Hmmm...

If fruit flies are crawling all over you, does it mean you’re sweet? Or in a state of decay? Maybe it means you’re sitting next to the leaky mango Isatou’s been saving since the afternoon.

The bugs have returned, and I am not too pleased...

Conversations with Mamadou: Blong!

Mamadou: The big dog, her name is Levi.

Me: Two Levis?
Mamadou: Yes, they are namesakes.
Me: Her name is not Soldier? [Mamadou had told me a few weeks ago the dog's name was Soldier, even though Neene says her name is Kuri]
Mamadou: Hmm?
Me: I think you said her name is Soldier. It is not Soldier? It is not Kuri?
Mamadou: Her name is…Blong!

He bursts out laughing. I burst out laughing. Wuri, who is over-hearing our conversation, laughs a little too. Even in Pulaar, Blong is a ridiculous name for a dog.

Mamadou starts coughing.

Mamadou: I laughed until I coughed!
Me: Her name is Blong?
Mamadou: Her name is…Torres. [to the dog] Torres! Torres!

Torres/Blong/Soldier/Kuri walks over

Mamadou: Fanta. F-A-N-T-O-U.
Me: F-A-N-T-A. Now the dog's name is Fanta?
Mamadou: Nooo. F-A-N-T-O-U.
Me: F-A-N-T-A. Who hears English, me or you?
Mamadou: Me.
Me: Okay, but I hear English too and F-A-N-T-O-U is Fantou; it is not Fanta.
Mamadou: F-A-N-T-O-U.
Me: Who is Fantou? Your wife?
Mamadou: No. [silence]

Mamadou, in a whisper: Salimatou is my wife.
Me, also in a whisper: Salimatou is your wife? Salimatou who?
Mamadou: Salimatou who was here this afternoon.
Me: Yes, I know her.
Mamdou: Don’t tell anyone!
Me: Okay.

Conversations with Rugi: How many mangoes?

Me: How many mangoes did you eat today? Ten?
Rugi: Yes. No, twelve.
Me: Twelve?
Rugi: Thirteen.
Me: Thirteen?
Rugi: No, fourteen.
Me: Fourteen mangoes?!
Rugi: Twenty-five.
Me: Heh!
Rugi: One hundred.
Me: Heh! Today Rugi ate one hundred mangoes.

A few days later:

Me: Rugi, how many mangoes did you eat today?
Rugi: Two.
Me: Only two? Me, I ate fifty.
Rugi opens her eyes wide in mock disbelief.

Who's afraid of a puppy?!

One night, a woman came to buy mangoes from Neene, saw Levi, gave a shout, and jumped away from him. Levi, who’d oringally just ambled over to sniff hello, started barking. This caused the woman to really panic, and she made a running leap onto the bantaba.Not the wisest choice, if she’d known how weak our bantaba is, but nothing collapsed.

Her reaction got me thinking about people’s fears of dogs, even when the dog is a cute little puppy who clearly belongs to the family--and why would any family keep a dog who bit mango customers? So I tried to think of an animal that I would irrationally fear and I realized that if I came across someone who kept a pet shrew I would react exactly as this woman had. If a pet shrew came running to greet me, I would fling myself onto the nearest tall surface and pray the shrew would not remember it is capable of climbing. I would not pause, not even for a second, to think, "Obviously this shrew is someone’s pet and why would someone keep a shrew that bit people?"

Thermometer?

I do not have an outdoor thermometer (just the kind for gauging fevers), so I have been trying to estimate the temperature by reading the storage instructions for various products that have melted. Neosporin should be stored between 68º to 77ºF, but I already figured it’s been hotter than that. My bottle of Germ-X hand sanitizer, which no longer has anything gel-like about its consistency, is flammable and should not be stored above 105ºF. Although my estimation skills are as poor as my sense of direction, I still feel it must be hotter than this, at least some of the days. Thankfully the hand sanitizer has yet to burst into flames.

Also, Ultrathon Insect Repellent should be stored in “a cool and dry place,” and what is hilarious about that is, in those precious few months when The Gambia is both cool and dry, there’s not a single mosquito around.

"Is it ripe?"

Mango season is coming to a close, at least for the trees around my compound, but you'll still read some more posts based on journal entries written back in the days of the mango.


Somehow, Gambians can look into a tree and instantly identify the ripe mangoes. Fatou Bobo came to my backyard one afternoon to help me knock all the ripe mangoes out of my tree, or at least, all the ripe mangoes within reaching distance of my two-foot stick. She kept pointing out the ripe mangoes to me, and I kept trying to learn the identifying features.


Me: You, you know if a mango is ripe.
Fatou Bobo: Yes.
Me: Me, I do not know.
Fatou Bobo: You see here [she points to the tip of the mango and presses it] it is ripe.
I press where indicated. It is squishy.
Me: If it is this, it is ripe?
Fatou Bobo: Yes.
Me: But if you cannot touch? [I point to a far-off mango that has a large orange-yellow patch] This mango, it is ripe?
Fatou Bobo: No, it is not ripe. It is the sun that did this.
Me: Even if you do not touch, you know the mango is not ripe.
Fatou Bobo, with that smile unique to people aware of their great and secret talent: Yes.

Conversations with Rugi: Body parts!

Rugi has learned some names of body parts in English.

Rugi, pointing to her head: "Leg."

Me: No, that is "head."
Rugi, pointing to her arms: "Leg."
Me: No, those are "arms."
Rugi, pointing to her legs: "Leg."
Me: Good! Rugi hears English now!

Mango breast milk!

Yesterday Rugi handed me an itty-bitty mango and gave me step-by-step instructions on how to eat it.


Rugi: Bite here. [I nibble off a piece of mango skin near the bottom]
Rugi: Spit. [I spit out the piece of skin]
Rugi: Suck. [I suck the mango juice and pulp out of the hole]

Pateh, who has been observing the proceedings: Mango fell on Binta’s shirt.
Rugi: Where?
Pateh: Here. [he points to the spot]

Rugi examines my shirt carefully, then turns to the mango in my hand and examines it carefully as well.

Rugi: It isn’t mango. It’s breast milk. Binta, Pateh is lying, you hear?
Me: Okay.
Rugi: It’s breast milk.

I wonder if "breast milk" is Rugi’s word for the milky white liquid that oozes out from broken mango stems, like “moons” was her word for stars, or whether that’s the generally accepted term. Because if “breast milk” is generalized to mean "any liquid produced by an organism for nurturing its offspring," then really, she's not far off.

Pigeon!

Last Friday a pigeon-like bird flew into the classroom. The excitement and upheaval it brought to the class surpassed (by far) that created by the scorpion a few months ago. All the boys immediately leapt out of their seats and started running around the classroom with outstretched, grasping hands. Eventually, with a shout of joy, Alhagie catches the bird. I assume he will open the door (which another student had closed during the chase) and toss the bird outside. Why would they do anything else?


But Alhagie does not do this. He tears off a strip of green fabric from somewhere and ties it around one of the wings, then walks towards the window. I think, “Oh, he’s going to release the bird with the fabric around his wing…to let everyone know Alhagie T. caught a bird?” But then he puts the bird, who is now looking kind of limp, on the window sill. The bird is only there for a second or two, because Alhagie changes his mind and hands the bird off to another boy, who brings the bird to the rubbish bin outside the classroom. I’ve decided by now that the bird looks very much not-alive, and this is confirmed when the boy proceeds to slice the bird's head off.


Me, finally realizing what’s up: Are you going to eat it?
Student: Yes!

Just a little longer...

and then I've got to shut down the computer, pack up my bags and return to village. It was nice hanging out with you, internet. We should do this again sometime.

Sigh.

However, you'll be pleased to know you'll be reading daily blog posts until the end of June!

Disaster.

The other day I discovered I'd saved one of my Peace Corps application essays (along with a scanned recipe for cranberry & white chocolate chip cookies and several term papers from my final semester of college) to one of the flashdrives I’d brought with me to The Gambia. I thought, "hey, this essay’s not half bad; maybe I should share it on my blog." But--when I inserted the flash drive into the Basse house computer (yes, I’m typing this in front of the computer RIGHT NOW) I discovered that my flash drive contained several folders I’d never put there, all claiming to be applications, and the folders I had put there, containing essays and that recipe and other assorted things, were nowhere to be found.


A virus.

Before today, I'd yet to have a run-in with a virus on my flashdrive, but this was actually my second infected flashdrive of the morning. Earlier I’d inserted Grendel (I’m not particularly fond of Beowulf but I do like the name Grendel) into the computer to look at some photos. I didn’t bring a laptop with me to The Gambia, but Grendel contained a Surprise Medley of photos selected by my sister before I left. Today, however, Grendel started doing funny things. I double clicked to open him and he kept on opening. I tried to delete some files and they wouldn't delete. And then I noticed some folders I’d never put there, the same folders I later recognized on my other flashdrive, Staples. (which isn’t a name I gave it but that’s the company that manufactured it). I panicked, and wiped everything from Grendel. He’s empty as the day I got him. Emptier, actually, because when I got him a couple of years ago, he came pre-filled with job-related documents for my duties as a resident assistant.

There's a serious problem with viruses and flash drives in The Gambia, so I've been limiting the number of computers I put my flash drives in contact with. It’s been easy to do, because I haven’t been around many computers. Grendel’s been in three of the four computers in the computer lab at the Peace Corps office and two other volunteer laptops. Staples has only known one of the computers in the lab at the school. Oh, and the Basse computer. The only computer they’ve shared… I’m not Sherlock Holmes, but I think I’ve found the source of the problem. I am currently typing on an infected computer. I feel the same way I do when a child coughs directly into my face—like I’ve got limited time before disaster strikes.

All of which is to say, sorry, you won’t be reading my Peace Corps application essay anytime in the next fifteen months.

Ko Allah tan andi dum

“Ko Allah tan andi dum,” word for word translates as “Is God only knew this,” more accurately means, “It is only God who knows this,” and most accurately means: “God only knows why a mother goat would fling a sweet, adorable baby goat with a squeaker-toy way of bleating over her head to perform an unwilling backflip.” Because it happened. In front of our very eyes.

“Ko Allah tan andi dum,” said Mamadou. I concurred.

English science!

What Science Experiments & Amusements for Children: 73 Easy Experiments (no special equipment needed) by Charles Vivian, published in 1967, has taught me about England:

• England is perpetually cold. Every photograph in Science Experiments shows an English child in a sweater, most often a sweater layered on top of two or three other long-sleeved shirts. Take also as evidence “The Candle at the Door” experiment, which takes for granted that one’s environment will be naturally cold. The description of the experiment includes such phrases as, “When a room is being heated,” “Meanwhile, cold air is being drawn into the room,” “Allow a room to get thoroughly warm,” “The movement of the candle (plus the cold draft you will feel) will indicate that there is current of cold air flowing into the room.” Nowhere in the text is mention made that this particular experiment is seasonal, so one can only logically conclude that it is cold in England right now, no matter when "now" is. 
• English children style their hair to look like Wolverine from the X-Men. Unfortunately, I can offer as evidence only the photographs, so you should try to find your own copy of this book.

And that’s actually all I learned about England. I guess I should borrow that travel guide to the British Isles from the school library. I think it’s on the shelf next to the cake-decorating book.

How Science Experiments & Amusements for Children: 73 Easy Experiments (no special equipment needed) by Charles Vivian, published in 1967, has enlightened me as to the differing definitions of “special equipment.” Not that I am faulting this book in any way, because it was neither intended for a Gambian audience, nor was I around in 1967 to know what sorts of equipment were readily available to English children that year. Regardless, here’s a list of non-special-equipment required by the experiments that I imagine the typical Gambian would be hard-pressed to find:

• ruler
• steel wool
• a small pane of glass
• silk handkerchief
• glycerin
• plasticine
• gimlet (I actually have no idea what a gimlet is, so maybe I’m at this moment unknowingly surrounded by gimlets)
• scissors
• soup plate
• a balloon
• food jar and cap
• two forks
• empty milk bottle
• radish
• old phonograph record
• piece of fur or flannel
• cellophane tape
• gummed cellophane tape
• broomstick
• empty screw-cap medicine or ketchup bottle
• celluloid or sheet plastic
• fine wire (that I at first read as “fine wine,” equally unavailable)
• drinking straw
• rubber band
• grease-proof paper or tracing paper
• paper clip
• rubbing alcohol
• salad oil
• copper sulphate
• boric acid
• a cold floor

Recipe: Cooked Mangoes

Cooked Mangoes

Ingredients:
some unripe mangoes
some sugar
some honey
some cinnamon

Peel the mangoes and place them in a cooking pot. Add water to cover. Heat the mangoes until they become soft. If there’s a lot of excess water, pour some out. Use a spoon to mash the mangoes so the fruit is mostly separated from the pit. The texture should be that of baby food. Add the sugar, honey and cinnamon and stir. Eat out of the pot, using spoons, after waiting for the mixture to cool down some. Serves some people.

"Life without education...

…is like attaya without sugar.”

These were the closing words to a student’s speech one Monday at morning assembly. I think the topic was the importance of education. It’s true; life without education would not be sweet. But Salifu's simile is actually more powerful than any non-attaya-drinker could imagine. Attaya is brewed with tea leaves, but the similarity to “tea” ends there. If I were to make myself a mug of Earl Gray, I could add or not add milk, sugar, cream or honey as I saw fit. I would probably not add any of the aforementioned and still find the flavor absolutely satisfying. Attaya without sugar, however, is not attaya. Mint is optional, sugar is not. You could not make attaya without sugar any more than you could make oatmeal raisin cookies without oatmeal. Sure, you'd end up with something edible, but that’s not the point of a cookie. So when Salifu compared an education-less life to sugar-less attaya, he was not merely saying the situation wouldn’t be sweet. Attaya without sugar is inconceivable, and the same applies to life without education.

Now if only Salifu would complete his maths assignments...

Learn how to jump rope!

One of Levi's favorite toys is a jump rope, but if he finds something more exciting, like a dead chicken, the jump rope will be abandoned. Mamadou must have come across jump ropes sometime before, because he knew exactly

Grab a hold of each handle

Step in front of the rope so the rope is now behind you

Swing the rope forward and over your head with as much force as you can

Try to jump over the rope

You will know you have been successful if the rope smacks you in the back.

This time of mango

Amadou: This time of mango, everywhere the children sit they will leave bad air.
Mamadou: [makes farting sounds with his mouth]

The worst part is, it's true.

God's horse!

 If I heard correctly, "God's horse," is how the Pulaar word for praying mantis, “poochu Allah,” translates to English. I think Connecticut has some law against killing praying mantises, because I remember one time when I was little and at the beach we found one walking underneath—and my memory is telling me it was underneath a surfboard, but people don’t go surfing in Long Island Sound so I don’t know what it was—something, and the adults said we weren’t allowed to kill it. Not that I wanted to kill it. And neither do Gambians, apparently. One evening a praying mantis landed on Amadou’s arm and he watched as it crawled around for a bit and didn’t try to swat it away or anything. And as the praying mantis walked and blinked, people started talking about it. Do conversations happen for other insects? No.


The strangest thing, though, about a praying mantis being God’s horse, is that praying mantises don’t even pray the same way that Muslims pray. So maybe I heard wrong and “poochu Allah” was referring to something else. Or maybe I’ve never watched a praying mantis closely enough.

Mango lamb!

No...I'm not eating lamb cooked with mango. That sounds delicious. I just wanted to share this entry from my journal:

“13/04/11: Today a lamb licked mango juice from my fingers.”

A sparkling white little lamb nose and a rosy pink little lamb tongue! Just imagine!

Oh, but first--forget what I said about eating lambs.

Awww... a sparkling white little lamb! So cute!

Pump!

One day I went to fetch water from the pump and for the first time ever, no one else was there. The downside to this was that even more bees were crawling around than usual, and I had to brush them aside to even put my bidong down--I was terrified and kept freezing up like I was taught to do in first grade (along with avoiding clovers) to prevent them from wanting to sting me. Luckily the bees were pretty well occupied with drinking water. And because no one was around, I finally finally finally got to pump water for myself. Every other time someone indicates that I should stand aside and let them operate the pump for me, even though pumping the lever up and down looks exactly like science museum sort of fun. And it was. The only thing that could have made the experience more fun was if I were half my current height and could therefore bounce up and down while pumping like the kids do. Also, less bees.

Break down!

In April I experienced my first gelle break-down. It was only a matter of time, and thankfully, many factors helped make it less painful.
1) Julia was with me
2) It was not raining (because it has not properly rained since October, maybe
3) nothing particularly horrible happened, other than a bad smell.

Here’s how it went: Julia and I arrive at the car park. There is a man wearing a t-shirt I will describe to you in a moment, not because the t-shirt relates in any way to the car breaking down, but because I found it particularly baffling. The shirt is pink and is being worn by a large, muscular man. The front of the shirt has a large silver Q below, in an italic script, “Which girl does Jesus like?” On the back of the shirt is a large silver A, that I initially mistook to stand for “adultery” before I noticed that it went along with the Q, and the words “This one” and beneath that “Jeremiah 31:3.” A clue! If only we had a Bible… So we texted John, who explained Jeremiah 31:3, but that still didn’t explain the shirt, so if you dear blog reader, are able to do so, or are able to refer me to the manufacturer of this shirt, I’d be much obliged.

Anyway.

So we sat in the car waiting for awhile and Julia bought some coffee concoction that’s a sort of spicy Nescafé. Spicy as in full of spices, not spicy as in a dash of cayenne pepper.

And then the car broke down. Well, before it broke down it took us two-thirds of the way to our village, so it could have been worse. First the car stopped outside a little village and the driver and some other men tinkered with stuff while I sat on a rock, but it turned out that the part they needed could not be found in this village but the next one, so we climbed back in and sped along. Sped along in a frightening, grab-the-seat-in-front-of-you sort of way. I thought maybe we were trying to outrun the problem and wished someone would tell the driver that if we hit a donkey or something that would only make the problem worse. Fortunately, we slowed down shortly after speeding up and realized the driver was hoping to coast into town. Success!

And then there was waiting and waiting and because there wasn’t anything to do besides wait, we waited.

And after they fixed the car, we returned to village and that was that. Pretty mundane, really. But I was not in the mood for an exciting adventure, so it worked out well.

P.S. The car’s windshield wipers, unlike many other parts of the car, were perfectly functional. Not that it rained, as I mentioned earlier. Maybe if I knew more about cars I could tell you how cleaning the windshield relates to an overheated engine.

Sandwich stories: Integration!

I discovered a woman at the school who sells sardine sandwiches. Sardine sandwiches are a thousand times more delicious than bean sandwiches and also easier to eat, because oil and spaghetti don't drip out as I attempt to eat one. Instead, a sardine sandwich is like a tuna sandwich, mixed with mayo and onion. Sometimes the sandwich even comes topped with a few leaves of lettuce

The only unfortunate aspect to sardine sandwiches is that the lady who sells them nearly always chooses plain brown paper to wrap the sandwich in. But one day I got a mini-refresher course in economics, courtesy of the torn page of an unidentified textbook that held my lunch.

…when one company…gain control of it. A merger is when companies agree…together under one board of management. Where a firm has acquired a number of other companies which retain their original names, it is known as a holding company. Imperial Group are an example of a holding company.


There are two types of integration
Horizontal Firms at the same stage of production join together, e.g. two manufacturing firms join together or two service industries amalgamate
Vertical Firms at different stages of production join together, e.g. a manufacturer buys up a supplier of raw materials, or a manufacturer buys up a chain of shops. Vertical integration can be divided into

Exercise

Which type of integration?

Say whether each of the following mergers/take-overs is an examp… horizontal or vertical integration. If you decide it is vertical, say wh…is backwards or forwards.

1 The merger of National Provincial bank and Westminster Bank to…Nat West Bank.
2 Brook Bond Tea buying up tea plantations in Sri Lanka
3 Scottish and Newcastle Brewery buying up public houses
4 MFI, cash-and-carry discount furniture retailers, buying up Hygena, manufacturers of kitchen units
5 British Airways’ take-over of British Caledonian Airways.


98

Recipe: Jumbo Mangoes

Jumbo Mangoes

Ingredients:

7 unripe mangoes
some salt
some Jumbo seasoning

Peel the mangoes, then cut them into small pieces. Put the pieces of mango into a mortar, and pound with a pestle (Or is it the other way around? Which is which? Do you pound with the mortar?). Add the salt and Jumbo seasoning. Pound some more. At some undetermined time, decide the mangoes are ready. Scoop the pounded mangoes (your hands will do fine for scooping) into a bowl. Eat by small handfuls. Serves 3 to 4.

I dream of rain...

You remember that song Sting sang at the Superbowl one year? I remember it, and I’ve watched very few Superbowls and couldn’t tell you much about music. Hence the reason I cannot tell you the title of the song, but I think it includes the word “desert.” It also includes the line, “I dream of rain” and afterwards there’s some aahlaayaahlaay”-ing.

I've dreamt of rain. One night I woke up and imagined I heard rain falling and furthermore imagined that I felt rain falling, ever so slightly, maybe five or six drops. However, it was late at night so rather than fully wake myself to investigate the authenticity of my imaginings, I fell back asleep. When I was in elementary school and wishing for a snow day, I learned (sadly, only after many such trials) that if you dash to the window and it looks like snow, in all likelihood it's actually just frost. I assumed the “rain” was more of the same.

I woke up and, as happens with most dreams, I forgot all about it.

At school later that day, a student asked, “Miss Jallow, do you think it will rain?”
Me: Do I think it will rain?
Student: Yes.
Me: Today?
Student: Yes.
Me: I do not know about today, but—yesterday I dreamed it rained. At night I thought it was raining. Student: Miss Jallow, it did rain last night. Me too, I thought I was dreaming, but then I looked and I saw the water on the ground.

Dreams really do come true! If the dream wasn’t a dream to begin with…

D.I.Y. Foosball for Free!

Materials: Flat surface, a large plastic bottle cap or similar item, a handful of goat droppings. 

Step 1: Arrange the goat droppings on the flat surface as if they were footballers on a field.

Step 2: By “footballers” I mean “soccer players.”

Step 3: Arrange the large plastic bottle cap or similar item in front, as if it were the goal keeper.

Step 4: Use a thumb and forefinger and try to flick the goat droppings (which are simultaneously footballers and footballs) past the large plastic bottle cap or similar item.

Yo Allah okku mangooji heewi!

I think that's how you'd say "May God give a lot of mangoes" in Pulaar. Here are two stories about heaven-sent mangoes.

Heaven-sent mango story number 1:
Neene: Binta, last night I was lying here [indicates the hammock] and I said, "I wish I had a mango," and then! a mango fell and hit me here, on the mouth.
Mamadou: God gave her a mango!

Heaven-sent mango story number 2:
Kairaba is lying on the bench listening to the radio. It's dark but not yet dinner time. We hear the crack of a falling mango. Amadou ducks and covers his head. The mango falls in front of Amadou, rolls towards Kairaba and stops just beneath the place where his hand is dangling from the bench.

Kairaba: Binta, you saw that? God said, "Here Kairaba, take this mango."  God wanted me to have this mango!
Me: It's true!

Eyeball!

One day at lunch an eyeball was staring up at me from one of the meatballs. They were fish meatballs, thank God, so it was only a fish’s eye, but still… There was no one around to dare me to eat it and no one who would have acted astounded if I had, so I didn’t particularly want to eat it. Since only Neene and I were eating at the bowl, I thought maybe if she turned away for a moment I could quickly pluck out the eyeball and fling it onto the ground somewhere.

No such luck.

And the meatball was clearly on my side of the bowl; it had even rolled into the little dip of my scooped-out rice, so there was no hope of subtly pushing it back into the middle. So: I ate it. With every bite I expected my teeth to sink into the eyeball’s soft squishiness, or for my mouth to become suddenly flooded with eyeball juices. Nope. Eating an eyeball is surprisingly uneventful.