23 January 2008

Don’t stop early marriages, especially in places with limited access to condoms and well equipped medical facilities. Marrying your girls at the beginning of their sexual awakening gives them a safe, committed partner with which to explore themselves sexually. Most people who willingly partake in their first sexual intercourse, do so between the ages of 16-19, regardless of marital status. If a person who becomes sexually active between 16-19 doesn’t marry until between 24-27 there is a very high likelihood that they will have several partners before being married, which greatly increases the risks for STI transmission (including HIV/AIDS) and unwanted pregnancies. Some f these socially detrimental outcomes can be mitigated by omnipresent access to condoms and birth control and their consistent and correct use, as well as comprehensive and easily accessible treatment for STIs, unwanted pregnancies and all the subsequent conditions. In places without these services or with poor quality of and access to these services, it is in the communities best interest to marry their girls young. This is not to say that once married, one becomes immune to the problems of STIs and unwanted pregnancies. Marriage alone doesn’t ensure faithfulness, especially in places where one partner has to travel to find work or the housework is too strenuous for a monogamous couple leading to polygamy or the child mortality rate is so high that one woman alone cannot bear enough children to meet the demands of the workload of the society, also leading to polygamy. All of these circumstances lead to non-exclusive marriages, which increases the risk for STIs and unwanted pregnancies, however, to levels not as high as that of an unmarried sexually active person. This is in addition to the ordinary risks of extramarital affairs faced by all married couples. Nonetheless, an early marriage is still far less risky than a late marriage. Early marriage is further supported by the health benefits of bearing children while still in your active youth (18-25 years old). The argument that while an 18 year old maybe in better physical condition to bear children, she is by no means mentally or financially prepared to raise that child, is true in a place where most 18 year olds don’t have enough knowledge to support themselves physically or financially. In a place where an 18 year old is fully equipped with all of the skills she needs to support herself and her family and succeed in her environment, there is no reason not to use her physical prime to do the most physically demanding work (bearing children). Not so coincidently, in places where 18 year olds aren’t equipped with the skills they need to support a family, the resources needed to mitigate the risks of STIs and unwanted pregnancies until those skills are acquired are available. Likewise, the places in which 18 year olds have the skills necessary to support a family, access to condoms, birth control, and quality health facilities are limited or non-existent.

One of the greatest public health risks to a society is when 18 year old girls no longer has the skills, or is told that she no longer has the skills, sufficient to support a family in the absence of omnipresent, accessible family planning and health care to mitigate the risk for STIs and unwanted pregnancies while she acquires those skills she lacks. This is a very dangerous situation which is ripe for an epidemic of STIs and unwanted pregnancies which leads to cancer, infertility, unsafe abortions, death, single mothers, and unprepared mothers with consequences on the next generation. This situation is exemplified in impoverished inner cities and trailer parks across the US where not even graduating from you local (also impoverished) high school at the age of 18 prepares you physically, mentally, or financially for supporting a family. And where you have limited or no access to healthcare. (Thanks to programs like Planned Parenthood, family planning has become more accessible in places where they operate. Unfortunately, they don’t operate in every inner city, near every trailer park, nor do they provide comprehensive health care). Because of this Catch 22, the transmission rate of STIs and number of single mothers is exceptionally high in these areas leading to the current generation being disadvantaged by disease and the next generation being unproductive because they weren’t invested in.

Even more frustrating than the skills-healthcare Catch 22 in impoverished America is the illusionary Catch 22 in The Gambia. In The Gambia it is not the natural transition into the mechanized world that has caught some people unable to support a family and unable to protect themselves from having a family, it is the foreigners and their organizations that have convinced people that they don’t have the skills necessary to support a family, when they actually do. IGOs such as UNICEF and IMF, NGOs such as Tostan, and even PCVs teach women and girls to liberate themselves from the culturally dominant, oppressive men who have trapped them in chairs of housework, obedience, and fear. This women’s liberation theory has permeated (or tries to) the government schools and programs, the non-formal non-profit sector, the private sector and the informal discussions. They have promoted these ideals of women following their dreams, furthering their education, gaining financial independence, and dressing and talking like men. Those are all fine things to promote in a place with a high enough quality of health care and access to family planning, and mechanized house chores and family that would enable a woman to plan her family in such a way as to allow her to follow her dreams. Convincing people to marry late to learn things that are minimally beneficial in a society without mechanized labor and whom don’t have the resources mitigate the risks involved in marrying late, is dangerous to the public health of that society, and unnecessarily so!

23 January 2008

It’s frustrating, sometimes infuriating, to watch the president or one of his ministers parade by in an H2 followed by a convoy of new American SUVs throwing pens and candy out the window on his way to his indubitably lavish mansion, while you stand next to a hand pump that has been broken for 3 years at a school with a teacher/student ratio of 1/40, no paper, pencils, nor chalk, and only ½ the World Food Programme rice & beans they were promised. The government is so corrupt. How can villagers put up with this blatant stealing? Thomas Jefferson once warned the American people not to let the government keep you so busy making a living that you don’t have time to hold it accountable for its actions. Are people too busy to care? Too lazy? Or aspiring to be a thief like them? Whatever the reason it is a culture of corruption and complacency and the culture has to change before this country can develop. The only way to do that is to completely stop foreign aid, at least temporarily. If you do that, then the whole country will go to shit and loose the little development they did have, then realize how much foreign aid money helped them and change their ways to get it back. Also, with no money to steal the corrupt government will crumble and the people will elect a more transparent, responsible government in order to restart foreign aid money flowing. And, since most of the aid money doesn’t make it to the lives of the average villager, it won’t really affect them.

Often times frustration over the economic disparity leads people to that conclusion. My challenge to everyone who has reached that conclusion is to look around the country and note where the money came from to build the pumps, schools, roads, hospitals, and processing of raw materials. Look closely. Was the new government hospital construction actually paid for by national revenues or a donation from an outside institution? If you find that the majority of the development in the country (including the services once working, but currently broken) was funded by foreign money, then freezing foreign aid would only affect the average villager. The corrupt leaders are already so much richer than the rest of the population, they would be the last to suffer and aren’t easily deposed.

Additionally, contrary to American recollection, it wasn’t the strong work ethic and financial foresight that made the country the developed metropolis that it is today. America piggybacked on the Industrial Revolution in Europe, which was only a great success because when they ran out of their own natural resources, they raped and pillaged the currently underdeveloped world of their natural resources and raw materials. It is machines that made the West and it is the developing world that made machines successful.

14 January 2008

If milling machines, which mechanize the pounding of the staple food, millet, into its useable powder form, are the first step to women’s liberation, as I argue they are, then why is it that so many milling machines aren’t well maintained and/or lay dormant while women pound by hand? (I argue that they are the first step to liberation because they relieve women of the physical burden of hand pounding and free up significant time with which they can pursue their other interests and develop themselves in whatever way they want.) Many volunteers go through lots of trouble to help their host villages obtain a milling machine because villagers themselves recognize their immense value, and are then baffled when less than one year later they find the machine collecting dust because a relatively inexpensive part broke and either people weren’t paying to use the machine or the user fees collected were eaten elsewhere and nobody can afford to fix it. A detailed community needs assessment was performed and the leaders of the community, both men and women, met to discuss the community’s development priorities, both of which determined the community needed a milling machine. The community members even raised the cost of transporting the donated machine from the capital; a prominent elder offered his spare storage shed as a home for the machine free of cost; 2 people were trained in its regular maintenance. It was a sensible, reasonable, entirely community driven development project that seems to have failed. Why didn’t the community, who seemed to value the service the machine offered, take more steps to ensure its proper maintenance? Is it, as many baffled volunteers conclude, that their culture needs an infusion of financial foresight, intolerance for corruption and a ‘do-it-yourself’ protestant work ethic before any development projects can really be sustainable? Does their need to be a cultural change before their can be a physical change? Should we withhold aid from people to teach them that people in the world won’t help you unless you help yourself? They need to be taught, just like we teach our children, that if you don’t have respect for your things and take care of them properly, then you won’t be able to enjoy them for very long, don’t they? Or, is there an other reason, a non-cultural reason the project failed?

I argue that there is an other reason. For any given woman, the service that the milling machine provided was very helpful, but not essential. During the time the machine was running, it freed enough of her time that she could spend an extra hour shooing cows from her garden (which secured her financial investment for that day), or taking her child to the health clinic (which prolonged his death by one more illness), or taking a well earned nap (which saved her sanity for one more day). The milling machine was not running long enough for women to fill their newly freed time with new responsibilities, only to better complete the responsibilities they already have. Had the machine been running so long that people had become dependent on it, filling the time saved with new responsibilities like literacy programs, starting businesses, etc., the community would have repaired it at all costs. So while the machine is incredibly helpful, it just isn’t a big deal to live without it. My advise to baffeled volunteers is to continue to help maintain the machine, irrespective of the incompetence and negligence that disrupted its usage. The dependence on the machine will create the demand for fiscal responsibility and the cultural/value changes.

22 December 2007

The disco didn’t come tonight. It is a great night for a disco. It is the second night of Tobaski, the moon is bright and the temperature is mild. Last night all the girls got dolled up in their new outfits and high heels. Bolokas, a sequency, see-through fabric, was the style to have this year. All the rich girls had extensions braided into their hair; other girls slicked their straightened hair back and decorated it with glitter. 360 days a year they work in their dirty, grubby clothes, sweating and laboring under the hot sun, but last night they scrubbed the garden mud from their cracking feet and painted them with henna. It is one of the 5 days a girl gets to look and feel beautiful. Last night even the 20 somethings and 30 somethings were out strolling in their new outfits reliving their carefree teenage years. Tonight, the second night of Tobaski, is a great night for a disco because all of the beautiful African gowns have already been displayed, but the new denim skirts and trendy tank tops need their venue. But the disco didn’t come tonight because the village is mourning.

This afternoon, just as people dove wrist deep into their lunch bowl, wailing broke out in Kamara Kunda. It wasn’t a big wail like I usually hear when a person dies. When I caught word of what was going on, I myself found it hard to wail. Siren Kamara, more commonly known as ‘Auntie’ because she was named after her somebody’s aunt, was a young girl. She was maybe 13-14 years old, not yet old enough to marry, but fully grown. She hadn’t been feeling well for the past week, but was well enough to sit out front with her friends, brew green tea and chat. Just yesterday she stood out on the road and greeted the people passing by on their way to Tobaski prayer. Two days ago I was at her house visiting my very good friends, her older brother and his wife. She was certainly lacking energy and her beaming smile was missing from her conversation, but she was cordial, chatty and moving around. She did not look like she was 2 days from death.

As I approached her compound, I found the village congregated. They divided up all the chores of a death: notifying all the relatives, digging the grave, washing the body, preparing the charity, etc. The silence of shock pervaded the meeting. She was a young healthy girl, who had been a little tired for the past week. Just before lunch her step mom came into her room and found her severely ill. Auntie’s dad hurried across the village to ask the owner of the only car n town to take his daughter to the health center in Basse. The owner immediately obliged, but by the time he drove to the house she had already died. It was so fast and shocking. It was hard to believe and hard to cry. But, when Auntie’s brother’s wife came home to the horror, she erupted in wailing tears. “Oh my mighty and merciful God. Please, no. Not my little sister. Oh, my little sister. Oh the all mighty and all powerful God.” Her tearful plea to God shattered through the shock and broke the crowd into tears. How could it be over so quickly? Someone can just be dead like that. No good byes. I was balling. Every time I went to chat at her house, she was the one who brought me water to drink and brewed tea and lait for me. Her mom and my mom were best friends. They learned to walk together; they learned to cook together; they got married together; they raised their kids together. My mom’s kids were her mom’s kids and visa versa. My grandma had even secretly dated her granddad in their youth. Auntie was my sister. She was my sister and there I was pounding millet for her death charity. I couldn’t stop crying. What was worse was that her mother wasn’t even there to cry for her. Her mother, my mother, died 2 years ago during child labor. A young girl dies and her mother isn’t even there to cry because she, herself, is dead.

Be it the numbness, the pending workload, or dehydration, the crying eyes dried, including mine. We had fetched water to wash the body and started the fire to cook the charity when wailing broke out in the compound next door. My heart stopped. I can’t bear another tragedy at this moment. A woman and her baby came running from the house screaming “Fire! Fire! Oh merciful God.” In response people yelled “Water! Water! Oh merciful God,” as they scurried to find water. We grabbed the buckets of water we had fetched to wash the corps of the 13 yr old girl and rushed them over to the burning house next door. The men tore down the fence, climbed up on the heap of burning dried groundnut hay and tossed the buckets over the flames. The women scurried to find buckets and rope to throw down the well to pull more water. Women from 2 compounds away hear the call and were brining buckets of water from their well. Although the rooms were smoky, the fire had been contained to the heap of dry hay nestled between two of the buildings in the compound. The men on the top of the heap announced that the fire was black and we didn’t need any more water. The head of the compound came for inspection and found the cardboard inserts from a child’s pair of new Tobaski shoes burnt, laying nest to a burnt match. Children playing with matches. Why do women have so many kids that they can’t watch them? I though frustrated. After we squatted down, raised out hands to God, recited the Fatiha, and thanked God for helping us put out the fire, we returned to preparing for the burial of the young girl. That’s why people have so many kids they can’t keep a close watch over them- many of them won’t live to adulthood.

The body was buried at sundown and, as is customary with all deaths in the village, a one-week village-wide moratorium on loud music and big parties was issued, even on Tobaski. The disco didn’t come tonight. I couldn’t have brought myself to dress up and enjoy the second day of the biggest holiday of the year anyway.

Rest In Peace

15 December 2007

People don’t change the world.

People change people.

Things change the world.

12 December 2007

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if I have been brainwashed or enlightened with truth.

Sometimes I wonder if they aren’t one in the same.

My upbringing in America taught me to always follow my dreams, to strive for professional success, and to never let a man get in my way of achieving those things. I have, therefore, never had a problem visualizing my successful life without a man in it. I went to college, then came to Peace Corps. From here, maybe more time abroad, grad school, write a few books, start an organization that helps a lot of people, give a few lectures, become an expert in whatever field I choose…and then I’m 35, successful, and single. But then what do I have? I’d have a long list of accomplishments, maybe public praise, maybe not, and a sense of pride that I never let a man stand in my way. My post-feminist-revolution American upbringing never taught me to marry (unless I am really, really, absolutely, positively sure it is what I really, really want and we have dated for a long time and are both financially secure) and it certainly didn’t teach me to sacrifice anything for marriage. Marriage is hard, very, very hard and it takes a lot of hard work and it isn’t for everyone. That’s all I knew about marriage…oh, and that sometimes you’ll want to kill each other. And kids? Only if you are rich.

My Gambian re-education has taught me something different. Family is the foundation of life. My Gambian coming of age tauht me to never cut ties that are tied in blood, to strive for honesty, humility and peace in life, and that without kids, your legacy dies when you die. It is not possible to realize these lessons without marrying and having a family. While nobody in my re-education claims that marriage is all easy, they celebrate it and focus on all the wonderful benefits it brings. When you are dead and everyone stands to judge the entirety of your life, you are first judged by what you did for your family and then what you did for the world.

Now that my upbringing has brought me up, and as my re-education here in the Gambia winds down, I find myself pondering where the truth lies. Have I finally seen the truth through all the lies engrained in me since youth or has my isolation in this foreign land temporarily brainwashed me? Or, is there even a difference between being enlightened by truth and brainwashed? Can you be brainwashed with truth?

3 October 2007

After experiencing the joy of living here and reveling in the uniqueness of your experience, it is easy to see how one could be blinded to the poverty and suffering. The people you lived with ate 3 meals a day and they got a new outfit for the Tobaski festival once a year. All the laughter and smiles distract you from the endless exhaustion.

10 September 2007

It would be a lot easier to abstain from eating and drinking if I wasn’t fasting. The anticipation of hunger and thirst is often worse than their actual experience. Ramadan is one long month of waiting in anticipation. I wake up shortly after 5am courtesy of either the call to prayer, my father yelling at my little brothers, or, if you are a Tubab like me, the alarm I set the night before. Ordinarily it would be a challenge to wake up early because the nights are so hot and humid that I can’t sleep until the early morning. But the anticipation of hunger and thirst in the day to come kicks my butt right out of bed. If your family has money this Ramadan, you probably snack on bread with fried fish balls, beans, or eggs and wash it down with Ovaltine, Nescafe or milk and tea. For others, it’s cold leftovers from dinner and plain tea. I am part of the elite that has a gas stove and can make cinnamon toast or fried eggs and potatoes and drink hot chocolate from my last care package. After prayer, or pagan replacement for prayer like meditation or a mental shot-out to those of us without food and water for whom I am expressing empathy for and solidarity with through fasting, I return to sleep.

It is often hard to sleep during Ramadan. After lying around all day too hungry to sleep, too lethargic to move, I’m not tired enough to sleep at night. Additionally, after sundown I stuff myself with good food and drink which replenishes my energy for the night. Many people stay up all night chatting to burn that energy and encourage sleepiness during the day. I haven’t adapted that system yet. Mornings are the nicest time to sleep because the sweltering night has passed and the sizzling day hasn’t started. It is a disappointment when the heat and/or noises force me out of bed in the late morning. I’m thirsty is my first thought. Damn it. It is Ramadan. Well, I could cheat and drink a little water now. I haven’t opened my door yet this morning so no body would see me and it is still early enough in the day that by evening I will appear haggard and dehydrated enough that nobody will suspect that I cheated. For whatever reason, I decide not to cheat, and embark on my long day of waiting. I fix up my house as slowly as possible. Sun down is a long way away and I have nothing to do for the rest of the day. I finish making my bed, organizing the table, cleaning up my pre-fast snack mess (which I left intentionally to give me something to do this morning) and doing all the other miscellaneous chores I can think of. Damn. It is only 10am. Already my stomach is growling and my throat is itching. On any non-fasting day I can easily go without food, but the anticipation of hunger growls in my belling when I am fasting.

I open my door and spend some time greeting my family. Nobody is very chatty this morning. It is the end of the rainy season so everyone is sick. Both babies have been coughing up mucous until they vomit for days (pneumonia?) and my mother and sister are both lying with fevers and achy bodies (malaria?). I haven’t had a bowel movement in 8 days, but I spent the 10 days before that with sever diarrhea and stomach pains from excess gas in my intestines (giarrdia?) so I’m not complaining. After wishing everyone a speedy recovery, I pack up my stitching materials and head to my friend Nansa’s house. I have a strong will when it comes to getting through difficult situations. I can endure enormous amounts of suffering if I need to. But when it comes to voluntarily not eating food that is sitting in front of me, my will is weak. My tactic this Ramadan is to spend as much of the day outside my hut as possible. After cheating my way through Ramadan last year, I decided the only way to keep myself honest was to keep myself in public. I realize that as a former gymnast and dancer I should have more self discipline then that, but it’s a vise I am working to change. In the meantime, I’ll use peer pressure to keep me disciplined.

Nansa is one of my better friends in this village. She was born in Cote d’Ivoire where both of her parents died in the war. Although her extended family is here, she is somewhat of an outsider here. She is only 20 something but she is worldlier than most girls here. We found that in common. She was recovering from a miscarriage, so on this first day of Ramadan I decided to visit her. We stitched our bed spreads and chatted about family, the miscarriage, and everything there was to chat about. I looked at the medicines she had gotten from a nurse the day before and we talked about how to insert medicine vaginally. After we talked and talked and talked, and after my yarn had run out, I left Nansa’s house and headed to Drammeh kunda. The time was 1pm.

There are 9 lively women in Drammeh kunda that I like to visit. They are the wives of a cohort of cousins and all between the ages of 20-35 years. All day every day they sit and chat with each other while crocheting and sending children on errands. There are so many of them that I was pretty sure I could stay chatting in that compound until the much anticipated break-fast at sundown. I met them suffering from the same boredom afflicting me. Since morning they had been preparing the break-fast, dinner, and morning snack. All of that food could be prepared in one hour, but with nothing else to do you can make it take all day. We chatted about the same everything and nothing that Nansa and I chatted about. Bored with my stitching, I played with the kids, until they were bored with me. I sat and chatted; I laid down and listened; I stood and stared of into space. Eventually my butt was bruised from sitting, my sides bruised from lying, and my heels bruised from standing. I went home. It was only 4:30pm.

I decided that I would try to sleep until 6pm at which time I would take an hour long shower and finish just in time to break fast at 7:15pm. I laid in my hut tossing and turning from the heat, hunger, and thirst. The pangs of hunger replaced the anticipation of hunger and the dehydration meant that I had no sweat to cool me off. I managed to doze off into a shallow sleep, which, much to my disappointment only lasted until 5:30pm. Two more hours to waste. I was too lethargic to fetch water to bathe with (carrying 20 liters of water on your head 50 yards isn’t that difficult, but it isn’t that easy either), so I sent myself on a series of pointless errands to waste the two hours till sundown. I went to the welder’s shop on the other side of the village to check on the doors and windows for the clinic, even though I knew they were finished. I went to my aunt’s house to ask if she was going to see her son soon, even though she told me yesterday that she wasn’t. I went to the shop and bought candles, even though I had a stack of them at home. I went to the shop with the generator and asked if they would be charging phones at night, even though my phone battery wasn’t low. When I returned home after my series of pointless errands, it was only 6:30pm. My little brother had bought bread to break fast with and it was sitting on my trunk. I don’t know how I got through those last minutes without cheating, but I did. Sundown came soon than I expected. At 7:07pm I took ablution. I didn’t pray at any of the first 3 prayers, nor did I the final prayer, but at sundown I felt compelled to pray. After all the anticipation and waiting, I felt like I needed some kind of closure before breaking fast. I also needed a reminder of what all of this boredom and suffering was for. I don’t know all the Arabic prayers, but I new what I wanted to do with my prayers. I covered my head and got out my prayer rug. I bowed and stood and kneeled and bowed and sat and bowed and stood several times like a Muslim prayer, but in my head was my own way of cleansing. I breathed in the good, clean energy through my nose, let it brew deep in my stomach, and then exhaled the bad negative energy through my mouth. I voided my mind of thought and let go of any attachments I felt were holding me back, until I felt light and empty. I completed the series of bows sitting on my knees. While sitting, I visualized the things I want in this world. I saw my brother in Europe after all of his migration plans worked out; I saw my boyfriend in Spain get a visa to come and visit; I saw my sister’s sick husband healthy, happy and joking around; I saw my host family healthy and laughing; I saw the sun shining on my friends and family back home while they enjoy the fruits of their labor. I finished with an Arabic prayer for peace and plentifulness in the world. When I got up, I wasn’t hungry anymore.

When my dad returned from the mosque, he, my two little brothers, my grandma and I broke our fast with hot tea and bread with meat sauce. With the first sip of liquid sweat came pouring down everyone’s face. It didn’t take much food to fill me up. I had spent all day anticipating the moment we could break fast. I wasted the whole day waiting for the time to come. But after I broke fast I found myself waiting again. I’m not sure if I was waiting for dinner to be served (although I was not hungry), or waiting to get hungry again so I could eat more, but I was sitting and starring at the stars and the sliver of the second moon of the month wondering Is that all there is? What now? Why am I waiting again? What am I waiting for? A few hours of star gazing later, dinner was served. I ate it because I had nothing else to do and I thought that maybe this was what I was waiting for. I wasn’t hungry and it eating didn’t satisfy my anticipation. After dinner, I went to bed because I had been waiting for night to come so I could sleep again. As I laid in bed, I found myself waiting again. I spent all day waiting to break fast, and then to eat dinner, and then to go to sleep, and here I am still waiting. I am waiting until it is time to wake up and eat my morning snack only to spend all day tomorrow waiting. I was waiting to wait. But, there was nothing else to do.

Later in the month of Ramadan, the feeling of waiting and anticipation faded and life went on as it had before, only without lunch or water. By the end of the month I had no problems fasting and even enjoyed the modesty and humility in only eating one meal a day. I highly recommend that everyone intentionally fast from sun up to sundown at least one day in their life. It is a very small taste of what millions of people experience everyday.

6 September 07

What is it that Africans have in common? There seem to be a lot of similarities between very removed ancestors of Africans and Africans. I am looking forward to seeing other cultures here in Africa to test my theory, but in the meantime, my observation is that there is a common thread that runs through the entire extended community. What that thread is has been the focus of many of my meditations. As of now, I have found that it is the practice of unconditional love that keeps them woven together. Withholding love from a friend or family member is neither an acceptable punishment nor an acceptable way to help people change destructive habits. Your lazy, unmotivated, hot-headed, negative son is still your son. Unconditional love is a practice that many American/Europeans see as justifying and encouraging bad behavior and is therefore a cultural flaw. Many volunteers here are very frustrated by the unconditional love they are surrounded by here and actively work to change it. Many who have been manipulated by parents withholding their love as punishment find comfort and strength in a system of unconditional love. Perhaps it is something to aspire to and not degrade.

18 August 2007

“You are a hero”, somebody once told me. “Look at all the less fortunate people in distant lands whose lives you’ve improved and even saved.”

The only thing I’ve done is the best that I can do with what I’ve got. That’s all any of us do. These lands aren’t so distant and these people have been given the same fortune as you and me: an imperfect soul full of laziness, fear and negativity and an immeasurable mind capable, of overcoming those imperfections and making a more loving, more peaceful self and society. If I have inspired anyone anywhere to overcome their own inner evils to find more love or more peace, I have only given what has been given to me. We should all inspire each other and be inspired by each other to be our best. To call it a heroic act is to damn ourselves to a life of occasional humanity. Let improving our inner imperfections be the way to peace and the participation in humanity, not such a rare and difficult feat as to be heroic.

20 July 2007

On our journey through life, we are all looking for the road out of chaos, the road up to inner peace. It leads to a place where you can enjoy the fruits of your labor and justice is true. It is the peace in your soul that only settles when you have your life in order, when you’re providing for your family, when you have both the availability of work and time to rest, when you feel productive in your life, when you have the resources to improve you and your people’s condition in life. For many Gambians that road is the road to Spain and the pass is 1,000 Euros (34,000 Dalasi). Once you have your passport, then you find the money. It is no easy feat, but between your savings from all the summers you farmed, your mom liquidating her livestock, and a loan from your father’s family savings stash, it isn’t that difficult either. It’s even easier if you have a sponsor. Sponsors are typically your relatives that have gone before you, and occasionally old white former tourists of The Gambia. The sweetest sponsor is the Gambian girl that was born in Spain whose parents tied you in wholly matrimony and is now making your papers. Three years ago, the road out was the road up through Senegal, Mauritania, Morocco and over the 6meter barbwire wall into the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla or across the Strait to mainland Spain by fishing boat. In early 2006 the EU invested millions in better surveillance and higher walls while the Moroccan police became more diligent in patrolling and more brutal in punishing, so aspiring immigrants changed their path. People began to leave Mauritania by boat to the Canary Islands. A reported 10,000 Africans arrived safely in the Canary Islands in the first half of 2006. (The Spanish police reported that between 1,200-1,700 Africans drowned of the coast of Spain in November and December 2005). Soon after, Mauritania also cracked down on border and coast patrol, forcing aspiring immigrants to leave from Senegal. Later in 2006, Senegal called for a return of all of their citizens living without papers in Europe and also began patrolling their boarders and seas more diligently. By that time, most Gambians and many Senegalese were already leaving from Banjul.

Leaving from Banjul was pretty straight forward. You pay your pass to the Sarahule or Jahanka man and wait for him to call you. It is a first come first serve and each 90 passenger fishing boat takes about 120 passengers, 1 bottle of water per person per day, bags of rice, jugs of oil, a gas stove, Nice biscuits for breakfast, and fuel. Late one evening you get a call with directions on how to get to the meeting point and a time to arrive later that night. Everyone’s meeting point is different and transportation is arranged for you from there. By the light of the moon you embark on your 7-10 day journey. Each man (I have never heard of a woman taking this journey) is rationed to one liter of water, one packet of Nice biscuits, and one meal of rice per day. Supplies sometimes run out as the journey is unpredictable and often include run-ins with police and/or pirates, deportations, and changes of course. According to the dozens of immigrants I interviewed in Spain, many boats run out of fuel just as the shoreline becomes visible on the horizon. Many scared, confused, tired, brave men jump overboard at this point, some in attempt to swim to shore and get help, others to take their own lives. Suicide is the primary cause of death on this journey.

Those who make it to the shore of Tenerife are first taken for questioning by the Spanish police. “What is your name? Where are you from? Who brought you? Who is the leader of your boat? Who did you pay? Why did you come?” “your name. Gambia. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Refugee,” is the response you are instructed to give by your big boss in Banjul. The police will issue you a paper with your date of arrival and send you off to the Red Cross refugee camp (abandoned army barracks with tents set up for over flow). You food and shelter is taken care of until Spanish immigration decides what to do with you. Some people have gotten visas right there at the camp, others just get admitted and told to apply for a visa in 3 years from your date of arrival, and others get deported. That part is all luck. Anyone being admitted is flown to Madrid and left there to make your own way.

If you have people already there, and most people who go do have someone there, they come and meet you in Madrid. Some people get set up with contract work by their relatives, but most have to start at the temp agency. Your first few months, you get your bearings, start learning the language, and find someone who has a visa to let you work under their name. Once you have a paper to work under, you can go to a temp agency. Typically you start working at factories making soap, plastic, or lotion. It is a day by day job. The pay is around 8 Euro/hr, but work is very sporadic. Some can turn this into a regular job and get a regular shift while others look for more stable work. Popular good employment options among uneducated immigrants are construction, gardening, working in warehouses, cleaning beaches/streets, driving, and opening a shop or telecenter. Some Gambians use selling cocaine as income on the side, few of them make their living at it, but both are pretty easy to spot (Rasta guys that look like coke dealers). People who sell cocaine usually don’t start selling until they have their own papers. In Spain, people are pretty free to move about the country without being harassed by police or asked for papers, but any run in with the law could spell big trouble for everyone working under that name. Their police record is your police record. Additionally, if the owner of the visa wants to travel outside the country, you have to stop any work you got under their name, and cannot return to that job again. Many employers know that their Gambian employees are working under fake papers, but are willing to help them out. However, it can be frustrating for an employer to have workers disappear without notice. While I did see several half African children, immigrants are not well integrated and most of The Gambians I talked to wanted to go somewhere that Africans are more respected like Germany or Sweden. But overall, Spain has the most availability of work with the shortest waiting period for visas, the most freedom from police harassment, and is relatively easy to reach undetected.

As for the quality of life outside the work place, it is pretty sweet. Not by American standards, but by Gambian ones. Many Gambians live among immigrant populations of Arabs, Latinos, and Chinese, each group having their own shops with all the comforts of home. The Black shops have African peanutbutter, tomato paste, kola nuts, oil, jimbo, attaya, sugar, beans, onions, rice, coos and tacky gold jewelry sets. Some even have completes or fabric and there are usually Senegalese tailors around to meet your kaftan needs. Breakfast is typically fresh French bread with mayonnaise and/or an egg with tea. Lunch and dinner is always rice with domada, plasas, or stew and it always has meat and veggies. (Coos is very hard to cook on a gas stove so it’s rice everyday). If you make rice porriage it always has yogurt. The water is always cold and on the weekends, when you usually get visitors, you may buy a liter of soda. A few Fulas even walk around common hang out spots and cell DVDs of Senegalese and American hip hop music videos and Cds. Housing is similar to most other Catalunyans: high rise condo-style apartment for sale or lease…very few are renting. (A three bedroom flat I stayed in went for 1,000Euros per month and had 8 people and will be owned in 8 years). Many people are living 2 people to a room (3 room flat has 6-8 people) which brings down monthly payments, spreads out the chores like cooking, and helps to keep from getting lonely. There are adult literacy classes in many cities to help you learn Spanish and once you have papers you can take driving lessons and get your license (practical exam only, no written test required). 6Euro phone cards give you up to 150 minutes of call time to The Gambia and the average number of times a husband abroad calls his wife in my village is 2.5 times per week. Money is sent home through informal Gambian transferors, and gifts like cell phones and bikes are sent via people going home to visit. Clothes are purchased in the Gambia (way cheaper) and brought back by people returning from a visit, although weekly street markets have some cheap clothes, shoes, kitchenware, accessories, and produce.

While the road out can be arduous and some even kill themselves before seeing the end of the road, it is the road up. Why don’t Gambians develop their own country instead of relying on NGOs to build everything for them? Well now they are. It isn’t possible to build a tap system, school, strong durable fences, and health clinic for the village using only money made from farming or small business here in The Gambia. There is no money here. Now, instead of an NGO bringing money from the West and giving it to villages to develop, villagers themselves are going to the West and earning the money themselves. The road to Spain has many bumps and turns along the way and the place that it leads has its benefits and detriments, which I will discuss in subsequent papers, but the road out has been the road up for many young men, their families, and their communities.

17 July 2007

The basis of all knowledge is experience. The more diverse your experiences are, the more knowledge you will find. I often wonder, along with many people in the world, why does the white man have so much more than the black man? Why does everyone want to be like the white man? Is it that people just don’t know all the horrible flaws in the white system? White man got ahead by being born into a geographical location which permitted extremely successful domestication of local crops and animals, which freed up enough time for specializations to emerge. Being a successful farmer (which was a result of good weather and good soil) enabled white man to accumulate enough capital to acquire more experiences both through traveling and developing writing systems that enable people to share experiences across time and space. Black man will never be able to duplicate his success because he can’t change where he was born and the history that resulted. Developing oneself or one’s country can only be done by knowing oneself or one’s country and that can only be done by experiencing another person or place. The more ‘others’ you know, the better you know where you are and where you can go next. While black man cannot be like white man because of the difference in location, but he can be successful if he is able to have the same wide range of experiences that white men had so many years prior.

The only things we know are things we have seen, experienced or heard about. Traveling is a great way to diversify those things that you see, experience or hear about, which will therefore increase your knowledge. It also helps you see more clearly what you have seen in your own system. Reading is another way to learn of a different system. A neighbor can tell you of an experience he had in a far away place, but a book can tell you of many more experience many more people had in far away places generations ago. However, the danger in acquiring experiences/knowledge from a book is that the farther away the person telling the story is from you, the less reliable the story is. You can tell if your neighbor is lying when he tells you a story, but you can’t tell if a stranger is telling lies on the paper you are looking at. Part of the white man’s success is the extensive sharing of information through writing. It accelerated the development process. There is a push by white man to get black man into the system of reading and writing so they can have access to the same pool of knowledge that white man is fishing from. That would be great. The only problem is that teaching such large, diverse, historically oral cultures to read and write is extremely difficult and requires significant time and resources. While literacy should never be discouraged, we should remember that the first, most effective method of acquiring information is traveling. Gaining a variety of experiences through traveling is something that the black man can do for with very little resources that will vastly increase his knowledge base. People in the developing world everywhere should TRAVEL: short distances, medium distances, and long distances. That is the simplest, most effective way to diversify one’s experience and become knowledgeable. Not surprisingly, that’s how the white man did it.

12 May 2007

While walking home one night with some newer PCVs, I tried to articulate a realization that had been long ripening inside. I, like my two cohorts and many other upper-middle class children of learned liberal parents, had been raised to be spiritual skeptics. ‘Nothing but the facts’, ‘prove it’, ‘scientist now say…’ are phrases that shaped my reality since childhood. Magic, make believe and God were fun to talk about, but can’t be proven and should, therefore, cannot be given as reasons and even require reasons themselves. If there was one word that could make me roll my eyes in distain, it was ‘God’, especially if given as a reason for something.

But even through my agnostic nurturing, there was something in the world that was more powerful then me, and I couldn’t help but notice. I have described it in many ways: the way the universe works, karma, energies and synergies, the way it goes. It is why cancer kills some people and some people beat it. It is why everything ends up being OK. It is why failure can end up being a success. Whichever words I used to describe the greater force, I never used “God”.

Living in a different language helped me confront my fear of the word “God”. If I were explaining my plans for the future to an English speaker and they responded “May God make it possible”, I would be insulted. They think I need the big, magic hand of God to deem me worthy of help and make everything nice for me. They think my own hard work and perseverance wouldn’t be enough. However, if I were to explain my plans for the future to a Mandinka speaker and they responded “Alla ma soniala” (the exact translation being “May God make it possible”), I would be flattered and graciously respond “Amina”. The difference is that when translating from Mandinka to English, I am forced to translate the meaning, not the words. While the words may translate “May God make it possible”, the meaning in my agnostic English is “I hope it works out for you”. The latter translation is essentially the same as the former and, in Mandinka, they are exactly the same. Wanting God (or whichever name you feel most comfortable with) to make it possible is the same as wanting the universe to work things out. Once I acknowledged they were the same, I was forced by logic to acknowledge that I have always believed in God. I have always believed in God, just by a different name.

That leads to the question “What is god?” or perhaps that question leads to the former discussion. I have had many ideas on this; the most prominent one being that God is just the synergy of energies. Everything has energy and every time two things interact their energies interact to create a synergy unique to those specific things at that specific time. God is how all those synergies are related. But when asking myself questions like ‘why do some people suffer so much and other very little?’ my idea of God didn’t satisfy my inquiry. That led me to my current idea of God. God is balance. It is the balance of good and evil, enjoyment and suffering, health and sickness, life and death. There is so much pain, suffering, and negativity in the world to balance all the pleasure, joy and positivity in the world. To have balance in one’s life is to know God. This also explains why people who have endured great suffering may have such inner peace. Indubitably, wonderful things have also happened in their life allowing them to experience a balance. They know both joy and pain, thus bringing the balance of God into their lives. One may also notice that people who have never experienced great suffering tend to lack the inner peace of balance. Only knowing joy, and not pain, leaves one without balance. So while their lives may seem wonderful because of the lack of suffering, they may not have balance and that is not desirable. Know balance, know God; No balance, no God.

11 May 2007

The institution of marriage here is so different from what I knew it to be in America. It is hard to even use the same word to describe both institutions. Family is the bedrock, the blood, the breath that makes life possible. Family is who gives you shelter when the storm destroys your house; it’s who gives you food when your crops all fail; it’s who gives you blood when you are dying of anemia. Family is the tentacles with which you can explore the world; it’s the glue that binds you to who you are; it’s the hand that hits you when you’re wrong; it’s the hand that helps you find the way to righteousness. Family is who you are. Family is why you are.

But family doesn’t propagate itself without the guidance of its members. Left to their own devices family members may seek to incorporate strangers into the family, which would dilute the blood that binds the family. Strangers have loyalties to their own blood. While nature may give you strong cravings for someone from a very different family because diversity in species is what is best for nature, it is better for the strength of the family, and consequently the survival of its members, to marry within the family. It is, however, also important that the family’s growth no be stifled by marring siblings. Therefore, marriage should be between blood mates but not bedmates, cousins, but not sisters.

11 May 2007

The hardest part about this experience is spending so much time with all the things you don’t like about yourself. There is a lot of time spent building amazing friendships and learning new skills and discovering all the things you didn’t know you knew. But because you are such a stranger so far from people who knew you, there is a lot of time to sit alone with your self-deprecating, destructive thoughts. Facing those demons within you by yourself is the hardest part.

10 May 2007

One volunteer commented that in their small village a second baker opened shop and what a bad idea it was because it was a small market that was already being catered to. Now neither baker will make a lot of money. If the second baker could sell his bread for 3.50 Dalasi instead of 4 Dalasi, then he could sell more than the first baker and be able to make more money and a have better business. A second baker merely entering the market reduces the first baker’s profits, but doesn’t cut him out of the market. Both make a small profit. If the second baker enters the market with reduced prices, the first baker won’t be able to sell enough to cover his costs, and the second baker will make more profit than he needs, but not as much as the first baker was making before he entered the market because of his reduced price. If the second baker didn’t enter the market, the first baker could make 200 Dalasi profit every month. If the second baker entered the market selling at the same price as the first baker, then two bakers could make 100 Dalasi. If the second baker entered the market with reduced prices, the first baker could either reduce his price, leaving each baker with 75 Dalasi profit, or he can leave the market, leaving him with nothing and the second baker with 150 Dalasi profit. Should one family make 200 Dalasi, or should two families make 100 Dalasi, or should two families make 75 Dalasi, or should one family make 150 Dalasi? I mentioned that it may be better that two families make 100 Dalasi every month than one family makes 200 Dalasi. Some philosophies advocate for a social obligation to help the less fortunate, but believe that we should encourage people to try to get as rich as possible. Other philosophies encourage people not to take more than they need, which reduces the number of people less fortunate. These competing philosophies have divided the world. Which side are you on?

At 2am a short, stalky, white man came stumbling through Dakar airport security wearing a long sleeved black pin-striped western shirt, huge belt buckle, and cowboy hat with Willie Nelson still blasting in his headphones. His luggage consisted of a single rollable carry-on backpack that was mostly full of gifts (brownie mix, pencils, and t-shirts). Missing from his travel preparations were visas, immunizations and malaria prophylaxis. This man was my dad and he had brought $300 and a smile to last him one month in The Gambia. In the middle of the night we crammed in the back seat of a Peugot stationwagon (aka sept-place). With our knees to our chests and Bob Marley on the headphones, and headed for Banjul. By the time he made it to Banjul he had been traveling for 8 days non-stop. (His journey started in California where he packed all of our things in a uhaul and drove through the biggest storm of the year to New Mexico, unloaded the truck and hopped a flight to London-Madrid-Casablanca-Dakar before traveling overland to Banjul). He fared surprisingly well considering he had just recovered from gall bladder surgery 2 weeks before and brain surgery less than a year before. After crashing for a few days on a fellow volunteer’s floor just outside the capital, we joined 25 other people in a 22 person minibus and traveled 300km from Banjul to Basse to start the real adventure. In Basse he bought a local bike and we took off on a 45km bike trip through the bush to my village. It didn’t take long before he was spewing curses sailors wouldn’t even utter…the bike was a *******, the road was *****, I was a *****. To his credit, the road was long, the bike was aweful, and it was in the heat of the day. We finally made it to my village at dusk, just in time to be greeted by the 2 village drummers, over 400 dancing women and children up the wazoo all singing welcome songs for him. We probably shouldn’t have bought a local bike and I probably should have taken him the 10k way to my village, but he danced the night away in the circle of griots, costumed women and drummers, and all was forgiven.

During his next 3 weeks in my village he managed to celebrate the Arabic New Year with Quranic readings and charity, participate in the distribution of kola nuts and money during the naming of the Alkali’s son, purchased all of my sister’s wedding fabric for her upcoming wedding, buried all 3 people who died during that time, adapted a Toyota factory water pump to be run by a tractor, motorbike or petal bike for faster irrigation, taught all the tractor owners in my village how to maintain and repair their tractors as well as how to use them more effectively in farming, prayed every morning prayer in the mosque, ate exclusively Gambian food with his hand at the communal bowl, visited every single compound in my 50 compound village, played football with all the young guys at the field, learned all the Jahanka greetings without writing down a word, and managed to spend quality time with me in the process.

The trip home was just as eventful. After I fainted from stomach pains on the Soma ferry, the local ambulance transported us via the worst road in the country to Banjul. The evening before his morning flight I was still not healthy enough to accompany him to Dakar so he set off for Dakar overland by himself. He had to change cars at Fajara-Banjul-Barra-Amdeli-Karang-Dakar Central to make it to the airport. Despite not speaking French or the local language and traveling in the middle of the night, he made it onto his flight. Three days after I said good-bye to him in the Banjul suburbs, and having made stops in Casablanca, Madrid, London, and Texas, he made it to our new home in New Mexico. He showed me that it really isn’t that hard to be motivated, to make a difference, or to open your soul to strangers.

Sanunding Fondinke Yiriwaa Kafo is the organization the youths in my village created in November of last year to “promote community development, spirit and unity through work, education, sport and recreation.” The first project they wanted to do was a tree planting exercise to provide fruit and shade at the school and future health clinic. I set to look for small funding to purchase the seedlings and lunch for the day of work. Before I even started looking, I was invited to dinner by 6 Spanish nurses. The young beautiful nurses work in a hospital in Barcelona and see Gambian and Senegalese immigrants all the time, but knew little about where they were coming from. So, they came and stayed for a month in Basse, the large town near me and volunteered at the clinic there. It made me laugh to see how prepared they were...all the latest camping gear, newest fastest drying clothes and towels, indestructible water bottles, backpacks with a million zippers, water filters, medicine for the most unusual ailments...but they were making a huge effort to see the world from another perspective and I respected that. At dinner they expressed their curiosity about the more rural villages, but weren’t sure how to explore them safely. I invited them to stay the night in my village and told them about the youth group was working with. It turned out that a friend in Spain had given them a little money to donate to a worthy cause, if they found one. They donated the money to the youth group for their tree planting and the youth group organized a village cultural program for them. The youth group purchased and planted 30 trees and the 7 of us slept like sardines in my little hut in Sanunding. Everyone benefited, including the Earth. It was a serendipitous outcome that renewed my faith in the benevolence of the universe. The compassion demonstrated by these young women who came all that way to understand someone else’s suffering is venerable. They didn’t come to change them; they didn’t come to help them develop; they didn’t come to pity them; they came to understand and empathize with them. That is how these young women came to be my six Spanish saints.

You don’t know everything.

If there is nothing else I take from this experience, let me remember that. One can discover many implications when trying to realize that statement. First is that one will always be listening for what someone is trying to tell them about their experience, not to what one want to hear not what the technicality of the words could be construed to mean. When one is conscious of ones lack of knowledge, one will really try to see where the other person is coming from because one knows they may teach you something. Secondly, one will discover that they, themself, does know something. You and your ideas are valuable. In the same way that you listen to others for sparks of truth to light your path, others listen to you. When others find truth in your words, which they will if they are listening with humility, you become validated. That leads to a third discovery. Be cautious of talking about things one has not experienced. If people are listening for truth in your words as you are in their words, speak truly about what you have and have not experienced. These are things I have discovered as a result of seeking humility. I may discover them to not be true at another time, but the most important lesson I hope to take with me in life is to speak and act with humility because I don’t know everything.

It's funny how this happens, but the life of a peanut starts with a peanut. It's an endless cycle and you could start anywhere, so I'll start at the time I entered the cycle. It is May and the weather is 115 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade (nobody is stupid enough to put their thermometer in the sun…it will fry). Gardening season is coming to an end and the rainy season has yet to begin. You have been sitting in a cool storage room adjacent to your owner's room since the December harvest. Most of your brothers and sisters were taken to market shortly after the harvest and most of those with whom you shared the shed with have been eaten. You are one of the few that will be planted again this rainy season. You sit along side the rice, coos, and corn whom are also the last of their respective breeds. But today is your lucky day. Just after lunchtime one of the women in your owners' family comes into the shed and scoops you into a 30 Liter pan, hoists you on top of her head, and carries you to her friends house. The poor suckers that you left behind may not be cracked until the last minute and last-minute peanuts get grinded open by noisy metal devise.

Your owner dumps you onto the cold cement floor of her friends house where all the other women are sitting with their peanuts. Some sit on mats, others sit on small 6" high stools, but all sit with their legs straddled and skirts folded closed around their knees. The cracking begins. In one swift motion the peanuts are picked up down by the feet, repositioned so the weakest spot on the shell is facing down, clasped between the index finger, middle finger, and thumb, smacked against the ground between the knees making a loud popping noise, flicked open by the index finger and dropped into the pile between the thighs. Both hands work harmoniously so the popping never stops. As the right is popping the left is grabbing and visa versa. The cracking of peanuts and chattering of women fill the village and pass away the afternoon. By sundown the entire 30 Liter tub will have been emptied, cracked, and filled back up with cracked nuts and shells. Those who finish early will knit or stitch curtains and sheets for a bride-to-be. Cracking season is also wedding season. You are finally freed from your shell and heard all the town gossip when you returned to your home. In a day or two the women of your house will separate you from your shell by tossing you about a shallow basket until all the shells are on the top and then cut the basket out from under the shells leaving only the nuts in the basket and the shells on the ground. Once the shells are gone you are free to go to the sifter (a piece of metal with holes poked in the bottom) where all of the broken, shriveled, or otherwise imperfect peanuts fall to the ground and you are left with only your beautiful, perfect siblings.

It is with them you will sit until the rains are ready. Each year the rains come later and later. God willing, you will head out to the field with your male owners in June. After the first few rains have passed and the donkey has plowed the field, you are finally carried out to the field. If you have smart owners, it is not the field you were born in. If your owners enjoy stripping their land out of ignorance or laziness, it is the field you and all of your ancestors were born in. If your farmers are rich, you may be planted in fertilized soil, but probably not. You and two siblings are dropped into a small hole about a foot away from your siblings in the next hole. Covered in your hole is where you will sit, praying for rain, until you sprout in a few weeks. Only the strong survive in this terrain, so many of your siblings won't even be able to sprout. God willing, you will be a beautiful bushy shrub in a month or two and your owners will come to weed you 2-4 times before the harvest. Larger farms take an entire month for 4 people to weed by hand, so many peanuts only get 1 or 2 weedings. Most people have 3-4 farms (one for coos, one for corn, one for rice, one for peanuts) and if you only have 2 wives and 8 children old enough to work the farm, work is plentiful and workers are not.

Ramadan marks the end of the rainy season. There is a rush to get the last weeding in before everyone starts fasting. During Ramadan, the kids and women who are not fasting pull up some peanuts and snack on them. Those are 'wet' peanuts and still white in color. They have a distinctly different taste. If you make it through Ramadan, you have a chance to see the light of day again. After Ramadan, people return to the fields to pull up the peanuts. By this time, you have been under the earth developing your peanuttiness for 4-5 months and anxious to be pulled out of the drying soil. One day your owners will return to the field to yank you out of the soil, bang the dirt clumps from your roots, and pile you in the sun to dry. On a separate day, you will be consolidated into one big pile and fenced off. The livestock are now being let loose to find their own food after being tied up in the weeds all rainy season and you don't want to be eaten by a hungry and obnoxious goat. After weeks of drying in the big pile, you will be beaten. You will be beaten a horrible beating with curved wooden sticks by men, women and children. You will be beaten until you and your shell fall from the plant and the dried leaves are thoroughly chopped. Don't worry…your owners hands will be ripped opened and calloused in return for their inconsiderateness, not to mention battered and sweaty from standing under the hot sun all day.

After you've had all the beating you can take, a woman will stand on a huge empty oil drum, hoist you over her head and drop you. The winds will carry the dried, beaten leaves to a different pile and you and all your siblings will fall to the ground below. From this pile you will be bagged and either shipped to market or carried to the shed to begin your life again. The whole harvesting process will be finished before Tobaski (usually some time in January). That’s the life of a peanut.

Delicious, isn't it?

A space in the fields under a mango tree had been cleared; a full twenty-eight days of fasting had past; and the moon was spotted the night before. Koriteh, the huge Muslim celebration that follows Ramadan, was upon us. Just after 9:30am the village alikalo led a procession of villagers from his house to the clearing in the field. Leading the procession were the old men, followed by the young men, then the old women and children. Somewhere near the back were two small boys lugging the village drum that was being beaten by 2 slightly larger boys. The thick rope twapping on the 2-foot deep dome were staccato accents to the low mumble of Quranic recitation. It’s an ominous sound when recited en masse. Wearing my sisters bright yellow

complet (a matching skirt, blouse and head wrap) and donning my camera and extra rolls of film, I grabbed the hand of my neighbor’s child and made my way to the clearing. I was the only women there of reproductive age; I have bright white skin which was partially covered by a bright yellow outfit and a massive camera hanging from my shoulder; and I am not a Muslim. Had I not received the blessing of the Imam ahead of time, I would have been too embarrassed to go. I tiptoed through the greetings with my male friends, conscious not to cross any religo-social boundaries. Islam has a huge gray area when it comes to male-female relationships. (This is due to the discrepancy between what the Quran says and the example set by the Prophet Mohammed, which is very practical and what the West would consider liberal, and what the institution of Islam requires, which is very conservative). I stuck to the back with the women and children, didn’t smile too big or make prolonged eye contact with the men, and only shook hands with those who gave their hand first. I was most highly welcomed by the people as the purely curious visitor that I was and almost every man shook my hand.The Alikalo and his people were the first in the procession. They were followed by another influential clan, and another influential clan, and another… Each of the important clans started a procession and Quranic recitation from their homes (but only the Alkali’s clan had a drum). The Imam’s clan was the concluding clan to make an entrance. The people from the section of the village where the slave caste lives straggled in behind the procession of influential clans. Everyone was seated in rows on prayer rugs and mats under the shade of the mango tree. The Imam sat front and center, ahead of everyone else. The first row of people behind him was reserved for the prestigious old men of the community. In the middle of that row, directly behind the Imam, sat the Alikalo. The members of the council of elders and the leaders from the small surrounding “suburban” villages sat beside him to complete the row. The remaining of the men were seated more-or-less oldest to youngest, leaving the 8 year olds on the edge of the shade nearest to the scorching late morning sun. A little ways behind them, under the shade of a second mango tree sat the small contingent of old women. The young girls sat behind the old women at the pack of the prayer ground. All heads were covered. Once everyone was seated and those with cameras took their snapshots, the ceremony began. As with all gatherings, it was started with a general blessing. After the opening blessing everyone rose for the main prayer. They stood. They bowed. They stood. They kneeled to press their foreheads to the ground. They sat. They pressed their foreheads to the ground. They stood. They repeated this several times in perfect unison on the orchestration of the Imam.After the prayer the children were excused and the adults readjusted themselves and chatted a bit. As the children laughed and played their way home, six of the men from the front row stood up and formed a circle. They began to drape big white cloths over each other. When they were finished it looked like a circle of kids at a sleepover who put a sheet over their heads to tell ghost stories. Once the men were shrouded, everyone took their seats and the mummer died down. The next fifteen minuets proceeded like a call-and-respond song. The shrouded men orated a long chant which was intermittently interrupted by a responding chant orated in perfect unison by the masses. It was beautiful, but all in Arabic so I didn’t understand the content. The men were deshrouded and another wave of people started home, greeting everyone, asking for forgiveness, granting others forgiveness and giving charity on the way. “Will you forgive me?” “Your heart is clean. Will you forgive me?” “Your heart is clean.” What was left was an informal gathering of the leadership of Sanunding. Some of the old women also stuck around and moved under the shade of the first mango tree, though far enough back to not participate in the discussion. The rows turned into more of a circle and the Alikalo took over from the Imam and the language switched from Arabic to Jahanka, signifying a distinct transition from the religious to the political. The Alikalo gave a long speech and prayed for everyone, including a very long prayer for me specifically, and gave praise to the history and tradition of each of the founding families. The Alikali’s speech was followed by a lively political debate, mostly about the construction of the new clinic. Village politics is always decided by consensus, never by voting. Therefore, once an idea is presented, only the dissenters speak and are responded to until there are no more dissenters. The women were welcome to listen in to the entire debate, but were not welcome to participate. (Women often participate at a latter time when one man comes to represent the ideas discussed at a meeting to the entire women’s group. They ask their questions and have their own debate at that time). The meeting concluded with a blessing and the homeward bound procession began. This time the procession was lead by the Imam instead of the Alikalo and it exited the prayer grounds on the southern path (which leads straight into the Imam’s compound) instead of the northern path (which leads straight to the Alikali’s compound). After we walked the Imam home and prayed for him at his door, we walked the Alikalo home. Much to my surprise, the next and final person we walked home was my father. After we prayed for him, little candies that had been bought with the charity money were passed out. Everyone dispersed and went home just in time for a big, delicious Koriteh feast - a feast that had been prepared by all those reproductive aged women who weren’t welcomed to attend the group prayer. Three and a half hours, 97 degrees, half a dozen prayers and three rolls of film later, I was back in my hut and exhausted. This was indubitably better than Christmas.

Everyday it was something. She was tired, or sick, or her legs hurt, or stomach pain. She had been lectured by the doctor at the monthly clinic about her sever anemia. "Eat more nutritious foods and make sure you deliver at a health center, not at home", the doctor told her every month. She ate very little, if at all, and when she did, it was a few handfuls of rice (which is not high in nutrients). She farms peanuts and sells potato leaves. I buy beans every week. These are the three best locally available foods to eat during pregnancy. She had the information and the resources to make her hard life better, and didn't. This particular morning she was complaining of a headache. She hadn't been sleeping for weeks and didn't take the medicine I had biked 10km to get her. I asked if she had gone into labor. She said no and I believed her. After all this was her 13th pregnancy. I told her to lay down and drink some water, then went back to my hut.Later that morning my sister came into my room to tell me that she wouldn't be able to wash my clothes that day because she had to cook lunch. Mom was too sick. I asked my sister if mom was ready to have a baby. She gave an ambiguous grunt. I had a feeling if mom wasn't already in labor, she would be soon. I let my sister go and cook lunch and took out my Where There Is No Doctor. I reviewed the sections on delivering babies just in case I got the opportunity to be there for the actual birth. Not knowing how long until delivery time, I cancelled my plans to visit a neighboring village in the afternoon. I didn't, however, cancel my plans to have lunch in the neighboring compound. Before leaving I told my sister to shout for me if the baby was ready. My mother and sister both assured me the baby wasn't going to come that soon. Upon my return from a hour long lunch next door, I met my father at the front gate. He looked stressed and flustered as he headed to afternoon prayer at the mosque. "Did you hear?" he greeted me. "Hear what?" I replied. "Ndo gave birth. It's a girl!" As I rushed into the room to see my new baby sister a million things ran through my head. This is not the way a normal birth happens. Something isn't right. How could the village birth attendant been summonsed that quickly. I was only gone an hour. My fathers face was sweaty and worried and he spoke quickly with secrecy. Was I going to walk in on a dead baby or horrible disaster scene? Was I about to see the amazing miracle of a natural birth? I expected to walk into the room and find a little naked baby nursing on fresh breast milk while my mother gazed at the little miracle in nothing but a thin wrap skirt. The village birth attendant would be packing up her little box of supplies and lecturing my mom on post-birthing care. I pushed the curtain aside and walked into the room. My mother was sitting alone on a bunched up piece of fabric on the floor as blood pooled beside her. Last nights storm had blown a thick layer of dirt onto the floor where she sat. Next to her was a bloody skirt that covered the baby. A long white cord connected that bloody bundle to another bloodier bundle containing the placenta. She stared up at me like a dear in headlights. She was frightened and, quite frankly, so was I. The baby was still alive and bigger than I would have imagined for the unhealthy pregnancy she endured. First the cord needed to be cut so the baby could begin breastfeeding. I summonsed my sister, but she was too scared to help. My grandmother was nowhere to be found. She had fled out of fear a long time ago. I spent a small boy to buy a new razor to cut the cord, but all the bidiks were closed for afternoon prayer. My mother said they had one; it was in my father's room. My father had also gone to afternoon prayer and locked his door. One of my little brothers was sent to find the village birth attendant, but she was in the rice fields. Because of my lack of equipment I just sat and did nothing. The well-wishers began to come see the baby and eventually the assistant birth attendant showed up, but without the box of supplies. Two hours and a dozen of well-wishers later, the box with clean ties and a fresh razor showed up and the cord was cut. The baby was a healthy 3.5 kgs. My mother wasn't doing as well. She hadn't stopped bleeding. I was worried, but nobody else was. She went to shower and the women brought dirt in to soak up the blood and sweep it away.My mother stumbled into the room and fell onto the bed. The loss of blood was taking its toll. I had never watched someone die. I didn't know if I was watching somebody die. How long can a person bleed before they die? How do you save someone bleeding to death? The women quickly propped her up like a doll sitting on the bed leaning against the wall. They refused to let her lay down because laying down is for dead people. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she flopped around unable to hold herself up. Then came the vomiting. It was mostly liquid. She hadn't eaten in the last 24 hours. Women continued to come in to greet her. The bleeding hadn't stopped; her eyes were rolled back and paper white; her skin was pale; she was quivering with chills and vomiting. Is she dying? They tied her head scarf (if your hair is showing when you die the angels can't see you) and draped a nice piece of fabric over her face. I couldn't tell if she was already dead or they were just preparing her. At this point many people had left. They had come to celebrate a new baby, not watch a woman die. With the masses gone, I took the lead. I laid her down, propped her feet up on pillows and massaged deep into her stomach to stop the bleeding. Peace Corps had warned us about actually treating anyone because if they die, people might blame you for killing them. But how do you just stand there and watch someone die. I went back and forth in my head between humanity and liability. I made her some hot water and got her to drink a little. Meanwhile, the baby had been taken by the marabou to get a juju made for spiritual protection. He gave the newborn abolition, washing her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. I decided that since she hadn’t died yet and wasn’t getting any better I would try to take her to the nearest health facility. Finding transport was not easy. There is an ambulance at the Basse Health Center, which is only an hour or so away. I tried calling for it, but you can only call it from a Gamcel mobile phone. I have Africell. I had to find someone in my village with a Gamcel phone that was charged and then go looking for reception. Once I was able to call, the answering machine hung up on me 3 times. So I called a friend of mine who works at the health center and he told me that the ambulance had gone to Bansang (a city 2 hours in the other direction). So I called the driver of the van in the next village over. He was already in Basse and all of the gasoline in Basse was sold out so he couldn’t even buy gas to come pick us up. That is the only vehicle in my area. Many people have motorbikes, but my mother wouldn’t be able to sit up on one. I thought about hitching the donkey cart, but a vomiting woman bleeding to death probably couldn’t tolerate that ride. Besides, by donkey cart Basse is over 2.5 hours away. My brother and I spent the next hour calling everyone we knew in Basse and asking them to flag down a taxi and tell them to come pick us up. Finally we got one. He would come from Basse to our small village to pick us up and take us back to Basse. It would cost 500Dalasi (almost as much as a bag of rice that would feed my family for a month). I paid it. While we waited the hour and a half for the taxi to show up the women fought about who would accompany my mom to the hospital. I was a given so there were two seats available. They choose and old women that knew my mother well and the women who cut the cord. I vetoed the second choice because I knew she would need blood and a relative is the most likely match. My brother came.We made it to the health center 8 hours after the birth and my mother was almost unconscious. Unfortunately, the health center was no savior. I wheeled my mother into the dimly lit room called the maternity ward in a stressful panic. There were a few metal frame beds in the ‘recovery room’ where women sat with their families fanning themselves from the air, which was thick with heat and mosquitoes. No amenities in this hospital. The nurse greeted me with an arrogant rolling of the eyes and a lecture on how my mother was foolish and should have come earlier. She was right. My mother should have done the whole delivery here, but I had spent the last 4 hours trying to find a way to get here, my mother was ever closer to death, and the baby had still not eaten anything. I didn’t want to hear it. The only thing the educated people in this country use their education for is to look down on everyone else. They took my mother into the back room and let her lay there for another hour before coming to help her. There were 2 nurses and one woman in labor, but somehow, they were too busy to help my mother. My mother used this time to confide in me that her time had come. She was ready to die. I was to tell her younger kids that she loved them and my sister to take care of everyone. There was no mention of the baby. As she recalled to me later, she didn’t even know she had a baby at that point. I held her hand and told her she was going to live. The electricity went out. A wind tore through the room. Rain began to fall. I was scared. We tried to light candles but they kept blowing out. Death was in the air. The baby began to cry so I tried to rock her to sleep again. The nurse finally came in and without saying a word jammed her hand up my mother’s vagina and pulled out handfuls of blood clots. My mother shrieked in pain and squeezed my hand with all the energy she had left. The bleeding didn’t stop. The nurse said they wanted to take her to Bansang where they had blood to give her. We checked her son's blood first. We both knew she wasn’t going to live to see Bansang. He was a match and they took his pint of blood. The blood dripped slowly into her arm all night and didn’t improve her condition, but kept her alive. I sat with the hungry baby in my arms and prayed for daylight. Everything looks better in the morning. At sunrise I was able to get the infant to suck on my mom’s breast. My mother wasn’t fully conscious yet and there was no milk, but it was the first step to recovery. We were able to move her to the recovery room and she even drank a little bit. The morning was in full swing when a few people, including her husband and brother, came to see her. One of the villagers was a blood match so he donated a second pint. Things looked good. Her spirits were high, she was eating a bit, she put fresh clothes on (that the old women had washed at day break), and she held her baby for the first time. We spent the next 4 days in that recovery room waiting for her blood to replenish itself. I slept on the floor packed like sardines between the other patients’ family members and the mosquitoes. I didn’t do much sleeping in those four days. People came to greet her from my village including the assistant birth attendant and my sister’s husband. I spent a fortune buying nutritious food like eggs, meat, beans, and veggies. I spent the days chatting with the other patients about how to keep a newborn healthy and other health topics. I watched people come and go. Some went in a car, others on a donkey cart, and some in a coffin. One night we all sat in our beds while a pregnant woman died of malaria. Gasp, gasp, die. A few minuets later, gasp, gasp, die. We just sat and listened. Nobody could talk. We just listened, watched and waited for her to die. She did. They took her out of the room and a woman with triplets replaced her. No Gambian had ever seen triplets. All three lived at least the 2 days I saw them for. It was an incredibly joyous occasion.An immense amount of bonding went on in those days at the hospital. I was so emotionally drained by the time we were released from the hospital that I slept for an entire day at home. My mother made a great recovery and my baby sister is alive and well. The naming ceremony was one week after the birth. My father named the baby after my birth mother in America. It used to frustrate me to listen to people give up there autonomy and throw everything into the hands of god. If God wants, he will save me. If God wants, he will take me. There is nothing I can do. After that experience, I saw for myself that there is nothing that can save you, but God. There was no reason my mother should have lived through that and there was no reason my baby sister should have lived through that, but they did. There is no reason but Allah.

January 2006 was a time for good-byes. I quite a wonderful job with amazing people, kissed my friends and family good-bye and left for the Peace Corps. I touched down in The Gambia, West Africa on 2 February with 16 other wide-eyed, eagar idealists and began training. Enduring the 10 weeks of horribly boring lectures and overwhelming language classes paid off with a beautiful swearing-in ceremony at the Ambassador's residence overlooking the ocean and catered with amazing food on 13 April. Since then, I have been living in a small-medium rural village up-country and off the main road. The whole village chased the big, white, Peace Corps vehicle that I pulled up in and greeted me with a huge dancing program and special porriage. After unloading my belongings, the vehicle left me all alone, a million miles from anywhere familiar. I knew I was home.

My local name is Fatou Jabbi and I live in a mud hut with a straw roof in a compound with my host family in Sanunding. By Gambian standards my family is tiny. My father only has one wife with 4 kids (5 including my newborn baby sister). My mother's mother also lives in our compound. I eat at the food bowl with my mother (whom is somewhere in her late 30's or 40's), my 16 year old pregnant sister, and really old grandma. My father and his 3 sons (20, 13, and 10) eat at a seperate food bowl. I fetch water from the pump and can charge my cell phone at one of compounds with a generator. Many people from my village have traveled to Europe or America to find work. They have sent back many bicycles, motorbikes, a tractors and a car, among other things to make life easier.

I am a Health and Community Development volunteer. Everyday I ask myself what exactly that means. The work I am usually engaged in is farming, gardening, cracking peanuts and chatting with my family. There are enough domestic chores to keep anyone busy from sunup to sundown: fetching water, pounding millet, cooking, watching the children, washing clothes, sweeping. I participate as much as possible in all of it. This is the basis for the stories you will read about my experiences here.