I am tenatively going to continue this blog... For myself mostly, as a record, and of course for all the other thousands of regular readers. I just took a look at it for the first time in a long time and I just it- I like the way it looks, my words all layed out on top of pretty lime green background! And I like the way it reads, quick and casual, capturing my thoughts and experiences in a way that fading memories are proving to be inadequate. Now, five months after being back, I still miss my life in The Gambia in a way that springs tears to my eyes everytime! But, the memory is vague and my Woolof is fading and increasingly, what I miss is justan impression of a peaceful life... long ago in a galaxy far far away... a mud hut at night surrounded by giggling kids...

Anyway, I do miss it madly and am trying set myself up to go back, inshallah (God willing). I just got accepted to NAU's (in Flagstaff, AZ) forestry and natural resource management program, studying international forestry under a very cool professor. The stars seem to be lining up a bit for me, after months of anxious limbo. The professor that will be my advisor, Dr. Mike Wagner, does research in Ghana and has established a sustainable forestry center there in partnership with a university there. AND, he's currently seeking funding for re-forestation projects spanning all the way up through the Gambia into northern Senegal. When he told me that in an office meeting, I almost shouted at him "REALLY??? That's PERFEFCT!"

Other pluses, Karissa my fellow RPCV Gambia is moving to Flagstaff and starting the same program, and living with me!!! I need a hiking buddy so bad and I can't wait for her move. Meanwhile, I'm waiting tables, enjoying this extended vacation, meeting people, trying my hand at high altitude gardening and enjoying the first days of spring! I tried to go shorts shopping the other day, feeling so excited by the prospect of wearing short shorts and not being totally radical (in the Gambia, ankle-length is the style of the season and that's a trend that ain't goin away). Not having worn anything shorter than mid-calf in three years, I cautiously tried some on in the dressing room... and whoa, I gasped at how much skin was showing down there. I opted for below the knee "shorts" and got outta there, promising myself that I'd work into it. My whole re-adjustment experience has been like that short shorts experience, too much too fast. My desire to hold on to the theme of the past two years still dominates; "slowly slowly, you catch the baby monkey in the bush"- the slow, the peaceful, the simple things... too bad they don't really have much place in this busy busy world. So, I hold onto lessons from the past and jump into the new, which has a beauty and an energy all of its own!

I have not posted on here in forever! It is my New Years Resolution though to write more, so I shall have to start. Meanwhile... I got a message from The Fresh Air fund with a great summer job opportunity for a great cause in NYC. Anybody interested? Check it out here:

http://freshairfundcounselors.smnr.us/

Everybody take care!

-Steph

Rainy season, 5 mos left here

All is well here, the rains have come in full, so Im trying to implement the last leg of the tree planting project which is outplanting... trying to get people organized and motivated to come get free trees and free tree guards (very valuable here, woven small fences that protect trees from the starving goats and cows that ravage vegetation in the dry season) and then to outplant them around their fields as "border planting" to benefit their soil, give them firewood, act as a wind break... It's hard because everyone is so busy on their own farms but slowly slowly, they are coming. Everything is so beautiful compared to the long dry season, when the sky was grey with dust blown down from the sahara constantly. Now there are clouds and sunsets and pure blue sky in between, ah! Also, lots of snakes too which i'm learning to love, or well, deal with. I have a small garden trying sweet melons (like cantelope) and okra, and I inter-planted squash with my family's corn. The food crisis is really hitting here, and everyone is scrambling to grow as much food as they can... cash crops are still important but now people are growing rice too, a new varitey called NERICA (New rice for africa, however that spells NERICA...) which supposedly can grow without being immersed in water. It's having mixed success in the gambia, but people are trying it more and more. Many people are not having enough to eat and I get increasignly asked to loan money or pay for small things, which... ug...I try not to do, but it can be so heart breaking. One of my friends in village, a women with 5 boys, pulled me aside the other day to ask for a loan because she had nothing to cook and no money. Typical of the women here, she's great, beautiful, proud, always laughing and smiling...I know it was hard for her to ask for money, I could hear desperation in her voice behind the pride... I've been working with her to do many things in her garden and fields to increase harvest and earn money, so I gave her a small loan (12 bucks). She took the money and started to cry, and then I did... oh life! Not always fair. But we are doing what we can to encourage composting, green manure and intercropping to help out the tired soil and I'm even starting to mention family planning and the possibility of (gasp!) not having 9 children. It's meeting mixed reactions, as is our idea to fertilize with human pee! funny stuff.

One thing I'm starting to realize is that 40 years ago, before development came, the gambia was much better off. No one was hungy, the population was small, the forests were big so they had 100% self-sustainablity- millet and "bush meat" was their diet. Now, they all grow cash crops (cashews, peannuts, seasame) in order to buy their food (oil, rice, sugar) which is somewhat subsidized for them. Artifically cheap rice allowed their population to boom, now there is not enough land to grow enouch millet to feed themselves and there is no more forest to hunt for meat in. Now rice is going up... and I'm realizing how ridiculous it is to feed the Gambia with rice imported from half a world away when they were perfectly fine feeding themselves. "Development" is only money-based, economics based, and just tries to pull developing countries into the world of import/export, and therefore dependency on fossil fuels. It's all about moeny- anytime money changes hands in the gambia, that's a good thing for the country, no matter if it destroys the environment, social and cultural structures. One of the first things I realized in the Gambia was that I wanted to be a counter-develpoment worker, and I'm sticking to that (we all are as PCVs), just daily trying to point out the values of traditional culture, food, way of life... trying to beef up their cultural self-esteem.

That's the news here, we are keeping on keepin on!

Hey guys... *ahem* it's been ahwile, I know... sorry bout that. But I'm back! In woolof they say "there was a river since i've seen you"- gej na la gis! And it's this instant guilt trip- because it's one of the pillars of society here to check in with everyone you know about every other day, let em know where the home people are(they are there only, with peace obly), where the kids are(there only, thanks be to God), and how your afternoon is (here only, with only peace, praising God, thanks be to God). There are many volunteers, and I'm gonna say particularly the guys, who get so amazingly good at these back-and-forth greeting rituals, going at acutioneer-speed, asking about the children and the health and praising Gods even when I'm pretty sure they're self-proclaimed athesists... ah but it's just impressive. I usually just rattle off a string of lazy "peace only"s.

So anyway, I just got back from Guinea! Guinea Konakary, not Guinea Bissau, since there's two of them, which I didn't know until I got here. There were seven us, leaving from the very eastern town of Basse, at around midnight. We're taking a European version of the Subaru, and we rent out the last 3 spots so that we don't have to Gambi-pack like sardines for what is to be this 28-hr-ride (granted, many hours spent outside the car, for a variety of fun reasons). They go through the elaborate ritual of shuffling our bags around on top, strapping em down with miles of rope, testing this and that, men everywhere with flashlights... and finally the driver gives us the sign and we pile into our wagon- thinking the red and silver sparkly shag covering the seats is nothing but a good omen. WRONG! There's no head lights, and even though the driver is sure that he can make it down the wretched road without them, we demand a new car. When we finally do take off again, with headlights, we are all shocked at just. how. wretched. the road is... our driver is barreling in-between, and through, the swimming pool-sized pot holes so fast though that we just gape in admiration... and wonder if he is escapeing the police? Anyway, we barrel through Gambia, then Senegal, and then sometime in the wee hours of the morning we camp on the border between Senegal and Guniea, in between huge 18-wheelers. In the morning we're off again... the car breaks, twice, which surprises us not at all considering Omar-the-driver and his mad man rally-car-driver ways. The shocks on our old car suffered, and so now we're sitting in a small Guinean village not at all stoned from the joints Omar smokes, eating mangos and staring back at the locals while we wait for... get this... the town welder to FORGE a new piece for the poor shock. OK. Eventually we do get there, into Pita, around 3 AM. Our ride was bumpy and sleepless but pretty fun, considering all the mangos (not yet ripe in the Gambia) and the ipod's bumpin through my little travel speakers. We stay the night in this semi-city at a tourist hotel for less than 4 dollars and the next morning we are OFF! to Dookie (that's right), a tiny village where a tiny man with a big nose, heart, personality, and penchant for abbreciations, meets us. "Hello!Hello Bonjour! I just got back with these two SG's (super girls!) from a K.A.H (kick ass hike)!!" He says. Everything he says comes with abbreviations and exclamation marks. The two SG's are cool girls working in Guinea, one from America and one from France, but they leave the next day and the week is ours to be led around by the man, Hassan Bah. He gives us bananas, rice with leaf sauce and palm oil, eucalyputs tea or nescafe with local honey... and more bananas, many more. He gives us 3 round beautiful Guinean-style huts with grass roofs, and he gives us hiking tours of his paradaise with a whole lotta love. Turns out a Peace Corps volunteer helped Hassan get this little tourist lodge together back in the 90's and it's been going well ever since... his guest book shows hundreds of PCV's and European tourists who have discovered this sweet getaway. The seven of us have a booze-free (Ok, well. the 2 boxes of wine that Karissa brought don't last long) and waterfall-soaked 4 days in the canyons and forests of the Fouta D'Jalan (that's the big raised plateau that we're on, the one that broke Omar's car to climb up). It's the dry season, the very end of the dry season, but still the place is lush. We, coming from the parched and scorched Gambia, are baffled and we commence Gambia-bashing and Guniea-PCV-envying from the minute we arrive. There are coffee trees, cola nut trees, banana trees, just TREES! And waterfalls, seemingly around every bend. There are baboons, and green mambas, and bush pigs (like wart hogs), and we are told there are deer and mountain cats... We're all led up and down this plateau by Hassan, often just bushwhacking (I taught him that word one morning as I was sliding and stumbling over his choice of "trail"). And we're trailed by Ebrima (arabic for Abraham), Hassan's super-cool aprentis. Of the 7 of us, Cam and Alex are the only ones who speak Fula, the primary language in Guinea. I speak Woolof and Karissa, Rob and Beth speak Mandika, the least popular language here. Ebrima speaks Pular and Woolof, and French, of course, of which very few of us speak very little. Ebrima is sweet tho, he just hangs back as we hike and we chat with him in woolof and fula and when we say something true or good he says "Thank YOU!." His other English word he says, when we get to a sketchy part of the non-trail, is "TRY!." In those difficult moments climbing a boulder or downed log, Hassan favors "PRESS!" PRESS and TRY and EASY EASY! All very good advice, and good as a combo. As we laugh and joke around in English, we hear Ebrima giggling along too, just from the contagiousness of laughing cuz he's just a good dude like that. He's fun, and he takes us to meet his mom and dad one day on the way back from a hike, and brings us 7 avacados on our last day. Yay for cool people, really. Hassan's wife is another one of those, she cooks amazingly and does our laundry. His brother is another, he offers to go to the Wed. market and set up a car for us all the way back to the Gambia. His kids too, a handful of 5 year olds trying so hard to stay out of the guests' way but unable to resist greeting us 100 times a day in French and Fula. At Hassan's promting, we all take billions of pictures at this overlook or atop that random arch-shaped rock, and we will post them all on facebook for you who want to see. At night we hang out, conversing and debating, predicting each other's life paths and the future of our world... One night we camp out on flat rocks overlooking a great canyon. Hassan leads us out there, sits down and does not roll a joint of not marijuana and not out of brown paper bag paper. He thanks us and walks away "to sit still for 20 minutes before HBH (heading back home)" We thank him for the amazing spot and sit chatting about how the moon orbits the sun and how exactly does it pull on the tides again? and other important things. We sleep out on sleeping bags and I get up early the next morning morning and find a secluded perch on a flat grey rock... ahh... it's overlooking green green forests and I can hear a rushing waterfall below... oh man.

Friday morning we leave in our pre-arranged car, which takes us to Labe. Here, Rob, Alex, and Beth leave me, Cam and Karissa cuz they're Peace Corps vacation days have run out. But first we wander around the maze of a market and buy stuff, like Guinean rocks. I ask the lady what they're for and she responds by picking up a large chunk of slate and biting into like its a bar of dark chocolate. Sold! I buy three little bags of rocks for my pregnant village friends to eat(it's the Guinean calcium vitamin!). The 4 of us get off ok, and it's sad to see them go, and then there are 3 and we find a little hotel to stay in and eat really good pizza. The next morning, the 3 of us head to a bordertown, Maliville, and precede to HIKE to Senegal! That's right, we hike! We have no guide book, but Cam remembers an ex-Gambian PCV telling him this was not only a possible border crossing, but also way faster than in a car, and pretty. Cam thinks he can promise me and Karissa that's it's all down hill, and Guineans enthusiastically confirm these ideas.... so ok, we say. A man in Mali-ville leads us to a little shop where some thin women with big bags are sort of fluttering around, preparing for the same trek. They are porters, paid to trek the 21 miles down this plateu (3500 ft down, by cam-estimate) carrying heavy stuff on their heads and backs and everyone wants us to wait for them and go with them but we are impatient so we go ahead... we camp that night after just two hours of the hike and the next day we catch up with them. They are wisely sitting out the hot part of the day (it's around 105- 110 F)and smiling at us as we gulp down the water at this kind compound. We move on (we win by the way, beating those little women down the mountain, but only cuz we're stupid whities willing to dehydrate ourselves and hike in the heat of the day). All in all, its a fun hike and we end up in Senegal, with dark colored pee but a nice memory of Guinea. Now we go see our friend Sara Lee, an ex-Gambian PCV who extended for a year to Senegal. She lives in a big town now, with electricity and 4 kinds of beer and 2 other volunteers and everyone speaks French... compared to her old village just a 15 k from mine, where there was no water much less electricity. She's my hero... Here Cam departs (another one fallen to finished PC vacation days) and Karissa and I hang out, eating lots of amazing food (wart hog sandwiches anyone?), watching grey's anatomy (could that show be any better? i cry twice per episode, maybe just because I miss it), drinking cold water and sleeping with a fan. Finally we leave Senegal to go home, with Sara too, whose going back to her old Gambian village for a wedding ceremony. We travel all day, packed into the back of a covered pick up truck. The three of us white girls argue with the 3 Sengalese women as to whose big butts are taking up more of the really uncomfortable bench. We see so many baboons, and some wart hogs, sorry bout the sandwiches... 3 kilometers from our Gambian stop, our car breaks for good and we allhave to walk. We get swooped up by a Gambian driver/white knight and his big white van... and finally we are home.

Good vacation. At the end, we have a list of what the Gambia IS good at, and what it DOES have, compared to the snazzy, developed countries of Guinea and Senegal. We can better bean sandwiches. We have more mahoghanys. We have cuter grade 1-6 school uniforms. We have a better APCD (our boss). More baobob trees, more donkeys, more desert, more little kids screaming Tou-BAAAWWWWBBB!!!" Their little kids just politely call us Portuguese, and don't even demand that we give them candy or our bikes. And their young men don't hiss at us like in the Gambia. And the Gambia only packs 12 people into a 7-seater subaru, Guinea puts 14 and two on the roof. Pshaw. Although, when I call her Sengalese posting "Posh Corps" not "Peace Corps" Sara Lee snorts "Here?" She says, looking around, past the street lights to the barefoot begging boys and the way-too-thin young men sitting around because they have no work.. "OK. Not posh. But still..."

The best news? I still have 15 vacation days left!!

Abli, just a rotund little ball of joy! Favorite kid ever.

Merry Christmas everyone- hope all is peaceful over there!

Well, here we just had the Muslim Big Holiday of Tobaski, where they sacrifice a ram and just cook the hell out of the poor thing- they cook every. single. part and then, with the ram testicles, which are schockingly large, they make purses out of them! In the morning, the old people and most males go under a big tree and pray, and then the imam (spiritual leader) goes around and kills the rams of those who were able to get one. The first goat meal is "sauce"- a bowl full of fried potatos, onion, other tubors, oil, and hacked up ram, including heart, lougs, stomach and plenty of splintered bone so that the marrow doesn't go to waste. Then they tear up bread and sop up the goo... it was glutinous and so good. Then they roast the hoofs and legs, head, ect and throw it all in a cauldron with water to stew... the deliciousness that results is served on top of cere (the millet) or rice for the next 6, maybe 7 meals in a row. For me, I can grab a Fast Ali's extra burger every now and then... but for them, it's the only meat they'll get all year so you see why they make the most of it. Last year, Tobaski fell on my second day in village. I didn't eat with the family but got a bowl of my own... I remember opening the bowl, looking and the "meat" parts and thinking it looked like a diagram of a cell (golgi apparatus here, endoplasmic reticulum there...). But this year when my host mom poked a crinkly piece of what could have been an aorta to my section of the food bowl I just said Bisimilah and chowed down... heh heh are you guys grossed out?

In the afternoon of Tobaski and the day after, everyone dresses up in their new clothes (the only ones they get all year usually) and goes from door to door around the village with their age mates in a group, asking for "Salibo!" That means the compound should give them a dalasi or 50 bututs, or some coos or peanuts that they can sell to the bitik... and then in return, the group prays for them and everyone asks each other to forgive them and to meet the new year in peace (ah-meen!). Then at night, my host brother the bitik owner (bitik- small store selling the basics) and the other twenty-somethings bring out the music and attaya and they have a little dance party... all night, for 2 nights in a row! Everyone really goes all out, esp. the young girls during Tobaski, getting elaborate outfits sown with bright colored sequinced-splashed frilly fabrics, and matching gaudy earrings and necklaces, Barbie-esque shiny shoes and hair decorations... the hair braiding gets extremely elaborate with different colored fake hair woven in (blonde, red) and the tighest little braids covering their heads in rows and swirls. Henna too, on the feet and one hand is a must. I "asobe"ed (dressed alike) with all the women in my compound, all of us wearing the same style outfit in different day-glo colors. Mine was Get your Groove on Green, and pictures are on their way! Aw, it was so much fun. And I have ear plugs so I got some sleep too.

So, now we are making the most of a warm Christmas here, with a baby banana tree for a Christmas tree and the beach instead of sledding... Merry Christmas from Africa!

This is my big tree planting project for next year- it got accepted as a Peace Corps Partnership so it's now just waiting for funding! Please go check it out guys, the link is below!

Hello friends and family! Salam malekum, peace to you

As a agriculture/forestry Peace Corps Volunteer in The Gambia, West Africa, I'm excited to announce the "Trees for Fuel" reforestation pilot project! This is a tree planting project between myeself, a few other Peace Corps Volunteers and even some Gambian Department of Forestry counterparts, to be carried out in several villages in my district. It is registered now as a Peace Corps Partnerships project, which means everyone can go to the link and glance at the proposal and, if you want, contribute ANY amount right then and there. If you have nothing extra to contribute right now, or course, no worries. But please, if you know others with charitable tendencies or interests in rescuing this planet's forests, please pass this link on.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/donors/contribute/projdetail.cfm?projdesc=635-042®ion=africa

This is why I'm so excited about this project:

Driving a few hundred kilometers through northern Senegal to the airport a few weeks ago I saw the shocking picture of desertification in full for the first time. The parkland of The Gambia, sparse but still treed, unfolded mile by mile into a devastated washed-out waste land. It's not fair to call it a desert, conjuring up pictures of lizards and cactus, red sand dunes and canyons, wolves howling at the moon from atop mesas. This was a man-made expanse, stripped of its layers of life down to a nutrient-void greyness, dotted only occasionally with an angry little shrub inevidably snagging some shred of plastic trash. Yikes. Senegal has electricity; power lined cut through the desert scene in all directions. Yes they are "developing," but at what cost?

The Gambia in in trouble, but it's not a desert yet. And the institutions are in place to inform people that desertification is a real scenario, that planting trees will keep their wells wet and the rainy season long. The time is right to make it "cool" to plant you own trees for firewood- the concept of planting mangoes and cashews caught on beautifully and it's just a small hop to making fuel wood tree propagation a practice.

So- thanks for listening! Pass on the link to all who might be interested and help us if you can. Feel free to email me with any questions. I wish you all well!

Hey guys! It's been too long since I blogged. Life can be really busy in a slow-moving way. These past few months, it seems like I've been in Kombo so much for this and that... before my Morocco vacation to get all that in order, and then I was gone to Morocco for 2 weeks, and then now this past weekend has been the Great All Volunteer meeting! It's so wonderful to come down and just see EVERYONE, all hundred of us, just relaxing, indulging and partying. For all the tough moments, all the dirty days and un-luxurious duties of site, Life really rewards 2-fold... listen to this: We all came in on Wed night and hit a karioke bar in the touristy part of town... goooood stuff! Who knew we were so talented? Our rendentition of Ace of Bases's All That She Wants was probably phenonmenal. My sister reminded me of how we found the tape and memorized all the words in 5th grade... Then Thursday morning, Rodney, our env. sector director, let us storm his house to cook for our big Thanksgiving dinner. He provided 3 cases of beer for us, music, his entire kitchen, his BBQs, playstation and fresh basil from his garden so we could bake 20 (yep.) pumpkin pies and roast 260(that's right.) quarters of chicken... there's not much better than cooking out with friends with good music and good beer (well... it was beer anyway!). That night we all got prettied up and headed over to the ambassador's mansion with our gross quantities of chicken and pie and preceded to stuff ourselves with so much good food. The new agriculture/forestry volunteers that just recently got into country were there too and we got to hang out with them a little. We all swam in the moonlight in the ambassador's pool, with the palm trees and ocean as a backdrop. The next morning we attended a formal "40 year anniversary of PC The Gambia" ceremony in a big room with lots of important people. We had to one by one stand up and tell them what we were up to in our villages... the president's band played some tunes for us, and the ceremony was over before it became painfully boring. More free good food followed. After some afternoon beach time, Life granted us yet another ridiculously wonderful boon... JelBrew, the one brewery in the country, threw us another free beer party! That means we all go to the brewery and hang out on their patio all night while a few cool employees feed us beer after beer from the two big fridges... 30 cases in all!! Goodness. This was our second, even better than the last- the full moon was shining down as we busted moves to our ipods and there was a movement amongst the guys to take off their shirts and sprawl around on the Peace Corps Land Rover to pose for a calender we're making... at least that's what we told them it was for...

Anyway! Much to be thankful for. I miss my family and home so much this time of year, but good friends here make is all A OK. The next morning we has our All Volunteer meeting, which was pretty nice... lots of annoucements, introductions to new NGO's and partners, updates on health stuff, ect. Now all is over and we're all heading our separate ways, until the nect JelBrew party, which, rumor has it, is going to feature a new beer- a mead actually, made with Gambian honey!

So life has been luxurious. I just got back from Morocco too, which I won't go into, but it was amazing! Figs, oases, being cold, and a rented car named Fatima were the highlights. (:

In Jamagen, all is well... things are gearing up in village for a great second year, inshallah. Village life is so peaceful, finally I feel just completely at home there. Our two chickens started laying eggs! Our compound got a puppy! I'm tutoring my host brother, just started a little garden with my two 12 year old sis's and am starting a "nursery" school for all ages once or twice a week to practice A,B,C's and numbers and maybe do some fun projects too. Other than that, just hanging out until time to collect tree seeds and plant.

Hope all is well for everyone all around the world, take care!

Allison Hoff, a health and community development worker, wrote these awesome haikus. They do a good job of summing stuff up!

Please kids, wash your hands.

Fine, just don't grab the goat shit.

Okay, don't touch me.

I can't speak Woolof.

What the hell are you saying?

I'll just smile at you.

You're still talking.

I hope this isn't important.

My answer is yes.

This meat is chewy.

Maybe it's just bad chicken.

Nope, sheep intestines!

I need something sweet.

There are cough drops in my med kit.

This can't be healthy.

They are called freckles.

They are not mosquito bites.

And that is acne.

Hey guys!! Enjoying fall? The crisp air, the crunchy leaves, there's no season like it right? Well I'm enjoying 100% humidity and sweltering heat of the end of the rainy season, which is charmingly timed with Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting- no eating or drinking from sun up to sun down. So bad moods, low energy and lots of colds and malaria do their part to make this month... not that exciting. Anyway... here's some excerts from an email I just sent my sister that tells a little about what I'm up to now that I'm officialy in my second year of volunteering!

"Well... life here is good... it's a little hard in ways but so amazing in others. I'm never able to be as productive as I want to be, but am also learning to just "be here now" and watch bugs and kids. But I'm always wanting to make the most of my time here... but you know, there are language barriers and cultural barriers ect.. and it's just hard to make anything happen. Last dry season Jamagen (my village) planted a tree nusrsery and that has been my main project I guess... getting those outplanted and working with the village every sunday to put up a fence, tend the field, ect. and it's been as awesome success. Then, I worked with the forestry dept. and others on tree nurseries in schools, as part of that "All-School Tree Nursery Comp" I always talk about, and that was a minor success but had a lot of problems, oh. so many hang ups! Things are sooo un organized here and gambians have a different way of thinking and communicating.... not that we don't get along but working together... sometimes its just a halarious mess. Next, I wrote a proposal to get a few thousand American dollars to do a small project in 6 villages starting soon, with the end of the rains. I haven't heard back yet about the funding. but the project is.. yep, tree nurseries! But this time, not mangos or fruit trees at all, but only fuel wood trees. The Gambia's beautiful forests are all but gone and it's so heartbreaking... most of it is from women collecting firewood. The funds would actually pay villagers for each successful tree they plant... it's based on the Green Belt Project in Kenya which was really successful. If I get that going then I will be so happy... trees, I really love them! The giant baobobs, silk cottons and mahoghanys- they remind me of dinosaurs, they seem like they could seriously just up root and start roaming around, like in the Lord of the Rings. They are magestic. I'm also encouraging the youth group of Jamagen to harvest honey and sell that, and get that organized. That's going well. Last thing, I'm a little nervous I guess and so am dragging my feet on this project, but I want to have kind of a kid's club in Jamagen. Something that mixes environmental ed, arts and crafts, fishing and other sweet skills, and yeah i guess teaching a little English too... I hesitate to teach English and might instead teach reading and writing in Woolof. I hate that assimilation thing, it's what I hate about development work. I know English is good to know and all that, but gosh it just goes against something in me... to come and spread the great Western gospel. So maybe if certain people kids who already go to school want to be tutored in English, then I can do that. But I'm hesitating to start because I don't want to start something I can't finish, don't want to be in over my head. But I'm bout to just jump in.

Speaking of jumping in! I have a new site mate, her name is Philipa and she lives about 3 k away in the same village as Elgn, my other site mate (both teachers)... she's rad, it's so fun to have another girl near by. Well, my story about jumping in goes... it's sweltering hot one Sunday, during Ramadan. Everyone is just laying around fanning themselves. The three of us snapped and decided to break the PC law about not swimming in the river (this is off the record). We bought a watermelon, the first of the season and some cookies and took our bikes to the river. We met 4 small boys doubled up atop some donkeys and they too were going for a dip, so they showed us the way and assured there were no hippos here, only fish. They lead us through some mangrove areas to a nice deep spot and entertained us for the afternoon. Anyway, it was much fun just floating the the brown mostly warm water... reminded me of my days in east Texas lakes. We're schemeing now to build a raft, since there are no skiing boats around. It's nice to go be away from people in nature, you feel almost not in The Gambia. The palm forests all around, the beautiful birds... the cows."

Anyway hope everyone is enjoying. I'm going to Morrocco at the end of October... SOOO excited!

Update on Fatou:

I got a donation, enough to pay for her first semester and some of her second for grade 11! Awesome, I'm going back to site now and can't wait to tell her. Thanks Yaron!

This is the first time I've done this... I'm asking for money for a Gambian cause! Here is the plea: an 11th grade girl needs money to finish school

Here is why you should help: This girl is the most inspiring girl student I've met in the Gambia. Her name is Fatou Dabo, and she is a Fula living in a village near mine. I met her mom first- a skinny energetic Fula women, fiesty and sweet. I ended up giving her mom some soy bean to try and hanging out in their compound for the afternoon.

Fatou came in and greeted me in Woolof and in English and we chatted. I had never before met a young girl in The Gambia who could converse well in English so I suriously asked her about her schooling. It turns out she has been going to school in Kombo, living with an aunt, and just comes home during the rainy season to help farm. School was free for her until 9th grade, and paying the 3,000 dalasi (115 US dollars)a year fee has been hard for her family- of course, because they are subsistance farmers/gardeners. Last year, she began grade 11 but the money ran out and the school had to turn her away. I ask her what she will do now, expecting her to not care one way or another about finishing school... sadly, that is the popular view in the villages. But no! She says she LOVES school, loves reading writing and math, (math? i ask in disbeief) and that she wants to go back and finish. She says proudly that she does well in school. She tells me she goes to her uncle's hut every evening to study (this is summer break for her! and it doesn't look like she'll be going back anyway, and she's studying in the evenings!?) I'm totally taken aback by her un-fashionable attitude- a young girl caring strongly about school is not something I've come across yet here. I've offered to tutor girls in my village but even as they politely agree, I can see that there is no interest. Fatou is 17 she tells me, and her father wants her to leave school and marry. With all the rebellious-ness you'd expect from a teenager but in a wierd reverse way she raises her small voice a little and says "My father tells me to leave the school and marry but I don't want this. I tell him let me finish school." My inner feminist cheerleader is waving pom poms and cheering "You go girl, you go you go!" I resist the urge to cheer and instead encourage her to keep studying on her own.

We sat in her spotless mud hutt and talked all afternoon, and she came to visit me a few days later in Jamagen. The thing that impresses about Fatou is that she loves school in a time and a place where it's not the cool thing to do. She is truly a rariety. She really can read and write- she wrote her name for me and read Newsweeks in my hut... this may sound trivial but the young girls in Jamagen who have finished highschool cannot read, write or speak English. Because it was not important to them, which is not all their fault, it's a problem with really deep roots.

Anyway! Can you help? I'm looking for friends and family who want to support this awesome young lady. It's 1,000 D per semester (US $39) and there's three semesters in a year. She would start the first week of September, grade 11. It's coming up soon! If you can donate any money to sponsor Fatou, let me know. If you're annoyed that I'm soliciting money, I'm really sorry!

stephrayburn@gmail.com

Summa time and the living... well "it's not easy in The Gambia"

The rainy season is here finally, tho that doesn't mean it's raining hard or everyday. It just means the rain is around, here and there, and the relentless brown and orange is being overtaken by green. Actually the rains are late... usually by early July they have set it regularly and heavily. Still, up-country (east Gambia) looks "like a park" now, covered in grass and even the north bank has gotten enough for the crops to germinate.

So... how are my days flled these days? I often go to near-by Kerewam to work the awesome Department of Forestry guys there... they were my main partners in working on the All School Tree Nursery Competition in the north bank. The competition was not a huge success this year, due to some hang ups at the national level but several school did create great tree nurseries and are planning on outplanting soon. The schools are closing now for the summer but will keep an eye on their trees and outplant as soon as the rains are steady. Now we start planning for next year's competition!

Jamagen and two other villages within 2k are participating in a forestry department initiative to create wood lots... the "PWAMP" project. This keeps the women of Jamagen busy preparing the land and tending their little tree nursery- every Sunday is a work day! I have started to bring a bucket of water with a packet of "jumpkin," a powdered drink mix they sell here at the little bitiks because otherwise they don't drink. Several hours of work in the hot morning sun and they don't drink! But the work days are effective... and halarious. It's a bunch of women with their tools, babies strapped to their backs, arguing, gossiping, cracking up, throwing things, stealing babies, and yeah, working a little too- so fun for me!

The forestry department has just delivered their promised chain link fence to the PWAMP villages- my village, Jamagen and two others near by that I monitor. Now the fence goes up and we outplant our trees from nursery to wood lot! Our wee and humble wood lot contains mango, cashew, some nitrogen-fixing "green-manure" and firewood species and a bush fruit tree called mandinka cola. And our coveted beds of sisal, the wonder-species for live fencing. It looks like agave and grows to be about 4 feet high- even the goats don't brave the huge spikes. We are wondering now if some sort of tequila can be brewed from it... that might be my next project. (: Have I mentioned that I made a successful cashew-fruit liquor? I just added sugar and yeast and let it sit, and it was so good!

Anyway, the forestry dept. will be bringing up more seedlings as well. Next year I hope we can expand our tree nursery in Jamagen and start tree nurseries in the other near-by villages.

There are other small projects I'm working on too I suppose... trying to get some "alley cropping" going in the fields around Jamagen. Basically, when the soil is degraded like it is here, you can add fertilizer (which is expensive) or you can plant trees that act as green fertilizer. This is not a common practice here, it's a new idea but the women and a few men farmers are patronizing me and allowing me to plant a fast-growing pea tree in their fields and gardens. I can't wait to see how it works out... if it sticks, it will be a good source of protein for the village and maybe we can expand it's use for green manure.

OK, that's about it for work. This week in Kombo has been ridiculously fun... Jul-Brew, the one and only Gambian beer, threw us an all-you-can-drink party on July 4! It was a good time... a hundred of us volunteers throwing back Jul-brew with lime, dancing to the blaring i-pod and speaker set up... all in the out-door worker break area at the jul-brew factory! A few days later, our awesome APCD threw us a laid back dinner BBQ at his house. His beautiful tropical backyard held all the volunteers who cared to pitch 75 dalasi (3 bucks) and served up delicious pastas in huge metal bowls, lentil burgers on the grill. His new toddler and 3 dogs played underfoot and we all played like we were at an American BBQ. Our new country director, who flew in that day, showed up to meet us all and the party was full of lively how-to-make-a-gambiatopia chatter...good times, so different than being at site!

Beach and good food filled the rest of our days, along with some mandatory PCV meetings discussing work stuff, problems and successes, ect. Kombo is nice but I'm ready to head back now... I miss the Woolof! Oh, and we got another language test- I got advanced low! (There's beginner low, middle, high then intermediate l,m,h then advanced l,m,h) I can't beieve I can actually hack my way through conversations now... it seemed so hopeless when I first got to village. (:

Miss you all and am hoping all of us get rain soon soon. Jamma ag nop! Peace and love

These are cashew apples. The cashew nut that we know and love is inside the green pod at the end. The fruit is super juicy and delicious yuuum...

Bee Killing or Keeping and Spending the Night with the People of the Forest

Cam comes to visit for a few days... We do some work, borrowing my older brother's bike and riding to a near-by school. We help them Itt a really late start on their tree nursery and I'm so impressed by the students- they've brought in seeds from all kinds of bush trees and are falling over each other to get them planted... the two teachers helping keep it organized and write down exact numbers and varities.

Then we lend the people of Jamagen moral support by drinking attaya in the garden while they attempt to goat-proof the garden fence. The once-lush garden is mostly empty now, with the cabbage and onions all harvested and sold at the market and new garden beds being put off until the rains. But the few peppers and sorrel that were still growing have been relieved of their leaves by all the small ruminants that would brave the barbed wire... and also, my garden, which was late in starting because I got to Jamagen in January, has sadly been ravaged. I got 3 tomatos and 1 nice eggplant, tho! It's so dry here, there's not a bit of green for the goats and cows to eat so really I feel OK about feeding them my eggplant leaves.

That night, we drink my first attempt at cashew apple wine- not too bad. I never knew you could just throw yeast and sugar in water with some fruit for flavor and have something that passes as wine-ish. Maybe I shouldn't go so far as to compare it to wine, but at least it's alcoholic. (:

The next day we bike to a market in a near-by village I've been wanting to try... we buy 30 cashew fruits for our next batch of wine. Nice bike ride, cool market, only a few "toubab!" squawks pointed in our direction. That night we go "swim" in the creek, which is pretty low right now but nice and cool. Then, we do something ground breaking. We spend the night in the forest. We grab the tent another volunteer gave me, buy some firewood and pack a few things to cook. When I tell me host mom and dad where we're going they smile and nod... pause... ask me again what we're doing, then smile and nod again, saying "Ok, until tomorrow morning..." A little puzzled but not the out right shock I was expecting! The next morning when we return tho, everyone we meet all day asks me where I went last night. And for the rest of the week. My host sister greets us with her huge laugh and a "How are the forest people?" instead of "How are the home people?" They ask me if we saw hyenas, which were a problem up to about ten years ago, when finally the forest was depleted enough to run them off for good. I must admit tho, I dreamt about hippos and snakes... Anyway, the forest quiet and lingering smell of campfire smoke was nice.

The next evening, Cam has left. A man from onw of my favorite compounds comes to my door just after sun-down... it's time. I put on my one long sleeve shirt and jeans, two pairs of socks and my tennies, my rubber gloves from my med kit and rush out to meet him. He is wearing flip flops and a tank top, but is grateful when I hand him one of my bee suits. It's my first village honey harvest!

We go not to one of his actual "Kenyan top-bar" hives, the kind that you can harvest and leave in-tact to make more honey, but to a good old log hive, set way up in a tree. As I stand pondering the lack of duct-tape around the openings on my wrists and ankles, Mustafa is up the tree, flashlight under his chin, tying a rope around the log. Then the log is on the ground and the hum of the bees is awesome. He lights dry grass on fire near-by and sets to work, first removing the cover from one end of the log. A piece of wood from the top comes off too and he is grabbing combs and, wiping bees off and throwning them in the bucket- with his bare hands! And he's barefoot! He's quick and gentle with the bees, if unsentimental about raiding this bee-village, taking most of the food they've worked so hard to store up for their up-coming hungry season. He points out the queen cell to me, as I feebly stand by holding my headlamp for him. In minutes he is replaceing the cover, re-tying the robe, shimmying back up the tree and replacing the log. Alright then! My first harvest. The pool of bees left on ground, drowsy from the smoke, have made a cool amoeba-like pattern. There's enough honey and wax left in the hive for many of them to live on, I think, and start over. But man that's got to be frustrating!

We eat beautiful golden honeycomb as we walk back to village and Mustafa laughs at me when I ask how many stings he thinks he got. Lots! Nonnie, my host mom, helps me squish all the honey cells through a strainer, which is great fun. The next day I try honey in cocoa instead of sugar and it's so good! The fam. balks at first when I bring out the honey for our rice porridge (replacing the normal half-kilo of sugar) but they like it. Uuum honey. I will harvest again soon with my host dad.

Jamagen at work

So... it's been awhile. After In Service Training last month, which was about a week of cool hands-on honey harvesting and tree grafting work, 'development' things in Jamagen have been moving fast. Well... fast relative to Jamagen's average speed. which, if you compare their style of dress, architecture, occupations and diets to that of their culture 400 years ago... well, it's not fast.

A while ago, I visited to main Department of Forestry in Banjul, to say hi and talk to them about a reforestation with native tree species project I wanted to start. I didn't get to finish my second sentence about the project idea, but their agenda for the meeting worked out for me too- they were looking for villages to participate in a wood lot project! Great I said, we've already started out tree nursery, the only problem is fencing. We can't afford barbed wire and after the rains end and animals are hungry again, the baby trees will be eaten or trampled. So we've started some live fencing species this year, and by next year they should...Great! they interrupt We'll GIVE you fencing, not just barbed wire but chain link! (Is that really neccessary?) And then we'll give you baby mangos, cashews, gmelinas (fast growing, used for timber)! Awesome.

Back in village, everyone is excited. Paradoxically, we have to CUT 400 fence poles before they give us the fence, which means trimming the branches off the few large trees dotting the fields. Sigh. Also, since they're giving us seedlings, enthusiasm for our nursery has trickled down a bit. But, not to look a gift horse in the mouth- the two-hectare wood lot will surely save a lot of Jamagen's pitiful "bush" from certain death by cooking fire. At the next meeting, it is decided that Sundays will be work days and the fence posts will be collected by everyone. Also, there's still motivation for planting our live fence because after a live fence grows in, the chain link can be moved to another project area or sold. Another idea is thrown out- we can plant corn inbetween the baby seedlings as a community crop! I wonder who will weed and harvest, and then who will help eat the corn? But I save my question for next time. (Family, remember that cartoon "who will help me sow my corn? no one. who will help me eat my corn? everyone! hahaha!) OK, pretty good.

Sunday comes and sure enough, all the men bring their axes and donkey carts, the women bring their hoes, and candy (?). The young men scoot up these huge trees with bare feet and hands, hacking off all branches except the main top branch. When the branches crack, I wince a little (yes, I want to hug the trees) but they hoot and laugh "AH! What is this?!" Others load the poles onto carts and take them to the fence site where the older men are digging post holes and packing dirt around the new posts. The women are clearing the land of what little greenery came back after the Great Bush Fire of Steph's 24th Birthday. They are also fighting over minties and who was late and has to pay the 5 delassi late fee. About half gets done, the rest saved for the next Sunday. Two other villages near by are also participating and I go once a week to check on them... their progress is about the same as Jamagen, sweet!

So, in the next 3 weeks or so before the rains set in, we will ideally have our fence and seedlings! In addition to the seedlings they give us, we'll plant our nursery seedlings at the end of the rains, and go ahead with our sisal-and-lime live fence idea.

In other work-related news, the Gambia-wide All-School Tree Nursery Competition, which was off to a rough start, is definitely underway. On June 4, I go on trek with a representative from the Dept. of Forestry and one from Ed. Dept to judge all the schools in the North Bank. It's taken several trips to the area offices in Kerewam, by me and Rachel, an ed. volunteer, but finally all is organized and ready. We'll judge the schools on how many tree seedlings have at least germinated, and how many varieties they have, as well as how many students participated. Then, in September we do another judging trek to see how well the tree seedlings were actually outplanted, then give prizes based on that. Good deal!

I have written a project idea proposal with the help of my Ag-Fo boss, Rod, on a small piolet project for reforestation with native trees in my district. The thing is, there are lots of government and NGO-sponsered wood lots, like the one Jamagen is doing, which promote monoculture lots of mangos and cashews. Ok, so bi-culture lots. And other fast-growing species, acaias and gmelina, are promoted but are their branches or even trunks are lopped often and never manage re-create a forest habitat. I'm hoping to address that... there's been some talk about travel agencies interested in "carbon offsetting"- they'd advertise their travel package as "green" and tourists would pay someone like me to facilitate a reforestation project that they could use to feel better about their travel. Trees during the rainy season can take in a ton of carbon I guess (literally a ton), which would theorectically offset the carbon put out by the flights. So, I'm looking- we'll see!

This is "sisal," the shrub that could save the forests of The Gambia! A live fence around a garden of Jamagen.

The garden at it's peak! Before all was harvested and goats ravaged every last speck of green that was left.

One of these things is not like the others...! Me visiting Roxi at her compound in her village in the kombos.

The 6:45 rooster crows at the break of dawn...

and pulls me out of my mosquito netted bed. My jogging shoes find their way on, my legs take me out into the still-cool morning air. The village is waking up slowly to the patient pleasant thud of the breakfast millet being pounded. My two 12 year old sisters stand over the mahoghany mortar each weilding a pounding stick, pounding out the sweet ryhthm of breakfast...i call out my thank you, which the appropriate greeting for anyone who is working, but my stomach knows I mean it.

I run past the women's garden, lush now with ripe cabbage, onions and tomatoes. My friend Roxi is watering. She calls out my name and asks if I've slept in peace, and notes truthfully that I am, in fact, running. I give her a big Peace only and note back that she is, indeed, watering.

I run past the fields of Jamagen, giant swaths of land, recently charred black by a major forest fire. These bush fires are way too common here, encouraged in the dry season by the loss of topsoil and trees and the dry Harmattan winds. A few large trees that dot the fields are blackened, but surviving; all smaller trees that were being left in fields or along field borders for their beneficial leaf litter are toast. I can see blackened mango and gmelina wood lot planted last year by the village youth group and feel a sense of urgency to help get a new orachrd started. New growth is popping up now in-between the black, giving my morning scene some nice neon green zing.

Home again, I wash up under the big mango tree in my back yard. The effortless morning songs of the birds above me are in stark contrast with the pained bray of donkey- he tries so hard! I laugh out loud, then text a good morning haiku about it to my up-country friend Cam. I listen to BBC and sweep my house. I'm called to breakfast, yummy coos porridge shared my my two moms and 5 sisters from a large bowl... as always, there's much giggling and hasseling, laughing at the babies, talking about the day. All in Bamara, my family's first language, with snippets relayed to me in Woolof.

The day goes on... in the morning I go to the school, 2 k away. I teach general science to 3 classrooms of giggling seventh graders, two days a week. We address each other with the same mild amusement; our small grins say wow we really suck at each other's languages but this is definitely interesting. They take lots of notes, notes in English containing words like "combustion" and "room temperature"... they are used to understanding little and memorizing lots but I do my best to make these concepts real... I move students around to illustrate attractive forces in chemcical reactions... I translate to broken woolof often amid shreiks of laughter. Are they learning? Ummm... it's debateable, for sure, but if I weren't there, they would sit through that period without a teacher so for me that ends the debate- it's better than nothing!

Back at home, after lunch I lay around with Roxi and her daughter, her mother and others... it's hot. We lay, we chat, we appreciate the "sweet wind" when it gives us a little breeze. And then! They hear it- I do not- but there it is! The alcalo's son is banging on the rusty wheel rim haning from a mango tree in the middle of Jamagen- the meeting is called!! I bring attaya, sugar and also canned condensed milk to brew (yeah, it's wierd, but it's delicious). The meeting is held by the Alcalo's son, Osman Sar, the closest thing I have to a counterpart. He speaks in Woolof and his words are translated to Mandinka by another women. The women sit on matts, shelling peanuts, shushing their kids. The meeting is called by me, Osman says, to tell everyone that I want to help them start another woodlot. HHe talks about how great the last woodlot was, before it burned, and that we can do it again. He tells them I have brought sisal (a live-fencing species that I collected seedlings from from a neighboring village) and that this year we will work on a live fence and firebreak to surround the woodlot. We will call another meeting next week to plant the seeds of the fast-growing melina (prized for firewood) as a village. The fruit and the firewood can be sold for money in just a few years. Yes great! They say. The meeting was good... we'll see if it pans out and tree seeds get planted.

A friend recently emailed me these questions:

Sounds like there are only 2 wives.....but with

11 children??? What is typical size of family....birth outcomes?

Family Planning???? How is health care/illness/prevention handled???

HOw much education have the women had? What about the 25 year old

brother. At what age do men usually marry? Do they have to have

land/house/furniture before they can marry?

So, to answer. In my compound, there are two brothers, each with one wife. One of the women has 7 children, the olther has 2 of her own and there are 3 from a previous wife who past away a while ago. So, yeah, 12 kids! That's definitely typical.

There are two clinics fairly close (the more comprehensive one is maybe 7k away), and because they are funded by UniCef, and others, the visits are only 5 delassi (the same price as a half kilo of sugar). A girl in village recently had a baby. She went to the clinic to have it instead of staying home, which I think is rare here, but she said the clinic was understaffed and she ended up having the baby ALONE! Total time, from the time she left to go to the clinic to the time she returned home with a new baby in her arms, about 5 hours. Crazy! I was totally shocked, she was sitting up in her house that evening! I made her eat bread with peanut butter (which they don't do here, pnut butter is for cooking). But the little baby is fine, healthy enough and not premature.

Many children get sick, I think it is malaria. I'm not sure about this yet, but in the rainy season I hear malaria can be very bad (they have malaria season like we have flu season). People do die fairly young, but the old people who DO live are in incredible shape! I have seen two "goiters" on people, which come from a lack of iodized salt. I've also seen osteoporosis, arthritis, the usual things. There are a lot of things I attribute to inbreeding- a surprising number of deaf people, crossed eyes, stuttering (is that ever genetic? I don't know).

Basic medicines are avaible at the clinics for around 5 - 10 delassi, like pain relief stuff, and ink as an antiseptic. But when my little sister got sick (coughing up blood, maybe an upper respiratory infection? no idea) she went all the way to a big city area for blood tests and a shot. My compound has the money to do this, because one of the brothers is employed by the government, paving the road. But most would definitely not be able to do that (the transport alone would have cost 80 D for 2 of them). Everyone still collects medinice from the forests, all kinds of leaves and barks which they usually seem to make into teas.

There is also a "marabout," a traditional doctor type guy- most of the animistic aspects of traditional medicine have been replaced with Muslim religious aspects. I went to his hut one night with some women, one of which had been having body aches. She blamed on her family planning medicine, and had stopped taking it. She was still experiencing pain, so the women explained that they were done with the clinic and they were going to take "medicine for black people!" The marabout's hut had lots of powders, leaves, ect...a bundle of horse hair. I was offered some medicine but declined (if body still can't totally handle their water and food, I should probably not push it)!

Anyway, so traditional medicine is still around, but is on the decline. Most women do NOT take birth control, even though it's available I think for free or for cheap. Most men prefer their wives to have as many children as possible, even though their resources are strained. I think maybe it's a sign of virility and power, and also it's just the way things have always been. Population control is something I really want to address, but it's a touchy subject.

Yes, men should have their own compound, or a place in a compound before they marry. They should have enough money to pay the dowry and have a house built (evenutally one for them, one for the wife and kids). My 25 year old brother is not married yet, I think partially because he's saving up.

That's all for now! Everything's great, super interesting. I will post later about my 24th birthday, the oddest and one of the best birthday's I've had! (: Take care

Watch this video on the President of The Gambia curing AIDS. This is so telling of... a lot here. Many people believe this because their president would never lie to them.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,30200-hurd_p2623,00.html#

The article that goes with it:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1252349,00.html

Being away from America, on the outside of the bubble of American life, I've had some major realizations about the culture; the great American way is really bizzare. And it's not the only way, though from the inside it can seem that way.

Here's some major contrasts between here and there:

1. Here, petty/bratty arguing between kids doesn't seem to exist; the culture is not based on individualism and competition, so siblings, pre-teens, highschoolers, everyone communicates with everyone else with relaxed, comfortable respect. Not that there aren't fights, but they seem to be pretty cut and dry.

2. No one avoids eye contact when passing by; (you see this in small town America too) greeting everyone is a cultural must-do. I think it just adds to the friendly neighborly-ness, plus it's just kinda nice.

3. It is a classless society- everyone is on equal terms and everything is shared openly. Anyone who walks by a compound at meal time will be invited (ordered) to come and eat. .

4. People work hard and live off the land; they build their houses out of mud bricks, they grow their grains and veggies, they make tea from bush leaves, baskets from grass, lotion for leftover candles wax and oil, incense, henna, medicine from certain trees, tools from welded metal, furniture from local wood, etc.

All that been said, I see this mass desire for westernization! They ALL think America and Europe are wonderful, they all want modern things... they see money, luxury, 'the good life.' What they don't see is the massive ecological destruction that a consumerist culture brings. They want "development," but they see the replacement and assimilation of native cultures that comes with globalization.

Development: it is a dynamic process of improvement, which implies a change, an evolution, growth and advancement.

Ok, but by whose standards? How should we measure poverty? What is "improvement?" As development workers (if you choose to go that route as a PCV), we get to decide, based on the needs and desires of the communities we serve how we want to measure development. I say it's definitely not numbers in a bankroll or the number of paved roads a country has. To me it's not measured in economic growth but in a community's ability to live autonomously, replenishing the land they use, providing a stable, safe, healthy and happy environment for its population. Development should ensure that a community will be able to LAST, survive, thrive... not to grow in size or monetary wealth, or bring in factories and roads. The thing that America/ westernized civilization never questions is the standard of development... if the more we grow, the more energy we need, the more cars we drive, the more land we need to clear theennnn.... the more global warming we'll have, the more species we'll wipe out and the more resources (water, coal) we'll suck dry. Uh, right? So why would we all world-wide blindly agree that that's the MAIN goal?

My line of thought: money equal a class society equals inequality. Money will never be distributed equally and will lead to more imported goods- stuff people don't need shipped to them on huge petrol-consuming liners, in cardboard boxes whose production caused deforestation in some distant place that can be ignored, or in plastic packages whose production used more oil and gas and whose waste products were dumped into some distant river that can be ignored, all dyed with hazardous chemicals using cheap labor exploiting (probably native) people from another far away "developing community" somewhere far away, whom we can ignore.

I think I'll pass on that, as much as I can. It's not up to me to decide for my village what they want, but I can try my hardest to make them see the value and beauty of their lifestyle the way it is. I can try to make them see the value of their natural environment and the need to replenish and restore their own resources so that they can continue to self-sustain.

Hopefully I'll use the next two years to help replenish the local resources and encourage pride in self-sustainability. And chill out here, enjoying the beauty of this type of lifestyle- a place without money that can provide for itself is a place with no stress, no depression or anxiety. A culture without individualistic competition is a culture of happy, stable and respectful people. People who do physical labor everyday are healthy people who don't suffer from obesity, high rates of cancer, high blood pressure and other diseases of the affluent.

So What Are You Doing?

So everyone asks what I'm doing, what I'm up to. I'll try to give some of the cool highlights of my days here...

You know I live in Jamagen, a small village of about 17 compounds- which are extended family groups, basically a u-shaped cluster of mud huts with a common area in the middle, space for small cassava and papaya gardens and maybe a few cows. Because The Gambia is the final destination for about 8 different tribes of Africa, my village is a cool mix of Woolof (what I speak), Pulaar or Fulas, Mandinkas, and another tribe similar to Mandinkas (both from Mali) called the Bambaras. There are also some Serers. My compound is Bambara, but they all speak Woolof and a little of everything like most Gambians. The compound consists of 3 brothers, two of them with one wife each and all their many kids, and their mom- my very old and very cool grandma. Madou is the youngest brother, unmarried now, about 25 yrs old, speaks fairly good English and is way cool. There are 11 kids in the compound, ranging from less than a year to about 18 maybe- they don't know their birthdays or how old they are and are confused when I ask (why would I want to know?)! I hang out a lot with the oldest girl (18?), Sabu, and the two second oldest girls, born 4 days apart from the 2 different wives in the compound (about 12 yrs old i think), Seneba and Nagale. I also hang out a lot with Roxi Bah and her family, (25 yrs?) in the Fula compound next to me.

So a typical day...?

Wake up at 7, push back the mosquito net, go for a jog or a seed-collecting walk, for my hopeful woodlot (more on that later). Come back, rinse off with water from my bucket... yep water I hauled on my head...water my little orange tree and baby papaya shoots. Go join my grandma around the fire-in-a-bowl where she heats water for tea- it's still a little chilly in the mornings here and by that i mean maybe 70 C. One child after another stumble out and wriggle in around the fire, poke each other and the fire with sticks. Two kids put on their uniforms and get ready for school (one girl, one boy, both about 8 or 9). The nearest school is 2 k away in Kuntair, where I will teach 2 days a week General Science to 7th graders- more on that later! I eat breakfast with the women, either rice porridge or coos porridge, in a big communal bowl. Coos is what we use as birdseed in the US (called millet) but it's actually really good, is a healthy whole grain with lots of fiber and anti-oxidants- it's the Gambia's main crop, along with peanuts. My mornings are free... I sweep my house, maybe do a little laundry, and usually hear Roxi call my name to come over. I hang out there for a while, they give me "sour milk" which is milk that has sat in a bowl in a cool place for a day or so and has become yogurt. You add sugar and sometimes coos and it is seriously amazing! Fula's are nomadic herders by nature and even the settled ones usually have a few cows. Some of them say they can talk to cows, which could be a useful skill for me to pick up while I'm here.

Sometimes I go visit the men working in their garden's along Jamagen's awesome tributary, or go with Roxi and my sisters to collect downed firewood from the forest around the river... yep I carry it back on my head haha! It's the season for "bush fruits" or forest fruits, and there's about 10 different kinds of yummy figs, plums, edible seed pods, ect... I've been collecting these too for a fruit tree section of my wood lot! My favorite is called Mam Poto it's sooo good- I also named Roxi's family's little puppy that since he likes to eat them too.

Lunch is always rice with "maffe"- a delicious sauce made from their delicious home made p-nut butter, fish, hot pepper and onion. After lunch it's hot... which means it's prime sittin-around-chattin-brewin-attaya-shelling-peanuts-time.

Attaya is worth describing if you don't already know what it is. All Gambians berw attaya. It's green tea imported from China, pre-crushed up, in a little box, at least a few ounces. They all have their attya sets- two small plastic shot glasses, a tea pot and a burner which is small metal cooker that they load up with embers from their cooking fires and set their tea pots on. A whole pack of green tea goes into the pot and is brewed with water. Sugar is added and the attaya is poured skillfully from pot to shot glass to shot glass to pot to mix in the (digusting amount of) sugar and then to cool it a little. Now half or whole shot glasses are poured, the nearest small child takes a tray with attaya shots around to each adult presently sitting around, who slurps it down and gives it back. 3 rounds can be poured from one batch. This is just a Gambian thing, a nice social luxury that they enjoy, tho it is addicting and can get to be an expensive habit. Some men brew three times a day!

So I chat and hang out till about 5. Then I haul water with my sisters and go to the big women's garden with all the ladies. We water everything (my little garden, plus their many beds of cabbage, tomatos, lettuce and onions). I love this time: all women and girls are there, the sun is setting, everyone's chatting, it's fun. They we go go home, all tired, just as the sun is setting. I take another bucket bath and hang out till dinner... ususally coos with a green sauce (maybe made from the stalks of onions, or the leaves of cassava or of the moringa tree). Often there's fried whole fish which I'm starting to like (protein is protein!) Chicken or goat are for special occasions only and I've never seen beef but peanuts and fish are actually plenty- I feel way healthy!

There's a day in Jamagen! Special days are Saturdays when I bike with another close volunteer in the nearest market, and buy eggplant and garlic and onions for our food bowl and eat been sandwiches and drink coolish Fanta sometimes. This is always an interesting time... but because it's a big market, people come from all over so you do hear "toubab" a little.

Toubab is worth explaining if you don't know about it. It's the term used I think all over Africa for white person, modern person, person with money, person not Gambian. Many volunteers HATE is and made a big deal about not being called toubab. My take is that... well, I am white, I do have money (relatively ok?), and I'm not Gambian so sure. It's usually little kids and I usually respond to their bird-call like squawk with an mimic cry "Child!" One time at the lumo a boy trailed me for 5 minutes squawking "Toubab" and I was so annoyed I turned around and began gretting him in Woolof, which embarrassed him a little and hopefully made him feel rude. The main point is that many tourists give out candy ("minties")/money/pens to the kids so they assume I'm a tourist. If I greet them, or say hey "greet me first" then they get it- they just want to talk to you and hold your hand while you walk around. Once, when I was in another bigger village (touristy) for a workshop, some girls were hanging around, saying "toubab how are you what is your name" and I started talking to them in Woolof- they shrieked and giggled and then one grabbed my hand and said something wonderful (in Woolof) "You're not a toubab, you speak Woolof nice!"...I was elated, I just wanted to hug her and give her minties and coins! So I'm a toubab.