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).

Go St. Mary's!

Professor Roberts and the group of St. Mary's students studying abroad in The Gambia this semester arrived Tuesday, and today I got to meet them!!! Yes, it was happiness of the triple-exclamation point variety. The house where the St. Mary's students will stay is only a five minute cab ride from the Stodge, and is also walkable (because I walked back).

[Aside: I've learned how to prevent getting lost in The Gambia! If I walk in dirt/mud while wearing my Teva sandals, I can follow the tracks back to wherever I came from. The tread on my sandals are a pattern of dots that no one else's shoes have, and it's rare that I'm not walking in dirt/mud. It's foolproof! Unless it rains...or my destination is not my place of origin...or a herd of goats walks behind me...]

Anyway, I had a really great time talking to familiar faces, sharing my Peace Corps experience so far, and hearing about their impressions of The Gambia. Then we walked up Kairaba Avenue and into a grocery store where I bought a pack of Digestive Crackers. I do not know why they are called Digestive Crackers, because the name makes them sound extremely unappealing. In reality, they are incredibly delicious, in a graham-cracker-ish sort of way.

In fact, I think I will go eat some more right now.

Woah!

Posting a post two days in a row?! Ridiculous. I'm now at the Stodge (aka the transit house in Kombo). I thought the transit house in Basse was fantastic? This transit house is fantastically fantastic. But I'm not going to bother describing it because you're presumably reading this blog to learn something about The Gambia, and a description of the Stodge would read like a description of some random house in America. I think this will be another list post, because:

• I like writing lists
• Writing lists does not require much thought, and as I slept poorly last night for unknown reasons (I didn't even drink ataya!) I do not have much thinking to spare
• I'm not sure when I'll be kicked off, and it's much less noticeable if a list is left unfinished than if a paragraph is. Sometimes. Therefore, I will not tell you ahead of time how many bullet points these lists were intended to have

Stuff I've recently eaten: 

• Milk 'n' Malt biscuits that I bought from the bitik down the street. They taste kind of like those cookies you always find at functions where cookies are handed out for free because you can buy them in packs of a million. My milk 'n' malt biscuits were not sold in a pack of a million, but the wrapper is bright green and yellow and one side is written in Arabic. 
• A chicken sandwich (I ate this a few hours ago) 
• Chips (French fries)
• Cucumbers, tomatoes, pickles and flatbread dipped in DELICIOUS humus from a restaurant whose name I forgot. It was the same place where I later ate the aforementioned  chicken sandwich. Brains were also on the menu, but I thought, "been there, done that..." Also, the species of brain was unspecified, but I would guess the brains were not from the following:
• Pig
• Human

Unfortunately,  I can't eliminate any other species with certainty...so... maybe I'll have to try them after all. 

Uncomfortably hot places I've recently been:

• Under a mosquito net on a bed in a room of the Basse transit house
• Squeezed into the backseat of a car for 6 hour drive from Basse to the ferry terminal to Banjul
• This couch. The couch is not uncomfortably hot, but the laptop balanced on my lap is. 

Comfortably hot places I've recently been:

• The shower. I have not taken a hot shower since our pre-departure staging in Philadelphia. You would think I would not even want a hot shower, what with the many uncomfortable hot places I've recently and unrecently been. You would be wrong. This shower was amazing. But you all know what showers feel like, so...I should probably start writing about something more Gambian.

I know! I'm going to flip through my language notebook and share some of the interesting tidbits scrawled within. Unfortunately, you will not receive the full effect of the awesomeness that is the Manuscript Book of Binta Bah (now Binta Jallow). This would require viewing the actual pages, where you would find such things as: 

• the outline Sarjo traced of my bird-shaped Silly Band bracelet
• the picture I drew of squash 
• the picture I drew of a butterfly
• the picture I drew of a mouse that was mistaken for a cow, if I remember correctly
• the picture Sarjo drew of a car stuffed with people
• the picture Ousman drew of the Peace Corps logo
• the picture Sarjo and Ousman drew of my house, pit latrine included
• the house Sarjo drew with the words "Sano BAH Momodou OBAMA USA"
• the sketch I copied from the blackboard of the layout of the car park 
• the two pages covered in orange spots from when a baby regurgitated what was presumably mashed up carrots 

I am also a fan of the fact that the notebook is now completely disengaged from the cover. 

Anyway, so, the interesting tidbits:

• Items that cannot be bargained for in a bitik (a bitik is a store, I think I mentioned that at some point. it is not the word for store, it is a type of store that I would define in more detail, but Google could probably give you the answer faster and more clearly): 
• cup of sugar (sukar)
• ataya
• bread (full loaf either 4D or 5D)
• matches, candles, kerosene, tomato paste*

*I have written these bullet points as they appear in my notebook. I cannot explain why tomato paste was grouped with matches and kerosene

• gertogal na dogga = chicken is running
• dendirabe are your cousins (but specifically the children of your mother's brothers and your father's sisters. Your dendirabe are your joke-mates. You can say absolutely ANYTHING to them. And go into their house and borrow ANYTHING. And there's nothing they can do about it. Except joke back. The dendirabe are also the ones who reconcile marriages. 
• the article always rhymes with the end of the word for which it is the article. unless the word was borrowed from another language, in which case the article is "o"
• the article "dam" goes with anything that is liquid, e.g. ndiyam (water), kosam (sour milk), and kedam (fresh milk)
• leki = tree/medicine
• nayi = four/cows. nayi nayi = four cows
• juma = mosque. aljuma = Friday. Because on Friday you go to the mosque!
• supa kanja is a sauce made with red oil and okra. it is very slippery, and goes w/ rice
• maafe/domoda is a peanut sauce that goes with rice, cous, chicken, fish
• no tip, unless the food is really good
• always keep a spare spoon in your bag
• a resema? = are you married?
• ala, mi resaka sabu ko mi suka = no, I am not married because I am a child/young
• during the rainy season, ocean-going vessels (back when The Gambia was a British colony) could go all the way up the river. no part of The Gambia is more than 35 miles from the river because the British thought that's all they'd need for people to come and trade with them
• if someone asks where someone is and you don't know, don't say "I don't know" because this is rude and implies that you don't want to know. Instead, say, "I haven't seen him/her"
• the granddaughter is the "wife" of the grandfather, which also makes her the co-wife of the grandmother. So the granddaughter can joke that she'll eat her grandmother's food because it's her husband's food, etc. 
• boni = spoiled (used for people and food)
• yaaki = spoiled, broken (used for everything except people)
• fusi - broken (used for jars, bottles, tumblers, bowls, eyes)
• heli = broken (used for chairs, beds, benches, trees, doors, handles, body parts except for eyes, a pen if it snaps)
• the traditional occupations have superpowers associated with them:
• blacksmith = if someone stole something from you, they can make a bad spirit follow that person until they bring back the item
• fishermen = can remove fish bones from someone's neck
• leatherworkers = not exactly a superpower, but they're the ones in charge of slaughtering the sheep and skinning it for a naming ceremony
• I do not understand why, but in the corner of one page I wrote: 

                          tomato --> best

                          picture --> worst

                          (pink rectangle)

• wota baaro pila o tidani = don't lean against the pillar, it is not strong
• luuwas = rent (house, car, wheelbarrow)
• tanderma = date *in my notebook, this tidbit is accompanied by my drawing of a date. I was trying to explain to my language teacher what I had eaten the night before to break the fast. I told her I thought they were dates, but I could not be sure, because I had only eaten dates once before, three years ago on the Friday or Saturday before Easter--the same day I tried chocolate-covered matzo for the first time. Except I didn't tell her that run-on sentence of a story I just told you. What I actually said was, "I think they were figs or dates." 
• during the big ceremony when the wife is brought to her husband, she will be covered in a veil and given dozens of pots, lots of bowls, and bookshelves of clothes
• if you REALLY can't afford to buy a sheep to slaughter for your child's naming ceremony, a chicken is acceptable
• "bii fattu!" means "son of a b----!" but "bii Fatou" means "Fatou's son." The former is absolutely an insult and the latter is absolutely not, but the two phrases sound remarkably similar. Therefore, I'm hoping I'll never need to insult anyone, or reference Fatou's son.  

Basse!

Grrr... I just wrote this wonderful post about being in Basse and
eating a bean sandwich and visiting my permanent site. And then I
clicked send and Internet Explorer told me I was not connected to the
internet. And when I reconnected, I checked the drafts folder, and
nothing was there except some e-mail I never sent a month ago. And now
everyone is getting ready to leave for lunch. So the super short
summary:

I'm in Basse (at the Peace Corps transit house, where there is a
computer with internet) and tomorrow I'm leaving for Banjul for a few
days for training, swearing-in, and shopping (furniture, etc)
My new house is a circular hut with a thatch roof and a corragate
fence around the backyard. Several branches of a mango tree also hang
over the fence, so I will have shade and mangoes. A glorious
combination.

I possibly ate electric eel, but I don't know because the fish was all
chopped up. But before they chopped up the fish (i.e. when their uncle
brought over a basket of freshly caught and still weakly-flopping
fish) my new host mom pointed to some of them and said the Pulaar word
for electricity. And I was confused, because she was not pointing to a
light switch or a battery or even a windmill. So she mimicked touching
the fish and receiving an electric shock.

And I think that's basically all I'd written before, but more
concisely. So...yay.

Training's almost over!

I'm considering writing this post with actual sentences. But I'll start off with some bullet points that I want to get in before, I don't know, I get trampled by a stampede of goats or something. Not that I've ever seen stampeding goats. And not that stampeding goats would be coordinated enough to open doors, but anyway:

• I'm actually writing this post after logging in to blogger, so I actually got to read people's comments! So thanks for all your comments!
• I can't remember if I already mentioned this, but Pulaar is the language where "Jam tan" (peace only) is the response to 90% of the greetings. (but all of the languages have their version of "peace only")
• I've forgotten what this last bullet point was
• Oh! I remembered: yesterday I went to a fantastic supermarket and GUESS WHAT I FOUND. Daim candies. In America, I have to go to a furniture store (a.k.a. IKEA) to find them. Actually, the second floor of this supermarket was a furniture store, so...I guess it's the same. Oh, and I bought one, of course.

Okay, lots has been going on, of course, but like I said, I'm going to attempt real sentences. I think I'll write about Ramadaan (which I've probably spelled incorrectly, so maybe I should stick with the Pulaar "lewru korka"). Nearly everyone in my village is fasting, so everything is much quieter, and there are no more bean sandwiches. I fasted for four days (Friday to Monday) for the experience (three of those days without water). So here's what a day of fasting was like for me:

• Wake up at 4:45 am and walk over to my family's house for breakfast. I had never been inside my family's house before now (usually we'll eat breakfast outside) so it was fun seeing the inside, even if I couldn't actually see the inside on account of it being night and the candle not providing a huge amount of light. I say, "Kong kong," which is what Gambians say instead of actually knocking on the door. My family tells me to come in and lets me sit on one of the two big chairs.
• Neene (mother) boils water using one of those scary gas tanks that I have been told will not explode. Baaba (father) or Tokaro am (my namesake) spreads mayonaisse on rolls of bread bought yesterday afternoon. Neene adds tea bags to the hot water.
• Neene adds powdered milk (or sometimes canned milk) to the tea, and heaping spoonfuls of sugar. Then she hands me a cup of tea and an empty cup so that I can cool off the tea by pouring it from one cup to the other.
• After I finish my tea and bread with mayo I return to my house and sleep for a few more hours. I wake up for real at 8:30-ish and get ready for lessons.
• Go to class and learn some Pulaar. Bring a bowl of the lunch I'm not eating back home with me to eat for dinner.
• Return home and nap for an hour. Then distract myself by washing clothes, helping my family pound groundnuts (which mostly is me watching in amazement), cleaning my house, studying Pulaar, watching the kids play cards, watching the kids fetch the sheep...
• At around 7:45 it's time to break fast! My family has been breaking their fast with moni, which is a porridgy type food made with coos, I believe. It's sweet and delicious and the texture reminds me of a combination of oatmeal and tapioca pearls. One night we ate it with the soured milk, which I did not like when I first tasted it weeks ago, but was delicious after fasting.
• Then we nibble on mango, dates, or cashews.
• Then we talk. Our conversational topics have included: teaching me to count to French, teaching them to count in Spanish, bringing my host brothers and a monkey to America via my suitcase, telling them I'll be going to Serrekunda for a few days
• About an hour later they bring out my dinner. I eat from a separate bowl, and I get a spoon. Dinner's have been DELICIOUS. Usually it's rice with dried/smoked fish, but lately it's been either: benichen, meatballs and rice, and most recently, really yummy fresh fish. Oh, and the lunch that I saved. I can't finish even the normal amount I usually eat, but my siblings finish it off for me.
• Then we talk some more, then I tell them I'm tired and am going to bed.
• I go to bed.

So much for replacing bullet points with actual sentences...Oh! I remembered what I forgot to write in my initial bullet points! Go here, http://ousmancham.blogspot.net/ , the blog of our fearless leader, Ian, and you will see pictures of me. I do not think I am actually facing the camera in any of them, but I am easily recognized by my bright pink hat. On the right-hand side of my blog there should also now be a box with the link. And I've just learned that Dylan's Flickr photostream, http://www.flickr.com/photos/daltoris has some photos of me facing the camera. Dylan is a trainee in my group, so some of his photos are probably of sights I have also seen.

Bye!

Jam Hiiri!

I fear I will be booted from this computer at any moment, as I've
already used more than my fair share in reading and replying to
e-mails. I'm currently at the Yuna EcoLodge (shower! flush toilets!
bread with pineapple jam!) where we've been having a couple of
training sessions and preparing for model school this coming week.

Highlights:
-Mango season is coming to an end
-I've found out my placement! I'm going to help out math and science
teachers at an Upper Basic School, and helping to expand a peer
tutoring program, which I'm SUPER excited about
-Field trip to Janjanbury = monkeys stealing and eating sugar AND I SAW A HIPPO
-my tokara (namesake) got married! (but I missed the ceremony due to
being hours away in Janjanbury saving my breakfast from monkeys)
-I sort of love my pit latrine
-I can't remember what I wrote in my last post (I'm e-mailing this one too)
-So I'm afraid of repeating stuff
-My collection of photos now includes several of my hilarious host
brothers, who love to pose
-I have in my possession two compelets (the wrap skirt, shirt, and
headwrap). One is bright orange and AWESOME.
-Still eating bean sandwiches for breakfast. And they're still awesome.
-Language test number 2 on the day after my birthday :(
-I promise to find time to write some letters once I'm at site...if I
tried writing a letter now, it would come out half in Pulaar
-I think my left index finger just received a minor electric shock
-I'm returning this laptop to its owner now