dinosaur legs
• you can eat them.

=)

Sometimes the students make me want to scream, but sometimes they make me smile.

From the day I returned the grade eleven homework:
Bakary: Miss Jallow, who put this here? [Bakary points to the sparkly, blue smiley-face sticker]
Me: I did. Do you like it?
Bakary: Yes!
A few minutes later...
Bakary: Miss Jallow! Muhammed is trying to steal my this!

From the same day:
One of the students: Miss Jallow, next time write "Bravo!"
Me: Okay, next time instead of "fantastic" I will write "bravo!"

From a lesson with the ninth graders, before it devolved into chaos:
Student: Miss Jallow, who invented maths?
Me: Many people invented maths. You know the people in the Middle East? They helped invent math. And the Greeks, the people from Greece. You know where Greece is? In Europe.
Another student: Maths is like science, it was not just one person.
Me: Yes! Exactly.
Yet another student: Miss Jallow, who invented colors?
Me: I don't know.
Same student: I think it was Isaac Newton. [chorus of agreement from the class that Isaac Newton invented colors]. You know Isaac Newton?
Me: Yes, but now it's time to return to maths.

20 Questions!

My host mother's sister, Wuri, was visiting for a couple of weeks, and we were sitting awkwardly and silently, so I attempted conversation.

Me: Tell me about Senegal.
Wuri: Yes, I'm from Senegal.
Me: I know, tell me about Senegal. Does Senegal have electricity?
Wuri: Yes.
Me: All of Senegal?
Wuri: Yes.
Me: Does Senegal have horses?
Wuri: Yes, Senegal has many horses.
Me: Does Senegal have hyenas?
Wuri: Yes.
Me: Have you ever seen a hyena?
My host mother, Nene, joins the conversation. 
Nene: Yes, I have seen a hyena.
Me: You've seen a hyena? I'm scared of hyenas. I think hyenas will eat people.
Nene: Senegal has a national park, it has many animals. It has hyenas, and monkeys, and ngiiru.
Me: I don't know, what is ngiiru?
Nene: Ngiiru is a wild animal [launches into explanation that I don't understand]
Me: Ngiiru has four legs?
Nene: Yes, ngiiru has four legs.
Me: Ngiiru is large or small?
Nene: Ngiiru is LARGE.
Me: Ngiiru eats grass?
Nene: No, ngiiru eats meat. Ngiiru eats [list of animals I do not know]
Wuri: And cows.
Nene: No, ngiiru does not eat cows.
Wuri: It doesn't eat cows?
Nene: No, it doesn't eat cows.
Me: I don't know!
Nene: Wait, if Amadou comes he will tell you.

We wait until Amadou comes.


Me: Nene, I forget, what is the animal I don't know?
Nene: Amadou Boy, come here. Tell Binta what ngiiru is.
Amadou: Ngiiru? It is lion.

Macaroni!

Here's a conversation I had with Mariama from the market:

Mariama: Will you eat rice?
Me: Yes, I eat rice.
Mariama: You eat rice? Oh! I thought you would only eat macaroni.

Smuggling kids in suitcases!

The following is not the first smuggling-kids-in-suitcases conversation I've had. But my training villae family thought it was hilarious, so after my host-sister Fatou asked if I'd take her 2-year-old son Pate to America when I went home, I took the opportunity to repeat it.

Fatou: When you go home to America, take Pate with you.
Me: Okay.
Fatou: Okay?
Me: Okay.  I will put him in my baggage. Because the fare is expensive, but if I put him in my baggage...
Fatou repeats what I've said to the other women sitting with us.
Fatou: But America is far. Won't he die? In the baggage?
Me: No, because I will put Pate in my baggage and I will put food in my baggage and I will not [I pantomime zippering the suitcase shut] and the wind will come.
Fatou repeats what I've said to the others, except she uses the actual Pulaar word for "close" instead of pantomiming it.
Me: But if Pate cries, or if he talks, the people will hear, and they'll come and see him and say "Ah! You have a child in your baggage!" and it will be bad.

So now my suitcase will have Sarjo and Sainey (my training village brothers) and a monkey, and Pate, and a chicken--a few weeks prior to this conversation one of the boys in the village told me that when I return to America I should take a chicken with me.

Baby-man!

I may or may not have written in a previous post that I'm the fourth or fifth Peace Corps volunteer that my family has had. My host mom has learned a few English words, and is always asking to learn more. One night, after proudly showing that she remembered the words "man" and "woman" she told me she forgot the word for "child," so I told her, and then told her the word for "baby," too. After which she announced, "Baby man! Bobo gorko!" In Pulaar, that's how baby boy would be translated. Maybe I should have corrected her, but I just couldn't.

D.I.Y: Repair a chair!

Materials: 2 broken plastic lawn chairs, some wire/string/rope/skinny piece of fabric 

Step 1: Examine your materials. The chairs need to be broken in different places, e.g. one is missing a right leg and one is missing a left leg.

Step 2: Stack the chairs on top of each other. There should be little or no space between the seats.

Step 3: Use wire, string, rope, or a skinny piece of fabric to tie the chairs together at one or both of the arms.

Step 4: Enjoy your new chair!

A super-fabulous day in my life!

Not all of these days are this super-fabulous. And at the time I am writing this post, I don't know if November 15 will be super-fabulous or not. But September 29 went like this:

• I went to school and the teachers spoke English nearly the entire time I was around them (during my first few days at school this hadn't been happening frequently, so it was pretty exciting)
• One of the teachers gave me a lesson on the history of the ethnic groups in The Gambia, and then directed me to a book in the library, so I met the librarian for the first time
• Walking home from school I met a little elementary school kid who called my name and started talking to me in flawless English. Here is part of the conversation we had: 
• Me (greeting the compound we're walking past): Nyallejam.
• Him: Oh, you speak the vernacular?
• I went to market and bought some peanut butter in a bag from my friend Mariama and learned where to buy bread. I sat and ate my peanut butter sandwich and learned that the reason part of the covered market they're repairing is sectioned off and has a separate door is because it's where they sell the meat. 
• I bought bananas. 
• Kids called my name and ran to hug me as I returned from market.
• Went with my friend Isatou (the mom to some of the kids I usually play with) to visit the hospital. I'm not sure why we went to the hospital, but I hadn't seen the hospital yet, so it was a good experience
• Witnessed the following glorious scene returning from hospital: Isatou's maybe-five-year-old daughter Fatoumata is semi-skipping along the dirt road leading back to our compounds. In one hand she's holding the ripped-off piece of cardboard box she found earlier. In the other hand, she's got an empty powdered milk tin that she's filled with broken bits of ceramic tile and placed in a plastic bag. She's shaking the bag and humming a tune. Snot is running from her nose. Her little sister, Hawa, is trying to catch up to her. Hawa is wearing pink shoes that squeak like a dog toy when she walks.

Conversations with Rugi: Corn!

This conversation took place back when the corn was just coming into season and people were roasting it ALL THE TIME. I'm visiting with Rugi's mom (Fatou) and her dad (Alaji) is also there.

Alaji: Binta, will you drink ataya?
Me: No, now I will not drink ataya.
Fatou: If Binta drinks ataya now, she will not sleep. She drinks it in the morning only.
Me: It's true. If I drink ataya now, I will not sleep.

A few minutes later:

Fatou: Binta, will you chew some corn?
Me: No, I'm full.
Rugi: If you chew corn, you will not sleep?

Eating ground-up cous with milk...

is like eating sand.

Fokkiti!

So for the first several weeks I was at site, I thought everyone around me was really angry all the time. Nope. Turns out "fokkiti" is the Pulaar for "setting off," as in, "I'm setting off for market," or "I'm setting off for school."

D.I.Y: Make a 2-in-1 toothpick and Q-tip!

Materials: Feather

Step 1: Gather your materials. A feather can likely be found around your feet, or you can send a child in search of one.

Step 2: Pluck the feathery bits off of the feather, starting at the base. Leave about 3/4 inch remaining at the top.

Step 3: Use the pointed end of your 2-in-1 toothpick and Q-tip to clean your teeth. When you're finished, turn it around and use the feathered end to clean your ears!

Note: If you cannot find a feather and only need to clean your ears, do the following: Walk to the nearest hut. Break a small piece of thatch off of the roof. Now clean those ears!

Flies!

There are probably as many species of fly in The Gambia as there are species of birds, but as I am not a whatever-the-fancy-name-for-someone-who-studies-flies-is, I can only divide them into three categories: 1) the surprisingly beautiful ones, 2) the ones that are ugly in a beautiful sort of way, or at least aesthetically entertaining, and 3) the ugly ugly ones.

On September 9, the day before I originally wrote this post, I saw a surprisingly beautiful one. It was so surprisingly beautiful, I considered making flies one of my new favorite insect. I contemplated what a fly-shaped necklace charm would look like. Then I remembered that they eat poop. Still, it was really beautiful! It's exoskeleton (yes, I still remember words like exoskeleton) was iridescent emerald and its red eyes were perfect spheres and not too bulging.

And the day before that, I saw one of those so-ugly-as-to-be-beautiful-in-a-hilarious-sort-of-way flies. It was fat. And had small eyes that were kind of flat.

But mostly I just see the ugly ugly flies. The most common type of ugly ugly fly is murky greenish-blackish-browinish in the portion of the body before the wings and a dirty beige-ish gray in the back. It's also fuzzy, which grosses me out. And the eyes are a dull red.

Games to play with stones!

Game #1: Gather a handful of stones. Scatter them on the ground. Toss one in the air, pick one up from the ground, then catch the falling one. Put the one you picked up from the ground aside. Repeat until no stones remain. Scatter all of the stones again. Now repeat the tossing and picking up steps, this time picking up two stones with every toss. Scatter the stones again. Repeat, picking up three stones with every toss.

Game #2: Toss a stone in the air and clap once before catching it. Now toss it in the air and clap twice. Now toss it in the air and clap once and tap your chest. Now toss it in the air and touch your toes. Etc.

Game #3: Toss a handful of stones gently into the air, flip your hand palm-side down and try to catch one on the top of your hand or your fingers. If more than one lands, ask someone to remove the extras so there is only one resting on the top of your hand/fingers. Now, keeping that stone balanced where it landed, pick up the scattered stones one by one and place them to the side, using the hand that is balancing the stone. When all of the stones are aside, toss the stone balanced on your hand into the air and catch it. Put the stone aside in a different location. Repeat from the beginning with the remaining stones. Continue until all of the stones have been set aside.

Switzerland!

Regretfully, Switzerland is no longer a part of Europe. Or any of the continents, actually. And I have proof.

One afternoon I was talking with my brother and his friends and trying to explain that America was not a part of Europe and that Sweden and Switzerland were not the same country. The world map I drew with a stick in the dirt wasn't helping much, so my brother brought out an old exercise book from last year that had a world map on the back cover. This exercise book was small, maybe half the size of the average spiral notebook, but this map was detailed. It mentioned that Greenland was a territory of Denmark, or wherever Greenland is a territory of. It labeled every island in every ocean and every country in Africa, including The Gambia and Lesotho. But when I searched for Switzerland, I could not find it. About half of Europe was a blank, unlabeled blob with some squiggly lines. Germany and Slovakia were also missing.

In the map's defense, the disclaimer at the bottom said, "The boundaries on this map are not authoritative."

More goats!

The Gambia has a lot of goats, which is why you are reading another post about goats. My school also has a lot of goats, which wander around the grounds and eat the crumpled up pieces of paper that the bean sandwiches come wrapped in. In one of my first days at the school I asked one of the teacher's about the goats:

Me: The school has many goats.
Teacher: Yes.
Me: Why?
Teacher: Because the school owns them.

A few weeks later I asked another teacher about the goats, and he was able to provide more information. He still couldn't tell me why the goats are there, or how they got there, other than that they're used sometimes as a learning aid for the agricultural science classes. I asked what they did with the goats, whether the teachers ever ate them, or anyone ever sold them. He said yes, sometimes they sell the goats and use the money to help out the neediest students. So, yay for goats!

Shopping!

I'm still in front of a computer, and the bugs are still not flocking to the computer screen or landing on my hair, so those are both wonderful things. Outside people are blowing whistles and cheering; one of the other volunteers at the Basse house told me it's probably a football game. And now the call to prayer is sounding, so it's an interesting combination of sounds.

Today the workshop ended right after lunch, actually, it ended before lunch but we stayed for the food. If I'd wanted to, I could have quickly packed my things and probably caught a car back to site...but I didn't want to. No one is expecting me home until Sunday anyway.

Here's what I did instead of spending two or possibly three hours squished in a vehicle: I re-visited the market. If you'll remember, my last trip to market was unpleasantly overwhelming. I mentioned the not-being-allowed-to-simply-browse aspect, but here's what else went wrong:

• the owner of one of the larger Mauritanian bitiks got mad at me for spending a lot of time looking around and then only buying 5 dalasi worth of goods. I could not tell if he was actually mad or only pretend mad (so I haven't returned) but either way it is not my fault his shop didn't sell the crackers I was looking for and if I decide I don't actually want oatmeal after all. In fact, I only bought the soft chocolate cookie with chocolate syrup filling because I didn't want to walk away without buying anything. Plus I like chocolate.
• I told a lie. Several times. I just wanted to find my way out of the part of the market selling bicycle inner tubes and stacks of plastic cups and other goods equally deficient in aesthetic value BUT every shop keeper I passed wanted to greet me and THEN because I correctly responded in Pulaar the greetings went on longer and I had to say my name and where I'm from etc etc. even though I just wanted to find the fabric or vegetable section.  So when the "etc etc" included "how is your husband?" or "where is your husband?" I said "he's fine" and "he's in America" because if I'd replied truthfully I probably would've had to explain why I'm not married and why I won't marry you, which I was NOT in the mood for. But now, even if I meet someone incredibly handsome and wealthy enough to buy me a new baby goat whenever the previous one grows ugly, I won't be able to marry him because everyone in Basse would know I'm a liar.
• I bought a chicken sandwich like I'd been wanting to do for weeks, but it was only semi-delicious because half of the chicken was just fatty, cartilage-y bits.

Today I returned to the market because I needed to buy some vegetables and I was also hoping to leave Basse on a more pleasant note.

Success!

Here's how today's market adventure went:

• I left for market around the time when most people were eating lunch, so the streets were less crowded and I did not walk around in constant panic that a motorcycle or donkey cart would hit me.
• No one shouted "Mariama!" or "Toubab!" One person called out, "Fatoumata Binta," which was half-way correct, and a few people actually remembered to call me Binta!
• I remembered the way to the vegetable section of the market without first wandering through the bicycle inner tube and plastic cups section
• Most of the ladies at the vegetable stands had left for the day, but I found one lady selling carrots and eggplants, so I bought some. At my site I can buy eggplants at the Sunday market, but I have yet to see a carrot
• I wandered the jewelry stands again (mostly plastic stuff from China) and this time when the ladies said "Hodum faalda?" I didn't even try to reply in Pulaar. In English I said, "I'm just looking" and then the ladies would point out the square earrings with the rhinestones in the middle or the square ones with rainbow stripes until I moved to the next stall. I finally bought some blue, glittery, over-sized flower ones that will hopefully distract from the hideous pattern on my Tobaski compelet.
• Speaking of Tobaski, today's market adventure did not include a "ram trade show." It either happened before I came, after I left, or not at all. I did, however, see a man walking a herd of rams in the direction of the market as I was leaving. They are probably destined for slaughtering because I've never before seen a herd of sheep that didn't include ewes or little lambs so cute they could be a pillow.
• Returning to jewelry, the lady who sold me the earrings also convinced me to buy some beaded bracelets, but she did not convince me to buy powder for henna or the necklace with the large beads that look like dried prunes
• I also bought some flip-flops because everyone else is going to have new shoes for Tobaski, plus the green and white ones I originally bought for bathing but now sometimes wear around village are 1) ugly and 2) not usually worn by women, who have better taste in shoes. The flip flops I bought today have a fish on each strap, and each fish has an iridescent rhinestone for an eye, so they're pretty fabulous
• I stopped at the Mini Mart on the way to the house and bought more of the biscuits with the Arabic writing on the wrapper and some coconut cookies for the kids

After the market I washed some clothes, and it was amazing because I could fill up the buckets with water from the tap and if the water became too soapy, I just poured it out and filled it again. And when it came time to hang the clothes to dry, the clothesline was waiting for me above my head. Washing clothes hasn't been this easy since I had access to a washing machine, a.k.a. since I before I left America.

And after washing clothes I cleaned out my backpack and read some and waited for the power to come so I could write these posts.

Now, farewell! I'm honestly not sure when you'll have another sitting-in-front-of-the-computer post...possibly not until December... I don't think anyone is going to Basse for Thanksgiving, it sounds like most people will be going to the Kombos. I've been promised cornbread if I will stop being a site rat and join them...but it takes a day for me to reach the Kombos from my site and I would be repeating the trip less than three weeks later for in-service training in mid-December.

But I really really love cornbread...

Apologies!

The lengthier, more-entertaining post I promised yesterday never happened, and also I forgot to move the post I scheduled for today (goat names) to a later date, so sorry for the confusion and lack-of-promise-keeping. Yesterday when I began writing the second post, the laptop I was typing on went into sleep mode, and then the charger refused to charge, so really it wasn't my fault.

So tonight I am back on the computer in the bug-infested room, which is possibly less bug-infested because we made sure to close all the doors completely and turn off the lights. However, because I have turned off the lights I have no way of actually seeing the quantity of bugs present.

Anyway, yesterday I'd just been planning on giving you the highlights of my day, so here's Yesterday:

• Breakfast = a french fry, hot dog and canned beans sandwich with a cup of tea
• Breakfast conversation = I chatted with one of the VSOs (sort of like Peace Corps Volunteers, but from England, so they have better accents and also they get to ride motorcycles) and learned the following:
• my accent is not one of those horrible ones that makes you wish the person would shut up
• his thatch-roof hut is like mine except with a refrigerator
• his hut is so large, "you could swing a cat around in it." this is a phrase I have decided to incorporate into my daily vocabulary, once my daily vocabulary returns to English
• After the workshop = I thought about going to market, but changed my mind and didn't go farther than the Mini Market. The Mini Market sells the following:
• Powdered milk
• Nescafe
• Ovaltine
• Canned chicken
• Canned salmon
• Soap
• Insecticide
• Hollywood Chewing Gum
• Chocolate wafer cookies
• Strawberry wafer cookies
• Gingersnaps
• Coconut biscuits
• Bags containing 80 dalasi worth of candies
• Room-temperature banana milk
• SpaghettiAnd a few more things along those lines, but not very much more
• Dinner = Room-temperature banana milk and some biscuits whose wrapper I couldn't read because I don't know Arabic. And then later I also cooked up some spaghetti with canned chicken.
• Sleep = Deficient. The hut at my permanent site may not have a fridge or enough room to swing a cat, but it is designed to allow the cool night-time air to flow inside. The Peace Corps house in Basse, on the other hand, was designed to require fans to keep its inhabitants cool. Unless the inhabitants are sleeping on the bottom bunk, in which case the inhabitant will give up attempting sleep and read several chapters of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time instead

More goat names!

The baby goat stopped being cute and adorable a few weeks ago, so I've stopped giving it a cute and adorable name each day. But here is the continued collection of names from before I stopped:

Sneeze, Flotsam, C.C., Fluffernutter, Little One, Snuffles, Filibuster, Jacob, Rhombus, Bobo, Scout, Bric-a-Brac

Maths!

I am sitting in front of the computer, and I will write a lengthier, additional post, but first I have a question:

If you are/were a math teacher or know someone who is/was, or if you are/were a student in a math class: Would you mind sharing any math games or activities with me? Preferably ones that require no materials, or at least not materials for which I can find no substitute in The Gambia. For example, Buzz! is a great game to practice multiples that until recently I'd completely forgotten. The games/activities could be for topics like fractions, negative numbers, factors, simple linear equations...

Thanks!

Internet!

This post is actually being written on November 4! The same day it is being posted, amazing!

So even though I just finished spending the weekend in Basse, I'm back again. Tuesday morning the vice-principal of my school tells me that there is a workshop I should attend at the regional education office in Basse. Starting Wednesday. At 9 am. Until Sunday. I can't be too upset with him though, because he didn't find out himself until the day before.

The good parts about being back in Basse for this workshop:

• it's a science and math workshop
• I get free breakfasts: Wednesday was a scrambled egg and French fries sandwich, and today was a tuna fish or sardine sandwich.
• I also get free lunches, which has been benichen for both days. And I get to eat with my hands, which I haven't done since training village
• I have time to wander the market
• there's internet
• and soda
• and showers
• I'll be around for the "Tobaski ram trade show" on Saturday

The bad parts about being back in Basse for this workshop:

• the room I'm writing this in is swarming with bugs
• the room I will be sleeping in will be too hot
• no one knows my name, so everyone calls me "toubab" or Mariama
• if I pause longer than a second at a market stall, I'm repeatedly asked what I would like to buy, and then the lady will walk around from behind her stall to ask if I would like these earrings, or maybe those ones and I do not know how to say "thank you kindly, but I'm only browsing at the moment" in Pulaar

Maaji!

In my first few days in village I played a game with the children where they'd hand me a dalasi and I'd hide it in my hands and pretend it had disappeared. Or I would hide it behind my back. It was like a magic trick, except I don't actually know any magic tricks. But whenever I would tell them the coin was not there, they would say, "Maaji!" so I thought they were saying, "magic."

Nope. It turns out "maaji" is the Pulaar word for "lost." Even the kids didn't confuse my coin-hiding for magic.

Conversations with Rugi: Laundry!

Rugi, you will remember, is my hilarious host-niece who thought the water filter in my house was a tap. Here's another conversation with her:

Adama is washing laundry while Rugi and I watch her. The laundry makes a squeaky-squishy noise.
Rugi: Did you hear that? The laundry farted!


So, actually, this really wasn't a conversation...but it was hilarious!

More stuff I've missed!

So recently I've gotten better about not imagining meals more delicious than sliced okra and rice, or craving freezer doors. But here's a collection of the stuff I missed at random points during the past six weeks:

• the television aisle of Wal-Mart in December when all of the T.V.s are on the burning-log channel
• 7-Eleven
• plain M&Ms (even though I like peanut ones much better)
• fruit-punch flavored juice (which I do not like at all)
• soft-boiled eggs (which I also dislike)
• a plain bagel sliced in half with cheddar cheese slices melted on it via microwave
• the Barbie aisle of Toys 'R' Us
• the way Home Depot smells

Meeting!

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting of the PTA. The principal wanted me to come so he could introduce me to the parents. Here's how it went: I don't know. It was conducted entirely in Mandinka, except for a few of the very important parts (the cost of school fees) that he translated into Pulaar in order to be certain that all the parents understood. Here is the extent of my Mandinka vocabulary: morning, afternoon, peace, name, children, work, they're there, slowly.

Even though I still haven't mastered Pulaar, people still want to know why I don't also know Mandinka. Or French. Which reminds me! As I was biking to Basse on Saturday I came across a yellow triangular sign bordered in bright red with a large, black exclamation point in the center. With some French words below it. So what I was being warned of, I have no idea. 

Halloween!

Here is how my village has prepared for Halloween:

• there is squash for sale in the market
• there are dried corn husks everywhere
• there are orange and black chickens in my neighbors' compound
• there are bats in my family's well. Julia, my site-mate, says not to worry, the bats don't die in the well...but they probably poop there. So who knows whether I'm actually cleaning my clothes when I wash them.

Hello, hello!

I'm back in Basse again, and this time I prepared some posts in advance, which I will post to future days. So rather than beginning each post with, "I'm not actually in front of a computer now," assume that I am not in front of a computer unless I say otherwise.

I'm in front of a computer now.

Today instead of taking a gele into Basse, I biked. It's 42k and took me about 3 and a half hours. The ride itself wasn't too bad though because I left before the day became hot and even though it's all a dirt road, it's smooth-ish for a lot of it.

I wrote in September that I would not actually be teaching any classes at the school, so I was not worried about the first day of classes. False. I'm teaching math to the two ninth grade classes, the two eleventh grade classes, and the twelfth grade class. Some of my future posts will be about life at school, I think. I can't actually remember what all the posts I've got written in my notebook were about.

Also, I had a kitten for three days. Then it died. It was living in my site-mate's roof, where its mother had abandoned it and its three siblings. I think it was still too small to be drinking anything except its mother's milk, so the powdered milk I mixed for him just wasn't making the cut. Or possibly he died because I tempted fate and didn't wait eight days before naming him. His Gambian name was Ngiiru, or however you spell the Pulaar word for lion, and his American name was Mosquito. My host brother kept forgetting the word "cat," so a couple of times each day he would ask, "Binta, where is your mosquito?"

Surprise!

I am writing this post at 8:10AM on August 29, which is nearly a month and a half from when you will read this, provided this scheduling to post in the future works. I'm going to assume that I will not have had internet access for awhile by October 14, the day this post will actually be posted.

To prevent this post from creating all sorts of bizarre loops and scribbles in the timeline, I'll stick to writing generally about food. I will not say, for example, that this morning for breakfast I ate some more of the digestive crackers I bought yesterday, because on October 13 I will probably not buy digestive crackers and on October 14 I will probably not eat them for breakfast.

Mango season had ended by the end of August, but banana season was just starting. As was avocado season. The avocados here have enormous pits in comparison to the ones I've eaten in the States, but the actual avocado is about the same size, so there is a lower deliciousness-to-nondeliciousness ratio.

The fruit stands are also selling apples, but these are imported from elsewhere and I haven't bought one yet.

Note: I can't remember what I've already written about, but I just realized that if I am repeating something I recently wrote, it will have been at least 6 weeks ago since you last read it, and therefore (hopefully) not boring and repetitive.

Here's a list of the foods sometimes sold on trays balanced on the heads of women/children walking along the street:

• cold water. it's packaged in plastic bags and you chew into a corner and drink from it.
• icees. juice that has been frozen into a plastic sandwich bag (not a legitimate plastic bag like the cold water is packaged in). although I've heard they're delicious, I am much too frightened of drinking unfiltered, unbleached water to try one.
• peanuts. these are super cheap and delicous!
• cashews. these are super expensive (in comparison to the peanuts) but even more delicious!
• dates. these are only sold in large quantities around Ramadan because many people eat them to break the fast.
• that's all I can think of at the moment.

Here's a list of the food I was super-excited to see in the supermarket (but too poor to actually purchase):

• canned lychees
• Happy Hippos chocolate candy by the company that makes KinderEggs

Some meals I've eaten (or seen other people eat):

Sandwiches: I've only ever eaten the bean sandwich, but I've seen other people eat the omelette sandwiches and my host brothers from training village once ate a chocolate sandwich (basically a Nutella-like spread). None of the sandwiches are made with sliced bread, and I just realized I have not eaten (at least as of August 29) sliced bread since I left the States. Which really makes me question that whole "best thing since sliced bread" thing because really, sliced bread isn't THAT fantastic. Anyway, I've also heard of the existence of bean and omelette sandwiches, but I do not think any bean, omelette and chocolate sandwiches exist.

Cous: It's not cous-cous, I'm not sure what it is. I've been given a bowl of ground-up cous before, with a separate bowl that had a sauce with fish and vegetables to pour over it. I'm not sure what this meal was called, but it was alright. I like rice better, though.

Rice: If it's not a sandwich or served with cous, it's served with rice. Sometimes the rice is cooked together wtih the other ingredients, and sometimes it's served separately and the sauce is poured over it.

Benichen: This is a rice dish where everything is cooked all together. According to my language teacher, "ben" means "one" in Wolof, because it's cooked in one dish. Benichen can be either red or white, depending on what type of oil you're using, etc. I'm not sure what the other ingredients exactly are...but I LOVE it.

Domoda: This is the groundnut sauce that I've probably described before. Sometimes there's a meat (like chicken or beef) included, and sometimes not. Also, I'm not sure I spelled "domoda" correctly.

Chew: The rice is separate, and then a mixture of cabbage, potatos, carrots, onion, some other vegetables, and meat (when I ate it for lunch during training, the meat was either chicken or canned beef, but I'm not sure what meat the Gambians traditionally use, or if they even usually include meat) is spooned over it.

There's some food whose name I've forgotten, but it involves cooking the rice with some seasonings and bits of fish and stuff. But unlike the other dishes, there's not a lot of oil added or any sort of sauce.

Now I'll go write a post that you'll actually be able to read today, August 29.

Muffin! I wish...

Muffin! I wish...

Once in awhile, such as when I'm drinking ground-up cous with milk, I will randomly crave something I have no hope of seeing for another two years. Drinking ground-up cous with milk, by the way, is like drinking sand. Recent cravings (as of September 18, the day I'm writing this post):

• Muffins
• Eating Belgian waffles with whipped cream and strawberries in a diner
• In-line skating
• Sweaters
• And, just this very instant, I've realized I crave the sensation of opening a freezer door in a supermarket. And not just the sensation of a freezing cold breeze--the whole experience of tugging open the door with its suction-y suction! Why? I don't know!

Photos!

So I'm at the Basse transit house and this afternoon the internet was working so awesomely that I uploaded some photos! Now it's evening and I've returned to write some captions.

Shortly after receiving the name "Binta" at our naming ceremony in training village. The woman sitting next to me was my host mom.

One day we took a bike trip to the beach, and here's a photo I took. If I knew anything more about trees and/or geological formations, I would share that information here. 



The storm brewing during our trip to Janjangbury. I can't remember whether I even wrote about this trip, but this is the river we saw a hippopotamus in. I would include my photo of the hippo, but it's such a small speck, you would just think your computer screen was dirty.





These were some of the girls that lived/played at the compound where my language teacher stayed. As you can tell, they were incredibly awesome.



The younger brother of two of the girls in the above photo.



Probably my most favorite photo EVER.



If I were the ambassador, this would be my backyard.

Birds!

This is another post that was not-so-secretly written in the past. But it may or may not be the first of these such posts that you are actually reading.

The actual date is August 31. But this is irrelevant because I am not writing about stuff I've done today, like eating ice cream at Bamboo Garden. I am writing about birds, briefly. Today, August 31, I found the Rough Guide to The Gambia among the books in the Stodge's library. And among the pages of this guide I found a bird identification section, that will allow me to identify 36 of the over 560 bird species found in The Gambia.

Birds I know I have seen:

• Village weaver. I was told by a reliable bird-identifier that these were what I had seen. I don't actually remember seeing the bird, but I do remember their nests, which were awesome. You can probably find a picture on Google.
• Red-cheeked cordon-bleu. These are AWESOME looking and I saw them all the time in Yuna. The males have these bright red dots on their cheeks that make them look girly and adorable.

Birds I may have seen:

• Hooded vulture
• Palm-nut vulture

I know I have seen a vulture of some sort or another. If The Gambia contains more than two species of vulture, it's possible I've seen vultures of neither the hooded nor the palm-nut variety.

Birds I wish I would see because their names are beyond awesome:

• Little bee-eater
• Beautiful sunbird
• Exclamatory paradise whydah

Birds I wish I would see because their blue feathers look like silk and they have yellow, bulging eyes:

• Purple glossy starling

Goat!

My host family owns several goats, one of which is tiny, adorable, and has a colorful piece of fabric tied around its neck. I have decided to (secretly) give it a different name every day. The names so far: Clover, Fleur, Button, Sneeze, Bounce.

Also, I'm writing/wrote this post on the day before yesterday. I love this publishing to the future feature!

More Photos! And Words!

View from my window the morning after the Marathon March

Note: These photos, and those from yesterday, were not posted in any sort of chronological order. Or any order at all, really. 

View of Banjul from the July 22 Arch

I wanted to upload some more, but the computer/camera is being disagreeable. So I'll write some. I need to leave in a few minutes anyway to grab a bean sandwich for breakfast and catch the car back to my site. Lessons start tomorrow, but as I won't actually be teaching a class (I'll be doing more teacher-training stuff) I'm not stressing. Officially, school started last Thursday, but students mostly attended assemblies and cleaned.

Words!

I've been at site two weeks now. I want to tell you everything, but I'm at real risk of saying nothing at all and instead wasting hours thinking of beginnings and then shutting the laptop shut in a fit of overwhelmed panic.

Okay.

Grrr...

Oh! I'll start with my squirrel story! It is a short story: I saw a squirrel. I didn't know squirrels existed in The Gambia, and for all I know it wasn't actually a squirrel, but that's what the driver told me, and it looked enough like one for me to believe him. Here's a transcript of the conversation, as remembered two weeks later:

A squirrel dashes along the side of the road and into the bushes. 
Me: What was that?!
The Peace Corps Driver: A squirrel. I should have run him over!
Me: I did not know The Gambia had squirrels!!!
Driver: There are squirrels in America?
Me: Yes, there are squirrels ALL over America.
Driver: And you do not kill them?
Me: No.

Yes, yes, I know squirrels end up splattered on the roads in America all the time, but do we aim for them? Not usually.

Here's another story, because maybe you can piece together these stories puzzle-style and form a picture of my life. Or just ignore this post and look at the actual photos of my life.

Rugi, my maybe 5-year-old host-niece, is in my hut watching me fill my water bottle from my filter. In Pulaar:
Rugi: You have a pump!
Me: No, this is a filter.
Rugi: No! It's a pump, it's a pump!
Me: No.
Rugi: Pump!
Me: No.
Rugi puts her mouth to the tap of my filter and starts drinking. 
Me: Stop!
Rugi smiles. 
Me: Stop!
I pull Rugi away and we go outside. 

3 days later, sitting under a tree with Rugi and her older brother, Mamadou. In Pulaar:
Mamadou: Do you need to fetch water from the pump? I will help you. [at least, I imagine he said something along those lines. I didn't actually understand his exact words]
Rugi: No! She has a pump in her house!
Me: It's not a pump, it's a filter!

And those are all the stories for today.

Field Trip!

Today we went to the museum and saw fascinating stuff like old passports, coins, tools (actually, old tools don't fascinate me), costumes and an intricate paper-and-wood lantern shaped like a boat.

Then we climbed to the top of the July 22 Arch. I was briefly reminded of climbing the Bunker Hill Monument in 8th grade, except the staircase in the Arch was wider, better-lit, and not covered in slime.

Also, several weeks ago an albino fly landed on my notebook.

Incredible!

What is incredible is that I have nothing incredible to write about. I spent most of the day in training sessions and then on the walk back from the office to the Stodge my brain melted. Therefore, I am incapable of remembering any interesting adventures from the past to write about.

However, I feel obligated to write something, and at the same time, to write something quickly so that I don't hog the computer. Therefore:

Stuff I've recently learned:

• scientists suspect the pink color of Amazon river dolphins is due to scar tissue
• there are also river dolphins in India
• the species of river dolphin that lives in China is functionally extinct

Stuff I've recently read:

• a June 2009 issue of National Geographic

Food Update!

So, actually, we ended up eating dinner at Bamboo Garden because Kabob and Curry is closed on Tuesdays during Ramadan. So we'll eat Indian food tomorrow. Also, I think I spelled "Kabob" wrong. I thought the icon with the green check-mark and "ABC" was the spell-check button because when I scrolled over it the words "Check spelling" appeared, but when I actually pressed the button, nothing happened. It did not even complain when I typed sadfwh.

So either the spell-checker is broken, or "sadfwh" is a word.

Pizza!

The section of the city known as Senegambia, the tourist section, contains many sights unknown to the rest of The Gambia. You will see exposed knees. You will see a restaurant decorated with bright red, green and purple lights that flash green, purple and red. You will see a European couple sloppily, slobberingly, kissing each other. You will watch with horrid fascination, then avert your eyes to the ham and pineapple pizza sitting on the plate in front of you.

Or rather, you would have seen this sights, had you been me last night. After training sessions that included an excursion to the ferry terminal, we went for a pizza dinner at Paradisio's. Delicious! I could even say, "It's the best pizza I've eaten in The Gambia!" I could say this because it's the only pizza I've eaten in The Gambia. In America, this pizza would rank below the pizza my elementary school served for lunch on Fridays. And I'll admit I liked that pizza...but still.

I'm much more excited for tonight's dinner at Kebab and Curry! Indian food! Only 49 minutes from now!

Beach!

I have just noticed that every one of my posts' titles is an exclamation. I am 87 percent certain this was not my original intention.

Anyway, I went to the beach yesterday! And drank overpriced Fanta!

I was going to write more, but I've just been informed that breakfast has been served.

Marathon March!

Marathon March actually happened a week or two ago, but since nothing has happened since last night and this morning, aside from some sleeping and eating and news reading ("Thousands flee Indonesia volcano," "Chile rescuers work on 'Plan B'," "US economic growth slows to 1.6%," "Algeria's shopping centre revolution").

Random stuff I feel like mentioning before launching into the story, that may or may not end up looking more like a series of bulleted points:

• The time is not actually 5:00 AM. That is the time the computer I am on is set to, but the time is actually 9:00AM. I have not looked at the time that Blogger has been recording as the post time until now, so I don't know what other temporal lies my blog has been telling you
• However, I do know of the following lie: Sometime in the future (I will leave the exact date a surprise) when I predict I will not have had internet access for awhile, you will read a post that was actually written today.

On the morning of Marathon March, I crammed the following into a bag:

• 3 litres of water, divided unequally between three bottles. I added powdered Gatorade to one of the bottles, so .75 litres was actually lemon-lime Gatorade
• my St. Mary's Fencing windbreaker, that is actually not much of a windbreaker but would still keep me dry if it rained. Also, it would deter criminals who could read English and understand that "fencing" involves sword skills
• sunglasses
• sunscreen
• bugspray
• whatever random stuff was already floating around in my bag...cellphone, hand sanitizer, random scraps of paper...

In a separate black plastic bag I carried my lunch. The hotel (sort of) we stayed at was supposed to have packed sandwiches, but instead we received aluminum pans filled with cous cous, vegetables and chunks of meat. It was delicious, but I ended up scooping half of my lunch out from the bottom of the bag.

Then we were crammed into the Peace Corps coaster, dropped off in some village, and photographed in our squeaky clean pre-march attire. Our guides were a couple of current Peace Corps volunteers who had planned out the course. The course would sound much more exciting if I could remember the length of the course or how long it took us.

We walked through the village a little ways, collecting children along the way. Kids would shout "toubab!" then run up and hold our hands. The unlucky kids who didn't get to hold a toubab hand would hold the hand of a kid who was, or the hand of a kid who was holding the hand of a kid who was holding the hand of a kid who was holding one of our hands. I had collected quite a few kids, and they were starting to slow me down, so I was glad when we turned off the road into a field.

We dodged the following obstacles:

• Uncovered wells, occasionally hidden by overgrown grass. I think they use these wells mostly for watering the fields. At least, I really really hope so, because one of the wells contained two dead chickens, according to the person walking next to me. I would not have been able to identify those floating masses as chickens.
• Trenches and whatever the opposite of a trench is. The fields are dug like this: \/\/\/\/\/\/ and in the rainy season the crops are planted on the raised bit and in the dry season in the lowered bit.
• Rice fields. I can now identify a rice field! Maybe. Rice fields were an obstacle in that we were not allowed to trample through them.
• A barbed wire fence. Actually, we did not dodge the fence, because it was quite long and we needed to be on the other side. So we hopped/were-lifted-over-by-someone-taller.
• A lady screaming at us in Mandinka for walking by her rice field and jumping her barbed wire fence

We did not dodge the following obstacles:

• Blisters. I got lovely blisters on my heels (I was not wearing my Tevas, having loaned those to a friend, and also thinking that wearing shoes that covered my toes would be nice) and then, when I squashed down the back of my shoe so that it became a flip-flop of sorts, I got blisters on the top of my feet. Fun!

And then we came to mud. The mud would have been incredibly glorious if we could have walked through it barefoot, so instead it was only semi-glorious. Also, I became stuck. Incredibly stuck. Stuck to the point of needing to hand my bags to the person behind me, and use my hands to dig away the mud from my right foot and yank it out. During which time my left foot became stuck. So I repeated the process. During which time my right foot became stuck again. I was eventually pulled out and managed to NOT fall face-first despite being convinced I would.

Then we walked along a marshy bit for a while, and then some more mud, and then I forget, and then some more mud. I refused to become stuck again--and succeeded!--but sprinting across mud is quite difficult.

We ate lunch underneath a baobab tree, which I identified from having read The Little Prince and also from those times when people have pointed to a tree and said, "That's a baobab tree!" We also ate Starburst candies and those gummy Coca-Cola candies.

Then it rained, and I put on my jacket. Then it stopped raining and I took it off. Then it rained again and I put it on. Then it stopped and I didn't take it off. But it stayed stopped, so I took it off and it rained again.

Then we reached the river! And because the water was still salty and therefore free of parasite-carrying, freshwater snails, and because I was not aware that there might have been crocodiles, I jumped in. We swam around until the people who would be canoe-ing us to the lodge arrived. Some of the group continued on for the complete march (they canoed past the lodge and then walked back) but for me the cost of aching feet outweighed the benefit of the beautiful view promised with the complete hike. Also, I'd be first in line for a shower.

Mandina River Lodge was wonderful, and I can only imagine what it would be like during the on-season, or whatever you call the non-off-season. There was a swimming pool that was huge and twisted around that we unfortunately could not swim in, due it being filled with rainwater and scum, but it was still awesome looking. And there were rooms that were literally right on the river, mine among them, and some rooms on stilts.

Here's what else I liked:

• the mattress I slept on
• the fact that the British guys who own the place also own a lodge in the Alaskan wilderness
• the mention of crocodiles in the brochure
• the mention of manatees in the brochure
• the healthy, pettable cats wandering about the place
• the heart-shaped rice served with our dinner

The next day we woke up, breakfasted, had a session on solar power, and drove back to training village (with a stop in Brikama so we could buy ataya and sugar for our families).