Toubab and Baobab

Bobo came by with Baby Alagie. I wondered what her ulterior motive was, but I didn’t find out until just as she was leaving. She has a baobab fruit. I need to come over later and bring sugar. Neene also wants to me to buy sugar, she is going to make that treat made of pounded peanuts, so that evening I go to buy sugar. Luckily the bitik next to the Lower Basic school is open, because that is the direction I’d walked in. I buy four cups of sugar, each cup individually packaged in its own plastic bag. As I’m walking towards Njie Kunda I meet Adama, Kumba and a third girl I don’t know. Actually, I didn’t meet them so much as one of them spotted me and yelled “Binta! Binta! Wait!” and then all three of them come running down the market road, two of them holding a large metal bowl on their head. The metal bowls were filled with jabbe, a sour fruit gathered from the bush. The jabbe had been mixed with sugar and seasoning and pressed into balls the size of those popcorn balls some people like to make for Christmas. The girls tell me there is a toubab from England with a large bag.

“Where?” I ask.

“He is your husband,” Kumba answers.

Adama points vaguely in the direction they’ve come from.

I am curious to meet my “husband” but I have no reason to walk to the market nor any way of knowing if he is still there, nor any way of knowing whether he’d be pleased to be greeted by a Peace Corps Volunteer (who, unbeknownst to him, really just wants to listen to someone speak with a British accent) or whether he’d be annoyed that here’s this non-Gambian ruining his image of African adventure.
An older man meets up with us and has overheard what the girls were saying. They are telling the truth, he tells me, and repeats the relevant facts (or maybe the only facts): A toubab from England with a large bag.

“Your husband!” Kumba chimes in.

“No,” the older man answers, “not your husband.”

We continue walking towards Njie Kunda. For something to do, I buy one of the jabbe balls—it’s sour but delicious. At Njie Kunda, Bobo mixes baobab fruit with water and squishes it around; I add some sugar. I start to wish I hadn’t eaten the jabbe after all because now my tongue hurts from too much sour and I can’t fully enjoy the baobab. When I go to the market the next day I decide to be on the lookout for a British man with a large bag, possibly my husband. After I buy vegetables and soap, I continue down the road that leads to the river, where the “hotel” (in quotation marks because I’ve never seen anyone there) is located. I figure maybe the British man is staying there. I take my time walking past the hotel, looking for signs of habitation. I hear someone cough, but cannot tell if the cough has a British accent or not. I give up.