The floor is lava.

Some games are universal. One is the card game Spoons, which I played a few years ago in the Hong Kong airport at the suggestion of the girl from Scotland. Another is the hand-clapping game Slide, which I've now played in the U.S., The Gambia, and Morocco. Another is The Floor is Lava.

Pateh didn't call it that, of course. What he said, standing on the cement stoop outside my house, was, "Binta, look! I won’t touch the ground." Then he proceeded to stretch himself over to the bantaba where I was sitting, with some assistance from a nearby pole, but without the assistance of the ground.

Volcanoes, by the way, are fires created by jinns. I am not sure how Neene knows this, as there are no volcanoes in The Gambia, but that's what she said as we looked through a copy of National Geographic.

Conversations with Rugi: Underwear!

Rugi grabs my head with both her hands, pulls it towards her and whispers, “Binta. When you go to America—when you go to America, bring me back underwear. Lots of underwear.”

Tears!

Amadou keeps referring to the guinea fowls’ feathers as “tears.” The other day he needed to remove the “tears” again so the guinea fowl wouldn’t fly over the fence (yes, they are still living in my backyard. yes, I still love them).

At first I thought this was just another case of mistakenly memorized vocabulary, like how I used to have trouble keeping “subaka” and “sukabe” apart, even though there’s not much similarity between the sun and children. Then I realized, I don’t actually know how to say “tears” in Pulaar! Maybe the word for “feathers” and “tears” is the same? The word for feathers, “leebi,” doesn’t really refer specifically to feathers anyway. It’s more a word for something shed from a body. Feathers are “leebi,” but so is dog fur, and the assorted debris that falls from mango trees.

And what do people shed? Tears.

The Pulaar dictionary neither confirmed nor denied this hypothesis, having no entry for tear (n.) other than the sort of tear that results when clothes rip. So I’ll just have to wait for some kid to start crying.

Whilst a dog has licked it.

At morning assembly, one of the teachers announced that it is very important for students to return bowls to the vendors after eating instead of leaving them around the school grounds. The problem is not that the students’ laziness forces extra work on the food vendors, who are the ones left picking up the scattered dishes smeared with leftover sauce and the stringy bits of cassava, but something far more serious.

Last year, the teacher reminded students, the school had only goats and sheep, but this year there is a new animal: the dogs. If a student leaves a bowl out until a teacher comes and collects it for the vendors, you will not know if a dog has been eating from it or not. The vendor will wash the bowl and think it is clean whilst a dog has licked it. And then you will eat from the bowl and feel very ill.

This information would have confused me, except for some information I remember learning at one point, either from a fellow volunteer or maybe it was during training. If a dog touches a bowl it must be washed specially, something like five times, before it can be considered clean.

Why? I don’t know. But I suspect it’s because Muhammed was a cat-person.

"It will bite me."

I biked to Kantaly; I wanted to share some treats with the kids there. I’d saved the best—a plastic figurine of an elephant with a button to press for elephant sounds—for Buba. Buba, however, was scared of it. As Gaye said, “He has a crying stomach.” As Buba said, “It will bite me.”

E.B. however, loved the elephant, but could not be convinced to give his bouncy ball to Buba in exchange. E.B. especially liked finding the kids with crying stomachs and then chasing after them with the elephant. He wanted to know if there was a battery inside. Would the battery be spoiled if it got wet? When he bathes, he will bathe the elephant too. He will wash the ears, and the legs, and this thing (the nose).

He gave the elephant some water to drink. His mother yelled that it would spoil the battery.

At least if the battery spoils, Buba might stop being afraid.