I'm at the computer, typing this sentence this very instant! Tomorrow morning I'm going back to site, inshallah (because you never know if you'll be abducted by aliens or something). I would write more about what I've been up to during my week in the Kombos, but it was mostly lots of American rushing around alternated with American lying around doing nothing. Which was fun for me, but not particularly fascinating reading material.
My favorite part of the week has probably been the past three days, when I went with the new trainees (just a week old!) to introduce them to the training village where they'll be staying for the next two months. I went with the three new Fulas to my old training village, where I hadn't been since my visit in December.
My family's got a generator now, and a light above their porch! And Hawa (who I hadn't seen since August) has a baby (who hadn't yet been born in August)! And the bean sandwiches aren't topped with spaghetti! And I got to be a fount of knowledge!
And: there were mangoes.
Even though The Gambia's an itty bitty country, it's large enough that the end of mango season at one end of the country is the start of mango season at the other. In honor of these last mango bites I enjoyed, here is my mango identification guide.
A Super-Scientific Guide to Mangoes of The Gambia:
Mango Mangoes: The mangoes that used to fall into my backyard. These mangoes were the size, shape, texture-- and if they ripened in the sun, also the color-- of a mango I might find at Super Stop and Shop.
Icee Mangoes: You can squish and slurp these small and squiggly mangoes like an icee.
Basse Mangoes: These are the only kind of mangoes I've ever seen for sale in Basse. They are round, medium-sized, solid orange and have a smooth, creamy texture.
Sour Gummi Bear Mangoes: These mangoes were the last to ripen in our compound. Neene doesn’t like them because they’re too sour, and I don’t like them because they’ve got the weirdest texture I’ve ever encountered in a fruit, but they were better than nothing and at least they're still around.
Smoothie Mangoes: My former training village family handed me one of these two days ago. It's large with a particularly flat pit and has the flavor of a mango smoothie YUM.
Purple mangoes: OMG. They're real. I've never tasted one, but they're purple beyond belief.
Jul 8, 2011
Jul 5, 2011
Bakadaji!
For a few days during the between-terms break in April I visited Effo in Bakadaji (and you can read about her adventures in Fatoto here)! Bakadaji is a Mandinka and Fula village, but her host family is Mandinka so I didn’t have much to say to them. I’m jealous because Effo’s neighbors have a monkey named Mabintu with Frida Kahlo eyes—and I’m not just saying that because she had a unibrow. Her face was itty-bitty and freakishly human-like and also very wrinkly. Not that Frida Kahlo was freakishly human or wrinkly, that's why I specified eyes. It’s unfortunate the only pictures I have of Mabintu are ones where she’s got dried mango stuck all over her face. There was a day when she was clean and eating banana bread and looking Adorable, but my camera was nowhere to be found.
Yes, you read that correctly! Banana bread! We succeeded in baking banana bread. Sure, it didn’t taste exactly like banana bread, but that was probably due to us using under-ripe bananas instead of over-ripe ones. The important thing, to me at least, is that it had the texture of banana bread and as a bonus, the loaves were shaped like giant muffins because we'd used large aluminium cups instead of baking pans. Effo lives near the baker, who speaks better Pulaar than Mandinka but speaks both languages with a stutter. When we first asked him if he could bake bread for us, he told us to come in the evening, but when we came around six he told us to return at nine. So we did. When we showed up he pulled the burning logs out of the oven so only the hot charred pieces remained. He put our future loaves of banana bread inside and closed the door. Then, for an hour and fifteen minutes, we sat in the dark and made awkward conversation with the baker. Whatever Effo said she needed to translate for me and whatever I said I needed to translate for her. The baker’s surname was Bah, so I mostly talked about his fat stomach because my last name is Jallow and I never miss an opportunity to tease Bahs about their inability to stop eating. I love these joking relationships with the surnames!
Here's what we learned during our conversation with the baker:
After I’d visited Bakadaji, Effo came to Fatoto. We were unfortunate to ride there in the same gelle that once took three hours to get there from Basse (it should take one hour, tops) and the same one (I think) that I also lost my water bottle in. I’ve now taken note of how to recognize this unlucky gelle: blue vinyl seats, two neon red triangles leaning against the windshield, and a driver with a permanent grimace and a Frankenstein’s monster forehead. However, the only thing recognizing this gelle will allow me to do is mentally prepare myself for a long and uncomfortable trip because with only one gelle leaving for Fatoto at a time and with hours in between gelles, there’s not much choice for the next time I show up at the car park and find the blue-vinyl gelle waiting for me. This time, the problems were:
Yes, you read that correctly! Banana bread! We succeeded in baking banana bread. Sure, it didn’t taste exactly like banana bread, but that was probably due to us using under-ripe bananas instead of over-ripe ones. The important thing, to me at least, is that it had the texture of banana bread and as a bonus, the loaves were shaped like giant muffins because we'd used large aluminium cups instead of baking pans. Effo lives near the baker, who speaks better Pulaar than Mandinka but speaks both languages with a stutter. When we first asked him if he could bake bread for us, he told us to come in the evening, but when we came around six he told us to return at nine. So we did. When we showed up he pulled the burning logs out of the oven so only the hot charred pieces remained. He put our future loaves of banana bread inside and closed the door. Then, for an hour and fifteen minutes, we sat in the dark and made awkward conversation with the baker. Whatever Effo said she needed to translate for me and whatever I said I needed to translate for her. The baker’s surname was Bah, so I mostly talked about his fat stomach because my last name is Jallow and I never miss an opportunity to tease Bahs about their inability to stop eating. I love these joking relationships with the surnames!
Here's what we learned during our conversation with the baker:
- He bakes bread for the whole village and has been doing so for the past twenty years, or maybe he said the oven has been around for twenty years, because he also told us he’s twenty nine years old. But who knows, maybe he has been baking bread since he was nine years old.
- The name of the singer whose song he hummed along to on the radio (since forgotten)
- He would like an English wife.
- He would like to learn how to make this bread, but he told us this before it’d even finished baking so I said wait and taste it first. We tried to bring a piece of it to him the next morning, but only met his father, so I never did learn his thoughts.
After I’d visited Bakadaji, Effo came to Fatoto. We were unfortunate to ride there in the same gelle that once took three hours to get there from Basse (it should take one hour, tops) and the same one (I think) that I also lost my water bottle in. I’ve now taken note of how to recognize this unlucky gelle: blue vinyl seats, two neon red triangles leaning against the windshield, and a driver with a permanent grimace and a Frankenstein’s monster forehead. However, the only thing recognizing this gelle will allow me to do is mentally prepare myself for a long and uncomfortable trip because with only one gelle leaving for Fatoto at a time and with hours in between gelles, there’s not much choice for the next time I show up at the car park and find the blue-vinyl gelle waiting for me. This time, the problems were:
- the car wouldn’t start and needed to be pushed
- the car kept needing to make stops and men would jump out and open the hood and fix stuff or maybe just peer intently inside
- the driver needed to stop so he could spend several minutes haggling with roadside mango vendors and then return with an armload of mangoes
- the woman sitting behind Effo kept resting her arms and head on the back of Effo’s seat so that she couldn’t sit comfortably.
Jul 3, 2011
Lost!
Are you aware that I have a horrible sense of direction? It’s atrocious, possibly non-existent. I like to pretend my brain has more important matters to concern itself with than where the rest of the body might be located. Anyway, I’ve recognized this fact for awhile, but only recently realized that since I cannot prevent myself from getting lost, I should at least try to prepare for finding myself again. One day in May, I wanted to bike to Sami Koto to attend a marriage ceremony there with some other volunteers. I knew I’d never find my way without Julia, who was still in Basse, so I pulled out my mP3 player and tried to learn some Serrehule. Garawol, which is the main village I would need to pass through on my way to Sami, is a Serrehule village and if there are Pulaar speakers there, I have not met them. Before I'd left for The Gambia I’d downloaded language files teaching basic phrases in the major languages of The Gambia. So I listened through the Serrehule recordings and managed to learn two greetings and how to ask the question, “Where is Sami Koto?” Then I filled my water bottle to the brim, slathered myself with sunscreen (who knew how long I would be biking in circles?) and headed off.
I made the correct turn from the main road, due to me remembering a billboard (there were actually two billboards) and due to me not remembering biking past Isatou’s village, Kumbel, on the last visit to Sami (Kumbel was a little past the billboards). But after that first success, I either turned too soon, or maybe I wasn’t supposed to have turned at all, because instead of riding through the garbage dumps of Garawol, I found myself smack in the center of town. I was dodging masses of school children, speeding past storefronts and nearly crashing into displays of fish and vegetables laid out in the market.
Even though I’d taken the time to learn Serrehule greetings, I mostly stuck with “Salaam Maalekum” because I didn’t trust I’d learnt the greetings correctly, but a few of the times I did attempt a “hootaranta” people replied “majam,” which is Serrehule for “peace only.” All of the times I tried a Pulaar greeting, just for kicks, I got blank stares. At every split in the road I would ask for Sami Koto, and when I couldn’t understand the answer (i.e. all of the times) I gestured, in a Dorothy-and-the-Scarecrow fashion, “this way? or this way?” Wait, do Dorothy and the Scarecrow do that? Or am I thinking of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland? Anyway…
It would be nice to know why I have such horrible sense of direction, so that maybe I could work to improve it, but on the other hand, this alternative route was much more pleasant, and not only for the lack of garbage. It was smoother and less sandy, and there were lots of exciting things to see, as long as I remembered not to get distracted to the point of running into a small child or something.
I made the correct turn from the main road, due to me remembering a billboard (there were actually two billboards) and due to me not remembering biking past Isatou’s village, Kumbel, on the last visit to Sami (Kumbel was a little past the billboards). But after that first success, I either turned too soon, or maybe I wasn’t supposed to have turned at all, because instead of riding through the garbage dumps of Garawol, I found myself smack in the center of town. I was dodging masses of school children, speeding past storefronts and nearly crashing into displays of fish and vegetables laid out in the market.
Even though I’d taken the time to learn Serrehule greetings, I mostly stuck with “Salaam Maalekum” because I didn’t trust I’d learnt the greetings correctly, but a few of the times I did attempt a “hootaranta” people replied “majam,” which is Serrehule for “peace only.” All of the times I tried a Pulaar greeting, just for kicks, I got blank stares. At every split in the road I would ask for Sami Koto, and when I couldn’t understand the answer (i.e. all of the times) I gestured, in a Dorothy-and-the-Scarecrow fashion, “this way? or this way?” Wait, do Dorothy and the Scarecrow do that? Or am I thinking of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland? Anyway…
It would be nice to know why I have such horrible sense of direction, so that maybe I could work to improve it, but on the other hand, this alternative route was much more pleasant, and not only for the lack of garbage. It was smoother and less sandy, and there were lots of exciting things to see, as long as I remembered not to get distracted to the point of running into a small child or something.
Jul 2, 2011
Toothless old men!
I'm in front of the computer, yay!
This past Tuesday, the day before I left site, I had the longest conversation I've ever had in Pulaar. I was talking with ten-year-old Pippi Isatou. Our conversation was about a toothless man who lives in Basse.
Here's what I remember of it, complete with footnotes:
Pippi Isatou: Tomorrow you will go to Basse?
Me: Yes.
Pippi: There is a person in Basse whose mouth does this [she sucks in her cheeks]. His cheeks enter his mouth. If he will talk—blah blah blah.
Me: He cannot speak?
Pippi: Blah blah blah and his mouth is like this [she sucks in her cheeks again]. And he does not have many teeth.
Me: How many teeth does he have?
Pippi: Two here [points to her top teeth] and two here [points to her bottom teeth]. Two above and two below.
Me: Only four teeth? Two and two?
Pippi: Two above and two below. You have never seen him?
Me: It is a man or a woman?*
Pippi: A man. He will chew kola nuts. He chews them like this with his teeth [she delicately nibbles the air]
Me: He is able to chew kola nuts? With just a few teeth?
Pippi: Yes.
Me: Slowly, slowly? Will he spit out the kola nut juice?
Pippi: [confused expression] Will he do what?
Me: Will he do this [spit] with the kola nut juice or will he swallow it?
Pippi: He will not do this [spit]. He will swallow it. But the ____and ______ (the blanks were words I didn’t know, but are presumably parts of a kola nut** ), he will do this [spit, spit]. And the ____ in his mouth, he will do his [runs finger along bottom gums] and then this [shakes imaginary chewed bits of kola nut from finger].
Me: Ah, I understand.
Pippi: He has a lot of clothes…men’s clothes, women’s clothes… in a sack. You know what a sack is? For your baggage.
Me: Yes, I know what it is. He will sell the clothes?
Pippi: Yes. And the Serrehules will come. You know the Serrehules? From Koina and…
Me: Garawol.
Pippi: And Garawol. They will go to ____ (a village I'd never heard of) and buy clothes. And on Sundays, on Sundays they will go to the weekly market.
Me: The weekly market where?
Pippi: The weekly market.
Me: Fatoto’s weekly market?
Pippi: Yes.
Me: But the man who has only four teeth will not come? To the weekly market?
Pippi: He will come! You have never seen him?
Me: No. He is an elderly man, or … ?
Pippi: Yes, an elderly man.
Me: Is he tall?
Pippi: He has many years.***
Me: But, is he tall, or…?
Pippi: No, he is short.
Me: He is not tall?
Pippi: No, he is not tall. But his teeth are long.**** The teeth above are like this, from here until here [indicates the distance from the fingernail to the first joint of my index finger].
Me: Heh!
Pippi: And one of the teeth below is big. And his teeth do this [sticks out a finger to indicate that the tooth sticks out sideways]
Me: It does this? [I do the same]
Pippi: Wait. [she grabs a small twig, snaps it so it is relatively ooth-sized, holds it up to her own teeth and makes the twig stick out sideways] They do this. And his teeth are very dark.
Me: They are dark?
Pippi: They are like this [she points to a yellow stripe on the wrap-skirt I’m wearing]. Yellow.
Me: He will not brush his teeth?
Pippi: I don’t know. I don’t know if he will brush his teeth.
Me: I think he will not brush his teeth. If his teeth are…
Pippi: Do you have a tika boroos?
Me: Do I have a what?
Pippi: Tika boroos.
Me: I do not know what a “tika boroos” is.
Pippi: For doing this [uses her finger as an imaginary toothbrush]. You have a tika boroos and soap?
Me: Yes, yes, I have that. A toothbrush.
Pippi: In the morning you will do this [pantomimes brushing teeth and spitting out a gob of toothpaste]
Me: Yes, I will do that.
Pippi: Morning only?
Me: No, night also. Morning and night. Two times.
Pippi: But you have only one “package”?
Pippi said “package” in English (as she had been saying “toothbrush” in English) but I was spared trying to figure out her question by her mother calling her away.
The footnotes:
*Remember, Pulaar uses the same word for he/she/it. In translating to English, I didn't want to use "it" to refer to a person, so I used "he," even though at this time in the conversation I did not yet know we were talking about a man.
**This is interesting, because I didn’t realize kola nuts had separate parts to them.
***Let me explain Pippi’s misunderstanding:
1) I unexpectedly changed from a question of age to one of height
2) In Pulaar “tall” and “years” are similar-ish, “juutde” and “duubi” respectively
3) I probably phrased the question wrong, I think I asked “Does he have tall?” instead of “Is he tall?” or “Does he have height?”
****Let me also explain that in Pulaar the words for “tall” and “long” are the same, so the
logical connection between a person's height and his tooth-length is more logical...maybe. But why wouldn’t we return to talking about his teeth?
This past Tuesday, the day before I left site, I had the longest conversation I've ever had in Pulaar. I was talking with ten-year-old Pippi Isatou. Our conversation was about a toothless man who lives in Basse.
Here's what I remember of it, complete with footnotes:
Pippi Isatou: Tomorrow you will go to Basse?
Me: Yes.
Pippi: There is a person in Basse whose mouth does this [she sucks in her cheeks]. His cheeks enter his mouth. If he will talk—blah blah blah.
Me: He cannot speak?
Pippi: Blah blah blah and his mouth is like this [she sucks in her cheeks again]. And he does not have many teeth.
Me: How many teeth does he have?
Pippi: Two here [points to her top teeth] and two here [points to her bottom teeth]. Two above and two below.
Me: Only four teeth? Two and two?
Pippi: Two above and two below. You have never seen him?
Me: It is a man or a woman?*
Pippi: A man. He will chew kola nuts. He chews them like this with his teeth [she delicately nibbles the air]
Me: He is able to chew kola nuts? With just a few teeth?
Pippi: Yes.
Me: Slowly, slowly? Will he spit out the kola nut juice?
Pippi: [confused expression] Will he do what?
Me: Will he do this [spit] with the kola nut juice or will he swallow it?
Pippi: He will not do this [spit]. He will swallow it. But the ____and ______ (the blanks were words I didn’t know, but are presumably parts of a kola nut** ), he will do this [spit, spit]. And the ____ in his mouth, he will do his [runs finger along bottom gums] and then this [shakes imaginary chewed bits of kola nut from finger].
Me: Ah, I understand.
Pippi: He has a lot of clothes…men’s clothes, women’s clothes… in a sack. You know what a sack is? For your baggage.
Me: Yes, I know what it is. He will sell the clothes?
Pippi: Yes. And the Serrehules will come. You know the Serrehules? From Koina and…
Me: Garawol.
Pippi: And Garawol. They will go to ____ (a village I'd never heard of) and buy clothes. And on Sundays, on Sundays they will go to the weekly market.
Me: The weekly market where?
Pippi: The weekly market.
Me: Fatoto’s weekly market?
Pippi: Yes.
Me: But the man who has only four teeth will not come? To the weekly market?
Pippi: He will come! You have never seen him?
Me: No. He is an elderly man, or … ?
Pippi: Yes, an elderly man.
Me: Is he tall?
Pippi: He has many years.***
Me: But, is he tall, or…?
Pippi: No, he is short.
Me: He is not tall?
Pippi: No, he is not tall. But his teeth are long.**** The teeth above are like this, from here until here [indicates the distance from the fingernail to the first joint of my index finger].
Me: Heh!
Pippi: And one of the teeth below is big. And his teeth do this [sticks out a finger to indicate that the tooth sticks out sideways]
Me: It does this? [I do the same]
Pippi: Wait. [she grabs a small twig, snaps it so it is relatively ooth-sized, holds it up to her own teeth and makes the twig stick out sideways] They do this. And his teeth are very dark.
Me: They are dark?
Pippi: They are like this [she points to a yellow stripe on the wrap-skirt I’m wearing]. Yellow.
Me: He will not brush his teeth?
Pippi: I don’t know. I don’t know if he will brush his teeth.
Me: I think he will not brush his teeth. If his teeth are…
Pippi: Do you have a tika boroos?
Me: Do I have a what?
Pippi: Tika boroos.
Me: I do not know what a “tika boroos” is.
Pippi: For doing this [uses her finger as an imaginary toothbrush]. You have a tika boroos and soap?
Me: Yes, yes, I have that. A toothbrush.
Pippi: In the morning you will do this [pantomimes brushing teeth and spitting out a gob of toothpaste]
Me: Yes, I will do that.
Pippi: Morning only?
Me: No, night also. Morning and night. Two times.
Pippi: But you have only one “package”?
Pippi said “package” in English (as she had been saying “toothbrush” in English) but I was spared trying to figure out her question by her mother calling her away.
The footnotes:
*Remember, Pulaar uses the same word for he/she/it. In translating to English, I didn't want to use "it" to refer to a person, so I used "he," even though at this time in the conversation I did not yet know we were talking about a man.
**This is interesting, because I didn’t realize kola nuts had separate parts to them.
***Let me explain Pippi’s misunderstanding:
1) I unexpectedly changed from a question of age to one of height
2) In Pulaar “tall” and “years” are similar-ish, “juutde” and “duubi” respectively
3) I probably phrased the question wrong, I think I asked “Does he have tall?” instead of “Is he tall?” or “Does he have height?”
****Let me also explain that in Pulaar the words for “tall” and “long” are the same, so the
logical connection between a person's height and his tooth-length is more logical...maybe. But why wouldn’t we return to talking about his teeth?
Jul 1, 2011
Electric fans!
This post is not about electric fans, but I AM IN FRONT OF THE COMPUTER RIGHT NOW and there is an oscillating fan that sometimes oscillates in my direction. I'm in Kombo, which means I can buy ice cream whenever I want but I think I've lost my taste for ice cream. The same thing happened in March, but I bought ice cream anyway thinking surely when I've tasted it I'll remember I'm supposed to like this stuff. This time I've decided to save my money. So far the only American foods I've eaten have been a cheeseburger with fries and a Twix chocolate bar. For breakfast today I ate an egg sandwich from the bitik and for lunch I bought some fish meat pies from a lady at the market. This is a problem. Oh, and I passed on buying ginger ale. Ginger ale! I'd been craving ginger ale just a few weeks ago. Instead I bought a bag of water. What is wrong with me?!
Fortunately, I can buy ice cream in Basse now (although I haven't done so yet), so if my taste buds ever return to semi-normalcy, I won't have to wait until my next trip down-country. Actually, I won't even have to wait for normal taste buds, because the Basse ice cream is made with powdered milk!
Okay, it looks like rain so I've got to hurry back to the house.
Oh! But mango season is just beginning in Kombo--YAY.
Fortunately, I can buy ice cream in Basse now (although I haven't done so yet), so if my taste buds ever return to semi-normalcy, I won't have to wait until my next trip down-country. Actually, I won't even have to wait for normal taste buds, because the Basse ice cream is made with powdered milk!
Okay, it looks like rain so I've got to hurry back to the house.
Oh! But mango season is just beginning in Kombo--YAY.
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