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.