No Heart Filling

I couldn’t get photos of the following signs either because:

1. I saw them from the window of a speeding gelle OR
2.  I didn’t have my camera with me at the time OR
3.  there were too many people around and that made me feel awkward.

• Best & Famous Watch Maker, Bansang
• Ieka (this is the name of a village, and the closest I’ll ever be to IKEA in The Gambia)
• Real 4 Life No Heart Filling
• Welcome to the Best Place to Buy Food in Town
• PLEASE NO SMOKING IN MY VIDEO HALL!!
• My Dream House
• These and many more of your needs are available at your demand.
• BMW THREE FLAWER (labeling drawings of a car, tree and flower, respectively)
• F--- all f---ers (but the original version was uncensored)
• Piece and love
• show no racism
• don be angery be good
• WE BURN WICKED FROM OUR DISTANCE

Storage buildings! And gangsters!

One week I left my bicycle in Basse (intentionally), so I traveled to school by foot. The ensuing conversations with the students who chose to walk beside me made me wish I’d left my bike behind more often.

Student: Miss Jallow, I am going to build a storage building.
Me: A storage building? What will it store...what will you keep inside of it?
Student: Things that people like.
Me: What kinds of things that people like?
Student, starting to look confused: Things like…things that people like.
Me: Food?
Student, still looking confused: Ye-es…
Another Student: Miss Jallow, he is not saying “storage” building, he is saying “storied” building.
Me: Oh! Like a building with many floors! Now I understand. I was very confused; I did not understand why he wanted to build a storage building.
Student: But I do not want to build it in America.
Me: No?
Student: No. I went to America and everyone called me a Negro.
Me: Oh, I’m sorry.
Student: It is not nice to call people Negro.
Me: No, it isn’t. Some people in America are not nice.
Student: And my house is going to be the top floor.
Me: That will be nice.
Student: I will build it out of grass.
Me: Grass? Oh, glass? Won’t you be afraid of your house breaking?
Student: Because you know they say people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Me: That’s too bad because I like throwing stones.

Not a storage building

Another day…

Student: Miss Jallow, I want to go to America.
Me: Yes, a lot of people want to go there.
Student: It is a nice country.
Me: Yes. What will you do in America?
Student: I will work.
Me: What kind of work?
Student: Hard work.
Me: But…what kind of work? What will you be doing?
Student: I will be a gangster.
Me: A gangster?
Student: I will be a gangster, like Akon, 50 Cent…
Me: Please don’t be a gangster.
Student: No I want to be a gangster, I want to make a lot of money.
Me: But I think, to be a gangster is very dangerous.
Student: But it will give you fast money. That is what they say.
Me: It will also give you a fast death.
Another student, laughing: Miss Jallow says being a gangster will give you a fast death! It's true!
Student, shrugging: But I will have fast money.

Not a gangster.

I ate a little baby bumble bee, won't my mommy be so proud of me...

Sometime after dinner, Ba Sarjo, the imam and lead beekeeper, brings over a plate full of honey comb. Neene calls me over to eat. She shines the flashlight on the dark stacks. They are not the most appealing stacks of honey comb. For one thing, they are not dripping or glistening. For another thing, I see lots of bulbous white blobs I can only assume are larvae, and the solid yellow cells containing the eggs. But I figure honeycomb is honeycomb, so I’m nonetheless excited as I pick up one of the broken-off pieces.

 The honeycomb was awful. From what I remember of honeycomb, you should be able to press it against the roof of your mouth with your tongue and when you do honey will seep out and fill your mouth and you can squeeze and chew until all the honey is gone and then spit out the wax because I never understood those wax candies and why would anyone eat wax? This honeycomb, however, would not have collapsed under the gentle pressure of a sledge hammer and the only way to consume it was to chomp diligently with one’s teeth for an extended period of time. I did this for a little while but was too repulsed by the texture and too tired from the effort of extracting non-existent honey that I spit it out. Neene, however, did nothing of the sort. I didn’t even see her spitting out the wax.

Amadou joins us and states the obvious: there is not much honey. He begins moving the honeycombs around on the plate and notices that a small pool of honey has collected on the side opposite us. He turns the plate around so the honey is closer to us and while Neene chomps away, he and I dip fingers into the meager pool of actual honey. I make sure my finger avoids the white larvae blobs sitting fatly in the honey. Amadou tells me he doesn’t like that—“that” being the dark and dried up honeycomb—but Neene does. Neene looks up at the mention of her name and says, “I like it.” Amadou breaks off a piece of yellow-studded honey-less comb and asks if I want to try, “This is sweet small.” I say okay and he hands me a piece and I start chewing on it.

It’s not bad at first, but it gets worse as I continue. I spit it out.

This is Musa, not me, but this is what my face probably looked like.

“Did you like it?”
“No.”
“Okay, return to eating here.”

So I return to dipping my finger into the pathetic honey puddle. I return to skirting around larvae. I think, almost with some satisfaction, that it seems I’ve at last discovered a food I will refuse to eat. Bee larvae. I wouldn’t even consider it food, except that Neene is eating them with gusto. I turn to watch Neene and feel slightly sick.

Bee larvae.

Well, at least there is a limit to what I’ll eat, at least I have some gastronomical boundaries, I reassure myself. But as my finger narrowly bypasses another larva glob, I wonder if I’m really ready to give up.

Yes.
No…
Yes?
No. No, I’m not ready to give up.

So, when no one s looking, because I didn’t want Attention, I scoop up a larvae, white and bulbous and looking like death, and pop it into my mouth with some honey. It tastes like nothing at all and has the texture of a tapioca pearl. It spends the briefest of moments in my mouth, not enough time to chew it, not enough time to discover if it has a taste, not enough time to complete the thought: “there is a larva in my mouth,” before it slides down my throat and the thought becomes: “there is a larva in my stomach.”

I sit and imagine what it’d be like if the larvae grew into a bee, then decide I am ready to go to bed. As I’m heading inside, I overhear Neene mention to Amadou that she “is not brave about eating the bee children.”

What?!

I glance towards the plate and sure enough, it seems Neene has been discretely forming a larvae pile on one side of the plate.

Shoot.

I swallowed a bee larva for nothing.

Meteorology!

Not the sky referenced below. 

I was chatting after dinner with some of the men staying at the agricultural center. One of these men is the meteorologist (did I mention my village has a meteorological station? it does! and it's filled with all sorts of apparatuses I don't understand!) but that is not why we were talking about the weather. We were talking about the weather because a large, ominous cloud was rapidly erasing the moon and stars.

The meteorologist explained about the wind that sometimes comes at night. I paid attention, because I've never been particularly interested in weather, and I was hoping he would say something interesting to interest me. He didn't, but grateful to have someone who appeared amused, he proceeded to rant about the general population's lack of appreciation for his work.

"It is important to know what the weather will be before you go outside," he moaned, "but...

these people, they don't value this."

"...how much is a football?"

A kid knocks walks up to my house and presses his face against the screen door. "Buy me a new football."
"Okay, if you give me money."
He turns to face the group of kids behind him, "Mariama, how much is a football?"
"I don't know."
"Is ten dalasis enough for a football?"
"No," Mariama replies.
"What about six dalasis?"

Recycle your deflated football into a hat!

Benechin morning!

On one of the mornings I spent with the trainees in village, we learned how to make benichen. I tried to pay-attention-and-take-notes but the kids distracted me. So I still can't cook benichen, but at least I got some cute photos.

This tokara had a habit of calling my name, but then having nothing  to actually say to me once I'd responded.

Sira is frying fish for the lunch Jabou was cooking for her own family. Our benichen had chicken instead.

I forget this girl's name.

And this girl's.

Oh, right. Let's pay attention. Sliced onions are pounded together with pepper.

This girl never smiles, even when her photo isn't being taken.

I don't think anyone ever did wipe her nose.

Oh no! There's stuff bubbling in a pot and I don't know what the stuff is!
Now I'll never be a benichen master... 

We thought maybe the kids were eating a grapefruit, because it  looked too large for an orange and he sprinkled sugar on it.
However, it was just a large, sugared orange.

The trainees started taking pictures of the brewing attaya, and I realized I'd never taken a proper photo of attaya myself.

What?! Lunch is ready? How did that happen!

Yuna reunited!

I didn't think of rhyming "Yuna" with "reunited" on my own. Just wanted to disclose that before you spent the day thinking, "That Sonja Kubik--she's so clever!"

I have a lot to say about the photo above, so I'll spare you some squinting and write the caption as not-a-caption.
1) Yes, I agree that child in back with the demon/gargoyle stare is totally creepy. He sort of appeared in our photo without anyone realizing it. Like a demon. Or a gargoyle.
2) That's me with my tokara! I hadn't seen her in two years, and I'd come to assume I'd never see her again. She got married while I was in training (a wedding I missed due to a mandatory field trip on which we didn't see a hippo) and moved to her husband's compound and that was that. But, happily, she returned for her brother's wedding, which, happily, coincided with one of my visits to Yuna to check on the new trainees :)
3) My tokara has a baby! Which kind of makes my past two years seem a little lame. What did she do in two years? Created a life. What did I do? Umm...taught some kids maths. See what I mean?!

I find this picture hilarious because Sarjo picked up Mariama  for the photo almost the same way he used to pick up  my notebook or a cashew: as a prop. 

Mariama and Baaba

The chair is not normally kept under the orange tree.  It was brought outside  while the  rooms were being  painted, in preparation for the wedding.

I didn't recognize Momadou at first. Click here  to see what he looked like the last time I saw him. 
And yes, he still ran away from me. 

Yo.

Ousainey, Momadou and Demon Gargoyle Kid (aka Omar)

Kumba, Ebrima, and a mobile phone.
Ebrima liked to cry if I looked at him too long.

This kid has a name, but I forget it. Not entirely my fault, because everyone just calls him "Dad."
So if I knew the name of the Dad he was named after, there'd be no problem!

I don't remember this girl's name, and it is entirely my fault.

Hawa and a bean sandwich!

Tanji!

A visit to the Tanji fish market has been on my to-do list since the day I heard it described as smelly and gross. I finally got my chance when I biked with the new trainees from their training villages to the beach. Unfortunately but understandably, the fish market's located in the opposite direction to the part of the beach we wanted to splash around in (and even so we still swam with floating fishes). 

I worried that "Hey, do you want to stop by the fish market on our way home? I hear it's smelly and gross!" wouldn't convince anyone, but luckily my host gave me a better excuse: to buy fish. Before I biked away she called out, "You're going to Tanji? Bring me back some fish!" 

"Hey, we need to stop by the market so I can buy fish for my host." Much more convincing. 

At first I didn't wonder about the blue color of the inside of the boat. I merely thought, "How beautiful and unusual, let me get my camera out." Now I'm thinking, "How nice that someone else thinks blue makes a beautiful color for a dilapidated boat. If I ever own a dilapidated boat I will paint the inside blue. A blue the same color as the water. Kind of  how the bottoms of some dolphins are white so that when viewed by predators from below, they're the same color as the sky. I'll bet it's the same for  the boat! Like, there are these huge swooping monster birds that attack fishing boats unless they're sufficiently camouflaged! I'll bet that's the reason..."
No, seriously, that's what I was thinking.

After the first minute, biking on the beach becomes no fun at all. Just a lot of work.

There is a windmill in the distance, but if you double-click on this photo to  enlarge it, I'm pretty sure all you'll see is a blur, because I've been reducing the size of the photos before uploading. So just believe me when I say there's a windmill in the distance. And next to the windmill there's a purple polka-dotted hippopotamus. 

This photo would be nicer without the garbage, or at least, the garbage should be more colorful. 

I asked these boys if I could take a picture of them and they said yes.
Two of the boys understood that I wanted a picture of them working and continued slicing  up fish.
One boy understood that I wanted a picture of them working but stopped what he was doing to give me a wide and crazy grin, like he's about to rip off a fish's head with his teeth.

I bought ten dalasis worth of fish for my host. I'd never bought fresh fish in Tanji before, and didn't realize just how many fish ten dalasis would buy. At site, ten dalasis will buy four dried fish. In Tanji, I was given a plastic bag with enough fish to fill a third of that green bucket. Or maybe only a fourth--I'm no good at estimating. Regardless, it was a lot of fish. More than one family without a refrigerator could hope to consume before they spoiled. I'm pretty sure they gave some away to the neighbors.

The women on the left got unexpectedly angry. I think they didn't want me to take a picture of them, so I tried explaining that I wasn't taking a picture of them, I was taking a picture of the net. Which was true, because if I were taking a picture of the circle of women, I wouldn't have left out half the circle. They didn't believe me, or didn't understand, or maybe they DID understand and were angry that I WASN'T taking a picture of them.  Then one of the women noticed I was speaking Pulaar, and decided to stop speaking Wolof, and she was a Bah so I said she was going to eat all the fish and then I walked away. 

Crocodiles!

Wednesday morning (I'm at the computer now) the bitik owner around the corner asked me for a mango. This is related to crocodiles, I promise. I've bought bread or soap or eggs from this bitik nearly every day I've been in Kombo, so when I didn't show up for a few days (due to being in training village with the trainees) he wondered where I'd been. When I told him, he wondered where his something-from-Yuna was.

"But..."
"But what?"
"Yuna doesn't have...anything."
"Yuna has mangoes."
"You want a mango?"

Normally I wouldn't question the desire to eat a mango, but the Kombos are literally overflowing with mangoes. They collect in smelly heaps on the ground because even the children have had enough.

"Yes," he answered.
"I ate all the mangoes."
"You ate all the mangoes?"
"Yes."

But the next morning he asks where his mango is, so I tell him I'll look for one.

I decide to actually look for one. Sadly, the only mangoes I find in the yard are either unripe or rotting. I decide to keep an eye out for mangoes as I continue with that day's quest: The Katchikally Crocodile Pool. It's somewhere in Bakau; the guidebooks all give "ask someone for directions" as their directions. The problem is that all the "someones" along the road in Bakau are people I like to avoid. They are:

1. souvenir-peddlers desperate for a customer 
2. taxi drivers desperate for a passenger
3. Men in Sunglasses desperate for a wife

I decide to get my souvenir shopping out of the way first. I want to finish shopping before Ramadan, figuring hungry shopkeepers will be less pleasant to bargain with. Crocodiles, a non-Ramadan-sensitive event, can always wait until another day.

After shopping, I remain unsure about seeing the crocodiles. Or rather, unsure about who to approach for directions. I decide to walk slowly home and see what happens.

What happens is a mango stand. I decide I might as well spend five dalasis and buy the bitik owner a mango. Then, realizing mango sellers belong to a category of people I like, I ask, "Is the crocodile pool far from here?" "No, not at all!" answers the man next to Mango Lady (whose name is Ousman Cee, but I'll just call him Cee). "I'll take you there," he adds.

I could have made up some lie about saving the crocodiles for a sunny day, but I decide I can trust Cee to not ruin my adventure because:

1. he's not wearing sunglasses
2. I approached him
3. while I was buying the mangoes he said, "When you go back to America, take this kid with you. He is ugly."

I follow Cee along muddy roads. I try to pay attention to the route, but we make so many turns I quickly forget. I decide to assume he's going to want money and figure it'll be worth it because I really could never have gotten here on my own. He discovers I speak Pulaar, which makes the conversation more enjoyable but the journey longer (we need to stop several times so he can show off the Fula toubab he found).

At the entrance there is a fifty dalasis admission fee, which I assume means I'll enter alone. But Cee gets waved through and I figure...whatever. He leads me to the museum, switches to English, and pretends he's a tour guide. The museum contains an assortment of unrelated objects (konkorans, instruments, farming implements). Actually, it's possible the objects were related, but I'm whisked around too quickly to read the explanatory placards.

Hey! I recognize this guy!

Don't recognize him.

This is the konkoran standing, but when he is "displaying" he bends down so that the pole sticking out in back (not pictured) touches the ground and then he does some sort of spinning thing. At least, that's according to Cee and a black-and-white photograph on the wall.

Probably the coolest-looking konkoran ever. 

We leave the museum and continue along a jungle-like path to the pool.

Facts I was told about this tree:

1. It is over 200 years old.
2. People will walk between it (like I did, when I took the picture) and pray so that their prayers will be sent up, up.
3. It is called an elephant tree.
4. It is also a cotton tree.

Cee tells me, women with fertility problems can come and ask for water from the pool to be brought to them and they'll bathe with it. Or even just people who want good luck.

"How many crocodiles are there?" I want to know.

Cee directs me to the crocodile caretaker, whose name I never learned. I nearly trip over a crocodile on my way over.

"How many crocodiles are there?"
"Over one hundred."

There is silence. We stare at the half-dozen crocodiles before us. Silence. I grow bored and ask more questions.

• Where are all the crocodiles? Most of them are still small because they hatch from eggs. Crocodiles can lay thirty eggs at one time. Also not many of the crocodiles are out now because of the rain.  Earlier in the morning they were out, because they are cold-blooded and like to sunbathe.
• Where are the baby crocodiles? In the nests dug into the ground at the edge of the pool.
• How deep is the pool? Over five meters deep.
• What is that growing in the pool? Water lilies.
• What do you feed the crocodiles? Fish.
• How many times do you feed them?  Once a day. But the time of day depends on when the fish arrive. The fishermen need to feed the people first, then the crocodiles. Sometimes the crocodiles do not eat for two or three days if there is not enough fish. Then they are hungry.
• What happens if they are hungry? They will sometimes eat their own children. It is unnatural. 
• Has anyone ever gone swimming with the crocodiles? Yes, if you are here a long time you will get to recognize the crocodiles. This one is bigger, this one is darker...
• Why are the crocodiles scratching? The water is filled with leeches.
• Do any of the crocodiles have names? Only one, Charlie, because he is the biggest. But I can name that one [pointing to a nearby crocodile] after you.

Cee leads me back to the main road and I give him some money because he never asked for any.

Walking home I decide what I want most at this moment is to eat a mango. So I eat the mango.