Collected evidence in support of guinea fowl:

• After seeing a guinea fowl for the first time, Adama asked, “What is that?” then said, “It is beautiful.”
• Buba has repeatedly requested that I give him one of my guinea fowl. He has also requested that I give him a car, a tractor, and my house. As cars, tractors, and my house are all pleasant things, one can infer that Buba only requests pleasant things. Thus, guinea fowl are pleasant things. (please move on to the next bullet point without rereading this one or thinking too deeply about the logic of those statements). 
•  They were named after “the Guinea Lands of West Africa,” as The Oxford Junior Encyclopædia (1957) refers to the place.
• “The guinea fowl… provide good red meat” (The New Caxton Encyclopedia, 1969)
• “The eggs… are good to eat” (Children’s Britannica, 1960)
• But before being eaten, guinea fowl will eat the nasty-tasting oatmeal I accidentally created in an attempt to roast away a bug infestation, thus preventing the oatmeal from going to waste (actually, it wouldn’t have gone to waste. I would have grimaced and eaten it).
• Other unpleasant things guinea fowl will eat: “insects, weeds, and so on” (The Oxford Junior Encyclopædia, 1957)
• The ancient Greeks knew all about philosophy, mathematics, theater and other Important Topics. The ancient Greeks also knew about guinea fowl.
• A guinea fowl can take the place of a watch-dog.
• Guinea fowl can been described with the following adjectives: gregarious, very shy, gallinaceous. To satisfy your curiosity, here is what gallinaceous means: Of or relating to or resembling a gallinacean. Here is what gallinacean means: Heavy-bodied largely ground-feeding domestic or game birds
• Guinea fowl can be described with the following noun: galeeny. Here is what galeeny means: Word not found: galeeny
•  

Guinea Fowl, Chapter 2, “Only one is useless.”

To prevent my life goal from being “useless” I decide to buy a female guinea fowl as soon as I return from a trip to the bank in Basse. Before I leave for Basse, I tell the kid I will buy a second guinea fowl, a female, as soon as I go to Basse and get money from the bank. He is pleased to hear this, and promises it will be caught. And that is how, a week later, Prunella Josefina Marzipan Cunningham came to join her husband, Ira Cornelius Peabody Cunningham.

Unfortunately, I am not entirely convinced that Prunella, is, in fact, female. When I went over to Camara Kunda to buy “her” the kid asked, “You need a male, no?” to which I replied, “No, it was a male you gave me before” to which he replied something along the lines of yes, that’s right, that’s what I’d meant to say. I wasn’t convinced.

“This one is a female?”

“Yes, yes.”

“She” is pulled out of a cage and brought over. Another kid flips her upside down for me and we look at the underside. I assume he is determining its sex. He assumes I am doing the same.
After a minute he asks, “Is it male or female?”

“I don’t know.”

“It is a female,” reiterates the boy selling me the guinea fowl, even though he had not even joined us in the examination.

At the house in Basse I’d found a poultry manual with a section on guinea fowl. I should have read it more thoroughly, taken notes, even. I think I meant to come back later and do so, but I forgot. What I do remember is: the guinea fowl is notoriously difficult to sex. Some tips were provided, however, which my brain did not bother to retain.

The next day in class a student asks if my guinea fowl turned out to be a female. I say, “Yes, they are not fighting.” I have assumed that, like Siamese fighting fish, you will immediately know if you’ve got two males by their commencing to tear each other to pieces. Ira and Prunella have done nothing of the sort, have instead chirped happily to each other and followed each other about the yard, swallowing ants and seeds. This behavior could mean nothing at all, of course, if it turns out guinea fowl are less similar to fish than I’ve imagined. One afternoon I notice a feather on the ground that must have come from the newest guinea fowl; when Amadou plucked out Ira’s flight feather he tucked them into my roof, but the feathers from the second guinea fowl were just tossed over the fence. I decide to do Amadou Julde’s feather-drop test. Male. Try again. Male. I thought maybe I was remembering the direction of the feather wrong, maybe face-down meant female, so I repeated the test a couple of times with one of the feathers that had been tucked into the roof. (Of course, two females would be another explanation for non-tearing-each-other-to-pieces, but Alasan had come to see Ira and looked at his underside and seemed confident in the “male” prognosis). The roof feather also landed upside down. I should have everything but distrust in this method. If sexing a guinea fowl was as simple as plucking out a feather, dropping it, and noting which way it lands, surely the manual would’ve mentioned that? Surely people other than Amadou Julde would be aware of it? And what are his qualifications, anyway? This I don’t actually know. Perhaps his family raises guinea fowl.

The next day, one of the guinea fowl let out a squawking trill and I wished Julia had been around to hear. Neene comes in, she wants to see them. She said it’d been making that noise all this morning and she thought it would’ve stopped now that he’s got a wife. She points to one, “Is that the one you bought yesterday?”

I cannot remember exactly, or see exactly which one she is pointing to, but I say, “yes.” She nods in confirmation; she can tell by the way that the other one’s neck is that it’s a male.

“Man and woman,” she says, pleased. Neene should know, right? After all, she grew up in Guinea…

At school, I decide to do some encyclopedic research. The school library has several encyclopedia sets, some of them complete, none more recently published than 1967. Vol. VI (FARMING AND FISHERIES) of the Oxford Junior Encyclopædia (an inscription on the front page informs me was Presented to St. Peter’s School by the Society of St. George February 1963, although the book itself was published in 1957) provides me with the following information: “Cocks and hens cannot be easily told apart except by their voice, for it is only the hen that makes the characteristic cry, which sounds something like: ‘Come back! Come back!’” I have heard my guinea fowl making a variety of noises, one of which may be the “characteristic cry” the encyclopedia is referring to, but the noise I hear most frequently sounds something like “BRSTHGWHWW!”

Well, if it does turn out I’ve got two males, I could always eat one of them.

Guinea Fowl, Chapter One "Life Goal: Acquired."

This post is dedicated to Julia, who is hopefully reading this.

As the kid had warned me, the guinea fowl came as a surprise. The afternoon I brought my first guinea fowl home, I had not even been thinking about guinea fowl. For the previous two hours, I’d been admiring a beautiful bride and photographing her as we paraded across the village to her in-laws’ compound (I’ll upload the photos in another post). The road home took me past Camara Kunda, where several of my students were sitting and brewing attaya. The kid reminds me that my guinea fowl has been caught. I had been told this a few days ago, but as the guinea fowl had never appeared at my doorstep, I thought the kid might be optimistically fibbing. I ask to see the guinea fowl. The kid brings it over.

“Could I bring it home now?”

I am told I may. I say I do not have the money now, but I can bring it the next time I am walking to the market, or even to school on Monday. I am told they will be at my compound this evening.

“300 dalasis.”
"But we agreed on 250."
“Okay, okay, make it 275.”
"But we agreed on 250."
"275."
"But I am your teacher, don't I get a special price?"
"275 is a good price! Look, this one is very big."
"Okay, make it 260."
"Okay. We will come to your compound this evening."

The guinea fowl is handed to me with a rope of cloth strips tied around one leg.

I'm holding a guinea fowl!!!

Pippi Isatou, who had been walking with me, asks me about some of the English words she had overheard in my conversation with the boys.

"I heard '300' and '250;' what does that mean?"

I explained we’d been haggling over the price. Then she wanted to know what I would do with my guinea fowl.

“I will put it in the compound and wait until the rainy season and before I go to America, I will eat him.”

“When you do that, call me over to eat.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t forget!”

Neene and Amadou both appear pleased (and less surprised than I’d expected) when I turn up with a guinea fowl. Neene asks how much I paid and gives a nod of “good, good” that it was only 260 dalasis. They want to know if it is a boy or a girl. I say a boy. Amadou Julde (a different Amadou, not my host brother), who is in the compound, says he will confirm. He plucks a feather and watches it fall. It lands face down. “Yes, it is a man.” He picks the feather up and drops it again. It lands the same way. He explains to Neene that the way the feather lands will tell you whether it is a male or a female.

Amadou (my host brother) tells me to bring the guinea fowl to my backyard. I ask if it will fly away. He says yes, I need to tie it to something. He tells me tomorrow he will build a house for it. He also tells me something along the lines of: "But you know, Binta, only one is useless. And he will always be trying to escape, trying to find a wife.”

Instead of explaining that I’d really only bought the guinea fowl to amuse myself for a few months and then to eat it I say that I will buy another one as soon as I go to Basse and get more money from the bank.

Guinea Fowl, Prologue

GUINEA FOWL: A west African bird having dark plumage mottled with white; native to Africa but raised for food in many parts of the world

The Stamford Museum and Nature Center, in Stamford, Connecticut, is an amazing place. There is a farm full of baby animals. There is a hidden playground in the woods. One time the changing art exhibit displayed mechanized creatures made of trash. It was on a trip to the Stamford Museum and Nature Center, probably sometime in middle school, that I first formulated one of my life goals.

We were leaving the butterfly garden when I saw the flock of guinea fowl. We stopped to watch the birds amble along the wall. I decided I needed to own some. Not right that instant, obviously, I wasn’t a “buy me a pony!!!” kind of kid. I filed the goal away with the other things to accomplish “when I grow-up.” I worried a little, because “managing a farm” was not on the list of grown-up things to accomplish, nor even “live in a rural setting,” so I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to succeed with “own guinea fowl,” but I decided I’d let my grown-up self figure that out.

And then, of course, I forgot about guinea fowl for awhile. For fifteen years, to be precise. Then I came to The Gambia.

“Guinea fowl!” I would’ve shrieked and pointed, if I’d been the kind of person who shrieked and pointed. A boy in training village had a pair of them and I asked my language teacher about them. I didn’t explain the whole life-goal-since-middle-school thing, but I told her I wanted to buy some. She said that was possible, and told me the prices, said they became more expensive as they grew bigger.

On subsequent trips to the market I kept my eyes peeled for guinea fowl. I saw only chickens.

During my first weeks in village, when I wasn’t doing much of anything because I couldn’t say much of anything, I thought about my future guinea fowl. I even debated what I should name them. Phineaus and Philomel? Or Bonny and Clyde?

But when the markets remained depressingly devoid of guinea fowl, I decided to get a puppy instead.

For a few months I thought, “Well, I don’t really need the guinea fowl now, that might be too much trouble, I can always wait until I’m later to buy them…even if I don’t get them until I’m sixty-five or something…that could be funny…I could be the crazy guinea-fowl lady…doesn’t have quite the same ring as ‘crazy cat lady’…Oh well.”

Luckily I snapped out of this thinking and realized, “NO! Guinea fowl cannot wait until later! I need one NOW.”

So this past October I began pursuing my life goal in earnest. I even wrote “guinea fowl” at the top of the month’s calendar page.

I go with Julia to ask Samba how to say “guinea fowl” in Pulaar. He tells us. I write it down. I lose the slip of paper. I ask where they sell guinea fowl. He says they sell them here, but they are maybe 400 or 500 dalasis. I could get them cheaper somewhere else.

I decide to look somewhere else. I have a vague memory of passing a flock of guinea fowl on the road to Basse…but where? Julia texts other volunteers for guinea-fowl-related information, but there is no response. I vow that even if I need to pay 500 dalasis for a guinea fowl, I would do it.

In mid-October, as I am biking to Basse, I pass a flock of guinea fowl on my way through Sudawol. I ask the volunteer in Sudawol if he knows who the guinea fowl belong to. He says his family has guinea fowl. Lucky me! I ask if he will find out if two are for sale. He says he will.

A couple of weeks later, I am in Sudawol for the HIV bike trek. I ask again if the guinea fowl are for sale and am told they “probably are.” I can come ask his family. I decide I will do it that evening. Evening becomes night before I’ve remembered. I forget the next day. And the next. Then we leave Sudawol.

It is the start of November. I write “guinea fowl” at the top of the calendar. On a bike trip back from Basse, I stop in Sudawol and greet the volunteer and his host family. He asks if I want to ask about them about the guinea fowl. I say, “Sure!” We find the one woman who speaks Pulaar and I ask her if the things that are not chickens and not ducks were for sale (had the guinea fowl been walking nearby I could’ve just pointed to one, but I guess things were more amusing this way). She says she doesn’t own them, but brings us over to the neighbor who does. He speaks Pulaar too, but the woman doesn’t explain why she led us over here so I need to go through the not-a-chicken-not-a-duck charade again. He says they are for sale.

“How much ?”

“But they are difficult to catch.”

“But you will sell one?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“If you come in the evening, before they go to the tree, they will be easier to catch.”

“Thank you.”

Maybe he wasn’t telling me the price because I’d get it for free? The Sudawol volunteer develops a plan involving a mini-mosquito net and says he will call me if he catches one.

The next week, walking back from the market, Julia, our “stranger” and I pass a flock of guinea fowl. I ask a nearby man if the guinea fowl are for sale. He says, “If you catch one, it is yours.” Our stranger chases one. It run-flaps away. One of my students, who is been watching, says, “So, Miss Jallow, you want one of these?”

“YES.”

“I will catch one for you.”

“If you catch one for me I will be very happy.”

It is starting to seem that owning a guinea fowl is as simple (or difficult) as catching one. I ask for advice from fellow volunteers. The mosquito net trap sounds like it should work, but it hasn’t so far. I am told someone’s neighbor has just captured a live baboon and has caught guinea fowl in the past…with bullets. I am told they have a loud and annoying squawk. I am told to wait until evening, before they fly into trees to roost. It is suggested I lure them under a wash basin leaning on a stick connected to a rope. I am told they are “pretty obnoxious creatures.” It is suggested I forget about owning a guinea fowl.

It is the start of December. I write “guinea fowl” at the top of the calendar.

In my journal, I write:

December 13: Casey didn’t catch one before he left for IST, but yesterday the kid from Camara Kunda said he’d caught a guinea fowl but I never came for it. I didn’t know if he was being serious or if that was just his greeting, so I tried to emphasize that I would pay money in exchange for a guinea fowl. Abdoulie told me he would catch it for me, I said I would buy it if he does. He could have it for me today. Today? Today or tomorrow. He wants to catch me the white one. Casey also wants to catch me the white one. If I end up with a pair of white guinea fowl, that would be amazing, but even if I just end up with one absolutely ordinary guinea fowl, that would be amazing.

On other scattered days throughout December there are similar broken guinea-fowl promises. I lose hope.

It is the start of January. I do not write “guinea fowl” at the top of the calendar.

Whoops!

Saliou, my husband, spilt the last cup of attaya, which his mom had been about to drink.

Sinni: Kowbala! [this is one of my husbands many nick-names]

Saliou gives a look exactly like Macauly Culkin in Home Alone. I wanted to burst out laughing, but I didn't want to encourage attaya-spilling.

There's a pause, and then Saliou announces, “I farted.”

Neighbor: You farted?

Saliou: Yes.

And that was that. 

"Here, Binta. A dalasi."

Ous hands me a stone and tells me it’s a dalasi. I hand it back and say, “Buy me a candy.”

Ous walks away. He returns empty-handed. “They were out of candies.”

Motorcycle and Man Meander to Market

On the way to the market, where I was going to buy soap, the following exchanges take place.


Man on Motorcycle: Hey, Adama!

Me: I’m Binta…Good morning.

Man on Motorcycle: I thought you went to America.

Me: Adama went to America, but I am Binta.

Man on Motorcycle: So when are you going?

Me: Remaining less than a year.


A couple of minutes later I get stopped by a man in a car. There are actually several men in the car, but only the driver talks to me.


Driver of Car: Why did you not call to me?

Me: Hmm?

Driver of Car: When you walked past me, why did you not call to me? I was going to the market, I could have taken you.


I now recognize the car as the one usually parked outside of the pharmacy I walk past on my way to the market. I must have walked past it today as they were about to head out.


Me: Sorry, I did not see you.

Driver of Car: But you walked right next to the car! I could have taken you to the market!

Me: Maybe I walked right next to you, but I was looking somewhere else.

Driver of Car, containing laughter: You were thinking about your husband over there.

Me: Yes.


Actually, I’d been thinking about blue jeans.

Goat attaya!

The night Gaye returned from Kebba Kunda he brewed attaya he had bought while on a trip to Senegal. He said this attaya was very good. Fatou Sowe’s Musa asked, “Is it the goat attaya?” Gaye replied that he didn’t know, but it is very sweet. The attaya they brew in Kebba Kunda is not sweet. It’s been a long time since he’s drank attaya because he will not drink the Kebba Kunda attaya—it’s really not good. In Kebba Kunda they will only sell the black attaya. If he brews it himself, he will make it so it is sweet because he will wash it first. But if you do not wash the black kind of attaya, it will be dirty, there will be dirt in your attaya.

Fatou Sowe’s Musa, grabbing the attaya carton: Dad, give me the box.
Gaye: Musa, it’s not finished yet!

Gaye takes the box back.

Later, when the box is empty, I see Musa examining it. It is lime-green and yellow and there is a picture of a deer on the front and back sides. The deer picture looks like clip-art that might be found on the tag to a camouflage jacket, or on the cover to a deer-hunting computer game, one of those ones from the $4.99 bin.

Meanwhile, Gaye and Kairaba are still raving about the goat attaya and lamenting that it can only be bought in Senegal.

Playing with fire!

Mamadou, Fatou Sowe’s Musa and I are sitting around the former cooking fire (former because the cauldron of sauce has since been removed). Mamadou is pushing smoldering sticks around unnecessarily.

Me: Mamadou, stop playing with fire.

Mamadou pretends he has not heard me.

Musa: Mamadou, Binta said leave the fire.

Mamadou continues poking around.

Musa, turning to me: Heh! Mamadou will not hear what is said.

Mamadou stops poking around and joins us on the bench. He turns to face Musa and says, “You have no brain.”

Me: He has no ears and he has no brain…

Musa: I have no ears and Mamadou has no brain?

Me: No, you said Mamadou will not hear what is said, so he has no ears, and Mamadou said you have no brain.

Mamadou pulls my head close to his and whispers directly into my ear. All I hear is “Mumble mumble seller mumble.” He leans back and asks, “Did you hear?”

Me: No, I didn’t hear.

Mamadou yanks my head down again and repeats, “He is a sour-milk seller.”

Me: Heh!

Musa: What? What did he say?

Me: I dunno—I’m not telling!

You're killing me!

Mariama rolls away with a motorcycle tire.

Mariama: I’ve gone to Basse!


Mariama rolls back with a motorcycle tire.

Mariama: I’ve come back from Basse!

Rugi: How’s the afternoon?

Mariama: Peace only.

Rugi: How are they in Basse?

Mariama: Peace only.

Rugi: How are the farts?

Mariama: Peace only.

Rugi repeats that last question a few times and they laugh, and Rugi says Mariama is a fart, and they laugh and laugh. Rugi declares, “You are killing me with laughter!”

Conversations with Rugi: Sumo Wrestlers!

Rugi came into my hut and began looking at the sumo wrestlers calendar page I have hanging on the wall.

Rugi: This one is a man, but this one is a woman.

Me: No, he is a man too; all of them are men.

Rugi: But he has breasts.

Me: Yes, he ate until he had breasts.

Rugi: Him, too, he ate until he had breasts?

Me: Yes.

Rugi: And him too, he ate until he had breasts.

Me: Yes.

Rugi: Now he will give birth.

Me: No.

The Coldness!

After dinner, one of the men who has come to sit around the fire decides to tell me about European winters. He tells me the cold is different in Africa because here the cold will get inside of you. The cold is worse in Africa than it is in Europe.

I reply that in America and Europe it is the same, the cold will get inside of you. He repeats what he’d just finished saying. I repeat what I’d just finished saying. He switches to English, convinced I have misunderstood his Pulaar. I repeat that the coldness is quite the same in terms of its ability to get inside you.

He says no, no, you don’t understand, the cold will go past the outside and do things to people.

I say, “Like make them sick?”

I am getting very frustrated at not being believed but at the same time I don’t want to be a snot and bring up the fact that, unlike him, I’ve actually experienced the coldness in all of the continents in question. So instead, I explain that the cold in Europe will make your lips dry so they crack and sometimes bleed. He counters with, “Ah-ha, yes here too, but also your skin will, you know, it will get like this.” Another man joins the conversation briefly, just long enough to suggest I apply a special oil to my lips so they will not crack. At this point, if I were a meaner person, I would have screamed, “I know! I know I know I know what to do about chapped lips because in America that happens ALL THE TIME.”

I do not think to mention that in America it gets so cold that sometimes people’s limbs will become frozen and need to be chopped off. It was probably best that I forgot to mention this.

Our conversation continues, if it could be called “conversation,” until the man finally acknowledges, “Okay, okay, you would know because you have been there. I did not know the coldness was the same. Thank you. Now I know.”

Swedish Newspaper Warehouse Quest (Part 1 of ?)

I began my Swedish newspaper warehouse quest by asking the man who always wraps his undercooked bread in Swedish newspaper where he gets that paper from.

Soggy-bread-vendor: Do you want a half-kilo or a kilo?

Me: I do not want to buy the paper, I just want to see who sells you the paper. Where is it, in the market, or…?

Soggy-bread-vendor: It is in the market, but it is a little far.

Me: Okay, but if you tell me where to go, I will go. I just want to see.

Instead of giving me directions, the soggy-bread-vendor leaves his stand of soggy bread and tells us to follow him. He does not look happy, which makes me feel bad, until I remember—I’m about to finally discover the origins of the Swedish newspapers!

After walking down one street and then down another street we enter the indoor part of the market and stop by a bitik.

Soggy-bread-vendor: She wants newspapers.

The bitik owner turns to a shelf behind him and pulls one from a stack. “This? How many do you want to buy?”

I examine the newspaper. At first it appears to be Swedish, and I’ll figure I’ll buy it just to be nice, but then I notice some æ’s and ø’s mixed in with the ä’s, å’s and ö’s so it’s actually Norwegian, probably, and I don’t want it after all. I slide the newspaper back across the counter and confess, “I do not want the paper, I just want to see where they sell them. Who will sell you this paper?”

The bitik owner makes an “ah-ha” sort of noise and asks, “You know the immigration post?”

Me: I did not hear you.

Bitik Owner: Do you know Basse?

Me, accidentally a little indignantly: Yes.

Bitik Owner. Do you know the immigration post?

Me: Yes, I know it.

Bitik Owner: At the junction turn right. Go down the road until the pharmacy. Ask for Ous Camara’s pharmacy.

Me: The papers will be there? Ous Camara’s pharmacy?

Bitik Owner: Yes.

Me: Thank you!


End of Part 1.

Unwanted puppies...

I came back from fetching pump water and see at least five boys, some with a puppy in arms, walking off to the bush. There was an air of excitement, such as you’d imagine perpetually surrounds Peter Pan’s Lost Boys. They shooed off Kuri and Levi, who tried to follow, and I was surprised the boys were successful, because after all, they were walking away with Kuri’s children.

After some time—I guess they wanted to be certain the puppies wouldn’t come crawling home—the boys returned to the compound empty-handed. I thought I overheard Kairaba asking Mamadou if he killed it and Mamadou saying yes. Inconceivable! These boys love puppies! Inconceivable…but not implausible.

Still, I wanted to believe the boys incapable of puppy-cide even more than I wanted to believe the puppies still alive, so I imagined a scene like in a movie where later the puppies come trotting home, or Kuri and Levi carry them home one-by-one, 101 Dalmations-style, because the boys didn’t actually kill them after all.

That night, just before dinner, Musa confided to me, “Today we tossed Kuri’s children to the bush.”

“Yes.”

“But I brought them rice. And milk!”

A week later, after dinner one night, we see one of the tossed puppies whimpering around the compound.We laugh, because he's such a scared little puppy in the beam of the flashlight, but then Neene starts complaining. She tells Gaye the puppies should have been thrown before their eyes were open. She told Amadou to do this, but he had not accepted; he'd said it was not good. But now look...

I guess that's what happens when you trust six-year-old boys to dispose of your puppies.

Fire!

I’d been reading a little before dinner when I hear a commotion from outside. Neene alternates between wailing “La-illah-illa-Llah” and repeating, in a tone both angry and distressed, something about Amadou not having listened to what she said.

I look outside. Smoke is pouring from an enormous fire. There is the crackling of the fire and the pounding of running feet and the hissing of water tossed on the flames. I stand still long enough to confirm that none of the houses is on fire (yet) but whatever is burning is awfully close to both Neene’s and Gaye’s thatch roofs. So I dash back inside, shaky with adrenaline, grab my bucket and run to the well.

Ma Balde is there, trying to get the pulley to cooperate, but the rope keeps getting caught. Jainabou and another girl take over hauling the water. A large group of women has now appeared, as have numerous buckets and wash basins, waiting to be filled. I wait for my bucket to be filled, but once it is, another woman grabs it and runs over to the fire. I start to feel useless, so I hurry back to my house, pour the water from my bidong into the wash basin I use for laundry, and bring this over to the fire, where I toss the water. I see that what has caught on fire is a pile of dried stalks. Amadou had probably been instructed to burn them bit by bit, or to bring the pile somewhere away from the compound before striking the match. He'd obviously done neither.

I return to the well. The women are getting frustrated because the well bucket is not filling quickly (there’s not as much water in the well now that rainy season is over). Most of them decide to grab a bucket and run over to the pump instead. So it ends up just being Jainabou, the other girl, and me at the well, although other women occasionally come by to grab the buckets Jainabou has filled.

Jainabou looks down and asks where my shoes are. I say I do not know. This she finds hilarious. Later, when the fire has been reduced to smoldering ashes, she tells me to go and find my shoes. I go inside. They’re next to my bed. At dinner she notices that I’m wearing my shoes. She asks where they were. I tell her, “Inside my house.” This is even more hilarious than my not wearing shoes earlier.

After dinner we have a campfire, which we hadn’t had in awhile. Maybe we wanted to prove we could control fire after all.

When Kairaba joins us at the campfire he has lots to say, some about the fire but mostly about Allah. Neene says, "Allah is a question." They also talk about how grateful they are to live someplace where people will come to your rescue. "Even people from Sinchan came; they saw the smoke and they came running." And thank God there wasn’t any wind. Heh! If there had been wind! There is some silence, thinking of this, because with even a little wind at least two houses would have caught fire.

Kairaba then bursts out laughing and tells us how Gaye had been scared of the fire—Gaye just stood there and repeated, “I don’t know what I will do!” Kairaba continues the teasing until Gaye explains that a house he’d been staying at once had caught fire and he had been the only one putting the fire out. Neene and Kairaba repeat how thankful they are that the people in our village are rescuers.

When Gaye leaves, Kairaba returns to repeating, “I don’t know what I will do!” But the way I see it, it’s perfectly logical to feel scared when your dried thatch roof (no rain since October) and dried coos stalk fence are feet away from a raging inferno.

Where is Adama?

Hamidou: Where is Adama?

Me: Adama Njie?

Hamidou: Yes.

Me: She went home to America. Now she will not come to The Gambia.

Hamidou: When do you go to America?

Me: Remaining eight months.

Hamidou: When you go to America, you will watch films until you’re exhausted.



*Dear Julia, I hope you are watching films until you are exhausted.

Touché!

We are sitting around the fire one night after dinner when Jainabou and her friends suddenly shriek and scramble backwards.

They'd seen a frog.

I said, "I thought it was a scorpion, but...just a frog."

Fatou Sowe, who was sitting next to me, says, "But someone will not be brave around frogs."

"Yes, but it's just a frog."

Fatou Sowe nudges me in the ribs. "Someone had a frog and a mouse enter her house and screamed, 'Neene! Neene!'"

I need to learn how to say "touché" in Pulaar.

Hej?

 I was at a workshop in Janjangbureh for maths teachers. We broke for Friday prayers at 1:30 because the mosque was far away, supposedly. I decided to go greet the toubabs who were sitting under the tree. They were two women and they’d been hanging out by an F.I.O.H. (Future in Our Hands) car, so I wondered if maybe they were Swedish (F.I.O.H. is a Swedish organization). I didn’t know how to go about introducing myself, because I really had no other interest than satisfying that curiosity, so if they turned out to be English or something... I'd want to say “Oh,” and turn around and walk away, but as that would be horribly impolite, I didn't know what I'd do.

I tried to think of a possible topic to begin a conversation with and finally decided I’d just start by asking if they were with F.I.O.H., even though the car made the answer obvious. Luckily, as the two of them were walking back to sit under the tree and I was walking up behind them I overheard them speaking Swedish. Perfect!

 Me: Hej!

No response. They must not have heard me.

Me: Hej!

Still no response. Now it’s awkward. Maybe they’re ignoring me.

Me: God morgon!

Swedish lady: Ja men...! Kan du prata svenska?

Me: No, only a very little.

So we sat under the tree and ate watermelon and talked, in English, about The Gambia and Sweden.

Raffle!

I am informed we are having a raffle, all the women from our Tobaski asobi group and a couple of others. I am to bring soap and ten dalasis and report back to Toulay’s compound as soon as possible. And bring paper too. And a pen.

I bring a little Post-It notepad and everyone applauds because I understand what is going on. The women tell me which names to write and then we fold up the names and put them in a plastic bag. Pateh was the passing child called upon to pull the name out of the bag. Rugielle reads it—Ma Balde. Ma Balde gathers up the 90 dalasis and the nine bars of soap. I’m told to hold onto the slips of paper for next week.

The next Sunday we repeat the process, except Rugielle isn’t around so I read the winning name. “Ma Balde.” “Binta, she won last week.” “I know, but the paper says, ‘Ma Balde.’ Before, when I did not read, I do not know if that paper was Ma Balde, or…” Toulay tells me she kept the paper from last week and goes to get it. Sure enough, Ma Debbo, not Ma Balde won last week. Then all the women talk about how Rugielle can’t read but pretends she can.

The third Sunday of the raffle I am away for the drawing but I return and am informed that I’ve won! Fatou Bobo is holding my soap and money until I get back from school. I am excited because winning is exciting, and because now I’ll have soap for all the laundry I need to do and because now I can stop contributing ten dalasis and a bar of soap each Sunday (or so I assume). We count out the money and the soap—7 bars of soap and 80 dalasis. I’m surprised because I’d only been expecting 5 or 6 bars of soap and 50 or 60 dalasis, but I assume that I’ve simply lost track of how many people we began with. After all, why would the winners continue contributing? You would just end up returning your winnings, bar of soap by bar of soap, ten dalasis by ten dalasis, until you were right back where you began.
Fatou Bobo says Fama did not contribute, that is why there is not enough soap and money. She repeats this a couple of times, I guess to make sure I understand that she, Fatou Bobo, did not steal them and that I should be angry with Fama. Fatou Bobo also says someone came and asked for soap so she sold one of my bars of soap, but here is the money--she asks her husband for five dalasis and adds the bill to the pile of winnings.

The fourth Sunday Fatou reminds me that it is Sunday and tells me to bring one of the soaps and the ten dalasi from what I won last week. So there really doesn’t seem to be any purpose to the whole proceeding, other than to cause minor chaos each Sunday afternoon as everyone frantically scrambles to find ten dalasis and a bar of soap.

Except, actually, the raffle does make sense. I learned about them in Economics of Developing Countries. There are different formats for these lotteries village women will organize (sometimes the weekly winner is agreed upon by the participants, sometimes the winner is expected to host a little party for the participants) but the logic for all of them is that it is difficult for these women to get a large sum of money all at the same time. There are always little things that need to be bought—a tablespoon of salt, a cup of sugar—or money to be lent to a neighbor or given at a naming ceremony… Not to mention that not all of the women have a steady source of income from which to save. Ma Balde works as a cleaner at the hospital, but Fatou Bobo relies on the allowance given her by her husband, unless she is lucky and has some extra mint she can sell at the market. So while you are essentially winning the money just to pay it back again, it is actually a bit different because one week you get to buy something more expensive if you’d like to, something you might not have been able to buy otherwise. Yes, you’re essentially just spending your own money, but without this raffle, maybe you wouldn’t have been able to get all of this money together at the same time.

The logic behind eight bars of soap, however, I cannot explain.

Translations!

The day I biked back to village after the Janjanbureh workshop I got a late start for one reason and another, so I did not reach Kumbel (Isatou’s village) until one pm. The kids bounced around on the bed as usual and then Isatou offered to bring me some food. I said I did not want to eat because I would soon be biking home. She said I should wait until evening, when the sun would be less hot. I could bathe here, rest, and at four o’clock go home. I was in an always-accept-an-invitation-because-you-never-know-what-sort-of-adventure-will-come-from-it kind of mood as well as in an well-I-didn’t-really-want-to-do-laundry-anyway sort of mood (because doing laundry had been my plan after returning) so I agreed and she brought rice with domoda and I ate until I was full because the food was delicious and I had three hours for it to digest. Isatou said her brother or somebody had come to visit from Spain and I got excited to try out a “Buenos días” or two.

Later a man came in and distributed icees to the children in the room. I thought he might be the man from Spain but Isatou made no move to introduce us nor did she say, “here’s the guy I was talking about” so then I thought it must not be him.

Isatou and I talked a little about Europe though, and I tried to convince her it’s too cold there and Gambian people are nicer, but she just commented, in an amused tone, that she wants to go to Europe and I want to be in The Gambia. And I wonder if the Fulas have a proverb like “the grass is always greener” because if so I should learn it.

There was some drama regarding the icees because there were fewer icees than children and Isatou was telling them who needed to share with whom, but Fatoumata, in particular, did not want to share with anyone, especially not the girl she was supposed to share with. And Isatou turned to me and said, “My family is too large.”

I go to bathe and when I finish I go and sit outside with Isatou and some other women. A man and a white lady walk by and Isatou introduces me to them—he is the brother from Spain. Except they weren’t from Spain. I don’t know where Isatou got that idea, but the wife spoke only French and the man spoke no Spanish.

Isatou asks if I want well water or pump water for my water bottle. I say pump water and two or three girls happily show me the pump, arguing over who will get to hold the water bottle and who will get to pump. After it’s refilled we start to return, but we are intercepted by another group of children who tell me to follow them, I must greet So-and-so. I soon recognize that they’re leading me to the German’s house. He is lying topless on his bed, and so is his wife. His younger son Steven was crawling around on the floor. There is a cuckoo clock on one part of the wall and framed black and white photos on another.

I tentatively sit down on the edge of their bed. If this was America, or, I assume, Germany, it would’ve been perfectly acceptable, upon walking in on a couple’s siesta and finding them half-clothed, to say, “Hello, pardon me, I’ll be going now.” In The Gambia, walking away with a “hello, goodbye” would’ve been rude, regardless of the circumstance. I didn’t know whose culture the German and his wife were operating under, until he and his wife sat up and she pulled down her shirt; I took that as an invitation to stay.

The German was more talkative than last time. Maybe he was refreshed from the nap or maybe he wasn’t preoccupied with a broken motorcycle. He wanted to know more about the Peace Corps, which he referred to as Peace Workers, and whether it was a religious organization and where I would be serving next and whether I joined to help others or to help myself. “To help others,” I replied, while thinking, “What other answer did you expect?” To which he replied, “But I think you are also helping yourself” and I had to agree, even though it doesn’t sound so nice when you say it aloud.

Then another group of children enters (the one’s who’d come with me were still hanging about the room) with the non-Spaniard and his wife, Marielle, in tow. About five children are holding Marielle’s hands. The non-Spaniard and Marielle sit down on the bed, too, and join the conversation. The German could speak German and English and his wife could speak English and Pulaar. I could speak English and enough Pulaar. The non-husband could speak Pulaar, French, and sometimes enough English. Marielle could speak French. Occasionally sentences would get translated through three different people. If, for example, we wanted Marielle to know something the German had said, his wife might need to repeat it in Pulaar to the non-Spaniard, who would then change it to French for his wife. It was amusing, and I wondered about all that had been lost in translation.

The German says he has only learned to say two things in Pulaar: “jam tan” and “kaalis.” The former means “peace only” and the latter, “money.” Then he went off on a mini-rant about people are always begging for money. Marielle says she knows “jam tan” also, and “Mido yiddi ma no bete,” which the German’s wife translated as, “I love you too much.”
The German disagrees with the Prophet Muhammed. Muhammed said to clean your face, clean your hands, clean your feet. But he forgot to say “clean your environment.” The German appears smugly pleased that he has thought of this, but there is a delay while this is translated to the non-Spaniard and maybe Marielle.

The German continues: He is always disgusted when he comes here and sees the people just tossing their garbage wherever. Why can they not have garbage cans? In fact, there are only two clean countries in Africa. The first is Namibia, which used to be a German colony. Here his wife interrupts, and we never do learn what the second clean African country is. She says something along the lines of “You would say that” and he retorts that the Germans taught them right. In Germany there are women in orange suits who patrol the parks looking for people tossing garbage to the ground. The women are connected with the police and when they see someone littering they will contact the police and the police will make the person pay a fine of 1,000 or 2,000 dalasis (he said dalasis and I don’t know whether he had done the conversion or whether he meant to say whatever-the-money-is-called-in-Germany). But here…

Later the German’s wife offered her opinion of Germany: It is all concrete, no dirt. And people will not even notice if you die.

Gathering groundnuts!

I followed Fatou and Sinni to the groundnut field because for several afternoons that’s where they’d been going -- I finally had time to join. I thought we’d be bringing back armloads of groundnut plants, but I quickly realized that’s not the plan. The fields, overflowing with green the last time I’d been (but that’d been months ago) were dried wastelands of sand.

The women get to work—they tie a cloth around their waists as a pouch and, hoe in hand, scrape away dirt and feel through it for groundnuts, which are picked up and placed in the pouch. After maybe an hour’s work each woman has a medium-sized bowl's worth of the leftover, forgotten groundnuts. I do not have a hoe, so I am not allowed to help. Fatou Bobo says even if I did have a hoe I wouldn’t be able to work. I think I probably could, but it does look uncomfortable.

So I sit silently on a stump for awhile. I couldn’t really follow their conversation because not only were they speaking quickly to themselves, they were spread out and difficult to hear. Sinni says I am being quiet and I say this is because I cannot hear all they are saying. They laugh at this, probably because “you don’t hear what is said” is an expression you’d say to a stubborn child who’s refusing to listen.

Fatou Bobo explains that they were talking about how one woman’s husband beat her last night and at Tobaski another’s husband had beaten her. So that’s probably another reason you’d go to a hot and dried-out groundnut field to gather a bowlful of groundnuts. Because you can’t very well talk about how your husband beats you when he’s just around the corner.

Cracked eggs!

At assembly one Monday a teacher had the following advice for the students:

“If you hit a stone against an egg, the egg will crack. Even if you hit the egg against the stone, the egg will crack. You are the egg. The teachers are the stone.”

LYE ilaha illa-Llah!

According to Islam for Dummies, “La ilaha illa-Llah” means “There is no god but God.” The book does not mention that in The Gambia, it is also used as an exclamation of shock or surprise, as in the following hypothetical situations:

• Someone walks in wearing an over-the-top sparkled and ruffled outfit. “La ilaha! That outfit is nice.”
• Someone mentions she accidentally tasted lye. “La ilaha illa-Llah! You tasted what?!”

Except (maybe you’ve guessed) that second situation wasn’t hypothetical. It happened. Here’s how:

I was leaving the Basse car park; it was quickly turning dark and even though I wasn’t hungry, I figured I should decide what I wanted to eat. I saw a lady selling large slices of watermelon and realized that was exactly what I wanted, so I bought a slice. More than one person commented, seeing me eat it: “You like the watermelon!”

All sorts of snacks were being sold along the road that I’d never seen before, like French fries, which I would’ve bought if my stomach had been in the mood for grease. I also saw, next to a plate of plastic bags filled with peanuts, little baggies filled with a white powder. I thought maybe it’d be something sweet, along the lines of that traditional candy I tried in Hong Kong. When I learned the bag only cost five dalasis, I figured I might as well. Maybe it would end up being something nice to mix with the oatmeal I had decided I would make for dinner.

I arrived at the Basse house—no power. I made some oatmeal and a cup of Christmas spice tea and got out my laptop so I could play some Christmas music, because I was in that kind of mood even though it was not yet Thanksgiving.

And then I remembered my baggy of mystery food so I jumped up to fetch it, all excited!

I dipped my finger into the bag to sample a little before mixing it with my oatmeal and thank goodness that's all I did because it burned. Not a jalepeño pepper burn, a burning burn. Like sticking your tongue in a hot beverage, hot chocolate maybe, but without the Warning: Contents May Be Hot and without the cool relief of whipped cream.

I tried to think of what I could possibly have eaten, and wondered why the lady who’d sold it to me had not informed me of the proper method to prepare this substance (like how the lady who’d sold me strange fruit one time had warned me it’d be a little sour and I should add sugar). Nope. Here is how my conversation with the white-powder vendor had gone:

Me: Good afternoon.
Her: Peace only.
Me: No trouble?
Her: Peace only.
Me: What is this?
Her: [a word I didn’t recognize]
The man sitting behind her: You hear Pulaar.
Me: A little. It is how much?
Her: Five dalasis, ten dalasis. [she indicates the different sized bags]
Me: Okay, I want five dalasis.

I give her the money, she gives me a baggy of the mystery substance. Then she asks, “Your last name?”

Me: Jallow. Binta Jallow. 
Her, pointing to the little girl standing beside her: She is also Binta.
Me: My namesake?
Her: Yes, your namesake!
Me: Tokara!

I wave goodbye and as I’m walking away I overhear the man say, “The toubab hears Pulaar, she said, ‘my namesake?’”

And that was it, the end of our conversation, no warnings, nothing.

So like I said, I was wondering what I could’ve eaten when I remembered what I’d read in Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes about improperly prepared cassava being poisonous. There was still no power at the house, but I decided to use the remainder of my laptop’s battery to research whether or not I was going to die of cyanide poisoning. I assembled the facts (but blame Wikipedia if these aren’t actually facts):

• Cassava is sometimes ground into a powder, for use in cooking whatever one cooks with cassava powder (this would explain why I’d never noticed these bags of white powder before now, cassava season. Maybe it was raw cassava that had been dried and ground into powder—was I supposed to have known this and boiled it or something before I ate it?)
• Cassava generally has higher levels of cyanide when it was grown during a drought (this past rainy season wasn’t exactly a drought, but the rains began late and were not as plentiful as expected and lots of crops never sprouted)
• Usually, but not always, the more bitter the cassava, the higher the concentration of cyanide (…then I must have eaten a lot of cyanide…that stuff was really bitter)
• Some small quantity (I don’t remember exactly) of cyanide is enough to kill a person
• There are two types of cyanide poisoning, acute and chronic (I read about both even though at this point I didn’t need to worry about the chronic kind, which has a higher frequency in populatons with cassava as a staple food and leads to paralysis)
• Symptoms of acute cyanide poisoning appear four hours after consumption (…so I need to stay awake an extra three hours later than I’d planned to, or attempt to fall asleep not knowing if I’d wake up)
• Symptoms include vomiting, vertigo, and something else I forgot. If untreated, eventually death. Treatment is simple—a shot of something (it had potassium in it or something that helps the body break down cyanide) and you get better.

I felt fine so far, but it’d only been twenty minutes. Three hours, forty minutes to go. I had no cellphone and there was no one else in the house. Here was my plan: If I began feeling nauseous and/or vertigo-eous I was going to pluck the baggy out of the trash, find the Fula night guard and say, “I am sick. I ate a little of this;” at which point I would present the baggy. Then I would say, “I want to go to the hospital.” He would know what the white powder was and be sufficiently panicked to take charge and summon a donkey cart or something. The article did not say how long after symptoms appear until death, but hopefully there’d be enough time.

Then the laptop battery finished, so I tried reading some magazines before I realized if I did wake up tomorrow, I would need to bike back to my village, so I should get a good night’s sleep. So I went to bed hoping the symptoms, if they did appear, would be strong enough to wake a person up so that I could maybe go to the hospital and stay alive and not have to leave the next visitor to the house with a dead body—that would be traumatic.

The next day I woke up (yay!) and when I returned to site, I asked Julia if she knew what I might’ve eaten. She said it sounds like I ate lye. This seemed improbable at first—why would the lady have been selling bags of lye next to bags of peanuts? Why would she have thought lye was something I would want to buy? And why would I buy anything but a snack food on my evening stroll home from the car park?

But the more volunteers I told this story to, the more probable it began to see. For one thing, it would explain why I burned my tongue. For another thing, it would explain why I didn’t die.

But at least I learned from my mistake! On a recent trip to the market, I found a woman selling what looked like maple sugar candies (the hard ones that look like amber) along with dried fish and other foods. I asked her what it was but I didn’t recognize the word. I thought it looked delicious, but I thought I’d better make sure.

Me: It is something to eat?
Lady: No, no! It is for clothes. You do this [she motions rubbing it onto clothes] and it will [explanation that I did not understand]. You understand?
Me: Yes.

Because although I did not understand just why the stuff was rubbed into clothes, I did understand it was not for eating.

*Also: according to the Guinness Book of World Records 1998 (a copy of which is at the school library), the longest palindromic word is saippuakivikauppias (19 letters) Finnish for “a dealer in lye.”

Footprints!

Rugi meets me walking back from school and we walk the rest of the way together. She asks if I have seen Pateh; I say I have not. When we get to the road past the hospital that leads to Koli Kunda, Rugi starts to walk slower so I stop to wait for her to catch up.

“Who are you waiting for? Me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, wait.”

I expect her to hurry and catch up, but she maintains her current pace. When she reaches me she explains that we need to look for Pateh’s footprints. He followed her to school in the morning, but now she does not see him. She knows if we see his footprints we will know he went home. She holds up his red sandals and a shirt; he left them at the school. This means we are looking for prints of his bare feet.

We do not see his footprints, or at least, nothing we both agree are his footprints. When we reach the compound Fatou Bobo immediately asks if Rugi has seen Pateh. Rugi explains the story to her mom, who then borrows a bike and pedals off in the direction of the school, shouting for him along the way. I expected this to be a dramatic story people would talk about, but that was the end. Later that day I see Pateh milling about, so I guess he was found, wherever he went.

T.V. Dinner!

Babusi, Amadou’s wealthy Serrehule friend, comes over with his DVD player. It’s one of those ones with its own screen and a remote, even though the screen is so small you’d never be sitting farther than arm's length from it. We watch a soap-opera-type film in a language I assumed was Serrehule (but later learn is that language they speak in Mali that’s sort of like Mandinka but not at all really). Babusi is the only one watching who can actually understand what is being said, so he translates, sometimes.

It is one of those American moments Julia said once happened with her host family: No one switches off the film for dinner, everyone’s eyes remain fixed on the screen and food enters the mouth automatically.

Four months?

We passed a large-bellied boy and Ma Debbo turned to Fatou Bobo and said, “Four months, do you think?”

At first I thought she was guessing his age, but that didn’t make sense because the kid was obviously much older than that. Then I realized she was joking that the kid was pregnant. I would’ve laughed to show her I got the joke, but first of all the timing would’ve been off and second of all, it just seems in poor taste to laugh at a malnourished child.

Shrimp?

One morning a teacher brought some food to school and invited us to eat. It was cous cous topped with what appeared to be popcorn shrimp. Shrimp seems unlikely, though, as I’ve never heard of it being sold in or around my village before. So maybe it was popcorn chicken. But that seems equally unlikely. In all of The Gambia I have never seen chicken cut into thin little pieces, breaded, and dropped in boiling oil.

Well, whatever I ate, it was delicious.

Ameriphone!

You need to know maths in order to apply for a visa to America. For any francophone or ameriphone country, actually. At least, according to one of the maths teachers. This teacher has clearly never applied for an American visa. Then again, neither have I, so what do I know? I wish, however, that admission to America/Europe were not being promoted as the reason to work hard in maths.

Another morning I overheard a student talking to this teacher about something he'd told her earlier.

“I remember what you said in class, if I should get a husband and he should take me to America…”

Apparently, he’d warned her that if she needed to wear a sweater, etc. here, she would never be able to go to Europe.

Guess I’ll never be able to go to Europe, either. I was so excited when I found a discarded knitted hat—now I can stop trying to drape a fleece blanket over my head in the morning; lighting the burner just got a lot safer.

Paramilitary!

A conversation that I wish I could remember more of was the one that took place when Ous and Pateh (both aged three, maybe) followed me to the luumo. Ous was talking about the paramilitary. I don’t remember if he was saying he was scared of them or that he was brave or that people in general should be scared of them…something along those lines. But it is okay because Ous has a gun, his dad gave it to him. Pateh, too, has a gun. His dad gave it to him. They will shoot the paramilitary.

I ask, "But if you shoot the paramilitary, who will lock up the thieves?"

Ous tells me he will. Then he tells me there is a konkoran behind that tree.
"Where?"
"There. The tree by the pharmacy. Don’t you see it?"
"Yes—I do!"
"Bang-bang!" Ous has shot the konkoran.

At the market all the people comment that the kids aren’t wearing any shoes and I hope no one tells their moms. Pateh wants me to buy him a little car, but I buy the boys melted icees instead.

High school!

Really, high school students are the same the world over.

Ebrima returns to class and announces, “I was urinating, I swear to God, and Mr. Kinteh says I have just come back from smoking.”

Camping!

Kairaba wants to talk about the fire. He thinks fires for sitting around at night are not in America. I think we had this conversation last year, but I say no, the fires are there. Neene expresses surprise. “Really?” I say, yes, it is there. I feel obligated to explain, but how to explain camping?

Me: Sometimes American people will go to the bush, they will want to sleep there…and they will have a fire.

Puzzled faces.

Me: You know in America there are many houses.

Kairaba: Yes.

Me: And…if the people do not want to look at houses, if they want to look at trees, they will go to the bush and sleep there. They will sleep in something…it is sticks and fabric…The sticks are like this and the fabric is on top…

Puzzled faces. Neene asks if it is something and when I say I do not know what that something is she indicates the large wooden poles that were once used to support a thatched awning between my house and hers. “No, not that.”

Kairaba, sensing we’ve given up, says, “No, let Binta speak until it is clear.” So I repeat basically everything I’d just finished saying, and nothing is any clearer. And what else could I add? What more is camping other than going to the woods and sleeping in a tent and sitting around a fire? Neene is convinced I do not know what I am describing but I say no, in English it is a tent, in Pulaar…I don’t know.

I can’t remember what I said that changed things, and I almost suspect Kairaba had heard me say “tent” but let me struggle a bit before saying, “Ah—camping.”

Me: You know camping??

And he launches into an explanation of how he used to work at the national park in Senegal; there was a hotel there and you could sleep at the hotel for such-and-such a price each night or you could go and sleep in a tent for 100 dalasis for one night, 200 dalasis for two nights, 300 dalasis for three nights. He turns to Neene and explains that the price is so cheap because you are not sleeping in a hotel, you are just sleeping outside. And you will have a bed that you will pump with air. One time a man came and he wanted to camp for three nights and the man and the woman they slept in the tent, three nights, 300 dalasis.