So, after 27 months, here I am. “Hantini” as the Fulas say. “Abanta” in the words of the Mandinkas. My time here is finished. Peace Corps The Gambia.

What was it all about? Did I accomplish much? Am I proud of what I’ve done? Would I recommend such a trip? Is The Gambia better off for me having been here? Am I?

The answer to all these questions is a resounding “Yes.” It’s been a tough and rewarding service. I’ve had an amazing adventure that I’ll never forget. I’ve made some incredible friends and I’ve fallen in love. I have a much better understanding of who I am, what I want from life, and what it means to be an American. I’ve traveled to Senegal, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. I now know how to hand-wash my own clothes (beat them against a rock), how to cope with amoebic dysentery (Ciprofloxacin), and how to eat sheep intestine from a communal food-bowl (spit it into your hand and throw it away when no one is looking). I’ve learned how to work with African bees, how to blend into a crowd of black people at an immigration checkpoint, and how to say Saalaamaaleekum.

I’d never heard of The Gambia before I was invited here to serve. I thought maybe I’d get to go to Tanzania or Madagascar when I initially spoke to the recruiter about volunteering in Africa. I’d never read Alex Haley’s Roots, never imagined I’d eat monkey meat, never heard of the illustrious President His Excellency Sheik Professor Doctor Yaya A. J. J. Jammeh and his plan to decapitate any homosexual found here.

I’ve struggled with the best way to end this with you, to describe the experience, to sum it up. I want to be able to relate to you-- through some exotic Wolof proverb perhaps—what this has been like. I wish I had some words of wisdom, the moral of the story. Wouldn’t it be great if I could tell you something that you didn’t already know?

We’ve all been here before: The end of one period of our lives and the beginning of the next. The bittersweet, the dichotomy, the complexity. (I’m afraid. I’m sad. I’m excited. I’m hesitant. I’m nervous. I’m unsatisfied. I’m exhausted. I’m proud. I’m larger than life. I’m ready. I’m pensive. I’m lonely. I’m hopeful. I’m hungry.) Part of us wants to stay safely where we are while another pulls us onward to the next adventure. These things are never easy. And we never really know what to say.

I’d like to say “Thank you.” Thanks to everyone who has made this possible. Thanks to The Gambia for hosting me: It has been an experience that I will never, ever forget. Thanks to the Gambians for everything they endure: Unfortunately, someone has to be some of the poorest people on Planet Earth. The Gambians are doing the best they can, they are trying to do it gracefully, and they maintain an incredible spirit in spite of their hardship. I wish them the absolute best and I hope that they can continue to improve themselves. Thank you to my host families. The Jallows in Kundong, the Mannehs in Chewel, and the Barrows in Gunjur. You kept me safe, you fed me delicious food, and you blessed me every night before I went to sleep. Thank you to Peace Corps: This is a huge operation and you have so much to do. President Kennedy had a remarkable vision. You are doing an incredible job at making that dream a reality. Thank you to all the ex-pats and ngo’s that I’ve worked with. You are making this world a better place for all of us. Thank you to that wild cat, that green vervet monkey, those chickens and guinea fowl and sheep and cows and fish. You gave your lives so that I could be sort-of not hungry. I’ve never witnessed the deaths of so many creatures. Thank you to all the Volunteers who I am so honored to consider my friends. We’ve gone through this together. You should be proud of yourselves. I’m very lucky to know you, especially those with whom I swore-in. We made it. Great job. I consider you my family and I hope to see you all again some day soon. Thank you to my family for supporting me through this. Mom and Dad, you came here and lived this life with me for a while. It required strength, it demonstrated courage, and it expressed love. I’ve never been so proud as when you told me how proud I’d made you. Thanks to the bees. Your honey is the sweetest. Thank you Tammy. It’s been great getting to know you here and I can’t wait to continue this adventure together. And thank you finally to all of you. Thanks for following my story. Abarka bakke. Jarama booy. Jere jef.

After a competitive application process stressing applicant skills, adaptability, and cross-cultural understanding, Mr. Traucht was invited into Peace Corps service in The Gambia, West Africa. On September 27, 2007, he began a comprehensive ten-week training program centered on local language acquisition, culture, and technical skills for life in The Gambia. Through technical training (116 hours) and trainee directed activities (20 hours), Mr. Traucht obtained a greater understanding of the environmental challenges faced in The Gambia, and of proactive agro-forestry practices to combat these issues. His training also addressed improved agriculture and horticulture techniques, natural resource management strategies, and formal as well as informal environmental education skills.

Language training (150 hours) included formal classes in Pulaar and informal daily lessons with the residents of his training village. By the end of training he established a fluency degree of Intermediate in Pulaar; by the completion of service his language proficiency was graded Advanced in Pulaar and Novice in Mandinka.

Cross-cultural training (20 hours) was formally conducted in a classroom setting and supplemented with group discussions with other trainees and Peace Corps staff. Living with a Fula host family in his training village further enhanced the training experience. This training increased his awareness and understanding of Gambian culture, informed him of the history and politics of The Gambia, Islam in the Gambian context, traditional beliefs and taboos, gender roles, and non-verbal communication.

Health sessions (30 hours) included preventative health measures, self-diagnosis, basic medical treatment, and outlined Peace Corps medical policies. Safety and security sessions (8 hours) emphasized how to adopt a lifestyle that reduces risk at home, work, and during travels as well as dealing with unwanted attention and emergency evacuation from village. All training lessons were reinforced and put into practice in daily village life through interaction with the host family.

On December 7, 2007, Matthew Traucht was sworn in as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in the Environment and Natural Resource Management Sector. He was placed in the rural farming village of Chewel, a small Fula village consisting of fewer than 100 people in eight family compounds, located in the Western Region two kilometers from the Senegal-Gambia border. There he helped rural residents plan and develop sustainable projects and liaised with local extension workers on agricultural projects.

Working with life sciences teachers and an extension worker from the Forestry Department, Mr. Traucht led environmental education classes at Kampasa Lower Basic School and at Wassadung Basic Cycle School. These classes met twice monthly to discuss current events and environmental issues (deforestation, gardening, and village sanitation) and to conduct practical work (construct mud stoves, collect tree seeds, participate in community clean-up). Mr. Traucht worked with both schools in their gardens and encouraged them to participate in the national All Schools Tree Nursery Competition. He also helped to organize and facilitate a field trip for some of the students and teachers to a local wildlife preserve.

Mr. Traucht worked in the Chewel women’s garden to introduce composting and intercropping systems. There he maintained several garden beds to study local growing conditions and to demonstrate improved practices. He also maintained a backyard demonstration garden, tree nursery, and half-hectare rice field. Mr. Traucht worked with Peace Corps staff, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a local n.g.o. to introduce and distribute an improved rice variety. Matthew encouraged the farmers to save the harvest (more than seven times what was planted) for seed to be planted the following year. He aided local farmers with the sowing, maintaining, harvesting, and processing of local subsistence crops including rice, millet, maize, sorghum, squash, beans, and groundnuts. Matthew advocated that farmers implement perennial field crops and fruit trees into their agricultural systems. He informed the farmers about soil improvement techniques including composting, alley-cropping with leguminous trees, intercropping, and the use of bio-char.

Mr. Traucht also assisted the citizens of Chewel in home construction using natural materials (thatch roof, mud block), promoted improved mud-stoves to reduce the need for fuelwood, and engaged in soil protection initiatives including erosion control and rain-water diversion. Working with Christian Children’s Fund and the European Commission, Matthew labored on a well-digging project which eventually resulted in a clean drinking water source within the village thus eliminating the need for residents to collect water from a neighboring village. He participated in community clean-up projects and battery disposal drives. Matthew maintained a tree nursery with community members and liaised with Department of Forestry officials to bring woodlot trees including eucalyptus, mahogany, and gmelina trees. These trees will be maintained to protect the watershed near the village and for eventual income generation.

Mr. Traucht worked with the Mankana Development Association comprised of over 1000 members from seven local villages in The Gambia and five in neighboring Senegal. His primary assistance involved helping to establish, construct, and maintain a market pavilion for the weekly local trade of garden products, livestock, and honey. He also liaised between the Mankana Development Association and Concern Universal extension agents to establish a link with credit unions and to bring agricultural training to the area.

Mr. Traucht was very active with beekeeping activities throughout the Mankana area and he also worked with the National Beekeeper’s Association of The Gambia (NBAG) and Sifoe Beekeeping Kaafo in the metropolitan area known as Kombo. He worked with community members to establish the Mankana Agroforestry and Beekeeping Association (MABA). He taught the members of MABA about general biology, bee pollination to increase crop yields, and improved beekeeping practices. Mr. Traucht encouraged MABA to acquire a small parcel of land to establish a community apiary and helped them construct ten Kenyan Top Bar Hives to be placed in the apiary along with the planting of bee-fodder trees. In addition, he worked with several members to weave traditional grass hives providing skills transmission by linking young people with experienced weavers thus resulting in income generation through the on-going sales of those hives.

For the National Beekeeper’s Association of The Gambia, Mr. Traucht provided technical support as their apiary manager. He identified and offered solutions for problems in the apiary including pest control, yield improvement, colony division, and improved harvesting and processing techniques. Mr. Traucht wrote and submitted a grant to Concern Universal for research and development of beekeeping; the grant was approved in 2008. He liaised between NBAG and several aid organizations including Mondo Challenge (U.K.), Concern Universal, US Peace Corps, and the U.K. based charity Feed the Minds. In 2008, he worked on the preparation and implementation of the $10,000 Feed the Mind’s funded Freebee Training to introduce and advance beekeeping in twelve rural Gambian villages. He aided in securing and managing the funding, designed the training materials and syllabus, and implemented the training sessions with more than 300 participants.

In May 2009, Mr. Traucht changed his residence from his small Fula village to the large Mandinka town of Gunjur with a population of more than 20,000 people. He made this move in order to focus on his beekeeping projects at NBAG and Sifoe. He was promoted to NBAG’s National Coordinator of the Freebee Training which involved conducting two more modules in those twelve villages, researching local traditions and beliefs, advising on current and future beekeeping initiatives, and reportage to Feed the Minds. Matthew was responsible for hiring and paying Gambian trainers, organizing lesson-plans, and arranging all travel aspects to the rural training sites. He also produced a training manual with photographic illustrations to be distributed to Gambian beekeepers. Mr. Traucht worked with individuals from the U.K. and The Gambia to establish an n.g.o. called Gambia BeeCause which aims to continue research initiatives and training programs. At the Sifoe Beekeeping Kaafo, Mr. Traucht conducted beekeeping trainings and improved production and management.

Mr. Traucht participated as Peace Corps Volunteer Technical Trainer in one Pre-Service training and two In-Service trainings. He instructed Gambian Host Country Nationals and Peace Corps Volunteers from The Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea on gardening, tree and crop identification, soil improvement, appropriate technology, beekeeping, and food security. He was responsible for developing training materials to meet Peace Corps rigorous knowledge, skills, and assessment guidelines. Mr. Traucht revised Peace Corps The Gambia’s beekeeping manual by adding several new sections of technical instruction, traditional practices, and project ideas.

Throughout his service, Mr. Traucht wrote a number of technical articles for the Environment Sector newsletter and served as the co-editor in 2009. He was instrumental in the pre-production (research, writing, props), production (camera work, acting), and post-production (editing using Final Cut Pro) of six technical training videos. These videos, which are posted on-line for volunteers to view, serve as teaching aids of such agricultural practices as composting, garden bed preparation, plant care and transplanting, income generation, and beekeeping. Mr. Traucht served as the Volunteer Support Network (VSN) liaison for the Western Region in 2008 and 2009. He also participated in the international Against Malaria campaign by raising over $400 to purchase mosquito nets for rural Gambians. He posted regular updates to his internet site to satisfy the Peace Corps Third Goal of describing to Americans what life is like for a Volunteer in West Africa.

I am a little more than two months from being finished here. Where did the time go? And why has it taken me so long to write this entry? Followers of my blog have probably notice a marked decline in my entries. I wish that this would just flow; I wish that I could easily describe how I've been feeling. But it is remarkably complex. Being here. Leaving here. Telling you about being here and about leaving here. Maybe I should start by telling you about the hardest part of leaving: I'm not all that sad about leaving. Which, truth be told, makes me extremely sad.

I thought I would be sad when I was finally finished here. I wanted to be. When I signed up for Peace Corps, I wanted so much to be here. But now that I'm about to leave, I equally as ready to go. That's probably not so difficult for you to understand. Twenty seven months is such a long time to live like you're camping everyday and every night. Such a long time to have crotch fungus that spreads from your nipples to your knees. Such a long time to miss your best friends, the birth of your niece, and the aging of your family. Such a long time to feel like you're failing, to feel like you are an outsider, to miss almost all of the jokes. Such a long time to smear the words across the sweat-soaked pages of your nightly journal entries. Such a long time to take weekly antibiotics to prevent malaria, to have no privacy, to be called a name that isn't yours.

A few nights ago, I was walking home in the dark and the rain had soaked me until I was shivering in spite of the humid heat. My leather sandals were disintegrating beneath my feet as I waded through ankle-deep puddles of mud and sewage. I fretted about the diary and electronics stashed in plastic bags inside my pack. Forty minutes after getting out of the rattletrap gelegele that had brought me to the outskirts of Gunjur, I finally made it home. My stomach had been churning for a while and I began to rush with the key to let myself inside. I shoved the door open and dropped my pack on the floor trying to get through my house to the pit latrine out back. My knees shaking, my thighs clenched, my stomach rolling I tripped over my pants trying to get out of them. I lurched out of the house naked from the waist into the rain but before I could get to the hole in the ground I shat all over myself. Stinking blobs ran down my legs and splattered at my feet. I slipped in one and fell to my knees. It kept coming and I kept going.

I came here for so many reasons. Many of those have long been forgotten, modified, and rearranged. Some were always unattainable and others were just plain absurd. But I never expected to be in these types of situations where I feel so physically and emotionally unhealthy. I came here because I wanted to see another part of the world yet, because of the conditions here, my world is smaller and more confining than it has ever been. I wanted to have an adventure, but living in a developing nation is often boring, slow, and mundane. I wanted to learn about a different culture. When in my own culture, I am free to reject the things about it I don't agree with. Here, I am obligated to remain "culturally sensitive" and non-judgmental. They tell you that Peace Corps will change you in ways that you never expected. I didn't used to, but now I get annoyed with people who constantly beg money from me. I didn't used to, but now I am skeptical of people's intentions. I didn't used to, but now I can't seem to write what I feel, can't seem to describe what this experience is like, can't seem to articulate my thoughts.

I didn't used to, but now it seems I've lost my sense of humor about this place. Now I am taking myself too seriously. Why? I was sitting today in meditation after a long session of yoga and I couldn't stop myself from feeling like I need to be more creative and open about my experience here. I keep feeling like I am losing something, someone, somehow. My head kept going back to it even as I tried to clear my mind and eventually I gave up. But how do you-- how can I-- just give up? The voice in my head kept telling me to laugh yet it was all I could do to keep from crying. These changes can't be avoided. I need to let go and relax and allow things to unfold. Why do I seem to be resisting everything that comes up? Friends leaving, projects ending, relationships shifting. Homeless, directionless, focus-less. Maybe this is the problem. Maybe it's not the here and now that is scaring me so much, leaving me so speechless and perplexed. Maybe it is what comes next that I am so worried about. Seems like, when I go back and reread many of the entries that precede this one, I was so excited and amused about this place because I was (mostly) fully here when I wrote them. But now I am so enwrapped in tomorrow that I can't focus on today. Ever since I decided that I wouldn't extend my service here a couple of months ago and started to think about leaving at the end of November, I am increasingly anxious about leaving.

I don't want to write right now that I've failed here. But haven't I? So many people told me that I would love this place... I've let them down. So many people said that I would really make a difference here, I have failed them too. Because I sometimes fail at cultural sensitivity, I feel like a failure when I don't agree with certain norms and behaviors. I wanted to be fluent in the local language, to improve someone's life, and to (somehow) find myself. Most of all then, haven't I failed myself? But I don't want to write about failure because it sounds so melodramatic, so self-deprecating, so un-happy. And that isn't quite at all what I wanted to write. Which is why, I think, that I haven't written for so long. Is wanting to leave-- is giving up-- failure? Or should I finally accept that it is time to go? Can I accept that I've done what I could and nothing less? Can I believe in myself that I gave it all my best. Now that it is finishing, there is nothing wrong with putting more into leaving than staying.

In the government-speak of the US Peace Corps, they call it Close of Service (COS) and it is more difficult than anything else I've done since submitting my application way back in the fall of 2006. COSing involves slowly withdrawing yourself from the relationships you've created. It means preparing to do something totally different somewhere completely away from here. It requires giving your projects over to somebody else and trusting that they will care enough to keep working on it once you've gone. COSing is about medical checks to make sure you aren't carrying some heebee-jeebies away with you, means completing hundreds of forms to quantify the work you did and the impact you had, and forces you to say goodbye to the people who have become your family. The Gambia is far from anywhere I plan to be in the near future and so I have to accept that this sort of life is something that I am also moving far from. The good and the bad. Sure, I am looking forward to no longer living in a mud hut with no electricity and water pulled by hand from an open well contaminated with amoebas and gecko poop. I can't wait to no longer rely on dangerous and undependable local transport to get me where I want to be. I am so happy at the prospect that I might go somewhere and make some money and stop living hand to mouth with some of the poorest people in the world. But I am also saddened that I might never see most of these people ever again, won't have the Atlantic coast as my backyard, will no longer live among monkeys and monitor lizards. What will happen to the little girl who lives in my compound (I guess I actually live in hers) and still calls me the generic "Toubob" instead of by my Gambian-given name Laamin or (my preferred) Matthew? How will things continue with the beekeeping projects I've started? Will the mango and cashew and moringa trees I've planted survive to bear fruit? When will I next see the Volunteers I swore-in with and how will we all have changed? Will things work out between Tammy and I once we are in "the real world"? This process is sort-of about giving-up; no wonder I am so apprehensive about it. Most of my friends are facing similar anxieties about leaving here.

A few days ago I wandered into the small Mauritanian-owned shop near my house to buy some eggs and bread for breakfast. There was a young woman standing at the counter and she instantly struck me as different than most of the Gambian women I see. Her head wasn't covered, her wrap-skirt was printed with cannabis leaves and Bob Marley icons, and she carried herself in a way that was, well, different I guess than what I've become accustomed to. The most remarkable thing about her was the unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth. Gambian women simply do not smoke. I guess I sort of was staring. She caught my gaze and scowled and then did something I didn't expect: She called me out on it. "What the fuck are you looking at? Never seen a nigger you Red Monkey?" I gulped and swallowed my embarrassment. I felt so strange all of a sudden. Usually I'm the one being stared at, feeling the scrutinizing gaze of some stranger. "Sorry. " I stammered feeling unsure of myself. "I was just standing here." She scoffed and turned her back to me and I walked out of the shop without my breakfast. Later, I told a few friends about the exchange and wondered why she was so angry. I thought about this damned Peace Corps life and felt sorry for myself, singled-out, and abused. I've come all the way to Africa to live like this (the constant itch of heat rash, the lack of intellectual stimulation, the inconvenience of it all) and the people who I've come to help treat me this way. I finally decided to just forget about her, forget about the weird exchange. It wasn't, after all, indicative of the way I am generally treated by Gambians. These people are usually some of the nicest I've ever met. Most Gambians will invite you to share in their meals, to live in their compounds, and to sample their lives. I should know better than to let one bad experience temper the way I actually feel about Gambians on the whole. Maybe she was just having a bad day.And then last night I wandered alone into a bar near here to buy a beer. As my eyes adjusted to the dim room I noticed three men gathered around a woman-- the same woman-- and laughing drunkenly. She was dressed this time in a pink halter-top, a leather miniskirt, and high-heel shoes. And then it struck me: She is a prostitute. This time I averted my eyes immediately and wondered if she remembered me from that day a week ago. I half-expected her to call me out again in front of the drunk men. I even considered asking "Are you still so angry at this Red Monkey?" But then-- standing in this stinking place with peeling paint and broken furniture, standing in this third-world heat and humidity, standing waiting for my beer avoiding the gaze of prostitutes and their clients-- I didn't say anything at all.

What did I want from this damned Peace Corps experience that I haven't gotten? I wanted to leave the USA and see something different. I wanted to challenge myself to learn a language. I wanted to have something to talk about. I wanted to meet new people and make new friends. I wanted to apply myself to the thrills and tests of the life-less-comfortable. I wanted to expose myself to African culture and customs. I wanted to learn about pre-industrial agriculture, permaculture, and beekeeping. I wanted to boost my résumé and improve my chances of getting into a decent graduate school. I wanted to travel. I wanted to simplify my life, to live without the modern trappings and conveniences, and to decrease my carbon footprint. I wanted to broaden my horizons. I wanted to put some things behind me. I think its time to leave here. Yesterday, a friend of mine who is also leaving soon asked me "What did you think Peace Corps was going to be like when you signed up?" I thought for a moment and then met his gaze. "Exactly like this."

I can’t believe that so much time has passed since I last wrote. I keep getting stalled, busy on projects. But I’m constantly thinking: I should update my life.

First, let me apologize that there are no photographs for you to look at. I spent several hours last week compiling snapshots from the past month but immediately afterward my laptop crashed. It still isn't fixed but I wanted to write something anyway. No pictures is worth the following one million words.

Today is the fourth day of a cramped belly, aching bones, desperate lunges to the toilet. I’m in the med unit taking doses of antibiotics for the dysentery I’ve been suffering through. My body goes through cycles of shivering cold that makes my stomach cramp and my lungs seize followed by bouts of feverish sweating that causes drops of water to drip from my pale, pasty flesh. Sounds dramatic. Yesterday’s attempt to drink a glass of water resulted in projectile vomiting. I’ve fouled my underwear more times than I care to recollect.

But I should say that I’m finally getting better. The Ciprofoxacin is killing the bacteria that made their home in my gut. I haven’t eaten anything for days so there’s hardly anything in my stomach to give me trouble. But when you’re sick like that, days go by like months and I can hardly remember staggering into the med unit covered in sweat, my face hanging off my head. Tammy says that I’m hilarious in my delirious yammering.

Before this, I was living for a few days at the nicest hotel in The Gambia: The five star Sheraton on the coast across from Ghanatown. We had our semi-annual All-Volunteer meeting where the Peace Corps Administration told us all how valuable we are, what we should improve upon, and how the new budget from Washington still doesn’t begin to cover our expenses. But going from grass mattresses to cloud-like pillows, bucket-baths to hot showers in glass enclosed bathrooms, the prickly heat of humid rainy-season Gambia to air-conditioned rooms with iced sodas will make anyone feel valued. Buffet dinners, pool-side beverages, ocean breezes.

I spent nearly the last two months on trek conducting the Feed the Minds sponsored “Freebee” training. It was truly a rewarding experience and I enjoyed the opportunities to work with beekeepers all over The Gambia. Many of the people we contacted were inexperienced but interested in learning about beekeeping. Others though had a lot to teach me. It gave me the chance to harvest from grass hives, log hives, and hives made from broken pounding bowls. I got to observe the difference in honey production from different regions here. Some places are densely forested with silk cottons and cashews while others are open savanna with a few baobab trees. Some colonies were old and some brand new.

I travelled with three of my Gambian counterparts- Karamu, Kaddy, and Gibril- and my very capable Bambara driver Abdoulie (who I once watched melt a broken car battery terminal over an open fire and then pour it into a mud mold to repair the one that had broken in our truck). We returned to all the villages we went to last autumn to see what people had been up to. On the first trek we had taught people how to weave grass hives and encouraged them to place them in areas where bee-fodder was available. This time we brought protective gear with us and took the participants out into the bush to inspect the colonies and to harvest honey. Sometimes the participants had built Kenyan Top-Bar hives (KTBs) or grass hives that we could spend time around demonstrating proper management techniques. For almost all of the people, this was the first time that they had really had the chance to inspect inside a hive. Even experienced honey hunters in The Gambia work in harried and quick-paced sessions with too much smoke on moonless nights due to their lack of protective gear.

We were able to take the time to show the difference between brood comb and honey comb, between capped and un-ripened honey. We are trying to teach people that the quality of honey will affect the price they can set and that by taking only the best capped honey they can make more money. Honey-hunting in The Gambia is traditionally done by men and older boys because of the associated dangers of wandering in the bush at night and the accompanying stings of harvesting. But we were able to convince several women to come with us and wear the veiled garments and rubber boots. It was especially rewarding to see the women get the opportunity to work with us and several of them seemed quite inspired by the time we were finished.

For my own part, getting to work around so many different colonies was highly educational. At one site, nobody had had any luck attracting colonies but we wanted to have honey and wax for the second day when we would teach about processing. Someone mentioned some wild bees high up in a baobab tree a little ways from the village. That night we went to the bush and spotted the colony about forty feet up in a tree that must have been over two-hundred years old. We decided that I should go up. We found a homemade ladder that was rickety and poorly constructed with too much space between the rungs and about ten feet too short. We threw a rope over a branch just above the hole where the colony resided. The ladder was tied to the rope and lifted until it almost reached the colony. I was placed on a man’s shoulders and lifted up to the ladder that was spinning and dangling from the rope. Of course being enshrouded in my beesuit, gloves, and rubber boots made me even more awkward than I would normally be clinging to a swaying ladder in the dark with angry bees circling me, sweat blinding me, and fear pounding through my veins.

From the man’s shoulders I reached high and grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder and pulled myself up. The baobab was all I could see because of the hooded veil. I hung there for a moment gathering strength and then slowly pulled myself up. Once I stood on the bottom rung I breathed deeply to try to calm down. I was scared of falling. There were at least twenty people gathered around below, the colony was still so far above me, and my heart was pounding out of my chest. I reached up to the next rung and pulled myself up. And again. The wind was blowing and my own movements were causing the ladder to swim around; banging into the tree and then thrusting away into the dark. Flashlights bounced around like klieg lights and a bon fire gave the forest a weird glow. I pulled myself up to the next level and then the next. My arms were weak and shaking, the rubber gloves filled with sweat, the ladder to and fro. Finally I reached the top rung but realized that it was too low. I’d have to stand on it and wrap my arm around the rope that I was dangling from to reach the hive. I pulled on the other rope which brought my bucket and smoker up to me. The bees were aggressive; the hive at eye level was huge and probably had never been harvested. It was quite a trick to keep one hand wrapped around the rope while I used the other to pump smoke into the hive. The bees smeared on my veil and the smoke in my eyes all but blotted out the night. For one brief moment I was able to look around at the night: Stars through the sparse limbs of the baobab, a sleight breeze, people below illuminated by the fire they’d built. My fear of falling subsided. I knew that this is what I had come here to do. I was doing something different; trying something that tested my physical and emotional strength. Though I had been stung a few times through my suit and could feel the burn, I felt strong and clear. I tried to cut comb away with my hive tool until I fumbled it and dropped it onto the head of one of the men below. Without it, I just grabbed at comb with my hand and lumped it into my bucket. Eventually I reached brood comb and stopped harvesting. I lowered the bucket down and then slowly brought myself back down the ladder. By the time my quivering body hit the ground, half the bucket of honey had been eaten.

On that trip I also did a few other things I had not yet done here. I harvested honey from wild bees who had built their hive in an abandoned termite mound. I inspected colonies hived in water jugs and baskets wrapped with rice bags. I learned bee-terminology in Mandinka, Serehule, and Wolof. At a water pump in a Fula village I found a small swarm that had probably lost their home in a nearby bush fire. They were clustered on the wet concrete at risk of being drownded and were remarkably docile- a result of being engorged with honey for their escape and most likely exhausted. The people pumping water thought this Tubob was insane as I reached my naked hand into the cluster of bees and gently moved them around until I found the queen. I lifted her and cupped her in my hand but she took flight. It took several minutes of frantic searching before I found her again floating in a bucket of water. I fished her out and Karamu helped me clip her wings. We returned her to the cluster until later that night when we married that small colony with a larger one that we were re-housing from a pounding bowl in the village to a KTB in the bush. I also finally ate some brood which is considered a delicacy that gives men their "strength." The raw brood straight from the comb is salty and too watery to be appetizing but I rather enjoyed the satisfying pop in the mouth of the cooked ones.

All in all, the “Freebee” training should be considered a success because we contacted so many people in the rural areas and taught many aspects of beekeeping. Men, women, and children attended the trainings and some seemed genuinely interested in getting involved. A few months ago, I wondered if we would even get the chance to work on the project because of budgetary and administration problems. And we finished just before the first rains fell in The Gambia.

Aside from that, I’ve been working on getting to know my new community. It hasn’t been easy since I’ve been away so much. Gunjur is pleasantly large and I am able to maintain a certain anonymity there that was impossible in my old village. For some, Peace Corps is all about integrating into a community and developing a strong relationship with their host family. For me, having come here as someone who hasn’t really set-root in any particular place and who left home almost 20 years ago, the desire to bond has never really been there. I am more comfortable roaming. I enjoy that my new guardians treat me more like a renter than a family member. Sometimes, if I were away from my old village for too long I would have to give small gifts and explanations to many people who wanted to know where I had been and why I was away so long. Now, I don’t feel so guilty if my work keeps me in Kombo or on the move elsewhere in The Gambia.

It’s not that I don’t miss being in Chewel because sometimes I do. The pace there was nice, the environment great for running in the bush or cycling, and I miss my friends there. It’s farming season and I remember fondly last year’s tiring days hunched under the sun weeding fields of rice, millet, and groundnut. I wonder whatever became of my biochar pit. And sadly, because of the All-Vol, I had to miss the wedding of Landing and Fatou, both dear friends who had taken good care of me while I lived in Manneh Kunda. My new home is more like an apartment and the back yard is a concrete slab. I'm away from home too often to even think about planting a garden and I have yet to find a place to put my compost pit.

But there is still plenty of work to keep me busy. The remainder of my service will be spent mostly on beekeeping related projects and helping with the Training for the group of Volunteers that will replace my cohort. They arrive in November. Three of my fellow Volunteers and I are shooting agroforestry training videos to be posted on YouTube and distributed to Peace Corps Volunteers. We've completed four of them thus far using the low-tech gadgetry available here. We've made videos about composting, garden bed preparation, transplanting, and organic pesticides. I'm also the co-editor and tireless contributing writer for our newsletter Natanial Fatty's Miracle Almanac which keeps me busy coming up with joke horoscopes and fake interviews. I am writing a new manual for Gambian beekeeping based on what I’ve been privileged to observe and experience here. I'm also working with some good folks who are trying to establish a non-profit venture here called BeeCause which is a three-tiered initiative directed towards people living in poverty. I'm sure you'll read more about that as time goes on. Finally, Tammy and I are planning a backpacking trip to Cape Verde.

Personal failure: The Hundred Push-Up Challenge. A couple of months ago, a few friends and I found this website that guarantees that you can do 100 push-ups without stopping if you follow the six week plan. Twenty-eight of us signed up in our own informal challenge. Of course, the author of that program failed to consider what affect a protein-poor diet might have on the push-uppers. How much protein do you get from eating baby bees?

Every other day I pushed-up until I collapsed- almost bloodying my nose a few times. Some days I did as many as 175 push ups in half an hour. Not bad considering that in my initial test I maxxed-out at 39 in a row. At the six week mark I did a progress test to see how close to 100 I could do. Ceremoniously I dropped to the prayer mat spread on the floor of my new house. I started strong and wasn't even sweating when I passed number 39. At 45 though my ears started ringing. Number 47 found me leaving either a pool of sweat or tears on the mat below my face. I couldn't tell which because I was "in the zone." I collapsed at 49.

As far as I know, only one of my fellow participants has actually completed the Hundred Push-Up Challenge. If I ever get my appetite back, I plan to try again.

My doctor just came into the room and told me that I am looking better but that she wants me to stay for at least a few more days to give my body a little rest. I told her that I really wanted to get back to work. She replied that the most important aspect of Peace Corps is the cultural exchange and that the work that we do here is a distant second. For me, learning about The Gambia has been an incredibly rewarding experience and having good relationships with my counterparts and friends here has made me feel like my service has been successful. It’s winding down. I’m thinking more and more about leaving and my Close of Service conference (also at the Sheraton thanks to off-season rates) is next month already. While I am fairly confident that I will push my leave date from December to April so I can complete a few things, I know that the end is coming. Having had the rural village experience for most of my time here and now a more urban one, I feel like I am getting to know this place fairly well. And with so much traveling, I now have a fairly broad perspective about The Gambia’s culture and environment. She’s right; the cultural exchange is certainly the most enduring aspect of Peace Corps service.

The Gambia is such an amazing place. I admit that I've been struggling lately with some of the frustrations typical for Peace Corps Volunteers. But I have not stopped enjoying my environs, respecting the people I work with, or knowing that it remains a worthwhile venture.

The job I'm doing here and the life I'm living: It is weaving long, twisted strands of spun fiber into a beautiful, durable fabric. The loom is pieced together from found objects and hand-hewn sticks. The work is tedious and the rickety machinery causes blisters and backaches.

One has to keep looking into the distance and seeing the far away goals in order to not get lost in the close-up befuddlement of the cross-eyed, teary-eyed laborious process. I have to remember that these things take time, that we each have a contribution to make, and that while it is never easy it is always worth it.

I've been working a lot lately. I am stretched between the job and the cultural integration. Somedays I don't know where to begin; others I could start just about anywhere. I've been moving around, doing many different things. I fall asleep in one bed and wake in another. So much of what I do is in the Kombo area far away from the village that is my home.

I've decided to make a change. It has been a tough decision, one that will disappoint some of my friends and make others speculate about my motivations. I'm leaving my village.I'm going to move- tomorrow in fact- to a beachside village near the metropolitan capitol city of Banjul. I've been thinking about this move for six months and have finally decided that it is time to make the change. I have been working with the National Beekeepers Association of The Gambia on several projects and have also been participating in Peace Corps trainings. All of this has kept me away from the village where I have been living for the past sixteen months. Sometimes I enjoy it while at other times I am frustrated because I am unable to focus on my projects there.

Am I moving away because of the ruin that my garden has become in my absence? Am I frustrated with the attitudes of my host village? Do I expect my work to be more effective here than it was there? Do I just want to live near the cool breeze of the sea, my girlfriend, or the dining options that accompany beachside tourism? Am I giving up?

Ultimately, there are many factors that have led me to make this choice. Telling the Fula people of my village that I was transferring to Gunjur was a difficult exchange. Explaining that I have work to do there they replied Kono a hebi ligge gaye. "But you have work to do here." My reason: I have a specialized skill that is sort of being wasted living in the rural village. I came here knowing a little bit about beekeeping and have learned so much since arriving in October 2007. While the people in my village are interested in learning about bees, they also need development in so many other ways. I wish that my diverse interests could be utilized to help them but I have increasingly felt like the greatest contribution I could make here is to focus on what I can do best.

I want to work where beekeeping is the primary focus, where people already have a basic understanding of the art and want to develop more intensive practices. I want to work with NBAG and the Sifoe Beekeeping Kaafo on their missions to teach Gambians about beekeeping while conducting research about bees in West Africa. NBAG and Sifoe are both within bicycling distance of my new home. While both of these places have experienced problems in the past with their practice and management, they remain dedicated to making a difference in The Gambia. By working with them, I can benefit more Gambians (hopefully) than I can by staying focussed on the small-scale work that accompanies life in an isolated rural village.

Of course it is a complex decision. I have spoken extensively about it with some of my counterparts, the Peace Corps staff, my Language and Culture Facilitator, and many of my friends. Finally, it comes down to asking myself "Where will I be most happy?" I have finally decided. While I am sure to miss some things about Chewel and to suffer from the guilt of abandonment, I also will be able to visit those people from time to time and to share with them some of what I will learn through my new, focussed work.

I am excited for this new chapter of my Gambian Peace Corps experience. I will be living with Mandinkas and so I will get to learn about that culture and language. My new home has a population of almost 30,000 people. I will still read at night by flashlight as there is no electricity, I will still take bucketbaths as there is no running water. But now I will be able to continue the work I am doing while sleeping in my own bed every night. My host family is one old woman and her two sons in their twenties, not yet married. I will be able to work with beekeepers at two separate locations and I also hope to spend time with the women in the large garden there and help with a lagoon restoration project near the ocean. This, like almost everything I have experienced in The Gambia, is bound to be complex and difficult and rewarding.

Time goes and nothing happens. My mind wanders back to easier times, times when it wasn’t so hard. Sometimes I read page after page of my thesaurus searching for words in my native tongue to describe to myself the way that I feel. But these are Fula times, I should be resorting to my dictionary of foreign terms. Sometimes I feel more nourished by the plants that died without ever being harvested, without seeing it through. Am I like this? Are these Kurtzian days and Quixotic nights food grown for the soul? I wanted to taste that papaya because it would’ve been the best one I’ve ever grown.

Time stands still and everything becomes. Sometimes I get so bored. I’ve spent these past weeks trying to feel better about the direction things have gone. Today, I should feel better because now things have gone finally. Relieved or proud or somehow personally rewarded by some small victory. But in this kind of life, is there any step forward that isn’t a step backward? And I run the risk of taking too personally these stumbling lurches.

But nowhere do they say that you have to be successful as you do these things. Just that you ought to try. And I’ve been trying, honest I have. This is not the first garden I’ve planted that I didn’t get to harvest. I’ve planted a garden of seeds that I’ve planted even as I knew when I planted them I’d never see them grow.

Fortunately I’m not alone through this. I’ve been kept company in that garden by people who have listened well, commented smartly, and inspired me to believe in myself. It’s easy; we all keep finding ourselves in these existential processes. Stories and songs hold us up. We agree with one another, this is not easy.

The three Goals of Peace Corps: Provide technical assistance to people who want it. Let Gambians get to know an American. Let Americans know what it’s like to live in a place not America.

Why do I feel like I’m not doing any of these things? Why have I been feeling like I’m failing? Sometimes I don’t give this credit for how hard it really is. Sometimes I feel like I don’t understand a single word that is spoken to me. Sometimes I find myself shouting just to be able to hear myself.

I’m working though, I’m really still at it. And I think I might be getting somewhere. This place is getting hot, dusty. I remember this. I think I might be getting somewhere.

When I first came to The Gambia, I had a Peace Corps friend in training who called himself The Dark Horse. There were many things here that he, having never left the continental US, struggled with. Harsh climate, cultural schisms, and dietary discomforts were among his problems. The thing he tussled-with most was the fact that he thought he’d come here and “know exactly what to do to help the world’s poor lift themselves up.” He found that in The Gambia, though people are malnourished, they are not starving; while people are living in poverty, they share a generally optimistic outlook. He was disheartened because he didn’t know how he was expected to help. What exactly did Peace Corps think he could do? When I would ask him how his day was going, he would invariably recite a line from the Coen Brother’s film The Big Lebowski. “Gutters and strikes.” His days were a constant toil as he tried to see the big picture but instead he allowed his smaller failures, say with language, get the best of him. Eventually, he decided to leave or Early Terminate (ET) in the jargon of US government anachronism, a month before we swore-in.

I won’t lie, I’m feeling a bit Dark Horsey these days. Since coming back from Sierra Leone, I’ve encountered several trials and tribulations and have begun to question-- more so than the usual Volunteer existential angst-- what exactly is my role in Peace Corps The Gambia. Harsh diet, weather schisms, and cultural discomforts are only a few of my complaints.

Upon finishing my vacation, I returned to my village to find my entire backyard demonstration garden had become an animal feedlot. The green vibrancy I left behind for a month had become a ruined, dusty whirlwind. The cassava plants were gone, the sweet potatoes gone, the beans and tomatoes and eggplants were all gone. The papaya-tomato-pigeon pea guild was nothing but a single gnawed-off stump in the silty oblivion. My demonstration had become nothing but an abstraction. A year’s worth of work and planning is now nothing but the shit of sheep, goats, donkeys, and cows scattered around as if to inform me of each of the ruminants who had ruminated. Tattered plastic bags, leaking batteries, and discarded broken sandals completed the appearance of neglect.I asked my host family what had happened. First the gate had been left open, later the cows came in the night and trampled the bamboo fence. Ko nye yaaki they told me. The cows disturbed this. After the cows came the donkeys, the sheep, and the goats.

When I left a month earlier, I asked my family to look after my garden and tree nursery until I got back. They told me Basi ala, no problem. They understand (I think) that I’m doing this for them. I want them to take an active role in this project. Sure, a small ebony tree in the dirt is little more than a stick with a few leaves. But in twenty years, the timber from that single tree could bring them a larger income than a whole field of groundnuts. The papayas and bananas are easy money-makers and require little more than water and protection.

One of the objectives of Peace Corps is sustainable capacity-building. If the garden I have established is not valued by my hosts, is it a waste of time to work in it? No matter how beautiful the crops were, if I haven’t taught my counterparts to care for it I haven’t done my job. First I was disappointed in them but gradually I began to point the accusatory finger back at myself. This was my fault too, I was at least partially responsible. Not just because I went on a two week excursion to Sierra Leone when they cannot even afford a three day trip to Banjul; not just because I hadn’t done a good enough job reinforcing my fence. I too am culpable because I was unable to impress upon my people that this garden is worth the effort. What I’m doing is not just for my own pleasure but is valuable because it boosts their nutrition, provides a source of income, and improves the health of their environment.

Backyard gardens aside, at Nyambai I met with an even greater disappointment than I could have prepared myself for. Things at the National Beekeepers Association of The Gambia (NBAG) had deteriorated into, forgive the obvious metaphor, an upset hive of angry bees. The problem though was not with the temperamental Apis melifera but instead with the corruptible Homo sapiens. We had been witnessing an increasingly volatile conflict between the Board of Directors, the general staff, and the NGOs who provide financial support. Thus far, it has been a slow-burn but recently the drama flared-up with intensity. This finally culminated in the firing of the general manager (a good friend of mine), the withdrawal of Peace Corps support, and the call for an entire restructuring of the organization.

Again, my frustration initially was directed outwardly: What about all the work I’d done in that apiary, all the hive-management training I’d given, and all the plans I had for the coming year? What about the second module of the Feed the Minds rural trainings. What about the grant that Concern Universal just approved for me to conduct research in the apiary at NBAG in Nyambai? Many of us have worked long-hours with the staff to help make the honey operation a viable one. Now some have quit amongst accusations and back-stabbing, some have been sacked, and Peace Corps Volunteers are prohibited from going to the office and apiary.It didn’t take long though for me to begin to feel like the problem was much larger than the obvious, more tangible inconveniences of this particular failure. The real problem seems to be something that I don’t have the capacity to improve upon. (Dissertations are written and critiques abound of development work in Africa. I haven’t the perspective or the education to begin to inform my readers about the inherent problems of aid and development work and so I will stick to a description of my own experience. It is not my goal to depress you, only to inform you of what I’m going through.) The real problem is that development work is impossibly difficult and often unrewarding. The real problem is that ultimately everyone must make for themselves what they will attain. Otherwise, what they are given will be meaningless and easily corrupted. I heard the old adage a very long time ago: You can lead a horse to water but it’s still gonna stink.

Dishonesty, fraud, and bribe-taking are the axis of evil in the war on poverty and malnutrition. Police officers will gladly look the other way if they are handed a wadded bill by the unlicensed driver of an overloaded car of people. The manager of my regional Christian Children’s Fund recently absconded with thousands of dollars leaving thirty people unemployed for three months and five-hundred children with no school to go to. Teachers remove girls from the classrooms to wash clothes for them; headmasters sell bags of beans donated by the World Food Program. And at NBAG, money that had been donated by the European Commission for the construction of three new processing centers went into the pockets of the staff and the Board. One senior member of staff paid another one to not tell on him and then accepted a bribe from this same person to return the favor.

It is impossible to say just how deeply ingrained this type of dishonesty is in the Gambian system. The money is just too easy and the temptation overcomes even the most trustworthy. The cash from Tubob-adu flows swiftly into the pockets of the people who are “committed” to making those funds work for the greater good. I can imagine that some resist the enticement of the cash for a while but eventually they realize that their honesty does not pay. Continued poverty seems the reward for doing the right thing. Can you blame them? Can I blame people who are struggling to put food on the table if they eventually take a little off the top? Can I blame my friends and the people I trust? Can I blame the public servant who hasn’t received a paycheck in months for taking a little fist-money? One of the people who had accepted a “tip” at NBAG is struggling with the fact that his wife has been suffering health problems. He can hardly afford the most basic of services and has been living in poverty for his entire life. Can I blame him taking a little money upon his realization that he was the only person there who hadn’t already?

What goes on under the table is often obscured from Peace Corps Volunteers who come here with a sense of hope and goodwill. We form strong bonds with our counterparts and believe that they share the same goals and ethics that brought us here. Discovering that corruption can happen to even the best of them can bring feelings of frustration, sadness, and hopelessness to the Volunteer. Personally, the past few weeks have left me feeling disillusioned, exhausted, and distracted. These emotions have had a drastic impact on my work, on my attitude, and on my outlook. When your counterparts disappoint you and your projects collapse, it is hard to not take-it personally. But then the inevitable happens. After throwing all those gutter balls I pick-up a 7-10 split on the seventh frame and follow it with a strike. (These analogies are indicative of the fact that I miss bowling most of all the American establishments that I miss at all. Development might be more effective if we just exported ten pins and a twelve pound roller to all these people and let them work the rest out on their own. If I ever return to the Western Hemisphere, you should plan on going bowling with me.) The small group of beekeepers that I hang out with near my village has impressed me so much these past few weeks. They have been gathering twice a week to weave grass hives for sale to the President of this country and have almost completed a third of his order. They plan to take the first one-hundred to His Excellency by the end of the month. They are excited to get a little cash income for all the cramped knuckles and tender fingertips that accompany weaving grass into cones and cylinders. With steady work, one man can usually make a hive in about three days.

They have really done a lot of work while I was away. I stood in front of the pile of hives that they had made and scratched the dust into my eyes. Each hive was unique; some were a little wonkity and misshapen but most were tight baskets big enough to house a healthy colony all summer. I felt a little strange standing in front of all those hives, a little conflicted. My ego, already strained, was hyper-active. I was a little ashamed, I hadn’t made hardly any of these (and the ones I had made were weydani- not nice). Here was another of my personal failures. Sure, they had made beehives, but what did I have to show for myself?

But then it struck me as I sat down with them and began to weave for the first time in over six weeks: This is exactly what I have been working towards. This is sustainable. This didn’t happen because I made it happen. These men had worked for their own development and they took pride (quietly) in their work. I had helped them organize, I had urged them to make grass hives, and I had helped cut some of the grass. Sometimes the successes in life are the intangibles like this. The bigger picture is hopeful and I am optimistic that even without me, this project will continue to help these people alleviate poverty. And it looks like they can do it without me, like they are going to do it regardless of what I expect of them. They welcomed me back, asked a few questions about Sierra Leone, and then encouraged me to try to make something weydi, something worthy of being sold alongside theirs. And when I’m not at Badjie Kunda splitting my fingers on palm fronds, I’ve been cleaning-up my demonstration area. I’ve repaired the fence for now. I’ve watered the banana plant and brought it back to life, for now. I’ve re-hydrated the cacti and burned the alluvial flotsam, for now. And we are trying to repair our relationship with NBAG, trying to see what can be done to recover everyone’s efforts. Some of us feel that we’ve put too much into that operation to let it perish. Too much work? Too much money? Sure, those also have been invested. But I think the true investment that we don’t want to squander is our hope and our enthusiasm for the National Beekeepers Association of The Gambia.

We will try to go ahead with the Feed the Minds trainings because that is the sort of grass-roots work that NBAG was founded on. Their motto-- Good Health, Local Wealth-- is still the way that many of us feel about beekeeping in The Gambia. Through NBAG, aid and development resources have made it into the hands (and minds) of rural people. Peace Corps Volunteers, Mondo Challenge Volunteers, Concern Universal extension workers, and employees of NBAG have worked toward that end. There is still plenty of optimism.Also, the papaya tree in my back yard has sprouted new leaves.

And I would be leaving-out another bit of happiness if I didn’t tell you about Minh-Tam. This blog isn’t just about the harsh culture, dietary schisms, and weather discomforts that accompany living in The Gambia. I met this girl. Tammy was a Volunteer in Bolivia until they were evacuated last Fall due to political tensions. Rather than quit Peace Corps after a year of service, she opted to try another country and so came here in October. She tells it best: http://tammytruong.blogspot.com/

But I mention it because I have enjoyed her company since we met on a dance floor in October. For those of you who’ve seen me dance, she is the only girl I’ve met who can actually hang with me. And she sings karyoke with verve (The last time I was in a bowling alley, some of Duke City’s finest entertained me while I waited for a lane to open.) and without self-consciousness. It has been pretty amazing. She is having a totally different experience here, and she has changed mine too. I’ve had the chance to get to know the people in her village and seen other aspects of agroforestry in The Gambia. She reminds me not to take the small rewards for granted. Her laugh is infectious. Still, it has been strange to court someone in this place: Kissing cousins come together in arranged marriages, husbands and wives sleep in separate rooms, we are apart for weeks on end waiting for transport.

I have experienced many different emotions over the past few months, to say nothing of the past year and a half that I’ve been in The Gambia. I’ve been here long enough now to have made very strong attachments to some of the people I've met. Two of those people are Nick and Amanda, and they are leaving soon. They have completed their work and are moving back to The States to see what sort of an impact they will have there.

Another of my friends, Kat has also left. She came here on the same plane as me and she was one of my closest site-mates. She’s moving to Tanzania to work on a project bringing light to rural people using bicycle-charged batteries.

I will miss Nick, Amanda, and Kat for the rest of the time I am here and I hope that, inshallah, they will be successful and happy. Yo allah ruta he jam.

I went to Sierra Leone and got a little souvenir.

A botfly laid her egg in my clothes which then hatched into my arm which then found nourishment of my flesh. It burned like hellfire everytime it squirmed around inside me. I spent a few days pouring boiling water on the spot and pinching myself.

It popped out and now I'm on the mend. Unless there was more than one that is...

Ryan and Jeff and I were intrigued about this tropical place south of The Gambia called Sierra Leone so we left together on a two week trip. We had spoken with a few other Peace Corps Volunteers who had travelled there, checked a few websites, and looked through tattered copies of the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. At the consulate in Banjul before we left, we were told to greet a few people. Then we were told to pay US$100 for the entry visa. The roundtrip tickets were US$300 from The Gambia to Freetown.

Sierra Leone is, as we would soon learn, a place of fascinating contrasts. It was at once pristine while filthy, welcoming while frightening, inspiring while disheartening. The environment has enormous potential to support agriculture yet less than 8% of the land is currently in production. Diamonds, gold, and metals are mined from the countryside but most of the profit is never seen by the people who live and die in these mines. The population is over four million yet there are vast stretches of uninhabited places. The growth rate is 10 points higher than the world average yet the country has the highest infant mortality rate in the world (as I write this, Salma Hayek is feeding babies there with milk from her own breast!).

Freetown, founded in 1787 for repatriated American and British slaves, is a crowded and polluted city full of refugees who came here seeking asylum during and after the civil war that lasted through the 1990s. It is not uncommon to see men and women who suffered amputations and other travesties during that struggle positioned on the streets begging for a few coins. In the sea of faces on the chaotic streets I saw two caucasions wearing white button-downs and dark backpacks. Then I noticed the nametags and realized that they were Mormons on a mission. We were a little lost and tired in the middle of Freetown and so I wanted to ask if they knew where we could get a room for the night. Maybe they had had visitors and knew of a place. They were moving fast down the street and I was chasing them- though slightly more encumbered. "Hey guys! Hey Mormon guys!" But they continued. We laid chase through the crowded street and I kept trying to make them hear my American voice. I had heard a story once on PRI's This American Life about how difficult it is for Moromon Missionaries to get anyone to listen to them and so I thought they'd be glad to hear us. I'd even listen to the Joseph Smith story again if they'd tell me where I could sleep for cheap. Finally I caught up with them and snatched one of their bags. I asked "Don't you speak English?" The boy shot me a glance as he pulled away from my clutch. "Yes." was all he said as the two of them disappeared into a busy retaurant. I gave up.

The tropics of Sierra Leone make it a great place to grow delicious fruits and vegetables. Cassava, pineapples, coconut, rice, sweet potatoes, cocoa, and coffee are among the crops that are grown here. We were also informed that chickens were being used to plant groundnuts in an inventive system employing plastic condoms stretched over the beaks to prevent the starving birds from eating the nuts. No proof of this chicken-tractor was seen and the claim is dubious at best.

We did a little book shopping from the men who sell reading material on the streets. Mostly you can find childrens' books and high school botany text books presumably donated from overseas.

I spent my downtime reading A Bend In The River by V.S. Naipaul. He wrote things like "...as I got deeper I thought: But this is madness. I am going in the wrong direction. There can't be a new life at the end of this."

America can be proud of the brand name Barrack Obama which is showing-up all over West Africa in the form of t-shirts, stickers, and beltbuckles. His face is all over every television set.

We also discovered a small hole-in-the-wall shop in Freetown called Barrack Obama Tea Shop which Ryan took a photograph of with Jeff proudly in front. We were immediately derided by the owner of the shop telling us that we had to pay him to take that photograph. He wanted to smash the camera and acted like he wanted to fight us. When we tried to rebutt that, since we had elcted Mr Obama, this man should pay us to use our President's name to sell over-priced cups of Nescafe he walked off in a huff complaining that we were selfish.

We purchased numerous coconuts on the street (about 35 cents each) which quenched our thirsts and satisfied our cravings. Men sell them out of push-pushes in the streets or you can find someone on the beach who will climb a tree and bring you one or two.

After a night in the too-expensive Aberdeen area at a guesthouse named after Princess Diana, (Where Ryan asked when he looked at the bed "Is that memory foam? to which Jeff replied "If it is, you don't want to know what it remembers.") we decided to head to the well-publicized River Number 2. The trip took about two hours by taxi. We haggled with the driver over the price for an eternity before we agreed on something around US$10. Thus began the process that Ryan quickly became weary of. Jeff and I are Peace Corps Volunteers in The Gambia where we take great pride in getting everything for less than the original asking price. Somethings are not negotiable: A coconut costs everyone the same while the price of a hotel room is rarely what the man behind the counter asks for. But we would be letting our Peace Corps Cultural Trainers down if we didn't engage in this West African tradition. No matter that we are making a stink over 35 cents. No matter that we will make that stink for twenty minutes. Ryan, on the other hand, is not Peace Corps. He came for a vacation from the States and he makes a decent living. After driving for an hour of dirt and rock road, the driver of our taxi stopped in the middle of nowhere with a sad look on his stoned face and said "But this is too far. The price is too small." Ryan shut me up by passing him another 10,000 leones (about US$3) and we eventually made it to River Number 2.

No. 2 River Beach is a community-owned project on a beautiful beach of white sand with mountains rising practically right out of the Atlantic.

The Lonely Planet lists the price for camping at 5000 leones which we were quite excited about. Once we arrived however we were informed that the price had gone-up just a little for the priveledge of setting out our tents. The first price was Le60,000. We eventually talked them down to half that... and we promised not to use their chairs.

The only other people we met on the beach that day were some Americans. I recognized the accent and so went over to say hello. As it turns out, the two elderly men were Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who had both served in Sierra Leone nearly forty years ago. They came for a visit and brought their adult children. Peace Corps is no longer active here but they wanted to see what was left of their work. One of the men had been a teacher and he saw that his school was still in use and he met some of his former students. The other man had been an engineer working on the roads and he thought that they had not seen much maintenance over the years. In fact, both men agreed that things in Sierra Leone were much worse than they had been when they were last here.

Ryan bought a bottle and we drank gin on No 2 Beach. Ryan ordered the baracuda skewers for Le30,000 and Jeff and I ate a plate of rice drenched in palm oil and wilted cassava leaves in a nearby village for Le1,000 each. We also were given roseheart fruits, bananas, and mangos.

We decided to head back to Freetown to arrange transport to the northeast part of the country. We had read about climbing Mt Bintumani (Loma Mansa) which, at 6381 feet, is the highest mountain in West Africa.

Freetown is a weird place.

There are funny signs everywhere. Some of them are informative about current issues.

Some of them read Love is Wicked and Oggo Farm Piggery and Youth Empowerment and Book for the heart, Book for the brain, and If Go grees we go succeed and banana water and Beware of Bad Dogs.

Some help get the word out on the medical care that is available.

Some of them tell You! to Stop asking questions!

The next morning we went to the bus stop at 5am where we wanted to catch the "government bus" to Kabala, the nearest town to Loma Mansa. We were told that "no bus goes today" and so we started hiking across the city for the carpark. Eventually we were picked-up by a taxi who took us the remaining 18 miles that we were about to walk. We were invited to ride in a Peugeot 504 bush taxi with a few other travellers and we negotiated the price and were off. The driver was a Redskins fan as are Jeff and Ryan. He had lived in the Bronx for 18 years and had just returned to Sierra Leone to try to make a living here. He took us as far as Makeni and then helped us negotiate a fair price the rest of the way to Kabala. We finally arrived there at about 4pm and started to look for a place to stay. The RPCVs we met at No 2 River had reccomended Pa Sargeant's guesthouse and so we trudged across town. Once there we were told that Pa wasn't in but that we could wait in the lobby. I'm not sure if this is what they meant when they told us to relax....

But we were a little exhausted.

And maybe all the travelling was making us a little loopy.

Kabala is a nice town and Pa's is a nice guesthouse. Unfortunately, it is not really very close to Loma Mansa. The Lonely Planet reads "The most scenic and wildlife-rich approach to the summit is from the west, either from Kabala..." We were informed that there were no cars that went there whatsoever and that the road was horrible. "Hunert miles." Pa said. We could probably charter three motorcycles and drivers for Le200,000 each. It'd take eight or nine hours to get there but they wouldn't wait for us to make the five day trip up and down. We realized that we wouldn't be able to make the trip afterall.

We were able to make a dayhike up to the crest of Gbawuria Hill which was sort of like climbing the highest mountain in West Africa. Well, not really. But it did afford us nice views of Kabala.

We also got really dirty on that hike which was fun. And funny.

We asked Pa if he knew where we could get local honey so he arranged for Fatamata to come over. She sold us a liter for Le4000.

She wildcrafts her honey from the bush but doesn't have any hives of her own. She told us that this honey was harvested last fall and that she wouldn't be able to get any more until March.

It was thick and dark which is what West Africans seem to prefer. She said that this honey will last at least two years but we drank it straight from the bottle and finished it in a week.

Jeff needed to get his hair cut and so we set out looking for a "Barbing Shop." West African haircuts are usually accomplished with a razorblade but Jeff insisted that the barber use scissors.

We also found a game that someone had set up: They put some jars of mayonaise, bottles of Fanta, and bars of soap on the ground and charge Le100 to throw a ring to try to win a prize.

He didn't win anything.

The next day we left for Tiwai Island in the southeast part of the country. It was an all-day trek involving a lot of negotiating, some hurt feelings, and a very cramped ride. The trip from Kabala to Mekeni went alright and we experienced only two breakdowns in our bushtaxi. The car, not us. From Makeni we rode in a van (gele gele here, podh podh there) for four hours to Bo. Then we hired a taxi for the last three hours to Potoru. We met a man there who let us sleep on his floor (he asked for Le20,000 each and we agreed on Le10,000) and then he told us stories of the war. He pointed out bullet holes on the buildings around his house and said that he lived in the bush for four months eating wild yams.

The next morning we set out on a ten mile hike (to save the Le45,000 we would have spent on motorcycle rides) to the Moa River.

This was my first time ever in a closed canopy jungle and I was awestruck by the beauty of it all.

It is difficult in such a place to really see the territory unless you can climb trees to get a look around.

Tiwai Island is a community conservation program managed by the people of Koya and Barri, the Sierra Leonean government, and Njala University. It is a unique 1200 hectare island biosphere in the Gola Forest Reserve, the last remaining dryland rainforest in Africa. Pygmy hippos, river otters, chimpanzees and ten other primate species live there as well as over 700 different plant species.

We did laundry with one of the locals in the Moa River.

Jungles are difficult places to take photographs. The lens doesn't demonstrate much more than greenery.

You have to look up to see much more than the plants in your face.

We walked with a guide from the community. He told us to keep looking up.

He told us to look down. Though we wouldn't actually see the elusive pygmy hippo, we would be lucky enough to almost step in some hippo poop.

The sounds of a jungle are much more dramatic than the sights: Skitter jitter, droops, barks, whistles, and growls. Dripping water on the tent. Whispers and long-range calls. Rhythmic pulse of a bird's beak on deadwood, melodic singsong pitch warble. Monkeys and apes in stereo as one picks up the voice of another and carries it across the jungle. A silence that is itself a sort of music. River on the rocks far away a whisper. Primates in trees as branches bend and flex and drop sticks and leaves in a whoosh almost of wind, a crack almost of thunder. A quiet again as lively eyes stare back at me. The buzz of a honeybee and the cadence of crickets. Rushing of wind through wide-spread wings. Thump on a hollow log. Operatic birds create a mysterious chorus of cackling laughs and mournful wails.

Tiwai Island provides tents for the overnight adventure. We stayed two nights. Solar panels provide cold beer and lights at night. The staff is comprised of locals from nearby communities who are generous, informed, and friendly.

We hiked out to Potoru and were lucky enough to find a podh podh going to Bo with a woman throwing up in the back seat. When she wasn't, her two children were.

Bo is a strange city full of Lebanese-owned diamond buying shops and high speed internet and corrupt government officials. We got a room at the Madam Woki Hotel across from Cool Zone Rest and Relaxation. We enjoyed some afra (grilled meat on the street) and took in the up-country nightlife. Ryan and Jeff both threw-up later that night but I slept like a baby.

Bo open air market: Reeking of raw sewage and rotting trash and dry fish. Throngs of people packed ridiculously together, gawking children bumping against us, wet and black sewage splashing over our feet, blank women selling cheap wax cloth and sorrel and groundnuts, pickpockets with their fingers groping our buttocks. Shouted "Whatcha lookin fo?" and "Hey friend, how di bodi?" and "From where?" Piles of smoldering trash, stacks of used American clothes, recorded voices hawking from megaphones, distorted rap from blown speakers powered by belching generators. Fast racing drunken motorcyles slamming me obnoxiously from behind. Not at all unique or inspiring.

Lovely children in the streets carrying overflowing buckets of rotted trash on their heads. A boy learning to drive a motorcycle stalling it over and over again and being laughed at by a policeman weilding a machine gun. The golden sun hanging in the smoky sky backlighting tall minarets atop the big downtown mosque. A rooster. Fried plaintains. Chubby Lebanese kids sucking on Cokes behind the counters of diamond-buying shops while their shrouded mothers stare aloof from barred upstairs balconies. A dog chasing another dog down the silt street. A car on flames with a black smoke trail strangling the city while men passively play checkers on a homemade board. Women together bent at the waist sweeping the earth with brooms made from palms. The most melodic call to prayer I've ever hear sung loud, proud into the polluted cloud of my first morning in Bo.

That morning we awoke to the pollution of a West African atmosphere. My eyes were burning and my throat was scratchy. I didn't realize that, like The Gambia, Sierra Leone also imposes "Clean the Nation Day" whereby cars are not allowed to be on the road, shops remain closed, and everyone is expected to burn their piles of plastic bags, donkey shit, and worn-out clothing. I decided to walk to a shop to purchase lye to wash my clothes in the bathroom sink but was quickly stopped by a police officer who beckoned me over to him.

He asked what I was doing out wandering around. "Don't you know that today is Clean the Nation?" he asked. I said I didn't. He told me that it was against the law to leave your compound or hotel until 10:00 and it was only 9:15. "Do you agree with me that you have broken that law?" I noticed that his eyes were a bit glassy and he seemed to smell of palm wine. I guess that I had to agree that I had broken that law and so I said "Yes." He had me right where he wanted me. "So do you also agree that you are under arrest?" We debated that issue for a short time and then he instructed me to follow him to the police station. We started to stroll but he was in no hurry. He told me that he hadn't been paid in a long time and that it was a shame that even the public servants were poor in his country. Maybe if he had a friend from America... I started to catch on. Suddenly I saw Ryan walking towards us. Apparently he didn't know the law either and Officer Barri asked him if he agreed that he was under arrest. The three of us tarted to stroll towards the station when three other cops showed up and demanded identification from us. Ryan showed his passport and I showed my Peace Corps id because mine was in the hotel. They told us to come to the station for interrogation and to verify our status in their country. Officer Barri became defensive. Either he had grown to like us (after I had given him a fake American phone number and promised to let him stay at my house if he was ever in Europe) or was playing good-cop bad-cop. Either way, an argument between them took the heat off us. Eventually they all grew tired of the discussion and agreed that were no longer arrested.

Back near Freetown we had a few nights remaining and a small cache of leones that we didn't want to waste. We'd been eating so many meals made of sardines mixed with a can of hummus and smeared on bread that we were super hungry for good Italian food. We found a beautiful resort called Franco's down the beach in Sussex that had been built over the past thirty years.

Franco let us put our tents up in the grass beneath a few coconut trees and only charged us about five bucks for each tent.

The downside of the site was that you couldn't lock up any valuables so we had to keep a close watch on things. There were a few hellion children running around throwing Coke cans in the ocean and clowning with the wildlife. We couldn't say anything because some of them were Franco's kids and some were the spawn of Bruno, one of Franco's expat friends from Germany. Our first night we turned-in rather early due to the exhaustion of lounging on the beach all day. The kids were full of pent-up energy from drinking soft drinks and eating buttered noodles and so were running around our tents. We tried to ignore them when Leo spat on Jeff's tent as he ran past and kicked Ryan's. Some one of their drunk fathers gave them sparklers and before we knew what was happening Ryan's tent was melting beneath a wash of bright sizzle and sulphur smell. We were livid and chased them into their houses where they cowered like the animals that they were. We tried to reason with Franco and Bruno but Franco was impossible to understand and Bruno was disastrously drunk. He patted little Leo's nappy hair and said "Did you set the American Army tents on fire?" "Not me Papa. Honest." Bruno shrugged and looked at us blank as a fart. "Be reasonable. Do you think he was trying to kill you?" He staggered back to his hotel room. Franco mumbled something about letting us keep our five bucks for the night.

We met a man from Las Vegas Nevada wh has lived here for sixteen years. He was a mercenary during the war and told us stories about his life here. Now he mines uranium and other precious metals. We also met a woman named Sarah from the United Kingdom who was on the final days of her volunteer work in Sierra Leone before heading home.

We headed back to Freetown for our last night. We found a nice brothel where they only charged us $8 per person and looked the other way: Sierra Leone has a law that restricts more than one person of the same sex from staying in the same room. We struggled throughout our entire trip promising hotel managers that we were brothers and that we swore not to engage in ungodly acts together in their houses of disrepute.

We went shopping for last minute silafonda- gifts to be given to host families upon our return home.

I bought myself a big grass hat and a barracuda-bone necklace for my girlfriend in The Gambia.

The next morning we went to the airport where we were informed that there was a US$40 "departure tax" that we would each have to pay before we could board the plane. I guess it was appropriate.

We said "Goodbye" to Sierra Leone and wondered if we would ever return. I am excited to get back home now to do some work.

After my parents returned home I was excited to get back to work. I returned to my village where I jumped into a few projects around the compound. My Host Brother Landing had finished threshing the groundnuts and we bagged them for storage. Some will be saved for next year's seed and we will eat the rest in rice dishes such as nankatan, maffe gerte, and gosi. From a single hectare field of groundnuts planted in July, we harvested nine sacks in November.

I helped Gallo and his family make blocks to rebuild the walls of his house that had collapsed during the rainy season. Altogether, we made 4000 mud blocks. For ten days five men and eight boys hauled water from a pump, dug mud with short-handled shovels, and formed sun-baked bricks.

My garden is a work in progress. I've designed a permaculture "guild" in the back corner of my demonstration yard. The tall papaya provides shade for the squash and tomato seedlings while the shorter pigeon pea will fix nitrogen. The trees were planted during the rains in August.

This almond tree is benefitting from the urine fertilizer I've been making. I apply about five liters of a diluted solution twice a month. The tree is very healthy and vibrant.

This ebony tree is also doing well. I keep it mulched with the chaff from groundnuts and millet, broken stalks, and small sticks. The chickens scratch at the moist soil so I have woven the very prickly branches of a winterthorn atop the mulch. I've used biochar and compost in all of my planting holes.

I harvested some of my sweet potatoes. They were planted in September on small hills in my back yard. I intercropped them with beans.

I'm really excited about the biochar projects I have going. Biochar is a soil amendment that is credited with contributing to the fertile soils of the Amazon. I collect the un-sellable dust and detritus from abandoned clandestine charcoal production sites in the bush. The government of The Gambia outlawed charcoal production twenty years ago as a measure to protect its dwindling timber resources. Because of the remote location of my village near the border with Cassamance, many people still engage in charcoal production.

My friend Bakary Jatta makes biochar using a gassification system. It is a clean and efficient way to make charcoal: Bakary uses crop residues and slash from his jatropha plantation. This process eliminates most of the carbon emitted into our breathe-o-sphere and retains more than 50% of the original biomass. The biochar is then mixed with the flotsam from Bakary's biodigester and finely chopped yard waste to create a productive planting medium.

Bakary came here 1984 from Canada to work with St Joseph's Family Farm in Bwiam. He promotes jatropha as a cash crop. It is a small bush that grows well in this sub-tropical sahel environment. The nuts from jatropha are pressed and the oil can be used for candles, cooking flames, and soaps.

People from eight villages in Foni Jarrol attended the Feed The Minds sponsored Free-Bee rural training. We've been traveling around the country for the past four months trying to spark an interest in beekeeping. This two-day workshop was held at the NBAG/Concern Universal Brumang Processing Center near Kalagi.

We informed the participants about pollination, seasonal calenders, and potential income from small-scale beekeeping projects.

We also engaged them with practical instruction. We encouraged them to build their own grass hives which are inexpensive and efficient.

We are trying to get women involved in beekeeping. Currently, they have little role in the traditional practices of honey harvesting. We hope to inspire them to see some of the different ways that they can benefit from constructing hives, harvesting hive products, and selling value-added products at the weekly market.

I've also been working in the apiary at the National Beekeepers Association of The Gambia. This Kenyan Top Bar Hive was badly cross-combed and unmanaged. We are all terrified of it. Everytime Nick, Andy, Bah2, Kabee, or I go near it we just shake our heads and run away.

The combs had been constructed perpendicular to the topbars and the colony hadn't been managed since it showed up here three years ago. Finally we built up the courage to open it. We harvested honey and wax, corrected the orientation of the brood comb by wiring it to the topbars, and gave them honey from another hive to compensate for what we harvested.

Five days later and they haven't absconded.

Unfortunately, the bees from our observation hive did abscond. They had built several queen cells and eventually swarmed.

Once the bees absconded, wax moths moved in and quickly destroyed much of the wax. It happens...

Happy New Years. Mi weltima hitande hesere. I traveled to Fajara to wish upon the fireworks exploding over the beach.

New Year's Eve has always been my favorite holiday. I always make resolutions and this year was no exception. Mine: Instead of believing in nothing, I will make everything happen.

And so today begins my trip to Sierra Leone. I will travel for two weeks with my Peace Corps pal Jeff.

His old friend Ryan from back home is also traveling with us.

This blog post was the final thing I had to do before I could leave.

Now, it's time for me to hit the road.

My mom & dad wondered if I was just making-up these weird stories so they came to The Gambia to have a see for themselves.

A day after they flew into Senegal, we got the Car from Dakar. We arrived at the crazy-busy-for-pre-Tobaski-travel carpark early in the morning and began the eight hour trek to The Gambia.

The road was long, bumpy, and dusty. The car was cramped and uncomfortable. Mom & Dad were amazed by the travel conditions.

Once in the Gambia, we had to board the overloaded Kanalai Ferry across the River Gambia from Barra to Banjul.

President Kennedy had three goals in mind when he organized Peace Corps in 1960. Besides helping the people of interested countries with technical assistance, Peace Corps places a strong emphasis upon the cultural exchange.

Many people come to The Gambia every year as tourists from Europe and Asia. Living up-country, I normally don't get much exposure to that experience. With my parents here, I spent two weeks living as a tourist in the Kotu Beach area. Typically-tourist activities offer a very different version of The Gambia apart from the one I have known.

My parents had a nice room at the Bakotu Hotel. It was right on the Atlantic Ocean near bird-watching preserves, restaurants, and a craft market. Here they became adept at deflecting the weird advances of Bumsters on the beach and over-zealous, hard-sell vendors in the market.

If I lived in the Kombos rather than up-country, I'd be very interested in working within the tourism industry. It is the vehicle by which most foreigners experience The Gambia and can offer a means of income for people in a variety of occupations.

West African folk art, clothing, and hand-carved wood objects can be found in The Gambia's markets.

Most vendors enjoy a spirited exchange when bargaining for crafts. If you try, sometimes you can get something for less than half of the originally-stated price. I sometimes felt bad quibbling over what would amount to less than $2U.S. Othertimes, I got caught-up in the thrill of haggling.

Some craftspeople go to the trouble to describe the process of making their art. My parents enjoyed learning about batik printing from this artist in Bakau.

One vendor offered my father "any ting in da shop" in exchange for his sandals. He might have gone for it if I hadn't reminded him that he'd have trouble getting home walking with drums or masks for shoes.

After a few days rest on the beach, we decided to travel up-country to my village in Foni Jarrol. My folks wanted to bring a little "silafonda" for my village so we went to a livestock yard and Dad helped me choose a healthy ram.

We decided to take a gele-gele from Brikama to Foni Jarrol. The ride usually takes about three hours.

Waiting for a ride might also take three hours.

We finally caught a ride in the hot pink gele-gele that goes direct to Kampasa. We rode inside and the ram took a seat on the roof.

The ride was dusty and bumpy. This would be a continuing theme during my parents' visit.

We arrived in my village in the afternoon and the celebration began as soon as we stepped out of the vehicle. Gambians are great at welcoming people. All the members from my community came out to greet us and there was dancing and drumming.

My host-brother made a welcome note from some bones that I was saving to pound into bonemeal.

My mom and dad were the focus of attention for the entire time we were there.

My mom taught women about cross-stitch.

While my dad taught children about digital photography.

The accomodations at my house were a little rougher than parents were expecting.

They had trouble sleeping because of all the sounds that a village makes through the night. Donkeys braying, music playing, babies crying. Women start pounding millet and rice early in the morning to beat the heat of the sun.

But if you can't beat 'em, might as well join 'em.

To really show my folks what the village experience is like, I got them involved helping-out with chores like fetching water.

We enjoyed seeing traditional practices and lifestyles in the village. We went into a few houses and continued to meet everyone.

Adama showed us how peanut-butter is made and my mom got a sample.

Molaamin taught us how to seperate peanuts from the shells after the threshing is finished.

We explored some of the gardens and banana patches.

Becca came down from her village to join in the festivities. She showed my dad how to dig yams.

Meanwhile, my mom continued with her cross-stitch demonstration.

Eventually it was time to kill the ram that we had brought.

As the "joom gaale" head of the compound and elder, Baa Cheike would attend to the sacrifice.

And Baa's namesake and youngest grandson would look-on in fascination.

Landing and I worked on the buthering of the ram.

My dad continued to entertain the children with his antics.

Alieu helped prepare the intestines which became a highly prized component of the food bowl.

As did the head.

Landing divided the meat and we took some to every compound in the village.

My mom and dad really enjoyed the Gambian food bowl.

Eventually we had to leave and continue our safari further up-country. My village tried to get us to stay longer. They thought we should linger for at least a month. But we had hired a car to come pick us up and take us to Janjanbureh Island and so we had to leave.

But we didn't make it too far before the troubles of the road provided for an unexpected stop.

Back in America, my father is an analyst for a major petroleum company. Even with all he sees Stateside, I think he was surprised that in The Gambia the gas pumps are hand-cranked.

We stopped at the Wassu Stone Circles near Kuntaur. These stones were placed here and in other locations nearby during the Iron Age from AD400 to AD1000 and are thought to have had spiritual significance for the Animist agriculturalists.

We stayed at a small guesthouse called Baobalon Camp on the Island.

And while it was a step-up from the conditions that we experienced in village, I don't see what is all the fuss about indoor plumbing.

We hired a tour guide to help us navigate the roads and streams of The Gambia's hinterland. He was a Fula who called himself Dan D. Man. He works for Gambia Tours which is a Gambian-owned operation promoted by the National Tourism Authority.

Dan D. Man organized a boat trip from Kuntaur on the River Gambia.

While I was too slow with my camera to prove it to you Dear Reader, please believe me when I tell you that the river was teeming with wildlife. On the three hour trip, we saw hippos, a crocodile, a python, and various exotic birds.

We floated alongside the Baboon Islands which are home to 73 chimps as part of the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Project. The list of mammals on the islands includes baboons, red colobus monkeys, aardvark, warthogs, bushbucks, and duikers.

The journey was long and Dan D. Man had to pay many bribes to get us through the numerous immigration, military, and police checkpoints.

Dan D. Man also helped us negotiate the carpark and ferry terminal when we arrived back in Barra.

Once we settled back into the hotel at Kotu, we continued to explore the tourist shops and restaurants along the shore.

There is always something amusing to stop and see.

To really get that African Safari feel, my dad tracked wild game back in Kotu.

We went to a cultural museum in Bakau where we learned about history, spirituality, and politics.

We visited the Katchikally Sacred Crocodile Pool. The pool is said to bring good luck to visitors and has been a traditional healing site for generations.

The crocodiles who live here are ravenous and not to be reckoned-with.

My dad has never been known to wear jewelry. This crocodile tooth however will probably never leave his neck.

Don't let him fool you if he tries to tell you about his wild crocodile wrestling trip to the tropical environs of deepest, darkest Africa. He bought it from a little old woman half his size for $6.

And that pretty much wraps-up my mom & dad's Christmas safari. They brought me gifts of toothpaste, jerky, and a new headlamp. I also kept one of their backpacks while they took my hiking boots and Nikon camera back to the USA.

Having no interest in making the overland trip back to Dakar for their flight to Atlanta, they bought a ticket to fly from Banjul on Senegal Air.

I cannot express how happy I am that my parents came to visit me. Peace Corps offers so many opportunities for cultural exchange. While my parents are not Volunteers, they too have gotten to experience much of what a place like The Gambia has to offer. The journey was exhausting at times and relaxing at others. Somethings were rough while others enormously pleasurable. I learned a lot about this country and its culture while my parents were here and I am sure that they will have memories that will remain vivid for years. I think that now they have experienced first-hand that The Gambia is a diverse and unpredictable place. When I asked them what was their favorite part of the trip they both agreed that getting to know my host family and friends in Foni Jarrol was the highlight.

So I got this blister on my thumb. It happened while helping my host brother Landing thresh the groundnuts that he harvested while I was in Guinea.

Groundnuts are brought from the field on donkey carts and then piled in a place well-protected from hungry livestock who love the hay. The plants dry in the sun for a few days and then they are beaten with bamboo canes until the nuts fall from the roots.

The hay is stacked and will be sold to local herdsmen who will feed it to their livestock as the dry season makes wild plants unavailable. Groundnut hay is of higher monetary value than the nuts.

Threshing can only be done during the warmest part of the day when the sun is shining very hot. One bamboo cane is used for lifting the plants while the other is for beating. You can kick them a little to separate them. Landing said that I would soon be "qualified." I made twelve blisters on my palms and three on my thumbs. The one on the right thumb became infected. Maybe a splinter went in or possibly germs and weebeasties. My doctor from Sierra Leone told me that.

Groundnuts can also be harvested by hand. My host father loves groundnuts. One of my favorite things about groundnut harvesting season: While the legumes are still attached to the roots, the dry plants can be set ablaze.

Once the plants are burned, we sit in the dirt and eat roasted nuts until our teeth are blackened.

Harvesting is happening everywhere these days. The cool season is upon us and people are staying very busy. My rice field produced a nice harvest. From the four kilos we planted, we harvested almost thirty five which is a great return. We didn't even use fertilizer.

The rice is cut from the grass and then brought back to the village in bundles carried on the head.

My friend Malang Manjang is an exceptional farmer. He planted fields of millet, corn, beans, sorghum, and sesame this year. The sesame plants produce beautiful flowers.

Most of the folks I loaned rice to returned it to me once they harvested. Now I have over 100 kilos and I will save about fifty for planting next year.

I also have been harvesting other crops. I tried planting mung beans and had a decent harvest. Remember when I first started A Growing Sense and wanted to become Duke City's King of Sprouts? I bought mung beans and let them grow for two or three days and then sold them at farmer's markets. People loved them.

I also have been experimenting with growing a few other things. Tomatoes are much loved here but wilts, blights, mosaics, and nematodes usually destroy the plants before they can produce fruit. I heard that tomatoes can be grafted to eggplants which do not suffer from such problems.

But I don't really know if the plants will produce fruit. We'll wait and see.

I've been spending a lot of time at the NBAG apiary in Nyambai.

We are trying to correct the bees tendency to build combs across the top-bars rather than one on each. The cross-combing is a big problem here.

The process we are developing involves cutting the combs off of the bars.

And then tying them on to individual bars. We have switched to wire instead of cloth because the bees accept it more readily.

I went on an overnight boat ride on the Bintang Bolong. This is a small tributary of the River Gambia that is located near my home.

Tim, Jeff, Alex, and I borrowed dug out canoes called pirogues from local fishermen and set out.

I let Jeff paddle me because my thumb was throbbing. It was still just a blister at this point but I was becoming a little worried. It was painful and had swelled to twice the size of the other.

But the river was calm and very pretty. We had a relaxing time watching birds and listening to river sounds. There were pelicans and king fishers and hawks.

Because of its proximity to the Atlantic, the Bintang Bolong is tidal. When we started out we went around in circles because we were paddling against the flow. The pirogues are made from carved trees and tend to be a little wonkity in the river. Maybe it is just us: Gambians stand in them and throw nets and seem to do just fine. Jeff and I caused our boat to capsize while bailing water out with a small cup. We flooded and sank. The current was fast and we struggled to pull the canoe to shore. Jeff pulled at the boat and swam while I kept hold of our bags and the twenty liter bidong of fresh water we had for the overnight trip. It took about ten minutes to get everything to shore. Jeff's fishing pole sunk and I watched my camera in its plastic case float away. I ran down the beach cutting my feet on shells while stripping my heavy, soaked clothes to get ahead of it. I jumped in and swam out and saved it from the fast current. The case was water-tight and so the camera still works. It makes pictures like this one.

We camped on a serene little beach where we drank wine and ate canned meat. The next day we caught the tide and floated home.

When I arrived in my village I found that my duck had died.

I was saving that one for my parents' visit next week but now they will just have to have monkey meat, scrawny chickens, and billy goat. Also, my headlamp got wet when we capsized and the salt water ruined it. I had had that light for years and it has illuminated many New Mexican cacti and Arizonan coyotes and Gambian fruitbats. Now the only light I have by which to read at night is this locally-bought pen-light on the end of a disposable lighter. For some reason though, it casts an image of Saddam Husein which is discomforting to read by.

My thumb had continued to get worse. The blister began to ripen and turn black. I could feel my heart pumping like it wanted to explode the tip off. The pain was all the way to my elbow. I was scheduled to help train the new Volunteers who were at Tendaba Camp in Kiang. I rode my bike there and expected to find the Peace Corps nurse but she was still two days away. I called her and she started me on antibiotics and recommended hot water soaks.

The thing about helping with the Training is that it takes you full circle. These kids are where I was one year ago and it brought my service into perspective. I have learned a lot here and was happy to share some of that wisdom with these fresh faced (no sun-wrinkles) and idealistic (not jaded by the realities of development work) kids. It also gave me a chance to see how the tourist art at Tendaba Camp has transformed.

Above is the mural from November 2007 while below is the bustier one there now.

The nurse arrived at Tendaba and was quite impressed with my blister. Although I had already lanced it once with a sewing needle, she gave it another shot using a syringe. Unfortunately, it was unproductive as the pus was too thick to be aspirated in such a fashion. Also, it hurted.

We went back to Kombo and on Thanksgiving morning the darn thing was ripe as a plum and burning like hell-fire.

The nurse called the doctor. He works for the United Nations and so doesn't need the day off. He doesn't really care about pilgrims and cornucopias and turkeys. He thought that maybe there was some sort of foreign body in there like maybe a splinter from a bamboo cane or some bacteria from eating groundnuts that had been cooked in the dirt. Anyway, why not cut it open?

So that's what he did.

Getting whatever was in there out of there sure felt better. Now I'm healing.

Also, that mustache looked stupid and so I shaved it.

Let me first say that I wish I hadn’t bothered to lug that ridiculous SLR to Guinea. I used to love taking photographs with my old Nikon but on this trip I found it to be limited and cumbersome. It is sad to admit I guess but the convenience of digital is hard to give up. I constantly wanted to change the ASA because my 200 speed seemed too slow, I was over-burdened with the camera body and lenses and filters, and I felt like I had to contemplate ad nauseum every shot because of the limited amount of film I had and the cost of developing.

Luckily for me, some of my friends took their digital cameras. All these photos are by Alex, Ted, and Tara.

Travel in West Africa is a trip in so many different ways. My friends and I met in Kombo, crossed the River Barra on the Kanalai ferry, and traveled to Basse Santa Su which is the biggest town up-country.

There is a car-park there where one can get a car to Guinea. Getting a car is not easy. In West Africa the most commonly used mode of long-distance travel is the Peugeot 504, a station-wagon with three rows of seats designed to carry seven passengers uncomfortably. The eight of us sat in the hot and dusty car-park for hours waiting for a car to arrive. We were told that one was at the mechanic and would be finished soon but when I went to check on it the engine was hanging from a tree and there was a pool of oil collecting beneath. The day drifted as we lay across our baggage.

Car-parks are wonderfully strange places: Colorful centers of trade, street-vendors with bean sandwiches and charcoal-roasted meat, and hundreds of travelers trying to go someplace. Gaudily painted bush taxis spew exhaust waiting to fill-up with passengers while young girls peddle bananas and baggies of frozen baobab juice from plates carried on their heads. There are no time-tables in these limbic places; vehicles don’t go until every seat is sold.

The sun went down on our first day of travel and no cars came to take us. We wandered the dirt roads of Basse and found a little Nigerian-owned bar called The Lord Is King where we sipped warm JulBrew and made plans for tomorrow. Peace Corps operates a small transit house on the outskirts so we trudged out of town to crash for the night. The next morning we were up before the sun and we found a man sleeping in a 504 with Guinea license plates.

We waited around for what seemed like too long and then haggled over the price for another hour. We had to convert our Gambian dalasis into Senegalese francs and so we found black-market traders with huge calculators who give slightly better rates than banks. Finally we struck a deal with the driver but in Guinea those same 504s carry nine passengers so we were forced to pool our money and buy the last seat so that we could get going. Our driver’s name was Abdul and he had just made the 26 hour trek the night before but said he wasn’t sleepy. It’s not that he is crazy; he is just living a crazy life driving a crazy car on a crazy road. We were packed into that car like sardines and our luggage was tied to the roof with the plastic jerry cans of gasoline. Three in the way back, four in the middle, and one lucky person riding shotgun.

The road is not much of a road at all. A dirt two-track scratched into rice fields much more accommodating to donkey-carts than motor vehicles. Abdul knew every pothole and pitfall there was and drove at top speed. He was forced to swerve randomly and forcefully and we were bouncing our heads off the ceiling with every lurch and thrust of the car. We passed through countless immigration checkpoints where our passports were scrutinized and bribes were paid.

After three hours we arrived in Velingara, Senegal and Abdul turned off the engine with a shudder. We were parked at a small petrol station where car parts and Coke bottles filled with black engine oil were littered across the ground. Abdul said we needed a little work and pretty soon three men were dismantling the master cylinder. We wandered around the market and bought fried dough. Two hours passed and then we were back on the so-called road.

Eventually it became apparent that those mechanics hadn’t actually fixed the problem. We had no brakes. We raced along through the dirt with other Peugeots like we were in some weird off-road rally. They passed us, we passed them. More immigration checkpoints, more bumps on the head. Senegal seemed to fly by and soon we were entering Guinea where men tried to trick us about the exchange rate from Senegalese money into Guinean. More immigration checkpoints. Every time we got to one we had to coast in and then Abdul would turn off the engine to come to a stop. This sort of driving increased the required bribe. It’s not that it’s unsafe, it just costs a little more. Eventually we made it to the town of Kundara where our master cylinder was again dismantled. Natasha and Alex and I wandered the streets trying to find a plate of rice while Ted and Tyler bought bread with mayonnaise and Tara and Cassandra and Mai nibbled on sardines at the car. There were five men working in the dusky dust trying to get our brakes fixed and as night fell so did the rain. It poured as we huddled beneath someone’s front porch and the hours passed. Finally we were going again. There is a small ferryboat somewhere between Kundara and Labe’ that Abdul was trying to make before it closed for the night. But one of the deep ruts in the road knocked something out of whack in what was left of the car’s suspension system. By three in the morning we were parked alongside the road and Abdul was under the car banging on something with a length of pipe. An hour later he was replacing the rear axle while we took turns holding the flashlight. The brakes also had ceased to function again.

At first light we were sitting at the ferry crossing with other road-worn travelers. This was our first look at Guinea in the daylight and we were awestruck. We were standing in a small Fula village enshrouded in fog with a wide river running through it. Grass houses and the crowing of roosters and banana trees growing everywhere. The ferry was little more than a skid large enough for three vehicles. We were tethered to a cable disappearing into the mist and the muscular ferry driver pulled us across as if he’d done it his entire life. Soon we were back in the car racing along yet another stretch of corduroy and pock-marked road.

The Fouta Djalon plateau is a rolling assemblage of peaks and valleys, of stands of pine and papaya, of pastoral villages and ranging sheep. It reminded me so much of New Mexico that I felt a little homesick. We each of us was in our own sleep-deprived dream world watching the scenery present itself. Our bodies were cramped and stinky and our eyes glassy as the sun burned through the fog. Finally we reached the large town of Labe’ where we would leave Abdul’s car for another 504 that would deliver us to the smaller town of Pita. There we found small holes in the wall where rice and sauce was served with café’ touba (spiced coffee) and huge loaves of French bread. We found a market where we bought bananas and sacks of peanut butter to take with us to Hassan Bah’s village two hours into the hills.

Another Peugeot and another bumpy road took us to Douki, the small Fula village high in the heart of the wilderness. Hassan Bah’s roots are there but he grew up in Sierra Leone. Today he and his family operate a small guesthouse and he leads hiking excursions into the canyon country. Accommodations are basic: Bucket baths, pit latrines, and a thatch-roof hut for sleeping in are basically the same as back home. Hassan’s wife prepares typical West African dishes such as domoda, benachin, and findi while their children climb trees to bring oranges and mangoes.

We stayed for five nights and we hiked every day.

Some are walks into slot canyons where you can swing from vines and climb the walls, others are rim walks offering expansive views of weird rock formations and idyllic villages in the valleys below. Every hike has at least one swimming hole or waterfall and several have high cliffs from which one can dive into the racing river below. Hassan is a fun-loving man who convinces you to hang your head upside-down from a pinnacle rock to see his world from different perspectives. He has named many of the formations and so he was constantly pointing out things like Hyena’s Rock, Vulture’s Roost, and a stone spire with the profile of Elvis Presley. He sings as he hikes and extends his arms out like he is flying as we follow along behind him giggling and flapping our own wings.

In one water hole on the second day I stood beneath a waterfall and then got sucked into a fast-running whirlpool that whipped me downstream with a gulp. I must have drank a little of the river when it swallowed me because a few hours later I began to feel the telltale rumble deep in my gut. By the time we got back to Douki I was doubled over and running for the latrine. In and out I went with a dizzy head and weakening body. I was nauseous and sweating in spite of the cool night and at four in the morning I took my first dose of Ciprofloxacin, the West African traveler’s best friend. That stuff is a miracle drug and by two in the afternoon the next day I was back on the trail.

The final day we walked for almost thirty kilometers on a hike that Hassan calls Chutes and Ladders (How does he know about that game?). We descended quickly into a wide canyon following a waterfall almost the whole way down. Once in the valley, we hiked through fields of rice, sorghum, and sesame. It felt like the land of the lost, somehow even more disconnected from the world than all those other villages hiding in the hills. A woman gave us some groundnuts that she had just harvested and we nibbled on them as we rested next to the river. The ascent was exciting as we climbed up ancient sticks lashed together with vines and roots as water fell all around us. This trail is used by these bottom-dwellers as they take their crops up to deliver to market. We followed an old man and three women, each with rice and groundnuts tied in bundles balanced upon their heads. There were nine of these “ladders” and Hassan’s brother guided us where to place our hands and feet. The going seemed treacherous at times- footing was unsure because everything was slick with moss and rainwater. Sometimes it feels like you are going throuh a tiny hole into the sky. It took about three hours to climb out of there and by the time we made it back to Douki, we were all exhausted.

Hassan knows a driver who sometimes goes to Basse Santa Su and so he rode his motorcycle out the next morning to find him. He was in fact going there which saved us the headache of trying to find a driver to Pita and another to Labe and a third back to The Gambia. We had a two hour break in Pita which is a small market town with a lot of atmosphere. The French influence in West Africa is markedly different from the Gambia and it feels so different to be told “Bonjour” instead of “Toubob.” We found a small café where they sold soft serve ice cream and popcorn and we felt transported.

The drive back to The Gambia was fairly uneventful. Scenery passed by, things struck us pleasantly. We drove the hours away playing the alphabet game: Name your favorite food that you can’t get in West Africa. Checkpoints and bumps on the head. Finally we arrived in Basse where we slept the sleep of the weary traveler and then each of us departed the next morning for our next Gambian adventure.

Mine involved beekeeping trainings in a few locations further up-country from my own village. With a grant from the UK charity Feed the Minds, my friends at the National Beekeepers Association of The Gambia and some Peace Corps Volunteers are trying to teach rural farmers about beekeeping. The trek took me to three different villages where I encountered Wolofs, Fulas, and Mandinkas. Most of these people are traditionally traders, farmers, and herders. There were Peace Corps Volunteers in each of the communities which enabled us to communicate with the people. In addition, we traveled with two Gambian trainers who are experienced beekeepers and able to communicate well with the rural people.

We are focusing especially upon local solutions for beekeeping equipment and improving traditional methods by introducing modern management techniques. Most beekeeping in The Gambia has involved honey-hunting which is an unsustainable and un-rewarding endeavor whereby wild colonies are set afire in order to rob the honey. We are trying to teach people that creating a habitat for bee colonies is a better practice because they can have multiple harvests of high quality hive products such as honey and wax. We are also introducing concepts such as pollination and agroforestry. Many people were very interested in the techniques we showed them for weaving grass hives but one concern that they had was protection. How are they supposed to keep bees without the beesuits that we promote? The suits are full body uniforms made from locally-tailored cloth with wire screens for veils but they sell for about 600 dalasis ($26US) which is beyond the means for most subsistence farmers in The Gambia. I want to try to develop a suit that beekeepers can make for less than 100 dalasis out of used rice bags and grain-sifting screen. I also hope to build a Kenyan Top Bar Hive from bamboo which would significantly reduce the cost of that equipment as well. I want to develop these two things before the next visit to the villages which should be in about two months.

It is great to be able to travel around the country and get to meet people. Although I have not been spending as much time in my own village because of this, I still feel like I am being productive and having cultural experiences. The Peace Corps venture is full of diverse opportunities to experience different cultures and engage in interesting practices.

For example: Softball. Those of you who remember me probably know that I have dropped the ball more times than caught it. I don’t think I’ve swung a bat since I was asked to warm the bench permanently for the Jenera Giants Little League franchise way back in 1980. But Peace Corps The Gambia is forming a softball team for the West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament (WAIST) held every year in Dakar in February. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Some of my fellow Volunteers (who happen to be younger, more athletic, and experienced ball-players) are trying to teach me how to catch a ball, throw a ball, and hit a ball. And they are excellent, patient instructors. I made it to first base in our last scrimmage with a line drive or something.

And karyoke. There is this little bar in Senegambia called Churchills where Wednesday and Saturday are karyoke nights. The place is owned by an ex-pat British couple who are pretty good singers as well as bartenders. Hillary and Tony. Hillary is amazing;, she is this tiny elderly woman with a short haircut who knows all the words to all the songs. She can wander around the patio singing to customers with a warm voice anything from Tom Petty to Frank Sinatra. And the Gambian prostitutes send thrills down my spine. How do these women even know these songs? But they stand on stage staring into the audience crooning in their mini-skirts and spiked heels and weird wigs. Me? You should hear my Louis Armstrong.

Yep, Peace Corps. The toughest job you’ll ever love.

I’m back from village for a few days in Kombo but I’m leaving tomorrow morning for Guinea. This will be my first real vacation since coming here unless you count Dakar which was more of an extended weekend. I will be gone for a week. I’m going with several Peace Corps friends, some of whom came when I did and a few who have been here longer. Tara, Ted, Mai, Natasha, Tyler, Cassandra, and Alex. We will leave from Kombo tomorrow morning, cross the River Gambia at Barra, and then take overland transport for about nine hours to Basse. From there we will begin the thirty hour overland trek through Senegal and into Guinea. We want to stay in a small village near Labe’ where we are told that we can wander through mountain ranges and swim in waterfalls. Many Volunteers from here have gone there and it is highly recommended.

We will be there for a week and then I will be back to work. I’m going to conduct a few beekeeping trainings on my trek back to Barra from Basse on the North Bank. The National Beekeeper’s Association of The Gambia (NBAG) was awarded a grant from a UK based charity called Feed the Minds with which we are trying to reach 400 rural people to encourage beekeeping. We want to stress the advantages of traditional methods while promoting modern management techniques. We will discuss the woven grass hive and the wooden Kenyan Top Bar (KTB) hive, talk about pests and diseases, and demonstrate honey harvesting and wax rendering. We will make three such visits to each training site over the course of the next nine months so that we can focus on seasonal training. The first classes will talk about baiting hives and apiary locations, the second will focus on harvesting honey and managing brood, the third will look at project development and advanced methods.

I have also spent a fair amount of time these past few weeks working with bees at the NBAG apiary near Brikama. There we have about twenty colonies which are giving us a lot of opportunities to learn and to develop our management strategy. We have baited several hives with beeswax to attract colonies. The technique we use is to run a thin bead of melted wax along the center of about half of the top bars in a KTB. Field bees from feral colonies find these baited hives and when they swarm (anytime between September and January in The Gambia) hopefully they will relocate to our apiary. This method of “bait and wait” is a very popular way to colonize hives here. I do not know anyone who is involved in queen rearing or hive splitting and so I am exploring these methods as part of my primary work at NBAG. If we can develop a method that improves beekeepers’ access to bees, we can begin to really promote sustainable beekeeping here.

One problem that we have with our KTB hives here is that bees do not understand our management strategy. Though we would like them to build one comb per top bar so that we can manage each comb individually, they rarely do this. Often they” cross-comb” so that combs are positioned diagonally and are therefore attached to three or four top bars. This makes brood management and honey harvest very difficult and creates a major obstacle for proactive beekeeping. We are developing a technique of cutting the comb from top bars and then repositioning it onto each individual top bar using narrow gauge wire. We tried cloth strips but found that bees didn’t like the intrusion of that material and would abandon entire combs. The wire method has been more successful and if it continues to work we will incorporate the strategy into our rural training modules.

Back in village, it is harvest-time. We ended up having much too much rain this year and so our maize crops were almost a complete failure. Gambians look forward all of hungry-season to the first ears roasted on open fires but sadly this year gave us few opportunities to enjoy that night-time treat. On the flipside though, the rain was great for our rice, millet, sorghum, and groundnut crops. Last year my host family brought in about 19 bundles of millet while this year we have 31and are still harvesting. The Nerica rice that I planted looks terrific and I expect a good harvest in another two weeks or so. I planted about four kilos and will harvest probably 25-30 which I will save as next year’s seed.

But looking at the crops around my village has keyed me in on something that I cannot hide from. The last few years have been unseasonably dry and so people have blamed crop failures on the lack of precipitation. But this year saw plenty of rain and still crops haven’t yielded as much as we had hoped. Subsistence farmers here have limited time to grow enough food for the entire year plus we should be able to put away enough for seed Many plants are stunted and yield is low across the country. The soils are depleted and it is difficult to do anything about it. Chemical fertilizer is transient in the soil and expensive and so does not provide a sustainable solution to fertility issues. Fallowing is easier said than done: For fallowing to work, land has to be uncultivated for up to twenty years but people are unable to rotate fields to such a degree that this would be possible. Agroforestry techniques such as alley cropping and green manure crops take a long time to be successful, require protection from grazing animals, and often need supplemental care to get them through the dry season. I cannot see how to make enough compost to improve the soil of these huge fields.

One technique that I am experimenting with at my village is the use of bio-char as a soil amendment. Basically, bio-char is slash from trees and crop residues (millet stalks, rice hulls, and groundnut shells) burnt in a reduced oxygen environment to create a fine-grained charred substance that retains up to 50% of the pre-burn biomass. It is made similarly to charcoal production but that practice is illegal in The Gambia. The law aside, many people have clandestine charcoal operations in the bush around my village. The technique, called pyrolysis, involves stacking biomass, covering it with soil, and then setting it afire. It smolders for several weeks until the charcoal-makers uncover it and then sell the fist-sized pieces on the open-market for low-smoke cooking purposes. They leave behind a large pile of fine-grained charred substance that I scavenge from the bush and take to my demonstration garden in my village. I add it to my compost or put it directly into garden soils.

Bio-char produces long-lasting results that can be present in the soil for thousands of years. The burned biomass increases potassium (the K in NPK) and stabilizes nitrogen (the N) to prevent leaching. It improves soil tilth and increases microbial populations. The bio-char creates a habitat where wee-beasties can thrive by increasing humidity and improving soil respiration. The addition of bio-char to the earth provides the carbon component of the micro-organisms’ diet with the added benefit of being not rapidly consumed. In field studies, where bio-char is combined with either organic or inorganic fertilizers, the vegetative growth and grain production was significantly improved over plots where NPK was used without bio-char.

So, as you can see, I am staying busy here. I really love the work that I do and enjoy the place where I do it. I have approached the country director for PCTG about applying for an extension of my service. He was enthusiastic but told me that budget-cuts within Peace Corps have made such extensions difficult. The new rules are that the Volunteer can only apply for an extension on the same continent as he is already serving and that to be considered he has to be willing to serve for an additional two years. Previously if a Volunteer extended she could serve for one additional year and could go to almost any country for which she was qualified. Still, I want to look at my options and will write my letter of intention when I return from Guinea so that my CD can begin the paperwork.

Another thing that has kept me busy is planning for my parents’ trip to The Gambia. They will be coming for two weeks in December. I salute them. Many Volunteers have told me that their families have expressed no interest in coming to visit. Sure, things here are tough, but I think we will have a terrific time. We will spend some time in Dakar before coming to The Gambia. Here, we plan to relax along the beach in Sanyang, visit my village up-country, and perhaps take a boat trip out to a small island where there is a chimpanzee rehabilitation program.

Let me take this opportunity to apologize that this blog post has no photographs. I left my digital camera at site. I was so distracted with wrapping-up projects and packing for the next three weeks away from village that I forgot that my camera was in my bike-bag where it still resides. Funny thing though: When I packed my bag for Guinea I decided that I would take my 35mm SLR camera with me because I want to get back into taking high-quality film pictures instead of the point-and-shoot type that I have been taking since coming here. So I will. Don’t fret though, there will be plenty of digital cameras on this trip and so I will try to post some of the pictures that my traveling companions take on my next blog.

Sorry also that this blog is so technical. I hope that it is not boring to read about the work that I’m doing. Usually I try to be entertaining in these missives but I’ve been so busy that I don’t really have funny little anecdotes about life here. No snakes this time. In addition to all the work that I mentioned above, I have written two long articles for our AgFo newsletter, worked on writing a grant to the UNDP for my queen-rearing program, updated our beekeeping manual, and started to prepare for the technical training of the new trainees that arrive here next month. All this said, Guinea Take Me Away.

Talk to you when I get back. I hope that you have peace.

As with most things that we hope and pray for, once we attain our strongest desires, we begin to wish for something else. While I am one who usually views droplets of rain as manna from heaven, today I am ready for the water to stop falling for a while. Just give me one day of clear skies that I might hang my clothes out to dry, air out my hut, and put my mattress on the roof. It has been raining non-stop for weeks. It rains all the time. My clothes are perpetually wet; some are rotting away as I wear them. My towel stinks of mildew, mold grows in my water bottle, I pulled my bed away from the wall and I found mushrooms growing there. Mud and mosquitoes and dripping ceilings. Wounds don’t heal; bacteria creep and crawl beneath the flesh.

Life is bursting everywhere. Millet, rice, cassava, groundnuts, sesame, maize, findi, sorghum, squash. Weeds. Weeds everywhere and I am constantly stooped in a field here or a rice paddy there. About the time I finish weeding a field it is time to begin again. I can usually last through five hours of hacking at the moist soil trying to see the difference between rice and grass before I have to walk away unsure of whether my back hurts more than my eyes. I have devoted over sixty hours to weeding the half-hectare rice field of Nerica that Landing and I planted. The plants look good, though not nearly as nice as the fields that Gambians planted around mine. Here is a photo of my half-weeded field so you can see what I'm up against.

I have spent a lot of time lately considering my real offerings here in The Gambia. Aside from the agroforestry work, the permaculture emphasis, and the general economic development that I hope to inspire in my counterparts. I think that my biggest contribution will be the work that I am doing with local beekeepers to advance the understanding of that art. I have been here for almost a year and have dedicated much of that time to researching traditional knowledge of the hive and the honeybee and to observing firsthand the behavior of Apis mellifera adonsonii. The thing that resonates most with me is that these little bees are considerably different from the bees that I have worked with before coming here. The most notable difference and the one that makes the biggest distinction is the sheer orneriness of these tenacious little bees.

Last week I was in a small village a short bike ride from my home where I meet with friends to weave traditional grass basket hives. Usufa Badjie and Bakary Colley are two skilled and experienced weavers who a few of my counterparts and I have been learning from. Generally between four and six of us show up for work twice a week and, while listening to BBC Focus on Africa on the shortwave, we weave dried grasses and the ribs of palm fronds into basket hives that we hope to sell to raise funds for our association to buy beekeeping suits.

Gallo, Malang, and I were weaving that day when we heard screams from nearby and, while we weren’t sure yet whether we were hearing a child or a goat, it attracted our attention. We stepped outside to investigate and saw that three goats tied near a silk cotton tree were frantically tugging at their ropes while running circles in circumference from the stakes to which they were attached. Suddenly one broke free and began to race towards the house where we were standing. I smelled the attack pheromone before I saw the tens of bees embedded in the goat’s hair.

The pheromone that is secreted by African bees is much more pungent than that of their European cousins and is a smell that both exhilarates and startles me- like the perfume of an ex-girlfriend. It is one thing that sets them apart from other, more docile bees. European honeybees have been selected by man through centuries of beekeeping efforts to be calm and easy to work with. The bees of Africa share little of that history of domestication. Working with Europeans, the beekeeper will notice a slightly sweet odor as his hive becomes aware that he is invading their secreted stores of honey. When working with Africans, the beekeeper’s nostrils will flare with the acrid and adrenaline inducing stench of angry bees.

And along with the pheromone, African bees attack en masse. While European honeybees are certainly loyal to their hive, Africans will assert every effort in defense of one of their sisters. If just one bee releases the alarm or attack pheromone (two separate and individually identifiable chemical compounds), tens- if not hundreds- of other bees will instantly investigate. This is what makes them the dreaded Killer Bee. While the sting of one bee delivers a significant yet non-life threatening (in most cases) amount of venom to the target, the stings of multiple bees can bring a six-hundred pound bull to his knees in a matter of minutes.

Before I knew it, one of those kamikaze bees had veered from her initial target and was now angrily tangling herself in my hair. Gallo and Malang had already run from the house but I remained to see what could be done for the goat. Along with her own disconcerting bleating I could hear other goats and sheep nearby trying to save themselves. The one shivering and panting near me had at least twenty bees tangled up in her hair and more in the air around her. I tried to go to her but another bee took notice of me and my nose tickled again with that unmistakable smell. I ran to my bike while beating my hand against my head where the one was still tangled in my hair. I started to ride as fast as I could but I knew that it was hard to outrun angry bees. Fortunately, they gave up the chase as I got to the outskirts of the village where I stopped and looked behind me. I could see that children wrapped in thick cloth were venturing toward their livestock but then giving up and running back out of range with arms flailing.

I rode home and collected my beekeeping equipment and raced back to the besieged village. I quickly donned my thick cotton full-body suit, knee-high boots, and leather gloves that come up to my shoulders. The villagers looked at me like I was some sort of space-age kankurang. I struck out for the silk cotton where the goats had been tied but in the time I was gone they had- in their panic- yanked their stakes from the ground and run home. I wandered around with angry bees trying to chew through my suit while I searched for any other livestock and then spent several minutes brushing away the bees. Fortunately, a thundershower moved in and once the rain came, the bees- who cannot fly when wet- retreated to their hive.

What caused this seemingly unprovoked attack? Bees are typically more aggressive after a few days of rain because the industrious field bees are unable to fly and forage. Also, at this time of year in The Gambia, there are few sources of nectar and pollen available and so the bees are on edge wondering how they will provide for their colony. Perhaps this hive had been subject to robbing by bees from a stronger hive nearby and so was on high alert. Or maybe a bird or lizard had invaded the hive in search of a high-protein meal. And then there is the traditional explanation for why these bees attacked: The ancestors were asserting themselves as they are prone to do every five or eight years. I have witnessed three such attacks in the past two months and two of these involved feral colonies who had built their hives high in the branches of Spirit Trees. While most Gambians are Muslims, they still hold on to select animist beliefs from long ago and one of these beliefs is that certain trees contain the spirits of the ancestors. And sometimes those ancestors feel like reminding the people that they are still here.

As a result of the bee attacks that day, two goats died. This is definitely an issue for beekeepers to consider in The Gambia and might be an impediment to development aid focused on bees. People here are, rightfully, afraid of bees. One of my major tasks is sensitization but when something like this occurs, my persuasive “bees for good health and local wealth” falls on deaf ears. Sure, there are differences between feral colonies and well-managed hives, but the average Gambian starts swinging wildly anytime a bee buzzes nearby. Trying to convince them that people can keep apiaries of five or more colonies near their villages is definitely a tough row to hoe.

Still, there are opportunities that we can exploit. The National Beekeeper’s Association of the Gambia (NBAG) recently acquired funding for research into queen-rearing and hive splitting. I am one of the only people in the country with any experience at all with these subjects and so I am spearheading the operation. To be honest, my experience is more from observing commercial beekeepers in New Mexico than from practicing these techniques myself. But I have been reading trade journals and experimenting with some of the concepts these past few months and, now that the rains are nearly ending, I am embarking on the program. I have scheduled several excursions around the country to meet some of the more advanced beekeepers and to try to isolate some of the more manageable bee genes. I plan to travel mostly by bicycle for two weeks visiting the counterparts of some of my Peace Corps friends.

Another beekeeping opportunity presented itself a few days ago when a basket hive in a tree grew too heavy and fell to the ground in a neighboring village. This community is Jola and I have to admit that my Jola is limited to a few casual greetings. I had been informed by someone who had just passed through that village that some bees were causing a problem there and so I went to investigate. When I arrived late in the afternoon, the language barrier was only one of my problems. I finally located the owner of the hive and through a system of charades and broken Mandinka (a foreign language to both of us but the only one we have in common) we set out for the bush to take a look.

The rope that the hive was suspended from had grown weak and the hive fell about fifteen feet from the mahogany branch that had supported it and crashed to the ground in a patch of waist-high grass and weeds. The man who owned it is typical of some the Gambian beekeepers I have come to know. They are interested and eager, have quite a bit of traditional wisdom, but lack the equipment to effectively manage their hives. This one hadn’t been harvested before the rains when it should have been and so was heavy with honey and old brood comb. Honey is highly absorbent of atmospheric humidity and should be harvested only during the dry season lest it ferment and spoil. So he told me that if I brought the honey he would split it with me.

Because I would be working alone and since this hive is in the bush far from people, I took the opportunity to try something new. Beekeeping here is always done at night and even the most experienced beekeepers I have talked to insist that this is the only way. Traditional honey-hunters always work at night and so this practice has continued. Also, bees don’t operate well in the dark and so when the beekeeper is finished he can walk a short distance, brush the bees off with weeds, and feel confident that they will give up the pursuit. But I think that the intricate work of queen-rearing will require that the beekeeper work during the daytime so he can see what he is doing. In fact, good management in general and close observation in particular almost insist that we have a better look than we can get with small flashlights under the cover of darkness.

So at about six o’clock, still two hours from dusk, I suited-up and headed out to the hive. This was my first good look at the hive and the bees’ first good look at me. The basket was still intact but the lid had blown off with the impact and the sides were caving in. I expected more aggression considering that they could see me in the light but actually they didn’t seem too bad. I smoked the hive with my locally-smithed smoker and then cut the basket open. It was a great opportunity to get a good look at the arrangement of a natural hive; to see the combs for honey and pollen on the fringes and the brood towards the center where temperature can be more easily controlled. Mostly there was old comb that was crisp and dark but also some new comb had been manufactured and was white and pliable, still empty. The brood pattern was nicely arranged indicating a strong queen but I was unable to find her among all the others. I observed that the capped worker (female) brood was located high on the comb while the drones (male) were at the bottom of the oblong comb.

I figured that this colony would have a difficult time surviving in its present state given that its hive was ruined, brood would be lost, and honey was leaking into the earth. Even though many workers were devouring honey in an attempt to save what they could, I am unsure if the queen was alive and would be able to make the journey if they decided to abscond. I placed a good portion of capped honey comb into my bucket to take back to the village. Next, I gathered all the capped worker brood that was undamaged and placed it into the small “nuc” hive I had brought with me. Typically, a “nuc” (nucleus) is a five frame Langstroth hive designed to transport a queen, a frame or two of brood and honey, and about two-thousand bees. When I first started beekeeping in New Mexico, I bought three “nucs” from a commercial beekeeper in spring and by mid-summer I had three fully-grown colonies. In The Gambia, I have built three such boxes for my queen-rearing experiments and found this a great chance to try one out. I wasn’t sure if the colony would take to the “nuc” but if they found so much of their brood inside and had lost their old hive, they might inhabit this one to stay out of the rain. I finished my work just before dark and when I walked a short distance from the hive I was able to easily brush the bees off me and then head back to the village.

The next morning I returned and we processed the honey. This involves squeezing the honeycomb over a bucket that has a thin cloth placed over it and then waiting for the honey to pour through. Because this honey was thin, it hardly took any time at all. We also processed the wax by boiling it and then separating it from the water to be saved for later. We ended up with three liters of honey of which I took one and shared it with the people of my village who believe that njummri (Pulaar for honey) is a cure for malaria. The next day I returned to the “nuc” but was disappointed to find that the colony had absconded, leaving the brood to the maggots.

My host family bought an entertainment package last month. Does this seem odd to you? I have spent the last nine months writing about how poor we are and now we are the only family in town with a dvd player, television, and speaker system. Here is how it happened: My host father asked me to borrow him some money in July, to pay him August’s rent early so he could send it to his daughter’s wedding in Bumari. So I did. Then when August came he told me that he needed the rent to buy a bag of rice and I told him that I didn’t have it, that I’d already paid it. My host brother asked me too and I told him the same thing. After all, I am here to help these people with economic development but not to be a bottomless wealth of money to give. Maybe the best thing I can teach them is how to balance their family budgets and to save for the future.

So Landing went to Kombo for a few days and within twenty minutes of his return the entire village was sitting around my compound watching the fourteen inch screen. The whole system was connected to a car battery and they were watching a poorly pirated copy of “Delta Force” starring Chuck Norris. That lasted for about three hours and then the battery was dead and people went home to eat rice while we stared at the blank screen on the bare kitchen table. (Actually, we don’t have a table and eat out of a big bowl set on the ground, but you know what I mean.) Then my host father asked me to borrow him some money, to pay September’s rent early so he could get a bag of rice.

So what should I do? While I “killed my television” long before I came to The Gambia, I can appreciate that human beings have a need for entertainment. In my own hut I have a solar system that powers a battery and a laptop computer and an ipod. Do I have any right to say that they wasted their cash? We all make mistakes with money. Besides, seeing all those happy faces as Chuck Norris kicked the shit out of terrorists was rewarding. My stomach is empty but my heart is overflowing with American pride.

Recently a marabout visited my village from Cassamance. Marabouts are the traditional healers and spiritual leaders of numerous cultures in West Africa. Many Gambians still look to the marabout for guidance and counsel in difficult times and often pay the marabout a small amount of money for blessings, healing-work, and jujus. A juju, or gris-gris, is an ornament worn on the body for protection. It is usually some words written by the marabout on a piece of paper that is sewn into a piece of tanned hide and then worn from a string tied around the waist, bicep, or neck depending on what is prescribed. Children almost always have one tied around their waists; Peace Corps Volunteers proudly display theirs across biceps.

Knowing that I am about to place myself in harm’s way with all the beekeeping I intend to do in the upcoming months, I decided to visit the marabout. She was an old but healthy and spry woman staying with Nyepa and Junkong. I went to her accompanied by Njie, a good friend and spiritual man. He introduced me to Daa Penda and I explained my situation. She paused for a long moment considering my request and then shook her head slowly. She told me that she could give me a juju to protect me from knives and bullets. But when it comes to bees, there is no protection. Then she handed me some powder that she made from dried bark and said that if I used a little pinch every time I bathed, I would be free from hassles with the police. I gratefully accepted her gift. Then she instructed me on a small prayer that I should repeat three times as I prepare to go to my hives. Koo lu hua, aloa adun aloa, samadu, lammee aloo, wallam aludu, walla u koo lu hua, ka fon a doon. Upon completion of the third round, the individual should spray his palms with spit and wipe his body. Be sure to wipe away from the heart or you will be inviting the bees to attack rather than repelling them.

Thinking of spitting… A couple of weeks ago I could no longer stand the smells of mildew and dampness that have infused the air of my hut. I decided to devote a day to cleaning so I set about moving furniture, shaking out sheets and curtains, and gathering-up old papers and magazines from where they had come to rest. I lifted my bed and found numerous termite mounds and spider webs as well as a healthy crop of toadstools. Working my way to the corner, I stooped to lift a large box of training manuals when I came eye to eye with the large, black, hooded snake that was living there. In a lifetime of seconds my mind registered what my heart already knew: My face was sixteen inches from that of a cobra. Personally, I’m not actually fond of snakes but have maintained a healthy “live and let slither” attitude toward even the rattlers back in New Mexico. But this one- in its slick leather hood, with its green slits for eyes, poised in a defensive position that elicits fear and trembling in every witness- sent me hurtling backwards and averting my eyes. You know, in case this was the spitting kind.

Badly startled, I fumbled for my camera and made a couple of shaky and out-of-focus pictures before the five feet of snake abandoned its home two feet from my bed to take refuge under my book case. This gave me time to run out of the house and find Landing and Njie. “’How do you say big, ugly, poisonous devil-snake in my house!’ in Pulaar?” I asked breathlessly. Njie went for his machete while Landing went for Sanna who went for his shotgun and I went back home to tell Baa Cheike. Gambians hate snakes. They are especially intolerant of those who come into the house. While I have tried to make peace with the beasts of the Gambian bush, cobras in my house get no sympathy. Sanna was out of bullets but he had a spear with a triple bladed point on the end. Within minutes the entire village was in my compound as men continued to arrive wielding machetes, clubs, and bicycle chains. It was a war and the battle-line had been drawn at my door. I tried to explain the layout of my house and gave a description of the perpetrator to the three men willing to go in. Just before we crossed the threshold, I looked down and shuddered at the fact that each of us was wearing flip-flops. Sanna said “Basi ala.” which translates to “No problem.” and he sprayed spit onto his feet. The rest of us followed in that action, though one of us- I’m not saying which- had a little trouble getting spit. Once inside, we crept on protected toes and sniffed the air like hound dogs. Sanna knocked over the bookcase vegetable seeds crashed in a clamor. Into the fray, the three of them started beating with their weapons blindly… I continued spitting on my feet. Finally, Landing whistled a cease fire and Sanna pierced the snake with his spear and they drug it outside for all the world to see. The whole world was there waiting. Njie quickly severed the head with his machete which was ceremoniously buried right where it fell along with the blood that poured forth. Someone whispered that it was a little one.

Ramadan began on the second day of September. For those of you who might not know, for thirty days a year Muslims abstain from eating and drinking between 5:30am and 7:30pm. As the Koran says, “Just be thankful for what you’ve got.” Or maybe that was Marvin Gaye, Massive Attack, or Yo La Tengo. No matter, the message is still the same. There are people all over the world who do not have enough to eat, who lack clean drinking water. In homage to them, Islam asks us to do without. Ramadan is to Muslims sort of what Peace Corps is to America: Taking time out of our lives and making personal sacrifices in order to relate better to the harsh realities of our world. Sure, I will never really know what it is like to be a Gambian, but through this experience I can empathize with them. If you have enough to eat, you will never really know how hungry a person can be.

So, this month in village, I am fasting. “Mi na hori. Mi namata, mi yarata.” Its not easy. Food is one thing, water is another. Even if the heavens open up and rain pours down upon our heads, we are not allowed to swallow. I begin my morning at five when I drink two liters of water and eat some rice. This obviously results in a stomach-ache that lasts all morning. The thing about thirst is that while it is possible to re-hydrate, you cannot really pre-hydrate. By nine-thirty I have peed six or seven times and by eleven o’clock, I am dying for a drink.

And I should admit that I am rather a hedonist. I love the taste of food and keep a well-stocked steamer trunk of sweets and meats that I buy in Kombo and send to myself on mailrun. But this is part of the point of Ramadan. To make us think about what we have, what we put in our bodies. Are we constantly trying desperately to satisfy our needs? Do we consume disproportionately? Can we do without?

The first few days were very difficult but it does get easier. You spend a lot more time thinking about hunger because, not only are you not eating, but the lack of food creates a depletion of energy and so diversions like work and play are less possible. Going without food and water leads to depression, mood swings, and lethargy. While normally I might work outside from 7:30 until 1:30 and then from 4:00 until 7:00, during Ramadan I am too tired to work nearly that much. I feel like I have to rest, sleep in the afternoon, stay out of the sun. I’m not running in the mornings like I used to. I ask myself “Did I come here to work or to participate in the culture? Can I do both?” While I do feel like this has helped to equalize my status in my village somewhat- many of my Muslim friends compliment my willingness to sacrifice- should I risk my emotional and physical health for someone else’s cause?

Ups and downs. Some of my Muslim friends tell me that they love this time of year while others clearly struggle. Sometimes I feel anxious and that this is absurd. Other times I feel calm and relaxed and stronger than I deserve to be. Allowing the digestive system to relax through the day can actually make one feel energized and clear of mind. Sure, you think about the thirst and the hunger but you also realize that you will survive. The hunger pangs at noon go away by the third day and you get used to being thirsty. You start to look forward to a simple bowl of rice and a cup of tea as if it were a three-course French dinner with a bottle of fine Spanish wine. By the time you break the fast with kuntari- half a loaf of French bread and tea from the leaves of a local plant- you are hardly even craving anything at all.

I admit that now that I’m not in village this week, I’m taking advantage of my anonymity and enjoying food and beverage whenever I want it. Thirty days is a long time.

I am working on planting my dry season garden of squash, lettuce, and tomatoes. Along with that is the maintenance on my fence; weaving thorny branches and filling-in the gaps. Of course I learned last year that the chickens and goats will try to devour my veggies but maybe I will have better luck defending it now that I know what I know and can get an early start. Maybe by this time you are harvesting your own tomatoes and squashes. The growing season in America is winding down; the days are growing shorter and the nights might soon be getting cool. I miss those seasonal changes and I fantasized while fasting last week about such goodness as warm apple cider.

I arrived in The Gambia one year ago and have to say that every day still brings surprises, challenges, and opportunities. The one-year anniversary is a time when I and many of my peers are re-evaluating ourselves and our contributions here. Some of the Volunteers who came here with me have gone home. For me, I am beginning to think seriously about extending my service. There are many prospects in Peace Corps: I could stay here and continue with the work I have already begun or I could move to a different country-maybe even a different continent- and start over. I enjoy doing development work and am thinking of ways that I can continue to make a contribution. The work I am doing here is extremely fascinating and rewarding. If I should stay here I will probably do the greatest good because I already have the year experience and have a grasp on the culture and language. On the other hand, going somewhere new will offer a fresh perspective to development and will give me the chance to satisfy my wanderlust a little. It is a long way off yet it is never too early to prepare for tomorrow.

By the way, my good friend Andrew labored for hours to post some videos for me on You Tube. If the photographs aren't giving you enough of a visual impresion of being in The Gambia, perhaps you will enjoy seeing me fight a bush fire, ride in a crowded gelegele, or recover from beestings. Go to http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=knucklewalking.I hope that you have peace in your life. Why don’t you send me an email and let me know how you’ve been? I’ve been thinking a lot about you and wonder all the time how you are.

After ten months in West Africa I finally got the chance to take a little vacation and so I traveled to Dakar, Senegal. My friend Amy was returning from there to The States for a wedding and so I wanted to go along to give her a little push.

Amy is called Buya in The Gambia. Like me, she is a Pulaar speaker and we were both a little nervous about going to Francophone Dakar.

We left early in the morning to catch the ferry from Banjul to Barra in The Gambia. From there we would board a packed bus and travel for almost thirteen hours before reaching Dakar. It was raining but the windshield wipers didn't work. A little girl sitting behind us threw up the sour milk she had for breakfast. So did her sister. I won't take the bus again.

After croissants filled with almonds and chocolate, we found a hotel near the lighthouse at Les Mamelles.

From there it is a short walk to the beautiful N'Gor village.

There is a nice beach at N'Gor where we sat for hours. We drank spiced coffee and ate mangoes and bananas we bought from a Fula woman.

In fact, we enjoyed great food and drink our entire time in N'Gor. This meal cost only a few dollars and was served in a quiet little bar from where we watched the surf.

The next day we took the short pirogue ride across the bay to N'Gor Island.

N'Gor Island is a small place where one can enjoy cliff-side views of the The Atlantic, can eat grilled shrimps on a sandy beach, and can wander a maze of cobblestone streets with high walls and picturesque gardens. We waded with sea anemones and sea urchins which were caught and grilled by local women on the beach.

After leaving N'Gor Island we decided to walk out to Pointes des Alamedies which is the furthest west point on continental Africa. I guess that this means it was the closest I have been to all of you in a very long time. If only I was a better swimmer...

Later that night, Buya would be leaving. To celebrate, we bought pizza.

The next day I decided to leave the hotel and find a place to stay in downtown Dakar. My Lonely Planet guidebook was a little out of date and since publication the Hotel du Marche has become something of a brothel. I did not realize this change until after checking in. Perhaps the wildly made-up women sitting alone in the lobby should have clued me in but I admit I'm a little slow on the uptake. It turned out to be a nice place though; clean and safe.

From there I went to get lunch at the Chez Loutcha which is highly recommended in the guidebook. I met a girl there. Nadia. We spent the rest of the day together.

We wandered the streets getting to know the city. We enjoyed a coffee and a park and a beach and a museum and a church and an open-air market and the Palais Presidential.

The next day, I had to leave. Money was short and my requested vacation days had expired. Peace Corps takes AWOL very seriously. Rather than the bus, I decided to take the a set-plas back to The Gambia. This is a small Peugeot station wagon seating seven passengers. We made a brief stop in Kaolack which is a place that I hope to return to when I have a bit more time. The ride seemed to fly by since the car can handle the washed-out dirt roads with grace and I was back at the border before I knew it.

What is it about traveling? The inherent adventure at border crossings. Getting lost and finding yourself. The momentum of self-reliance. The new day in a bed where you've never awakened before. The smell of your own body and the scratch of your own stubble. Learning how to say goodbye using words you've never used before. A discreet glance met gently, acknowledged silently. Strangers who become friends and then become memories. Surviving- no thriving- in a place absolutely unfamiliar. Realizing that far away isn't all that far at all. Being happy with going home.

With the arrival of the rains The Gambia has come alive. Everywhere I look I see shades of green and layers of life. Some of the growth is chaotic and wild; the natural world coming out of its droughted stupor. Elsewhere neat and ordered rows of millet, sorghum, and groundnuts grid my surroundings. After months of living amongst the shades of yellow, brown, and grey I suddenly feel like I am camping on a golf course with its neatly trimmed greens, dramatic water holes, and occasional sand traps. It is like that surreal morning in New Mexico or anywhere following the first snow fall: I know this place by heart yet somehow now it is changed. The shapes are sort of as I remember but the textures and hues of the world are all brand new.

The Gambia is a beautiful place. I first wrote these words in my journal almost ten months ago when I arrived a virgin to the West African sub-tropics. Now I have witnessed the transformations that such a place will go through and I am amazed. My own disposition too has changed; the feelings of life awakening, of a giddy lightness. Maybe I was suffering from a little seasonal depression but now I can feel a weight lifted and a hope renewing. All my plans, helpful gardening hints, and widely-heralded seedlings wouldn’t be worth a hill of beans to these people if it simply didn’t rain this year. But it is raining. I was a little worried for a while but now I am reassured. When I came here in October, it was almost harvest season-- still lush and vibrant. Since then I have watched farm soil turn to alluvial dust, seen trees turn bare, pitied the livestock as their skeletons became visible beneath thin hides. Now tall grasses are thriving, crops are consuming the landscape, and animals are growing fat.

And bush fruit, such as this tabo fruit, are coming ripe.

So many people are planting so many things. Hardly a patch of usable space within walking distance of my village is left unturned. Millet, rice, squash, watermelon, corn, bitter tomatoes, eggplant, sorghum, findi, and groundnuts. Teams of bulls and drowsy donkeys, men and boys with arched backs in the fields, women and girls slogging in the rice paddies. Farming implements amaze me and I feel like I am back doing archaeology in the Southwest. Broken down but still usable seeders and weeders dragged behind scrawny beasts. Digging sticks. Hewn branches with locally smithed iron tips. Handhoes and machetes. Chunwars, golos, sombes, and jalos. Seeds transported to the fields in last year’s calabash gourds.

Junkong, Landing, Galel, and I have most of our planting finished. We have about one hectare (100x100m) of groundnuts planted in the field that I cleared last month. You might recall from my last blog entry that I had convinced Landing to leave the camelfoot trees (Piliostigma tongii) as recommended in agroforestry resources. When I returned home from Kombo though, I was disappointed to find that he had changed his mind and cut them all down. I asked him about it and he said that Baa Cheike had told him to do it. The old man has been farming here since before my father was born (a million miles away) and he has never heard of anyone leaving the barke (Pulaar) tree to grow among crops. I tried to explain to him about the benefits of shade, nitrogen, and organic matter. He retorted that he needed to be able to see "ko taari en" (atmosphere, environment, structure) of the farm and that the trees disturbed his view. He and the family dog will be out here day and night to chase away monkeys and warthogs and the trees would make such a task even more difficult.

This raises an important question about the work that I am doing here. My primary assignment as a Volunteer is to educate people about the scientific reasoning and traditional wisdom behind agroforestry techniques. These include alley cropping of certain trees such as pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) and leucena (Leucaena laucocephala) for yield improvement as well as establishing windbreaks and live fences. But how can I convince people to plant these trees if they have such valid reasons not to? Is the increased yield worth the trade-off of having more of your crop ruined by wildlife? (Of course live fencing would help prevent their entry but somehow this message is lost in translation.) Similarly, many people won’t plant moringa (Moringa oleifera) near their homes because it invites loneliness. Nor will they tolerate the planting of bamboo: Even though it is a fast growing and prized resource used in furniture construction and fences, it attracts snakes. Gambians hate all snakes. I guess that I will have to be content to, at the very least, promote ngessa jiloomba (intercropping). I have planted buudii (pumpkin-like squashes) in the groundnut field where the stumps of camelfoot trees remain.

The field behind our compound is probably three times as large as the groundnut field outside of the village. Junkong already employs certain intercropping techniques. We are trying various combinations of millet, corn, sorghum, and beans. This involves ammagol e awogol, dancing and planting. Once the team of bulls has criss-crossed the field making long furrows and ridges, we follow with our gourds of seeds. First we line up; each of us has a handful of mixed seeds. Then we begin the barefoot dance. Goose step to a ridge and with the left heel make a divot. Drop five (or so) sorghum seeds and two (or so) corn seeds into the impression. Lightly spread soil over the seeds using the toes of the right foot and gently tamp it down. Goose step again. And again. It is the rhythm of my village these days. Kingfishers, black-headed plovers, and parrots play the harmony. Time is kept by the metronome of swaying coconut trees.

I’m not very good at the dance. Unlike these guys, I haven’t been working this way since my childhood so I quickly fall behind. Less a dance than a seizure, I look out of place there in the field. I am dorky, klutzy, and stumbly. I trip into the furrows, lose my balance, dribble seeds everywhere.

I am also not very good at weeding. We use a jalo which is a short sort of handhoe. Again, we line up and hunch over, resting the weight of our tired bodies on the left elbow against the left thigh just above the knee. The jalo quickly scrapes away the grasses and weeds that spring-up around the millet. It is remarkably efficient if you can tell the difference between grass and millet, between hudo and gawri. I cannot. I ask the man next to me “Hudo?” and he tells me “Gawri.” I avoid scratching it with the handhoe and take a half step forward. “Gawri?” “Hudo.” I scratch it and inch onward. I consider myself a fairly observant and reasonably intelligent man yet even after days of this work, gawri looks too much like hudo.

Which brings-up another problem with my work here as a Volunteer. I am here to try to help these people become more productive farmers. This requires that they trust me, that they believe that I bring some sort of experience from abroad. I have told them about the organic farming I did in New Mexico. I have bragged that I grew up in the heartland of farming country in America, the breadbasket of the world. That my grandparents were farmers, that my mother and father were gardeners as I grew up. Yet I cannot tell the difference between weedy grass and the staple crop of The Gambia. When I try to explain that I have never grown millet, somehow it gets lost in translation.

My house has become a very popular place recently. I bought a fifty kilo sack of Nerica rice seed and have been distributing it to whoever wants it. Everyone wants it. Nerica (New Rice for Africa) is a fairly productive hybrid of Asian and African rice developed by West African Rice Development Association. I bought the bag for 600 dalasis (about US$30) and am trying to distribute it to as many people in my village as possible for planting. On average, Nerica will yield five times without inputs and nine times if fertilizer is used. One kilo of rice should yield between five and nine kilos.

Here is where my efforts as a Volunteer seem, once again, to fall somewhat short of the mark. These Gambians can do the math and they tell me that I am not giving them enough. They want more. Daa Haadi wants me to give her seven kilos and Daa Nyepa wants five. Sarjo told me that she is planting her entire field and that one kilo won’t even do a little bit so I should give her ten kilos. The developers of Nerica recommend planting 50 kilos per hectare. But this is not the only rice that the women are planting. Most of them have saved rice from last season and are planting that as well. I try to explain that if they plant one kilo this year they might reap seven times what they sow. If they keep all of it for planting next year they will soon have enough to feed themselves. It is an investment. I give them one kilo this year (I am asking that if they take a kilo, they will pay me a kilo when it is ready.) and in a few years they can be self sufficient. One now becomes six next year which becomes thirty six the following year. It is simple economics; it is the age old process of seed-saving. It is lost in translation.

Nevertheless, we are trying. The rice fields, or farros, around my village are the sites of daily and day-long work. The rice that is grown here is mostly dry-land rice as opposed to the wet paddy rice that can be found further downriver. Floodplains are used but these areas are soggy rather than constantly flooded. Women hoe plots of clayish soil and then broadcast the seed. This has been going on since our first good rain and I enjoy the time I spend among the women in the farros. They sing as they work and joke with me. The rice fields are picturesque and peaceful places, often shady and cool compared to the fields where I work with the men. There is a long, narrow floodplain that stretches north to south about two kilometers from my house where the women from many area villages work together. Mandinkas, Jolas, and Fulas from The Gambia and Senegal share this farro and I enjoy spending time with them, helping them work.

Jellica is one of the people I admire most in The Gambia. She is thirteen years old (or so) and lives a couple of compounds from mine. She was one of the top students in my environmental education class at Kampasa School and also spends a lot of time working with her mother in the women’s garden. Sometimes she helps me with the work I do in my backyard, tending my tree nursery or weeding my vegetables with me. Last week she came exhausted and filthy to my door wearing the mud-encrusted pants and rubber boots that she had traded-in for her usual tie-dye skirt and flip-flops. “Mi na hebi farro mi na fala marro” she said. “I have a rice field and I want rice.”

My friend Amber and I took a bicycle trip a couple of days ago to visit the new Peace Corps Education Sector Trainees who have been in the training villages for their first week. Amber and I are the VSN (Volunteer Support Network) Representatives for this region. VSN is a peer-to-peer support group helping Volunteers cope with the various stresses of Peace Corps service. We went to four training villages and talked about our lives with the fourteen Trainees. We answered their many questions and tried to offer advice on this transitional period that they are in. We told them how we handle issues with food, with cultural differences, and with language barriers.

It was especially nice for me to return to my old training village. It has been seven months since I left there and I was glad to take the opportunity to distribute some of the photographs of people that I had taken. They were happy to see me and we were all surprised at how well we were able to communicate with one another. When I left there in November, my language was halting and rudimentary; greetings and simple expressions of need. Now, we actually had real, imaginative, and entertaining conversations. We spent the night on the floor of the alkalo’s house, rose in the morning to bowls of sour milk and millet, and said a few teary-eyed goodbyes.

Which takes me up to today. Actually, tomorrow. My friend Amy is flying back to the States for a wedding and her plane leaves from Dakar, Senegal. Dakar is the premier West African city, the Paris of Africa. It is a six hour trip overland and I am going with her to keep her company and to take a brief vacation for myself. I’m a little nervous: I spent most of my Gambian stipend for July on that bag of Nerica and so I thought I could come to Kombo and access some of my personal money with my bankcard from home. After all, I haven’t spent a dime of my own savings since September. But my bank uses the Mastercard logo. Mastercard may be everywhere you want to be but it is not everywhere you happen to be. Its not accepted anyplace in The Gambia. The internet search I just performed indicates that there is one atm machine in Senegal that accepts Mastercard. There are none in Guinea, none in Sierra Leone, and two in Mali. All three of these countries are places that I plan to travel to early next year.

A friend here borrowed me enough money to get to Dakar (a real friend would have given me enough to get home too.). I should be back in a couple of days unless I cannot access my cash… By which case I might just have to become a Peace Corps Senegal Volunteer. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Kaira.

Ndungu artii!! The rains have come!! Finally. You’d think that after nine years in New Mexico I would be used to watching storms on the horizon that never bring rain. I’m not. In fact, I am horrible at it. I have spent the last month with my neck craned to the sky begging each passing cloud to spit a little something. I’ve tried English, Pulaar, and Mandinka but the rains speak an entirely different dialect than anything I’ve yet to learn. Shaking my fist at the heavens and stamping my feet on the ground have also gone unheeded. People in Foni Jarrol expect rains to come by June 15 but we did not receive our first appreciable precipitation until fourteen days after that. Other places in The Gambia have received a bit more than we have, but all together this country is unseasonably dry. Now people all around my village are scrambling to clear bush, bust sod, and get crops into the ground. The bulls and donkeys seem perpetually tethered to antiquated plows and seeders. No man goes anywhere without his machete because we all are helping one another cut back the bush that has advanced since last year. Fallowed land with fifteen foot tall trees and ten years of growth is being brought into cultivation to try to maximize our food growing capacity. I am working primarily with Landing Manneh, my host brother, to prepare a fallowed plot for groundnut cultivation. He is a little older than I am and is married to a wonderfully patient woman named Fatou. They have three children named Musu, Bauweea, and ModuLaamin. They have been living in Kombo for the past several years where Landing worked as a security officer at an embassy but they recently moved back to the village to try to reacquaint themselves with rural life. Landing told me that living in Kombo is too expensive and too crowded and that he wanted to be back home to be with his ailing father Baa Cheike- also known as Tourre Fula which is Mandinka for Two Bulls. Tourre Fula is a renowned farmer and stories are told about his abilities to grow millet in desiccated soil and groundnuts without rain. The Mannehs share the millet field behind our compound with the Sannehs and so Landing, Junkong, and I have been plowing and sowing since the first decent rain. The process begins with hooking the donkey to the plow. I have American ideals about the treatment of animals but it is very difficult to make a donkey do anything without screaming at him continuously and striking him with sticks across the ear and the ass. When I first began, I thought that I could catch more flies with honey than vinegar, could dangle a carrot in front of the donkey and whisper sweet words into his ear, could get more accomplished being nice than being mean. I was wrong. Donkeys are asses. Two men are required for plowing, one to whip the donkey and the other to press the tines of the plow as deeply into the windswept and sun-scorched earth as his chest muscles will allow. Truth be told, I’m not very good at either of these tasks. My voice is too small when I scream at the donkey and I hold back with the whip. Physically, I am the exact opposite of my Gambian counterparts. My host mother is strong enough to knock me to the ground and she is in her fifties. I push with all of my might to get the plow to actually make a decent furrow and wind up with sore muscles from my neck to my buttocks and hardly a scratch in the surface of the earth. Thus, I have been relegated to clearing the groundnut field. It is not easy. We want to do about one hectare of groundnuts which is 100x100 meters. The field that we are using is about a ten minute walk west of the village and has been fallow for a number of years. I try to get out there early before the sun is too hot. Every morning after watering the tree nursery behind my house and my vegetable beds in the women’s garden I try to hone an edge onto my machete. Bakke am goes everywhere with me. My machete is my most useful tool. I use it for digging fence-post holes, dismantling termite mounds, and chopping trees with trunks five inches in diameter. Gambians know how to keep their machetes sharp by rubbing the blades against rocks and I’ve been trying to learn the skill but I am never satisfied that it is sharp enough. It takes a while to get to the field because I have to greet so many farmers along the way already out in their fields. I am not entirely pleased having to participate in slash and burn agriculture, however food self-sufficiency is becoming increasingly a priority. The trees and brush that I drop are unpalatable to animals and useless to man except as fence posts and firewood. I do not participate in clear-cutting and I try to convince others that we should leave certain trees stand in and around our fields. So far, Landing has allowed me to leave some trees and I am hoping that other farmers will try to follow our example. Already, Gambians leave palms, baobabs, bush mangoes, and large winter thorns to stand in their fields. I am also leaving the camel-foot tree, so called because of the shape of its leaves, due to the fact that it fixes nitrogen in the soil surrounding its roots and provides animal fodder in the dry season thereby increasing manure under its canopy. I thought I would be able to finish the clearing yesterday but unfortunately I slipped in the mud the day before and sprained my back as I fell. I did not realize how badly I was hurt until I got to the field yesterday morning and started bushwhacking. Obviously, this is extremely physical work involving a constant stoop as you grasp the brush with one hand and hack away with your machete in the other. After fifteen minutes of this I was experiencing intense pain emanating from my lower lumbar reaching into my legs and shoulders. Soon I could hardly lift my feet and was sweating profusely. I became slightly lightheaded and saw bright spots and strange contrasts everywhere I looked. I began to wonder if I had been bitten by some strange spider and was going into shock. I needed a stick to walk and it took me thirty minutes to get home where I instantly crashed onto my bed and stayed all day. I phoned the PC nurse in Kombo who told me to come into the office. The cramped and bumpy ride in the gelegele was not amusing but somehow I made it here where she checked me over, gave me an ice pack and some ibuprophen, and told me that I cannot work for at least ten days. Great timing. I met some children near the border with Senegal who were collecting scrap metal to sell. They make one dalasis (about five American pennies) per kilo of rusted carparts and foodbowls which is then transported to Kombo where it is made into things like hammerheads.

I went on a camping trip in Kiang West National Park with some fellow Peace Corps Volunteers about three weeks ago. I rode my bike to Amber’s site and the rest joined us by coming on gelegele from Brikama. The park is beautiful and Amber loves being there but sometimes dealing with government policy and red-tape is a headache for her. We wandered bush-trails, slept under mosquito nets hung from trees, and swam in the small tributary that runs through the area. We followed some animal tracks which confirmed what I have believed all along: Small antelope are chasing and attacking hyenas. We played Frisbee with a baboon name Baboon until the disk fell into a deep well populated with bats. We saw a beautiful swarm of bees hanging from a tree branch which entertained us for hours. I took another bike ride a few days later to Jeff’s site which is about seventy kilometers from where I live. A few months ago while returning to site from IST, the gelegele that Jeff was riding in crashed and flipped over in Bondali. He was asleep and woke while it was skidding end over end as women and chickens fell all round him. His shoulder and arm were injured and he was taken first to Bwiam hospital, then to Banjul, and eventually was flown to Dakar, Senegal where the facilities are better equipped to handle the nerve damage he was experiencing. He stayed there for a month while he underwent physical therapy and is now finally back home and trying to get back to work. He still has some numbness in his fingers and his arm hurts when he works. The worst part though is the depression that accompanies such an injury. Ag-Fos in Peace Corps are notoriously hard-working people and it is difficult to sit back while those around you are digging in the dirt, especially now that everyone is so busy with field preparation and planting. The bike ride tried to kill me. This was the third time I’d ridden out to Jeff’s and by far the worst. The heat and humidity right now in The Gambia are unbearable. Oppressive actually. I know I’ve said it before but this is really ridiculous. I got a late start too and didn’t leave my house until 8:30 which made a big difference. I thought I’d get there in about three hours but by noon I was only half way and was exhausted from the headwind I was riding against. I stopped in Keneba where women sell frozen baobab juice in plastic baggies and I devoured five of them in less than two minutes. The bitik there was out of purified water so I had to drink from a well that was suspicious at best. After resting in the shade of a Mandinka kola-nut tree I rode a little further and decided that I needed to rest again. I threw my bike to the ground and passed out in the dappled shade until ants started to bite me. I rode. I stopped. I slept. I rode. I stopped. I slept. I rode. I threw up. I crashed. I was awakened by a girl who asked me if I was alright. I looked around through stinging eyes and realized I was alongside a red-dust road with my Teletubbies shirt pulled over my face lying in a pile of leaves and donkey shit with my bike a few meters away from me. She said I’d been there for an hour and that maybe I needed to see a doctor or at least get further off the road. I asked her where I was and she told me the name of the village which I recognized as less than five kilometers from Jeff’s village. I thanked her profusely for saving my life or whatever- “Baraka barke. Baraka barke.” I rode until I was too dizzy to ride anymore. I pushed my bike for lack of balance and finally arrived at Jeff’s eight hours after leaving home. “Where you been?” he and Nick laughed as I collapsed at his door. Later that night- after drinking gallons of water and chewing rehydration tablets like breathmints- the three of us suited-up to do some honey-harvesting. One of the old men that Nick and I met on our beekeeping trek there last month had several hives that he hadn’t looked at for a year and wanted us to take a look inside them. We shouldn’t have agreed but we do so love the thrill of beekeeping. By dark we were wrapping one another with duck tape and heading into the bush. Every beekeeper knows that the less you handle hives, the wilder the bees will become. A year is nine months too long and so all five hives we opened were honey-bound and pissed-off. We were covered with bees and each of us got stung more than twenty times as they chewed through our suits. The air was heavy with sweet alarm pheromone, the honey was more than we could carry, and the old man hiding a short distance away warned us that there were most likely puff adders lurking in the night. The next day we worked in the fields helping the Manjangs plant rice in their small plot in northern Kiang. The boys hooked-up the donkey to the planter while Adreesi modified the seed-spinner insert for the rice grains. Men and boys utilize animals and machines while the women, who were also planting rice, use a carved stick with a blacksmith forged metal hoe on the end. I took a turn at each and can attest that neither is very easy. But the boys take turns screaming at the donkey while the women gossip and sing songs; the latter is definitely more idyllic. I was already beginning to fret about tomorrow’s bike ride. I was hardly recovered from getting here and now I had to get back home. That night, after more beekeeping, I slept in Jeff’s hammock in his backyard. Some donkey conversation woke me at four in the morning and so I decided that the moon was full enough to just get going. Moonlight isn’t nearly as hot as sunlight and the wind was calm. I pedaled hard and made it home in less than three hours which was quite an improvement on my previous time. Another trip I took was an excursion to Kanali National Game Park and Farm with some members of the Environmental Education class from the school where I teach. Since December, I have been presenting environmental current events class to a self-selected group of children at the Lower Basic School near my house, grades 3-6. Three of my Peace Corps friends from the surrounding area worked on similar classes in their local schools. We decided to arrange a field trip to Kanali which is a protected area in the town where President Alhaji Dr. A. J. J. Jammeh was born, about 40 kilometers from my village. We couldn’t take everyone. These are all rural schools with no buses, the children walk from home to school. We were able to get some financial assistance from St Joseph’s Family Farm in Bwiam who said we could take up to four students and one teacher from each school. To select the students we decided to conduct a written examination worth 80 points with a practical component worth 20 and the highest scoring students could go. It’s not easy. The classes include students representing a range of grades and comprehension levels so some of the students were unable to answer even a single question while others were better prepared. In The Gambia, education is developing but right now I think that in many ways the system is failing the students. Rote memorization is valued over critical thinking. Trying to get students to consider abstract concepts that Americans are familiar with (recycling, global warming, biodiversity) is often asking too much. The highest score in the classes I taught was 42 out of 80 even though we had an extensive review and most of the questions were multiple choice. For example, “What are fodder trees? Trees used to stop wind; trees that animals can eat the leaves of; our male parent in the forest; trees popular for bird watching.” The majority of students selected “Our male parent in the forest." Then came the practical side of the exam. The forester that we worked with on the class thought it would be a good idea to have students bring trash to the school since one of our lessons was “clean environment.” He told them to bring fifteen plastic bags, twenty five batteries, and five ruined sandals. I agree that The Gambia needs to work on trash clean up. I hate when I am digging in my garden and find a leaky d-cell buried there. I don’t like cleaning up other people’s plastic sacks that blow across the compound into my yard. Still, what was supposed to happen once the students brought the trash to school? There is no rural trash service whatsoever. Set settal, which occurs on the last Saturday of every month, is a mandatory trash clean-up across the nation. Mostly people ignore it but some at least rake the plastic bags, batteries, donkey dung, and discarded clothes into a huge pile and set it on fire. As I collected the exam papers, I was assaulted by thirty students at one school and thirty five at the other, each with a ridiculous load of tattered sacks, disintegrating batteries, and stinky sandals. I am lucky that some of the students didn’t care enough to bother. Now I have to find some way to dispose of 983 used batteries, 195 broken flip flops, and 637 tattered plastic bags. Last week the day finally arrived for the excursion. I awoke at 3:30 in the morning- from a nightmare about kids on a safari- to the sound of a gentle rain falling on my roof. Within fifteen minutes, the sound on the corrugated zinc was deafening. This was the first big rainstorm, the one I’ve been waiting for. The one we’ve all been praying for. I dragged my heat-rashed self right out of bed, out the back door, and took my first real shower in a very long time. The rain was falling in sheets. I lathered. Rinsed. Repeated. The rain fell and the sun rose and still the rain fell. The fields around my house became flooded lakes and water was lapping at my door. I felt a release, a relief. Finally the rain. Nine months- to the day- after arriving in The Gambia, the rains that I’ve been hearing about were finally falling. And falling. For anAg-Fo, this is what it all comes down to. This is what all the work and planning and theorizing has led to. I have nearly 300 trees in my nursery waiting for out-planting and my vegetable garden is in full force again. But why couldn’t it wait until tomorrow to rain? I had told the children to be waiting at the schools by 7:00am for the gelegele and had scheduled us to make stops at three different places. The compound was a pool of water and the fence at the women’s garden had collapsed in two places when the torrents flowed. I phoned Becca who was scheduled to be the first pick up and she said it was pouring there too and that she and her students were waiting but expecting to postpone. Then at 8:00 the gelegele arrived there and would be heading my way. I had to wade through knee deep water to get to my school where the teacher and students were waiting. By 9:30 I received word that the road to our school was washed-out and that we’d have to walk a kilometer to get to where the gelegele was waiting. We hiked the distance, loaded up, and departed to collect the last school. Unfortunately, the road to that school was in worse shape and we were not able to get anywhere near them. We left them with a phone call saying we would make it up to them somehow. We were on our way and the rain had lessened. We arrived at Kanali and the rain had transformed to the light drizzle that characterizes everyday of ndu ndungu. The park is a sprawling, forested area with a high fence surrounding it; the closest thing to a safari that The Gambia has ever known. More a zoo than a safari since most animals are inside individual enclosures. Once, there were hippos and lions but now there are only some crocodiles, zebras, camels, hyenas, and ostriches. The children were excited to see these creatures; many of them had only seen camels and zebras in books. We also visited their farm where they grow many of the traditional Gambian cereals including sorghum, millet, and findi. They have an impressive citrus orchard and oil-palm plantation. Then we went to St Joseph’s Family Farm in Bwiam. This is a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching Gambians about improved agricultural techniques. They have a nice demonstration farm that we toured where we learned about bamboo, live fencing, and appropriate technologies. They served us a delicious meal and talked to the children about resource conservation. Once the day was finished, we loaded up and returned home. Yesterday was the Fourth of July in The Gambia. Probably there too. Many Volunteers came into town and we spent the afternoon at Rodney’s house. He is the Peace Corps country director for the environment sector and an all around great guy. We barbequed bush pig, listened to Alice's Restaurant on satellite radio, and caught-up with one another. It was a potluck with all sorts of great food so most of us ate like we haven’t eaten since Thanksgiving. And that’s about it for this month. My back is getting better and I hope to return to site tomorrow. There is a lot of work to do and I feel like I am missing my big chance to get more seeds into the ground. On a sad note, my Solio solar charger has stopped working leaving me with an uncharged ipod. This event has drastically altered my Peace Corps experience. I don’t know what to do without hearing music everyday. I am trying to be miserly about what I listen to and when I do it. Instead of randomly playing a shuffle for hours at night or listening while I'm off for a run, I am picking my tunes carefully. Whatever song I choose to listen to last will get stuck in my head for days. The soundtrack to The Gambia or at least the backbeat to the rhythms of donkeys braying and babies crying and stars falling and clouds forming. I will try to send the Solio back to the company for repair. Until then, every time you get into your car and sing along to your favorite song, remember me here trying to get by with nothing but a shortwave radio broadcast of a Portuguese weather report. Maybe they are calling for rain.

Fssst. Thump. Fssst. Thump. Laughter and fast footfalls. Ruminants gallop while boys dive. The elders assert their social standing. With each gust of wind another mango drops. First heard far away but quickly tossed from tree to tree until it tickles the branch you are poised beneath. The wind in the leaves high above finds that fruit that wasn’t quite ready with the last gust. Fssst. Thump. Necks twist and sprints are broken. Fssst. Shouts and giggles and laughter and cries of pain. Thump. The ripe fruit and a puff of dust: an orange flame in the drab dirt. The face of my Gambian village stained orange on its cheeks and chins. Stringy bits stuck between the teeth. Every hungry creature licks the lips and chases the fruit. Clouds of brown kicked up as the children race and chase for the… Fssst. Thump. Early in the morning we are called from our beds by night-cool fruits. The first afternoon breeze drops a piping hot mango pie at our feet. By the time the evening winds blow, the fruit- like us- has cooled. Fssst. It is not knowable which is the more welcome refreshment. Thump. The burst of the mango or the breeze that dropped it. Each of us is certain though that this is the sweetest bite that will come all year. Waiting for windfall mangoes.

This month brought many surprises- many treats and one minor threat.

A big congratulations is in order for my brother in Columbus, Ohio and his wife. They had their first child, a healthy baby girl named Amelie Sophia. It makes it hard to be here sometimes because I am missing some important moments in the life of my family back home. I am very happy for you Nate and Caroline.

The first rain I’ve seen in eight months came just a few days ago. I was on my bike on a windy morning about fifty kilometers from home and I was praying for rain. I had just spent the last five days on trek in Kiang with my Peace Corps friends Nick and Rob conducting beekeeping training. We rode from village to village meeting beekeepers and showing them some of the techniques we’ve been experimenting with. Mr. Bah2 from the National Beekeepers Association of The Gambia (NBAG) had set up some of the meetings. We demonstrated Kenyan Top Bar hive baiting and post-harvest wax rendering to more than thirty beekeepers. The initial results were seen when several hives that we baited were colonized within days. This is in spite of the fact that now is the beginning of the dearth period when bees are less likely to be on the lookout for a new home. Another highlight: We showed a man how to clarify his beeswax and he turned it into hand-cream and made over 500 dalasis. Also we talked with beekeepers to learn from them and I was shown a grass that is burned near hives because the smoke works as an attractant. We walked around and observed many different apiaries and helped a few people place their hives. Nick bought some woven-grass hives from a man for 100 dalasis each.

Finally, I had to return home but I had a bit of a coughing and wheezing thing going (seems like whenever I travel in The Gambia I hack up a lung) so I was feeling a bit slow and travel-worn. There was a headwind and sweat kept dripping from my helmet into my eyes. I was moving in slow-motion through villages, bush, and open fields. It is becoming planting time here in The Gambia and so men are slashing dried weeds and burning crab grasses. Many people are out preparing the dry rice-lands with machetes and digging sticks. A cool drop fell to my arm and I instantly registered it as something other than salty perspiration. Then another. And another. And then the electric scent captured my nose with a remembered tickle from some far-away olfactory memory. Rain was in the air. First I had felt it, then I had smelt it. Naturally I had to taste it. I stopped my bike on the red-dirt road and looked into the hazy distance. There was rain falling all around me; my clothes- which were already wet- became soaked. The wind was cooling the air and the trees were sipping from their leaves the first dusty drink of the rainy season. I did too.

It rained only about ten minutes. The road soaked up the water and left no evidence that it had ever fallen at all. I sniffed the air for every last lingering proof like the perfume of every pretty girl gone but never forgotten.

(Sorry about that. Rain and pretty girls are undeniably poetic in my world.)

So, I was sitting on the bamboo bantaba in my compound one morning a few weeks ago talking about soldiers with my friend Sanna. Suddenly he spotted a small animal running across a burned field just beyond the village and he smiled hugely. “Laar wandu ngessa toon!” he said and I looked at the monkey over there in the field. A few days before, he had asked me if I would eat a monkey. I said that I would and told him the story about when I ate one last February that some Mandinkas had charred. He said he wouldn’t eat one because it looks too human but that if he saw one he would shoot it for me. He saw this one and was instantly calling for his mutt and racing to his house for his rifle. He was back in an instant and we went running to the chewe’ trees- chasing the dog that was chasing the monkey. We arrived at the grove and craned our necks skyward searching the canopy for the treed primate. I sent up a silent wish that somehow Sanna would miss even though I knew he wouldn’t. What was I doing? I had no right to hunt this monkey just because I’ve been eating nothing but rice for weeks. Maybe he’ll miss. A crack went out as he shot and then silence. We each breathed up into the leaves and dappled sunlight. Nothing. He must have missed. He wouldn’t miss again. The monkey lunged from one tree to the next with a graceful jump and looked down at us. My eyes locked with hers. I knew exactly what she did. There was no way out. Even if Sanna missed this time, eventually somehow she would fall. The rifle blasted and the monkey fell and the dogs lit upon her and I looked away. She was dead before she even hit the ground.

Sanna and I took the monkey home passing through the ranks of people staring and grinning. Few people here eat monkey and I knew right away that I would be on my own with this thing. We took her home and my host-mom asked what we were going to do with it. We scared my host-sister and fascinated the children. Finally we took the carcass to my back yard and strung it from a leuceana tree. Sanna offered to skin and gut it for me since he knew that I didn’t know how. Once he was done with that though he left me on my own to cut away the meat. I worked for an hour to free the meat and I decided that I agreed with the townsfolk. Monkey looks a lot like human. But once it was finished it tasted an awful lot like beef. I marinated the meat in olive oil, salt, and spices for about three hours. I made a mango, onion, and tomato chutney from local ingredients. Finally, I braised the meat over an open fire and reduced the sauce until it was thick and served it over rice. My host father refused to try any at all but the rest of my family each had a few bites and told me that it was weli (sweet.)

The President came to town last month. He is an interesting figure. Perhaps you have heard of him. He is the man who believes that he can heal HIV/AIDS by rubbing oil on people’s bodies and has publicly said that any homosexuals found in The Gambia will be beheaded. He was making a tour of the country and stopping at various towns along the way. This man travels in style. Long, black armor-plated Hummers, military men and artillery spread out in a sea of camouflage on the road in front of and behind him. People here love their President though and so turned out en masse to dance and sing and hear the speeches. My group of beekeepers carried a KTB and a traditional grass hive up to Kalagi on a donkey cart so that we might get some exposure. Schools from all over the Fonis came, women and men who never leave the village made the trek to see the President. I got there in the morning and nobody knew when to expect him so I mingled for a while on the dusty road with clowns and school children. Some Jola women were singing and I decided to make a short video of them. (I have made a lot of videos here and will put them on YouTube so you can view them. Unfortunately, the connection is slow and uploading takes forever so I’m sending them to some friends back in New Mexico who have a fast connection. When they are up, you’ll be the first to know.) I videoed the women for a while then panned across the crowd at the Bintang Bolong bridge that the President’s parade would cross over. Instantly and before I knew what was happening a paramilitary man all in black with a hefty pistol and mean look on his face filled my viewfinder with his hand and took the camera away from me. He was manhandling it trying to turn it off while I protested. He would not give it back and threatened to throw it on the ground if I didn’t shut it down. So I asked for it so I could turn it off and then promised to put it away. He gave it to me reluctantly and informed me with the air of authority that his position had given him that cameras were prohibited when the President was around. But he wasn’t around I told him. But I was just taking some pictures of the people assembled to welcome him. “You should leave the territory.” He told me. But I was invited here and I came with friends. “If you don’t leave right now I will fuck you in the ass!” Now I was shaking and many people were watching. He grabbed my arm as I struggled to put my camera away and he started to drag me. I wasn’t putting up much of a fight. I just kept saying “I’m Peace Corps. I live here. These are my people.” But he wasn’t hearing it. “Leave now. You are not welcome here. The President is coming and I don’t want to see you. If I see you I will beat you.” I didn’t want to go of course but I also didn’t want a beating… or anything else that he was offering. “Doubletime! I said move!” He was shoving me and marching me while all of the people of Foni Jarrol looked on and I kept wondering how this incident would affect my credibility within the community. Finally I was back in town away from the bridge and I could tell that the President had arrived because of all the cheering and the sirens. Suddenly, the paramilitary man was gone and I was trying to decide what to do. Then I saw my PC friend Nick who was passing through on his way to Kiang and got stopped for the oncoming motorcade. He could see that I was frantic and so I told him the story amidst all the revelry and commotion. Then I noticed that there was an army man directly behind me. He searched my bag and then heard my story. He said I could stay and that I shouldn’t take any more pictures. I said I wouldn’t and he disappeared into a sea of camouflage. I spoke to the local police who confirmed that I could stay and that if I had any other trouble I should come to see them.

The best part of the story is that the President saw the beehives that my friends had brought and offered to buy 300 of the grasshives. I was thrilled because it’s a great way for them to make some money. Also, only two men there know how to make them so we will have to be taught. This translates to skills transfer, income generation, and community project which are all watchwords of Peace Corps and important to me as modes of development. I am so proud to see this happening and feel like this is an important step for the Mangana Agroforestry and Beekeeping Association.

I found a dead donkey’s skeleton in the bush last month. I brought the sun-bleached bones home and pounded them with a large wooden mortar and pestle and then shook the dust through a screen to make bonemeal. People walking past my house came over to see what I was doing because Gambians who pound millet everyday get a big kick out of watching toubobs try it. They had never seen such a thing and several women helped me for a while. I explained the NPK needs of plants and told them that bonemeal would add phosphorous and calcium to the soil stimulating root growth, flower development, and overall plant health. I told them that I would mix the bonemeal with wood ash (equal amounts) and then apply the blend to the soil as a plant fertilizer. Wood ash adds potash (potassium- the K in NPK) to the soil which enhances the plant’s ability to retain water, increases crop yields, and improves the plant’s resistance to disease. These will be applied to the base of the plant once it is six to eight weeks old. Prior to that, I am using human urine for the nitrogen needs of the plant for vegetative growth. Peace Corps The Gambia is promoting human urine as an organic and inexpensive fertilizer. I fill a 20 liter bidong one quarter of the way with water then pee in it until it is half full. This takes about a week. Then I top it off with more water and keep it sealed to prevent ammonia release. I leave it for one week then apply it directly to my plants for both foliar and root feeding. Chemical inputs are expensive, unavailable, and not very good for the soil. By making fertilizer from urine, bones, and ashes I am providing all the basic needs for my plants without having to resort to something I don’t want to use.

So I guess that’s about it. Other stuff too but as always I have to get going back to site and I am trying to get this posted before I go. I hope that you are all well. I hope that you are growing something and that it makes you happy.

I won't lie. I've gotten used to being in Kombo with friends and beaches and hot showers and cold air conditioning. But today I really must go back to site to try to get back to work. My post from April 15 might seem a little grim and you might be thinking that I'm depressed or downtrodden. But I am not. I'm excited to get back to work. There are many challenges in Peace Corps but those are part of what makes this experience so amazing. Challenging myself.

I helped out at IST last week especially with the beekeeping and composting components. The bees here are very different from those at my site. Its probably because we were working at Sifoe Beekeeping Kaafo and National Beekeeping Association of The Gambia where the colonies are more used to being disturbed. I only got stung a few times through my suit even though I led three groups on three separate nights. Training people about keeping bees has been very rewarding for me. It's a little easier when they are all English-speakers like it was with my fellow PCVs. I hope that I can continue to work with beekeeping and development after Peace Corps is finished. I feel like it is a very sustainable practice and that many people in developing countries can benefit economically from it: The farmers from the pollination, the beekeepers from the honey. Working in other people's established apiaries can be difficult though because I am a visitor there and have certain opinions about management that the operators might not share.

Hanging out in Kombo is so weird after being at site. The Stodge (our Transit House in Fajara) is the closest I've been to a fraternity house atmosphere in a very long time. It has enough beds for 40 people, a very messy kitchen, and an entertainment center. Volunteers from all over the country come there when they need a break from site so debauchery ensues. Late nights, beer drinking, loud music. I might have thought that it wouldn't be a very attractive environment but I have to admit that I actually enjoy being there. I am quite close with many of my fellow Volunteers. Also, PCVs get to know one another quickly because of the nature of our lives. Someone you've never met before might become your cooking partner or fall asleep on you watching a movie. Peace Corps can be sort of frustrating so we depend on one another to help us cope and relax. Also, there is an extensive bootleg collection of dvds so I got to watch the very excellent No Country For Old Men which was filmed in New Mexico. It made me homesick in a very pleasing sort of way. I miss that place so much and the scenery in that film reminded me of so many places that I have loved.

So I hope that you are all well. I have received a few comments from people I don't even know which I am very happy about. Thank you for your kind words and encouragement. Its probably time to get sowing seeds in America and I hope that you are each planting a few.

I've posted some photographs at http://picasaweb.google.com/knucklewalking/TheGambia

Also, my brother and his wife are set to have a baby in the next 2-3 weeks. I wish them success and happiness. My village is very happy for them and we will slaughter a goat to celebrate the occasion.

Kaira,

Matt

Another month in village (where things are starting to heat-up, in more ways than one) and now back to Kombo for the Agroforestry In-Service Training (IST) and to cheer on the new Health Volunteers who are swearing-in this week. Seems like only yesterday that that idealistic and enthusiastic young Trainee was me- obsessing about language, culture, an all-rice diet, and the heat. Well, I still worry about all those things. And plenty more that hadn’t yet even occurred to me then. But nevermind. Now I give them my best wizened look, scratch at some incessant bug-bite, and tell them that they’ll be just fine. As I write this I am perched high above Fajara where an ocean breeze cools my espresso on the balcony of Timbooktoo, the bookstore and café where wireless internet is free with any purchase. Gambians love their Nescafe’ and its hard to find a good cup of coffee anywhere but there are two places I know of in this country that offer the finer things. When will I learn to trust my woman’s intuition? (Mine I mean, I have no woman and she has no intuition). I knew I had to be in Kombo by Tuesday morning for a meeting at the Forestry Department and last Saturday I began to feel like I should not depend on things going smoothly. Two of the three gelegeles that leave from my neck of the woods have broken down along the road somewhere and haven’t been seen for weeks which left me counting on Molafi for my transportation to Kombo. On Saturday I went to his house where his kin assured me that he would be going on Monday. Inshallah. If Allah wills it, he will go. So on Monday morning I awoke at 5:30 and hefted my duffel of clothes and my burlap sack that I had sewn closed after stuffing with three beesuits, three pairs of boots, and all the tree seeds I’ve collected for the IST seed exchange (winterthorn, moringa, yellow cassia, flamboyant, pigeon pea, and pignut). I am building my neck muscles and so was able to carry one bag on my head like any good Gambian would, the other slung over my shoulder American-style. I hiked about four kilometers through the rice field before the cocks crowed but the bees were already awake and I could hear them in every gmelina I walked under. When I arrived at Kangsambu the aparante (boy who rides in a gelegele and negotiates tying the goats to the roof, haggling fares, and stuffing as many sweating human animals into a dusty metal box as physics will allow) was scratching his head looking forlorn at the flat tire. I knew it. Luckily, they had a spare. Unluckily, as soon as the thirtieth person climbed aboard in Kangsambu we began to hear the telltale hissing sound from said spare. We all climbed out and the aparante borrowed a bike pump from someone but it was mostly ineffective (due of course to the hole) so Molafi rigged some sticks to the rear forks of a borrowed bicycle and sent the boy with the flat tire to Kalagi (at least ten k away) to get it repaired. We sat in the dirt. About three hours passed and then Molafi threw my rice bag to me from the roof and told me that we’ll go tomorrow inshallah. So I humped all my stuff back home where my host family had a chuckle. But I couldn’t give up so with the help of my host-brothers’ wives Fatou and Syrah, we tied my bags to my bike with the shredded inner-tubes that are used as straps here and I set off on a wobbly and precarious ride to Kalagi. There I left my bike in the hands of some local police officers who, with a disturbing wink and grin, assured me that they’d take real good care of it. I’ll be surprised if I will ever see it again. Then I went to sit along the main road with about thirty other travelers with burlap sacks and waited in the sun and the dust. Because it is a police checkpoint, all vehicles are required to stop whereupon the riders are accosted by young girls hawking bananas, coconut slices, and plastic bags of water and the aparantes by stranded nomads who insist “Sure, you can squeeze me in right next to those chickens and sheep. Come on.” It took a while before I really asserted myself but I realized that if I didn’t push and shove like everyone else I’d be sleeping right there that night and I eventually got aboard an already crowded vehicle coming from further up-country. We eventually were impeded by a flat tire in Sibanor and then eventually made it to Serekunda where I eventually caught a taxi to Latrikunda and then another to --eventually—Fajara, my destination. Things at site have been up and down this month. Most of my fellow Volunteers are experiencing the same. Gambians love to say “it is not easy.” Nothing is. I’ve been really experiencing some difficulties at site with the work that I want to do. For example, I have a hammer. Not many people here have hammers. Ali Dado asked to borrow mine and when he gave it back twenty minutes later it was in five pieces. How do you break a tine from the claw, the head from the body, the body from the handle, and the handle into two pieces? If you asked me to break a hammer and gave me six weeks to do it I’d be lucky to make it into two pieces. I had called a workday at the womens’ garden for the following day to repair the fence so that all the hungry cows, sheep, and goats wouldn’t be able to eat our modest crops. So I showed-up ready to pound fence nails with a rock. The garden is a total loss. But I cannot totally blame that on the hammer. All gardeners no matter where they live struggle with nature and Gambians are no exception. Pests, climate, soil, germination, weeds. All these and more. The Gambia is a tough place to grow food. The sun is hot. Nange na wuli wut! Things dry out so fast and even the warm season and drought tolerant vegetables I was growing in New Mexico struggle to survive here. By 10:00am it is beyond hot and by noon the harmattan winds from the sahel blow whatever moisture there was to oblivion. Soil is actually sand and silt with no organic matter which compacts with watering to a state similar to cement. I am trying a mix of mahogany saw flakes and dried leaves as mulch to try to keep the soil cool and damp but I have to be careful not to attract termites which are a huge problem here. My tomato plants suffer from wilt and my cucumbers won’t grow fruit. The carrots are all stubby because they can’t break the compaction. Seeds that my family sent from America won’t even germinate. And then, if you can beat all of that, the local livestock will go through, under, of over any fence you can construct. A few weeks ago while in the garden I noticed that there was a goat eating some woman’s bitter tomato plants. I chased him with a stick and he ran out of a hole in the fence that I then repaired. The next day I noticed another goat and a sheep eating okra and eggplants. I chased them with dirt clods and they each went out through two new holes. I repaired those. The next day four goats, six sheep, and two cows. I chased them with sticks, clods, and a pitchfork. They evacuated through holes except for the cows who jumped over the four foot wire mesh and barbed wire fence that had been donated from NGOs Concern Universal and St Joseph’s Family Farm. Fencing in The Gambia is a big issue and one that agroforestry is trying to address. Local solutions include cutting bamboo or small trees for fences or twisting thorny branches or palm fronds together to try to keep the animals out. Livestock range the bush and most herders could never supply supplemental food for their animals. Because of this they are malnourished and insistent. The goal of the herdsmen is to keep the livestock alive through the dry season and then fatten them when the rains come sometime in late June or July. Women garden in The Gambia while men raise livestock and farm millet and groundnuts. Because of this, the men do not really help the women with their gardening and so fence maintenance- which is no easy task- suffers. Here’s where agroforestry is trying to help. We are teaching about “living fences” which is the use of perennial species to create a thorny hedge or impenetrable barrier. Most of the Acacia species do well here once established, euphorbia and pignut are unpalatable to most livestock, and sisal is an Agave that can make a low-maintenance living fence. Of course all these require planning and investment which “is not easy.” People have a lot of priorities and trying to get them to think about planting seeds and nurturing trees through their vulnerable seedling stage is a difficult task. You need a fence around your nursery to keep the animals from devouring your young living fence propagates. It is simpler to cut garden fence material every year in order to repair the damage that termites, sunlight, and livestock do. Or, in some cases, an NGO might provide prefabricated fences but not the tools that are necessary to maintain them. I’ve watched helplessly as men try to cut barbed wire strands by bending them over and over until they break because they have no wire-cutters. This demonstrates how development can hurt sometimes; good intentions become obscured when the people lack the basic tools for maintenance. So in addition to the livestock and other pests, to the sun and the wind and the drought, to the lack of soil fertility, another obstacle to raising food is the people’s attitudes and abilities. And here is where I feel absolutely unprepared as a development worker. I have spent the last few years studying food production in difficult climates, researching organic methods and permaculture systems, fraternized with extension workers and farmers. But sometimes theory and practice do not meet. Good ideas. I have a particular vision, I’m not at all sure that the people I am working with share in that vision. For one thing, I come from America where some of the best agriculture in the world is practiced because of fertile soil, chemical fertilizers and pest control, superior seeds, and government subsidies. There I have seen crops flourish and watched men make huge sums selling the fruits of their labors. Here, I am working with people who have never seen such things and so just imagining such lush fields might be beyond their capacity. It requires a huge leap and I am asking these Fulas to strive for something that they have never seen, to project themselves to someplace else, to another time either before the climate grew inhospitable or after they have re-nourished their soils with organic matter- which could take years. People here have always practiced slash & burn techniques. How do I convince them that burning fields in preparation for planting extinguishes the rare biota that remains in the soil and releases carbon into the air making it even more difficult to grow food? How do I encourage leguminous cover cropping when people invest all they have into basic staple crops ? How do I convince people that they need to change their practices when the language barrier prevents me from speaking creatively and making my points clear? The men of my village told me last week that the rains last year came late and ended early and their harvests of groundnuts and millet were disappointing. Usually they save the best seeds for planting the next year but this time they ate everything and now they have nothing to plant. As I’ve described, I tried to get the women to help me repair the fence against the livestock yet they were unable and unwilling. The sun is hot and people are tired. Traditionally this is the time of year when they take a break from growing vegetables and so when the ruminants started to break through, the women gave-up and lost over a hectare of tomatoes and onions and cassava. It broke my heart to see that small patch of green reduced to stubble in less than two days. Perhaps you’ve heard- climate change is making it hard everywhere to grow food. The World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization are all predicting that things in the developing world are only going to get worse. It is not easy. Over sixty percent of the people here survive on subsistence agriculture yet the problems with that lifestyle are compounding because of changes to the climate, to the economy, and to the culture. I am here because I want to help and these people have accepted me because they desire help. Sometimes though- lying sweating in my bed or watching crops whither away or seeing children with distended bellies of malnutrition- I wonder if I am failing them and failing myself. Sorry about all the doom and gloom. There are wonderful times in The Gambia too. Recently there was a naming ceremony in my village. Ok, the story begins kind of sad but… My friend Sanna and one of his wives had a little boy and traditionally Fulas wait eleven days before naming the child which takes place with a huge ceremony attended by friends and family from all over, the child’s hair is cut, people donate money for his well-being, goats are slaughtered, a griot will come and sing stories, people dance all night. A few days before the eleventh there was a death in our village, an old woman named Hawa passed away suddenly. The mandatory grieving period for the village is forty days and so the naming ceremony was postponed until after that. As the date of the event neared people started to arrive in my village. Houses began to swell with family members from all over, new faces (to me) were happy to be home. Some folks had come from a long distance and some had not been here for a long time. Sanna encouraged me to invite some of my Peace Corps friends so I invited Amber, Tim, and Becca who live reasonably close to me and could ride their bicycles. A dj was hired: Since there is no electricity he had to bring a generator to power the huge speakers and dual cassette players that he brought on a donkey cart. People were dressed to the nines with fancily tailored clothing and I noticed that there were a few new goats in town. Saturday was the day of the naming ceremony- also the hottest day of the year so far. Amber and Tim rode in filthy with dust stuck to the sweat coating their bodies; Becca arrived later in much the same state. They took bucket baths behind my house then put on their best Gambian clothes. We wandered out and joined the party. The baby and his mother were on a blanket and women were holding a blanket over them which was blocking the sun and catching the coins that people were throwing. The griot was singing praises upon them and telling the genealogical history leading up to his birth. Jarreh is the man the baby was being named after and he was proudly shaking hands and giving small gifts to everyone who had come. He is a good friend to the Peace Corps Volunteers of the Foni District because he owns a small restaurant along the Bintang Bolong where we often meet for the only JulBrews available for many kilometers in any direction. The time came for the ceremonial cut and a man with a razorblade took a lock from the boys scalp and the cheer went up as the hair was handed to the mother (never let your own hair lie because birds are likely to pick it up and build nests which will cause you to have a terrible headache for weeks). Then the attention was cast to the man with a long knife and he cut the throat of one of the goats. Then another and another until five bleeding, twitching goats were strewn about in the dust. All the women went to the big cooking pots already steaming with rice and onions over open fires beneath the mango trees and the men set about butchering the goats. The party lasted all day with people getting to know one another and catching up. I met many new people and we sipped attaya and talked about local issues. When dinner was served I wandered from compound to compound and shared the food bowl with many people. Towards evening the music started and people danced until well into the next morning. Fulas love watching us toubobs dance and cheered us on as we tried to predict the exotic rhythms and sounds of the music. Finally we were exhausted and so went to bed in my home but we were all too tired to sleep so lied around in my hot house telling stories until the sun came up. Another adventure occurred two weeks ago when I rode my bike 72 kilometers to visit Jeff up in Kiang. I left early to beat the heat and saw a huge bush pig on the road along the way. Kiang District is different from Foni District in many ways and it was rewarding to get out and see the changes in the scenery. He lives near the River Gambia so the landscape is unlike where I live due to the different plants that grow and the landforms that are present. I got to his house by 10:00am and was introduced to his family. They are Mandinkas so I was only able to communicate on a superficial level before Jeff would step in and explain that I was Fula and then try to translate what people were saying to me. We went for a bike ride to the village of Kemoto where boats were coming in with the day’s catch of shrimp, tiger prawns, and various tropical fishes. I had a great time talking with the fishermen because many of them were Fulas from Guinea so we were able to communicate. Some of them told me that they were wanted back home for various crimes, some were drunk (not all Fulas are Muslims), some were trying to make enough money to get home to their families. I felt an affinity for many of them: What adventure are we each on that takes each of us so far from home to stand together amongst tangled nets trying to tell each other the stories of how we came to be there? They were impressed with my Pulaar and showered me with praises. They gave Jeff and I some crabs and we bought fish and shrimp to take back to his family. I promised to return when they invited me to go out on a two or three day trip with them. Later, Jeff and I took another ride and ended up at the Kemoto Hotel. Kemoto is a long way from Kombo by road but fairly easy to access on a river excursion. The hotel is a beautiful example of tropical gardens, tourist crafts, and traditional architecture right along the river. Today it is an abandoned ghost town beginning to crumble into the earth. The story I heard about the place from a friend of mine who used to live near there goes like this: A wealthy toubob investor built this hotel and another in Kombo in the Senegambia region where tourists often stay. His plan was that Europeans would stay in Senegambia for a few nights and then take a boat trip up river where they could spend the night in Kemoto before continuing on to Tendaba or Janjangbureh. Land ownership in The Gambian provinces is nothing like the real estate of the western world and so apparently the man signed a deal with the alkalo of Kemoto that if he built there he would bring jobs, electricity, and water (all the water near there is too salty to drink because of the River Gambia). The hotel is huge and probably could hold over a hundred guests and so the potential was big for the villagers. Unfortunately, as things go in The Gambia, the potential was never realized. The hotel encountered financial problems and finally declared bankruptcy. The people of Kemoto never saw the income generation promised nor did they ever get water and electricity. Eventually there was something of an uprising described to me as violent and the hotel was abandoned. (Let me again say that I have no evidence to support this story but Sulyman who told it to me seems credible.) Now there is a fence around it and a big security guard (with only one eye though) who is friends with Jeff so he allows him to collect cuttings and seeds of some of the plants growing there. Jambundi. Compost, compost, compost. I build compost all the time and actually have four pits working right now comprised of leaves, grass, cow manure, fish bones, urine (my own), moringa, millet chaff, shrimp shells, wood chips, ash, eggshells, food scraps, banana plant stalks, and the sun-bleached bones of a donkey I found in the bush and pulverized. I remember my compost mentor- Jim bragging about being able to compost a horse and now I know what he means. You just have to make it into manageable pieces. I am preaching the virtues of compost everywhere I go for two reasons: First, the soil is depleted and exhausted and requires mass inputs of organic matter to try to balance the pH, provide nutrients, and facilitate water retention. Secondly, this is the first and easiest thing that gardeners can do to try to improve their yields as the time investment is short and the resources are all locally available. I offer classes to villagers and to students in two different schools. At one school I had asked the students what sorts of things we should put in our compost and after all the obvious answers one boy told me that monkey heads should also go in. People are interested in compost but it is difficult to get people to really invest themselves into the process. I think that one factor is that the gardeners use manure from small ruminants with some success. One problem with this practice though is that the manure adds mostly nitrogen which makes the vegetation grow so people think that they are doing what it takes. But plants need a complex of nutrients and trace elements which are underrepresented in manure alone and so while green leafy growth occurs, the plants lack what it takes to remain healthy and strong. Thus fruiting yields are low, the plant succumbs to the effects of sun and wind, and general weakness makes them very susceptible to disease and pests. Try saying that in Pulaar. Three nights ago I dreamt that I was so happy with some compost that I had made that I started to eat it. As I chewed a big mouthful and admired the worms and slugs in the pile at my feet I realized that I shouldn’t eat it because of the manure. My breath stunk of cow shit. The mephloquine that we take to stave off malaria causes strange and vivid dreams and many Volunteers enjoy sitting around comparing weird stories. I keep a dream journal next to my bed and write in it almost every morning upon waking. (Let me begin again. This is getting too long and its been twelve days since I first started it. Blogs aren’t compost, this should be short and current not a thesis-- for crying out loud.)

The Three-Month Challenge is finished and I find it hard to believe that I left America almost six months ago. Six months here has taught me many things about myself, my peers, my country, and The Gambia. I have to admit that many of my notions about what this was going to be like have been proven false, to have been fantasies and preconceptions. Also, the ways I thought that I would behave and react have also been challenged. Blog entries up to now have been easy because everything that I’ve written are simple observations about the differences between here and the USA. But now that I am settling in, things don’t seem so odd, so crazy, so absolutely different. Now, to be crammed on a dusty, crowded gelegele banging along a bumpy road with goats tied to the roof, with children peeing out the windows, with chickens on your lap is commonplace. I’ve seen the change of seasons as the effects of the dry season have affected the vegetation and the contents of the food bowl. I am beginning to comprehend what is being said around me and understand the reasons for certain cultural mores and attitudes. Not to imply that I’m still some seasoned veteran now and that I am blending perfectly with my surroundings. I continue to be surprised everyday by something new and I look forward to adventures in The Gambia everyday.

Peace Corps is truly a remarkable experience and I am proud to be a part of this American institution. Sure, traveling to foreign lands and working in exotic locations is a unique opportunity. Of course, I am happy that some of my experience is benefiting others and that I am learning things I could never imagine if I had stayed home. But another aspect of Peace Corps is that it truly does make one appreciate what America as a place, as an attitude, and as a people have to offer. I miss it. It is very different from The Gambia in so many ways.

But all those years studying anthropology have left me thinking that one should try to be objective in his observations and try not to make too many comparisons. Obviously, we all know that that can’t happen. We all view the world through our own eyes and therefore all observations are subjective and filtered through our individual values, biases, and experiences.

What’s a typical day like in a Fula village on the south bank of the River Gambia in West Africa? For me, there haven’t been any typical days yet and so it is hard to say. Everyday is different. There are routines but I try to actively pursue a variety of activities so that I don’t find myself in a rut or becoming too comfortable. The nice thing about being an Agriculture and Forestry Volunteer compared to one working in education or health is that there are no real strict definitions of what I am supposed to do day in and day out. I can work in a variety of locations and do many different jobs each day. One day I might be found in a small forest with my machete and the next I could be teaching students about compost and bush fire prevention. Today I am working at the National Beekeepers Association demonstrating how Dadant hives function and tomorrow I might be slogging through a rice field on the border with Cassamance. Yesterday I was sipping a pina colada on the beach and swimming in the Atlantic Ocean and in a week there will be a naming ceremony in my village wherein a small child will receive the accolades he deserves for surviving the first difficult months of his life in the harsh Gambian bush.

That said here is a page from my journal dated February 23. “I am awake very early, still dark. I lie listening to the braying of some foolish donkey, the territorial meanderings of too many roosters. I need to get up, catch Molaafi [the gelegele driver who goes everyday through here to the Kombos] and get him to take my empty propane tank to Brikama and exchange it for a full one. But I stayed in bed with a flashlight reading the last pages of Angle of Repose and then I drifted off again. On the edge of a dream that reminded me of so many panicky childhood nightmares where the overwhelming feelings of insufficiency remain long into the waking world: the stable where the donkeys stay [of course, in real life there is no stable and they just sleep standing wherever they are] has just burned to the ground killing the village’s 23 asses and I’m expected to rebuild it and breed new stock. I begin to feel overwhelmed when I’m roused back to waking by the sound of a banging honking vehicle on the road half a k away. I jumped up and pulled on some clothes, ran from the house with my tank to the korosama [junction, waiting spot] but when I got there it wasn’t Molaafi and I didn’t know the dryaber or the apparante and so didn’t want to give them either my tank or the 250 dalasis it would take to exchange it. So he drove off and I waited and waited. Finally the orange and blue gelegele from Kampassa drove up and I recognized Sulyman who said he’d take it but that he wasn’t coming back until Monday so I decided to wait on Molaafi. And wait. And wait. Besides, as Sulyman sat there idling waiting for people and chickens to pile into the van a huge puddle of petrol was forming in the dust beneath them. I waited. A Mandinka woman from Kamamadu tried to tell me that no others would come today. Finally though I heard in the distance the familiar puttputting of the white and blue Kangsambu van with “Alhumdidlihi” painted across the grill and Molaafi arrived. I handed him my dalasis and the tank was hoisted to the roof and he told me “Basi ala” [no problem in Pulaar]. As I was walking home in the dust stirred by the rising of the sun I thought to myself “Basi ala, basi ala. Things always work out here. That’s what I’m here to learn. Be patient. Be positive. These people are. Basi ala.” These thoughts trailed after me as I re-entered the village. I wanted next to water my garden beds and to sow lettuce and carrot seeds but I searched everywhere for the seeds that I had bought in Kombo two weeks ago and couldn’t find them anywhere. Why not? This house is so tiny. Where did they go? I looked everywhere. Also the garden rake was gone. So I gave up and took my water bag to the deep open well in the garden but after hoisting three loads the rope snapped and the bag began to sink. I ran home and grabbed my jallo [handhoe] and tied it to the frayed end of rope and fished around until I finally caught the bag and brought it back up. I tried to untie the knots but they were too tight so I went home and got my knife that I had noticed on the floor next to the bed but had neglected to bring along. I came back and started to saw at the rope and instantly cut my finger wide open. My finger bled and bled as women stared at me. So I went home and wrapped my finger with a bandage. I went back and finished the job but with my finger throbbing my heart wasn’t in it. Walking home I kept thinking that today seems strange. At home I had to scrub some clothes in the backyard and wait for Conteh to come so we could work on the constitution of the Mangana Area Beekeepers’ Association. Molaamin came over and said he’d brew attaya for us but then never came back. Conteh showed up and after a few minutes of working said that we ought to have some tea so I sent a small boy to find Molaamin but he came back with Gallo instead who sent the boy with five dalasis to the bitik on Conteh’s bicycle for another glass which is strange because as long as I’ve been here they’ve always used only one even though just last night I noticed Molaamin was using two. Gallo started brewing but I noticed that my bottle he was using to take water from had blood on it from this morning. Sitting there I kept thinking about that morning two weeks ago at the PC hostel when Becca came in the room where nine of us were bunked and asked if anyone had a tampon. I pretended to be asleep but now I wished I had told her that I had just used my last one. Anyway, Conteh was writing and I was offering some ideas and Gallo was brewing and listening to some French broadcast on the shortwave. I looked at my heel where the dry skin had cracked and was red all around and I wondered how long I could stave-off infection. Landing walked over and our worlds collided because just two nights ago he had berated me for putting too much into the beekeeping stuff and not enough into our village. He plopped down on a prayer mat and listened to Conteh and I but he never said anything. Just smoking a cigarette and sipping attaya. Then I noticed a huge plume of smoke north of the village blackening the sky just beyond where Gallo’s garden and my beehive were. Both Gallo and Landing got up to look but Conteh never batted an eye which seemed strange since just four days ago we were teaching students together about bush fires. Five minutes later I said out loud that it seemed like the fire was coming closer. But nobody budged even as an eerie calm settled over the village. Jonkong and Sanna were under the big mango tree unloading bamboo poles from a donkey cart that they had just cut in Cassamance. I noticed an ass dolefully licking the earth where some river water had been poured several days ago and had left a salty crust. He was remarkably content; his ears cocked, his big stupid eyes dreamily happy, his ugly whitish tongue lapping over and over again. I felt a strange compassion for him. I can’t stand these ridiculous animals for all their farting and late night braying and violent territorialism and shitting piles all around my house. But at last I saw the Buddha-nature of the ass and was happy for him, for myself, for the world. Molaamin came over and saw my book at my feet which was a biography of Ian Curtis [lead singer from Joy Division]. Since he is a ninth grader in Sintet he can read so he started to turn through the pages and got to the lyrics section. I have probably heard “Love Will Tear Us Apart” a million times since I myself was a ninth grader so I asked him to read it and see what he thought. How weird to be sitting here like this as he in staccato robot African English reciting formally: When the routine bites hard And ambitions are low And the resentment rides high But emotions wont grow And we’re changing our ways Taking different roads Then love, love will tear us apart again Why is the bedroom so cold Turned away on your side? Is my timing that flawed, Our respect run so dry? Yet there’s still this appeal That we’ve kept through our lives Love, love will tear us apart again. And I am utterly sad. What will Molaamin ever know about any of this? He grinned. For a boy growing up in the African bush what could these words even mean? Now, after hearing them sung for years by a man who killed himself shortly after recording them and just before his daughter’s second birthday, I would never hear this song the same way again. I smelled smoke and got up to see the fire better and started to think that the garden and beehive were bound to be consumed within an hour so I asked Gallo if we should do something. The whole village was becoming concerned and people were heading out to try to fight it back away from town. Men, women, and children armed with machetes and green leaves and buckets of water attempted to turn this insane thing around. The heat was intense as the dry grasses were engulfed, fueled by hot winds from the sahel. Our faces were scorched, arms and hands and feet singed, choked and crying. Wind surged and flames leapt and people scattered with charred earth chasing them back towards the village. The air all around was stifling and black-yellow like a bruise. Suddenly the wind died and it was as silent as the time after a sonic boom. No birds, no roaring flames, no cracking trees. The spirits of the people were lifted until the wind would kick up and the flames would explode again. All these skinny people in torn clothes fighting for their lives and their homes and their animals with ridiculous tools. We were actually beating it. Then it was beating us. Then we were beating it. For hours people worked against the flames. It was enormous and all we could hear, see, or feel. The village at our backs and branches in our hands. Blackened teeth, reddened eyes. In the middle of it I received a text on my mobile from Kate: PC mailrun had come to her house and delivered a box from her family in Tucson but something in it had rotted and maggots were crawling all over the contents. She burned the whole thing. Finally, the fire had been beaten down with our efforts. Not stopped but now going off in another direction. Everything smoldered. The sour smell, the strange elation that we had beaten it but had lost so much in the process. I dragged myself home and thought about my garden which would need watered and the tank that I’d need to pick up at the korosama whenever Molaafi returned. I drank some attaya, washed my face. You never know if or when a gelegele will come by so I wandered out to wait. And wait. Finally I hear a vehicle in the distance but as it comes closer I see that it’s the Sulyman who said he wasn’t coming back for a few days. He blows by and doesn’t even wave. I wait. And wait. Nothing. Finally I decide to ride to Molaafi’s house a few kilometers away. His brother is there and tells me that they are not coming back today. Maybe tomorrow. I came home and poured buckets of water over my head. Now I am ready to sleep. Goodnight.”

So I guess that that is sort of what things are like here. Sometimes. It’s a great place to live. It can be discouraging at times and emboldening at others. Three days ago several men came together and we built four Kenyan Top Bar Hives for our beekeeping program. I have taught a few classes at two different schools and another to the women in our garden about composting. Coming to Kombo is such a different experience than living in village. I'd like to describe some of those differences but I'm out of time and have to catch the gelegele before I miss it. Unless its not going today that is. I hope that you all are well. I think of you often.

Foniatto.

Pounding surf, varieties of food, English speakers, internet access, beer, air-conditioning, a dvd player at the hostel. Well it had to end eventually and now I am heading back up to site for another month. So much salt water up my nose! I added some links (below the photographs) to a few blogs by other PCVs in my training group so check them out for more of the Gambian experience. Have a great day.

Haa gudgol. Haa yesso. Aa jarama. Baraka barke. Bismillah.

I'm back in town for the President's Day (US) and Independance Day (The Gambia) long weekend so all the roads in Kombo are shutdown for parades, the grocery stores are closed, and Youssou N'Dour is performing at the stadium tonight. While I really love being at site up-country, it's great to come to a place with internet, food choices, and english-speaking friends. I've had a terrific time this past month.

My thirty-fifth birthday was last week and I celebrated in true Gambian style: I feasted on lion. I was in my house when a small boy came knocking with a fistful of bloody meat. He kept telling me "Ulundu. Ulundu." I knew that that meant cat but all the feral kitties running around town are too emaciated to even provide enough meat to fill his tiny hand so I wandered over to Gibba Kunda. My friend Sanna Gibba had been out out hunting in Cassamance for whatever bushmeat he could find and came home with a large cat-- about the size of a New Mexico mountain lion. The skin was tanning in the sun, the eyes staring back at me from the large furry face, the skinned tail projecting stiffly from the skeleton. Having been a vegetarian for many years before coming to The Gambia and also having had great relationships with many kitties back home, I was slightly reluctant. That said, I am also starving out here. The diet leaves something to be desired. Vegetables are few, the peanut-butter tastes like fish, and the rice is, well, rice. Besides, who would turn-down a plate of wild cat meat? I have to say that it was the best thing I've eaten since the seafood bisque in New England. The meat is tender and mild-flavored, my host-mother seared it with a potato and some palm-oil. Two days later I ate monkey meat charbroiled over an open fire; that also was quite tasty. On my birthday I also did some gardening and talked with my mom and dad from the States which was a great treat. Even though I have a cellular telephone its hard to get calls because the network is often disrupted. Calls come through but are nothing but static or they just get dropped. It was very nice to hear from them, to hear voices and stories from home.

Also from home, I received my Christmas packages on the third week of January. How absolutely great. Friends and family sent magazines, beef jerky, Peanut M&Ms, photographs, Gold Bond Powder, batteries, pens, mp3s, yogurt starter, cheese rennet, and games. My neice wrote me a very touching letter asking about my stay here and describing her Christmas tree.

My garden is doing well and I am already eating tomatoes and cabbage that I have grown. Some of the tomatoes are suffering from wilt but others are weathering it. I am using pigeon-pea shells to mulch them which is helping to retain moisture and add some nitrogen-rich organic matter to the soil. The eggplant is not transplanting well even following lunar cycles as described in biodynamic texts. Perhaps once I disturb the soil around the roots the plants suffer too much to recover in the hot sun. My carrots are doing well which is rare here; many friends are having trouble getting them to even sprout. I bought some onion seeds but they never come up, the same thing happened with the carrot seeds I bought for some friends. I think that the seed stores don't keep them in the best conditions and probably sell them long after they expire. I am also back to sprouting mung beans, lentils, and garbanzos to provide some much needed nutrition and variety to my diet. The women's garden is a great place to work because it is well fenced from the hungry cows and sheep and a short walk from town so that the chickens don't venture out and destroy everything. The thing about The Gambian style of livestocking is that people let their animals roam around everywhere. Nobody could afford to fence them in or provide food and so they forage around town for their daily victuals. This is good in some ways as the chickens clean up spilled rice after meals while small ruminants are terrific weed-whackers. The down side is that they don't know where to stop and I have had many arguments with the greedy animals who climb the fence (or burrow under it) around my house. I want to develop a backyard herb and vegetable garden as well as tree nursery but it seems like a never-ending battle. I have put in a small zen garden, yoga space, and meditation platform but I get disrupted when the ants bite me or chicken flies over the fence and onto my head.

I've been working quite hard around my site; getting to know potential counterparts, exploring potential projects. The hard-working people are inspiring and I feel badly that I won't be able to do enough to help them. Some of them want me to get fences for their gardens or help them dig wells but these tasks are difficult for me. Peace Corps Volunteers are supposed to work primarily with communities and organizations building capacity for sustainable projects. This can be discouraging though because many times the same hard-working people are the only ones who show-up for the community-based projects and it seems like maybe I should just work with them in their own backyards. I've never been much of a mobilizer or motivator and have always preferred to work independently or in small groups.

I have spent a lot of time working with the lower basic school in Kampasa. This is grades 1-6 but due to the way it works some students in grade 3 for instance are older than those in grade 5. Children are encouraged though not required to go to school here, sometimes family obligations prevent them from completing a level, sometimes they start late. Lower basic does not cost money (except for the required shoes, uniforms, and supplies) but by grade 7 families have to pay for their children to attend and often will have to send their students to boarding schools far away or they will stay with relatives near an upper basic. For these reasons many girls and some boys never progress past lower basic. I have been teaching enviornmental education: Many people warned me when I was a young boy that I might end up with children who caused me as much consternation as I caused my own parents and teachers. To my chagrin, they were right. Teaching here is difficult and discouraging. The students are restless and have short attention spans. Also, though english is the language of the schools, many children have a low comprehension rate made even worse by my American style of speech. My counterpart in the school translates my lessons into local languages. When I described the situation to my friend who is an Education Volunteer she told me that part of the problem is that they know I won't beat them and so there is no incentive to pay attention. Corporal punishment is still practiced here. Of course Americans who come here would never, but Gambian teachers strike misbehaving students with bamboo canes. But I am trying to adapt my style away from lecture and instead creating hands-on learning projects such as building mudstoves and leading excursions into the nearby bush.

I am working on starting a beekeeping association. Nobody I've met in my region keeps bees and instead are familiar with the practice of bee-killing. There are many feral hives in the bush suspended from silkcottons and baobabs and so enterprising and fearless Gambians traditionally light hives on fire and then take the honey once the bees have been burned. This practice is something that the National Beekeeping Association of The Gambia is trying to discourage through sensitization and training. Not only is bee-killing an unstainable and wasteful practice (because you can harvest each hive only once) but the honey tastes horrible due to excessive smoking and the inclusion of un-processed nectar which ferments and taints the entire batch. By building Kenyan Top Bar hives Gambians can learn to manage colonies sustainably and economically. The KTB hive is a low, single story wooden box with twenty bars across the top that can be manipulated for management and for harvesting of honey and wax. Beekeeping in America is usually done with the Langstroth stackable hive which utilizes factory-made comb frames and centrifuges for extraction. The whole point of sustainable development is to show people that they needn't be dependent upon outside aid, that they can do things themselves with locally available and affordable resources. I will be teaching the members of our association how to make these hives along with explaining bee biology and management principles. By now, because of the widely publicized Colony Collapse Disorder, many Americans are very familiar with the importance of honeybees for our standard of diet. It has been estimated that honeybees in the US are responsible for as much as 33% of our food. But here, people do not really understand the concepts of pollination and the direct roles that insects play in agricultural production so that type of sensitization is part of my work.

But African honeybees are markedly different than in those in the US as I have remarked upon in previous entries. About three weeks ago I wanted to harvest the honey from the one colonized hive that I have and so I talked to two of my Gambian friends who have expressed interest and we made a plan. Bakary and Molaamin showed up after the evening prayer because here its best to open hives at night and we suited up. I inherited three suits, veils, and gloves from my PCV predeccessor but only two pairs of boots. Since my friends were only wearing flipflops I gave them the boots and I wore running shoes and wrapped my ankles with duck tape. The people in my village might have thought that aliens were invading (if they had exposure to Western science fiction) when they watched us come through with flashlights and white spacesuits. I had my machete too and smoking donkey dung in my homemade smoker made from a metal can that I punched holes into and hung from a wire. The hive is in the bush a short walk from town and by the time we got there the sweat was stinging our eyes and our suits were steaming in the cool desert night illuminated eerily in the dark. The idea is that bees cannot see well at night and so are less likely to disturb us after sundown but when we set about opening the hive I couldn't help but think that the moon was very bright. Night-vision aside though, bees have incredible senses of smell and in spite of the smoke I think they knew where we were standing as we dismantled the hive. The colony is strong and I am happy with the amount of comb that was present but these bees are also very possessive. After only a few seconds I was smelling the smell that all beekeepers can instantly identify: Alarm pheremone was heavy in the air as the guardbees alerted the rest of the colony that they were under attack. I felt the first sting on my ankle, then the next. My vision was obscurred by sweat, the smoke, the small beams of light from waving flashlights, and the hundreds of bees crawling across my veil. A sting to the forehead. How did they get through? Another on my cheek. My knee. My ankle again. And to make it worse, the bees had crosscombed and nothing in the hive was neat and tidy, no way to separate the brood combs from the honey stores. My cheek. My ankle. My eyes were swelling from the sweat, the smoke, the stings. Molaamin was flailing about, his suit was crawling. Bakary was trying to stay calm. I was directing about in broken Pulaar, Mandinka, and English... grunts and gasps too. They didn't get the joke when I said "Living the dream huh boys." Finally we found some comb that we could take and so we cut it from the top bar with the machete into a bucket. The lid was put back on the hive and we walked a little ways away where we could begin wiping bees off with branches and grasses. It took about an hour and a half for the whole process and I had been stung over twenty times mostly my face, neck, and lower legs. Get this: Bakary was stung once and Molaamin not at all. These African bees must really hate Toubobs!

The next day I was debilitated. I could barely walk and my eyes were practically sealed shut. When I looked around all I could see were my eylids, my cheeks, my forehead. But many people were coming to the door because, in The Gambia, its polite to share everything so I had to struggle out of bed and watch each person step back horrified from my door. Then they recovered and asked me for some honey. Finally, by dusk, I started feeling better so I started the lengthy process of getting the honey from the wax. Again, no electrically heated knife or centrifuge. I have a leatherman though and so I started cutting the cappings from the comb which were then inverted in a bucket with a cloth stretched across. It took two days for the honey to drip through but by the end I was able to bottle almost tree liters of which I instantly gave two away to Bakary and Molaamin and then slowly most of mine to the villagers who wanted some. Living the dream.

Ever hear of Jeleeba Koyateh? Neither had I. He is a famous (here) kora player who recently put on a benefit show at the Mayork Upper Basic school an hour & a half bike ride from my house. There was an all day event with a track meet, chicken domoda for lunch, and a dj spinning cassettes of West African music, Jamaican reggae, and American hip-hop. Six Peace Corps Volunteers were there and my host family has relatives in Mayork so I was happy to be around so many friends. The PCVs were elated when I pulled from my burlap sack fresh cabbage and tomatoes from my garden and homemade honeymustard dressing. Gambians just don't eat much raw food so it was a rare treat indeed to eat salad. At about nine in the evening we wandered back to the school and paid the 25 dalasis ($1.08 American) ticketprice. The band was just setting up their bongos, the wooden xylophone, the organ, and the electric guitar. Jeleeba plays the kora which is a traditional West African instrument made from a calabash gourd, a cow skin, a knotched stick, and 21 fishing lines. The school fired-up the generator and the amplifiers hummed, the few stage lights beamed in the dust, and the air was tingling. My last live show was Modest Mouse in Brooklyn back in August so I was hyped. Gambians were dressed in their finest clothes, some who couldn't afford the ticket price were content to dance on the grounds outside the makeshift bamboo fence. As the night went on, more and more people were becoming familiar with my "dancing style." Children got a real kick out me, men and women tried to exhaust me in their circles. At one point I found myself surrounded by dancing kids on the balcony overlooking the field with everyone pointing and laughing from below as I tried to "blend in." I made some mp3 recordings with the handheld I brought from home. At about 1:30 the generator ran out of gas but by 2:00 they had found some more and so we danced until the end at 3:15. Now, Becca (Education Volunteer living near there) tells me that she cannot go anywhere without people telling her as they shake their hips and point their fingers "Look at me! Look, I'm Laamin Manne!"

The Gambia is a remarkable experience and I am happy that you all are coming along for the ride. I cannot express how much I appreciate getting emails from each of you. Your kind words and encouragement go a very long way here. Thank you so much for your interest, your insights, and your continued correspondence.

Aa jarama. Bismillah.

Well things here have been absolutely terrific. I have just come into town for a quick trip to the bank and to see some friends and now I'm heading back up-country.

Some of the highlights of the last month have included Tobaski, Christmas, and New Years all of which were celebrated with my friends in and around my village in Foni Jarrol. Tobaski is a Muslim holiday only a few days before Christmas where families come together to reflect on the past year, pray for all the good things that have happened or hoped to happen, and enjoy good food. People raise or purchase rams that are slaughtered on that day after prayers and then eat and eat and eat. You basically go from one compound to the next enjoying people's great cooking and hospitality. I got to meet a lot of people this way because family comes in from all over the country and spends a few days or a week. Teenage kids who go to school in the Kombos and people who have traveled away for business all come home for the holidays. Because of all the people who were there we got to do some work including clearing fire-breaks and building a luumo (outdoor flea market and farmers market). Christmas there was basically a continuation of the Tobaski festivities but many people wished me a good holiday. Santa was good to me: I got a new rope made from woven rice bags and a discarded plastic oil jug so that I could fetch water from the well at the garden. New Years was spent at a small bar on the mangrove-covered banks of a tributary to the River Gambia in a small market town called Kalagi. The owner of the restaurant there treated three of my PC friends and I to a huge plate of domoda (peanut sauce and beef over rice) and played Gambian music on a beat-up cassette player. The scenery and the company were all terrific.

My host family is really great and I enjoy spending a lot of time with them. For the holidays my two older brothers from the Kombos brought their families and so the family of three that I normally live with swelled to about eighteen. The village is a great place to be; laid-back yet hard working. I live in a Fula village but all around are Mandinkas and Jolas so everywhere I go I get taught new words and phrases. Its hard enough to learn one new language but three is over-the-top. But its necessary at least to get the greetings, learn how to count, and figure-out the words for "Cut me some slack, I'm new here."

The work that I'm doing is really rewarding. Several villages in Senegal and five in The Gambia have joined forces to create the Mankana Development Association of Fulas, Mandinkas, and Jolas interested in bringing sustainable development and environmental protection to their habitation. This has introduced me to many people who are intelligent and forward-thinking which makes my job so much easier because I don't have to look to find them scattered about-- they have weekly meetings and already are working on some very admirable causes.

They worked really hard to organize the weekly luumo which will bring new products into the area as well as provide a centralized place for people to sell vegetables, prepared food, and crafts. We cleared a large plot of land under some ancient Silk Cottons and Baobab trees, dug hundreds of holes to erect sticks cut from the bush with machetes, and arranged palm fronds on top to create a nice shaded structure. Before this, the nearest market was half a days walk away. The opening day was a remarkable event with over a thousand people in attendance including the Governor of the Western Region and the TV news crew from Banjul. They slaughtered a bull and prepared enough food to feed everyone. The Koran readers came and provided spiritual guidance and there was music, singing, and dancing. Now, on Wednesdays, people can come in from all around to buy many useful products for everyday life. Also, sourmilk and deep-fried pancakes!

I am also working on my own garden beds in the massive women's garden just outside the village. These women are really successful growers and my four little beds are hardly a demonstration because people come by and give me sound advice all the time. I have a lot to learn-- growing vegetables in Africa is tough work. I have mentu, supamil, gille', batanse, loge, and toome (tomato, cabbage, peppers, eggplant, garlic, and onion). Also in the garden I am building a large compost so that we can try to improve the soil there. We have lime trees and pigeon pea trees scattered about and two open wells for fetching water.

My community is very interested in preserving the forests around there because it is one of the last and best examples of old-growth forest in the country. We are working on establishing tree nurseries and wood lots of a variety of species to try to replenish what is being taken by loggers as well as create a sustainable means of income for the next generation.

So the bees in Africa are really mean. In New Mexico I could manage my hives with a veil and long sleeves without ever getting stung once and people could observe from a close distance without any protective clothing at all. Here, when one bee attacks all the bees attack. I have a Kenyan Top Bar hive near my house that I was clearing some brush away from. I had the foresight to don my suit which is full-body protection of thick cotton and a tightly-woven mesh veil. Didn't matter. Instantly I was covered with angry bees stinging my suit and coating the veil so that I could hardly see out. There must have been a thousand bees literally clinging to me making the most angry sounds I have ever heard. My blood pressure skyrocketed and I was swatting at myself with my gloved hands. Several found ways into my suit and I was stung inside my nostril, and all about my face and neck. It took an hour of wiping my suit with weeds to get them all off as I wandered around trying to get away from the hive while not bringing the angry bees back into the village.

Language is the hardest part. I spend a lot of time with people who laugh and have dynamic conversations but I have really no idea at all what they are saying. It is frustrating and can be lonely at times. Its incentive to keep learning everyday how to communicate.

Well, I have to get going so that I can catch the gelegele or I won't make it back today. Tomorrow the group I am working with is laboring on President Jammeh's farm so I don't want to miss that!

I hope that all is well wherever you are.

Bismillah. A Jarama.

Tomorrow begins the first three months of actual Peace Corps Volunteer service. I swore-in yesterday at the Ambassador's house and we even got to be on local tv! Great food and crashing waves on the shore just yards away from where we took the oath to serve our country.

I am looking forward to being in my village now. I think it will be a rewarding pursuit and I can't wait to get to know my new host family and fellow community members. Also, I am itching to get to work building some compost, working some bees, and starting a garden plot.

I hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas/Hanukah and a very good New Year. I will be celebrating Tobaski in two weeks with my village.

I bought a mobile phone so if anyone is interested in calling to Africa... Dial 220.746.1122. We can compare December weather.

Hope that all is well.

Haa yesso. Jarama.

Matt

Where do I begin? The Gambia, first of all, is an incredibly diverse and beautiful place- one that I am happy to call home. It is a place of contrasts, a place that is the eighth poorest in the world yet perhaps one of the happiest. The people are satisfied with what they have and they work hard to make a living. They are proud to give you some of their portion just for being here among them and for trying to learn some of their language and part of their culture. There are vibrant colors everywhere whether on peoples clothing or growing from the ground. Palm trees and baobabs- some thousands of years old- are scattered throughout the landscape. The climate attracts hundreds of species of birds including parrots, toucans, and gargantuan vultures (but I don’t think here we have hummingbirds). The children are joyful and resourceful: Its amazing the toys they can make from a broken sandal and a stalk of sugarcane. I have so much to learn about this culture and feel very happy that I have (at least) two years to study and participate. I have been made to feel highly welcome.

Peace Corps training is finally coming to a close. I will be sworn-in as a Volunteer later this week inshallah- god willing. My training group of 23 other individuals has spent the past three months learning one of several local languages, whether Wolof, Mandinka, or Pulaar. I fall into the third language group, that of the Fula ethnic group who are traditionally (and many remain) herdsmen and farmers. In addition to language we have also been versed in various aspects of Gambian culture including religion, history, and politics. We have been taught by Gambian “Language and Culture Helpers” who have been working with Peace Corps and the American Embassy for years. They are a knowledgeable and patient group of individuals who leave their families and come into the training villages up-country in the Kiang region where they live with us for several weeks to prepare us for the many challenges we will face.

We were split-up by language groups and each stayed with host families in small villages without electricity and running water where we attended daily language classes and interacted with the community. I have become good friends with many of the Gambians in the village where I lived with the Jallow family. My father was a hard working old man (few people really know their own ages here) named Sanna. I had many brothers and sisters who lived both within the community and throughout the country. I might someday meet someone that I have never seen before who will ask my name and then exclaim that I am his brother. Baa Sanna and Daa Sutay Jallow named me Laamin after their first born son who is a tailor in Serekunda. The Gambians remain a closely bonded group, though this is reportedly changing as the ideals of the western world intrude into their lives. Many of my neighbors are also family members. Now that I have visited my new family in my permanent village which is a considerable distance away, I have met many people who are “uncles” or “brothers” or even “fathers.”

In The Gambia, the family terms are quite different from those used in the US. This is partially because of the different roles that people play in the lives of their neighbors and families. For example, the children of one’s biological father’s brother are considered to be brothers and sisters while the children of one’s biological mother’s sister are also brothers and sisters. One’s father’s sister’s children or mother’s brother’s children are cousins. Because a majority of the Gambian population remains rural and “traditional,” a child will be cared for by many people throughout his or her upbringing. Because of the communal nature of these villages, many women nurse and care for babies and so it is logical that as that child grows up he or she might consider many women to be “mother.” Girls work alongside their grown-up female role models and learn how to behave through their observations and chores. Boys work with the men and so they refer to many different men as “father” because of the guidance role that these men take. Last week the headmaster of the local lower basic school introduced me to his eight different classes of children and he told them that he expected them to look to me as a parental figure. It is not to say that people do not know who their biological parents are as they certainly do. But because these communities are so tightly-knit, the family structure is considerably different than it is in the States.

My host family in training village and my host family in the permanent site are paid a small sum for their hospitality. I have agreed to pay my new host family- Baa Cheik Manne and his wife Daa Haddi- 600 dalasis per month for my living quarters, three meals a day, and laundry. I offered them more but because they want me to feel like a family-member, they would not accept it. At the current exchange rate of 20 dalasis to one American dollar, I am paying $30 per month for all of my basic needs which is enough to buy about one 50 kilo bag of rice. At a restaurant in the Kombo area which is the metropolitan center of this nation, a twelve inch pizza costs 175 dalasis and a beer 35 dalasis. It is easy to observe the differences between the rural villages where many Peace Corps Volunteers work and the city.

My new home is located in the Kiang West region of The Gambia about 150 kilometers from the coast. I am a fifteen minute walk from the border with Senegal and located in the corner of the country where the southern border makes a right angle to become the east. I will be about 170km east of Banjul and the rest of Kombo. All of my local travel will be by foot, bicycle, and donkey. Long-distance travel like into Kombo once every four to six weeks is by gelegele which is the way that almost everyone travels here. Gelegeles are large vans that seat up to 35 people- very tightly- and are artfully decorated with glitzy stickers and hand painted signs. You can wait all day standing alongside a dusty road for one to stop and pick you up as they each bump and bumble past so full that goats are tied to the roofs and people stand on the rear bumper. There is no guarantee that anyone will have room to take you and you might have to come back tomorrow if you really have to go anywhere. Once inside you will be squeezed between sacks of rice, squawking chickens, and children on the laps of their mothers traveling to wherever where. People are so happy to hear a toubob (foreigner) speak their language so giving a few greetings in Pulaar will help break the ice and passing around some kola nuts or a hunk of bread will make fast friends. And of course you are likely to find someone with the same first or last name which makes you instantly related. Friends are great to have because the roads here are obnoxiously broken down piles of degraded asphalt and rippled dirt so you might travel at only 35 kilometers an hour with dust pouring in through the windows and the gelegele bouncing along through enormous ruts and pitfalls. Along the way are police, immigration, and military checkpoints where you have to show identification to intimidating men dressed in fatigues with grenades hanging from their belts. But everywhere you stop women and children offer to sell you steamed cassava, slices of watermelon, or bags of peanuts.

My home is made of mud bricks and plaster with a corrugated metal roof. It is a long rectangular building with my quarters being on the south end and the rest of the family- Baa Chiek and Daa Haddi and my five year old brother Mussa- living throughout the rest of the building. Our house has a large open compound that faces out to the mosque and the pump. My section consists of two rooms each measuring about 12 feet square plus a fenced backyard where the previous Volunteer left three ducks, five tomato plants, and a small tree nursery with moringa, papaya, and acacia. I have my own private bathing and toilet area outside too which is surrounded by a tall fence of woven grass. Washing up is by bucket bath: Twice a day I fetch water from the pump well into a bucket, strip down, and dump water over myself. I also have a pit latrine there. From the previous Volunteer I bought a propane stove, a bamboo bed and shelf unit, and a solar system powerful enough to charge my mobile phone, i-pod, and an energy efficient light bulb. I might also be able to power my laptop there for a couple of hours a week if it is particularly sunny.

In addition to language and culture, training has also involved a diverse amount of technical work in agro-forestry, gardening, and appropriate technology. For instance, we have been taught how to make mud stoves which increase the efficiency of cooking by 60% or more over the typical method of three rocks positioned around a fire pit and a charred cauldron placed on top. Mud stoves are made by mixing three parts termite dirt with one part cow dung and one part dry grass. In The Gambia termites build huge structures taller than me of dense silt and clay that dries to rock hardness. My fellow trainees and I decided to make a stove for each of our host families and so we amassed a wheel-barrow (pushpush in Pulaar) of cow dung and three of clay then soaked it with water and literally danced in it until it was thoroughly mixed. Then we let it ferment for a week and set about building the stoves. Basically you enclose the rocks with the clay and shape it into a semicircle so that the cook can feed wood into the fire and you poke some vent holes into the windy side. All of our families were happy to get one because it saves time and labor for them and we were happy because it reduces the number of trees that will be cut for firewood.

Agroforestry is the practice of incorporating trees into agriculture and it is the primary philosophy from which we work. Like elsewhere in the world, deforestation in The Gambia is a major issue. Trees such as mahogany and rosewood are in high demand for their lumber and craft use. Other trees are cut for firewood and as the population continues to increase more land is cleared for agriculture. In addition to logging, climate change is contributing to desertification as the sahel intrudes from the north. As the trees disappear the soil is left unstable and erosion occurs as a result of the pounding water in the rainy season and the harmattan winds in the dry season. In addition, groundnuts (peanuts) are an alluring crop because of the high-dollar value they have for export trade. Once they harvest the nuts, the farmers sell the silage for livestock feed. This results not only in very loose soil from the harvesting but also a complete absence of the return of organic matter to the earth. One way that agroforestry practices can help is by planting trees either on the perimeter of fields or through intercropping. Trees are important because they make organic matter available to shallow-rooted annual crops through leaf-drop. They also help to stabilize the soil and some trees are nitrogen-fixing. We are encouraging the planting of cashew and citrus orchards, live-fencing trees such as acacias and mesquites, and the establishment of community woodlots and forest preserves. Also we are promoting composting which is an important way to build soil, replenish nutrients, and improve moisture retention.

Beekeeping has long been a passion of mine and here it is very exciting and different from what I have been doing in New Mexico. Many Gambians are interested in beekeeping because it is a big income generator for them and because there is a lot of publicity about beekeeping from local organizations. Of course the Langstroth hive and all of its accoutrements are beyond the financial capabilities of most Gambians and so Kenyan top-bar hives are built from local materials such as wood and straw, grass, concrete, or hives are made from baskets and gourds. Many local groups and NGO’s are trying to make suits and veils available to beekeepers and smokers are made from tin cans. I am lucky because some money was recently donated to build a processing center in Kalagi near my village and so I will help with that project in the coming months. The previous Volunteer left me four hives though only one is currently colonized. Many people have hives here that are empty and so they bait them by spraying perfume into them or smearing honey inside and place them near feral colonies in hopes that a swarm will find the place attractive enough to call home. One of my projects will be working with the National Beekeepers Association of The Gambia in rearing queens to possibly help with this demand and make quality hive nukes available.

Food here definitely takes some getting used too; not because of its flavor- which I enjoy quite a lot- but because of the poverty there is very little diversity in the diet. During certain times of the year it wouldn’t be uncommon to have a simple bowl of lechere, which is pounded millet, for three meals a day- in the morning with milk and sugar and in the evening with fish sauce and salt. Sometimes we might eat rice with sauces made of either pounded onions and palm oil, pounded groundnuts, or pounded sorrel. Almost everything we eat (with the exception of food from restaurants in the urban areas) is grown very locally. I arrived at the end of the wet season when many crops were being harvested. Millet, groundnuts, rice, and corn are all grown within a kilometer of the Fula villages and fish are available from the river which, in The Gambia, is never more than fifteen kilometers away. Bush meat (monkey, mongoose, grouse, antelope, boar) might be available if you give a couple of bullets to a hunter. The women of my new village have a beautiful garden that they feed their families from and sell surplus to the neighboring villages. Some of the vegetables they grow include tomatoes, onions, hot peppers, cassava, eggplant, okra, beans, bitter tomatoes, and watermelon. The villagers make huge mortar and pestles from local trees and use them daily for food processing. Most days women start pounding rice or millet long before the sun comes up to beat the heat and my house literally vibrates from the activity. It is a beautiful sight to observe two or three women pounding in the same bowl each in synch with the others and clapping their hands as they throw the mortar into the air.

Another thing to watch is the process of brewing attaya which is imported “gunpowder” green tea from China. Usually a young man brews for several people. The equipment is a small enameled teapot, two shot-glasses, and a charcoal burner. Four shots of water and one shot of tea leaves go into the pot which is brought to a boil on the burner and then a shot of sugar is added. Then the tea is poured from a height of about 20 inches into the shot-glasses. Then back into the pot. Then back into the glasses. Then back into the pot. Then back into the glasses. Over and over with spectacular dexterity and nonchalance the tea goes back and forth. Some say it is to properly mix the tea and sugar while others say it is to create a head of foam and make the tea light and delicate. Finally a glass is handed to the eldest in attendance or the most distinguished guest who sips with slurping approval. Three or four gulps and it is gone and the glass goes back to the brewmeister who pours another for someone else and it gets passed around until the tea is gone. Then more water and sugar is added to the pot and the process starts all over. The tealeaves are good for three pots and the brewing all-told might take forty minutes or more. This is very popular throughout The Gambia. On special occasions fresh mint and condensed milk is added for an even more wonderful treat.

Coffee is not readily available here. I have found one grocery store in Kombo that sells it but it is very expensive. (If you're looking for a good gift...) Nescafe’ is popular but I can’t seem to be able to make the switch. Recently I discovered a small Lebanese-run café near the American Embassy that offers pastries, espresso, and ice cream. I bought a shot for 35 dalasis (worth every penny, shamelessly and absolutely) which I gulped quickly and then spent the next hour sniffing the empty cup. They also have wireless internet making it one of only a few places in the whole country where web-surfing is possible.

Clothing is always made locally and to order so tailors are everywhere. The women wear beautifully crafted dresses and head-wraps from such cloths as poplin, mbasan, wax (dyed cotton), and borode. Men have their clothes made too and they wear knit hats or tight little head caps. A style that many children enjoy is to wear second-hand clothing shipped in from the US, Germany, and Italy. I once read an interesting article written by someone who followed several tons of clothing from a second-hand store in New York City to India and the author remarked about how unexpected it is to find people across the globe wearing t-shirts with Madonna’s picture or slogans such as “I taught your boyfriend that thing you like.”

Another thing that is different from America is shopping. In village there are small bitiks where you can buy staples such as a bar of lye for laundry, a sack of sugar for attaya, or some candles. Luumos are weekly open-air markets not unlike the grower’s markets that I am used to except that in addition to produce and fish, one will also find machetes, clothing, and sandals. The peanut butter you can buy there is from freshly picked and roasted peanuts. In the larger towns are street vendors for everything from mobile phones to freshly made bean sandwiches. Dry-goods shops sell typical hardware, groceries, and solar panels. The thing that is different from the States though is that nothing is priced and you should bargain for everything. The typical exchange is that you ask the shopkeeper how much something costs and then scoff at the inflated price he gives and offer to pay half. Then the two of you go back and forth until you finally agree. If the seller accepts your offer quickly then you know that you are probably still paying too much. The best practice is to start to walk away until you are called back and then make a deal.

The Gambia is almost 90% Muslim. People go to great lengths to practice the Five Pillars of Islam and they are very devoted to their religion. People here pray five times a day though no-one has ever preached to me. There are no pressures to change one’s beliefs and everyone is quite tolerant. I enjoy hearing the call-to-prayer (even at five in the morning) being sung from the mosques. I am not an expert on religion and so I feel unqualified to remark on Islam to any great extent. That said, living here is not like I had expected based upon the US media’s portrayal of Islam and I am pleasantly surprised by the differences.

While village-life can be harsh and quiet, there are contrasts to being a Peace Corps Volunteer (well officially I am still a PC Trainee). One example of this was Thanksgiving: In the morning I was awakened by donkeys braying in a tiny village where I fetch water from a pump well and go to the bathroom in a hole in the ground. That same evening I was eating cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie in the Ambassador’s mansion with a swimming pool and beautiful ocean view. Last night I ate chocolate cake and played rugby on the beach with a shrimp farmer, someone from the United Nations, and a couple of volunteers from Canada’s VSO. In a week I will make my home in a tiny village where roads and houses are made of dirt and subsistence farmers work from sun-up to sun-down to feed their families less than two kilometers from the tumultuous Cassamance region of Senegal. I have taken a boat ride from the Tendaba camp into the mangroves, petted a crocodile at the sacred Katchikali Pond, and viewed the city of Banjul from atop President Jammeh’s Arch 22.

Many of my fellow Trainees have commented that I am well-qualified for the kind of work that we are doing because of my background as a beekeeper, organic gardener, and anthropologist. While this might be true in some ways, there is so much here to observe- so much that is different from anything that I have ever known- that I feel so much like an explorer. This year celebrates forty continuous years of Peace Corps in the Gambia and I am proud and honored to be a part of this service. I swear-in on December 7 and leave for my village on December 9. That begins the “three month challenge” where trainees are supposed to sleep each night in their host village. This is to try to establish a good bond with our families and communities and to gain a good knowledge about the day-today life. It might be difficult for me to get to Kombo and so I won’t be able to communicate through the internet for a while. Once this period has ended though I hope to be able to update my blog monthly to keep you posted on my activities and whereabouts.

I hope that you all are healthy and happy.

A jarama. Haa Yesso.