Ok. So we have been here in The Gambia for 18 months and we have seen and done a lot of things. We have attended wedding ceremonies, naming ceremonies, funerals, and other cultural activities. We have taken a boat trip on the river (i.e. The Halloween Booze Cruise), traveled from one end of the country to the other in one day on numerous occasions using local transport (if you knew what transport was like here you would understand the significance), I have camped in the bush with park rangers as a park of my work, Tavi has camped on the beach with our friends. We have endured two dry seasons and enjoyed one rainy season. And so on. But recently, I had the opportunity along with friends of ours (Josh and Anne Larson) to attend a ceremony that only happens once every 25 years. The ceremony was a Jola circumcision ceremony. The Jola are one of the many ethnic groups here in The Gambia, and they are one of the most animistic of the ethnic groups. Therefore have some of the most colorful, elaborate, and exciting ceremonies. Gambians from all over the country come to see this particular ceremony because it is so special. This particular ceremony lasts a whole week, but we only attended one day. However, it was probably the best day to attend because of all the activities that occurred. We arrived at Burock, the village where the ceremony took place, in the mid-afternoon. As villages go in the Gambia, Burock is small village with a population of maybe 200. When we arrived there were hundreds of people there. Cars were parked all over, camping tents were everywhere, and homemade ‘roman candles’ were being set off one after another. The atmosphere was like a mix a county fair and music festival. There were vendors selling food and various material items (i.e. shirts, jewelry, flashlights, batteries, charcoal, etc…) After navigating our way through village and crowds with Josh, Anne, and their host mother, we came to a fruit tree orchard at the back of the village where a number of people were sitting and relaxing in the shade. The boys and men who were going to eventually be circumcised where also in the orchard. Apparently they were waiting there for the ceremony to begin. Because this ceremony only occurs every 25 years the age of the boys/men ranged from 6 to the mid 20’s. As we took cover from the sun in the shade we sat on the mat for a while talking with other Gambians until it was time for the ceremony to begin. I know what you must be thinking. Did we actually see the circumcisions take place? NO we did not. Traditionally, when circumcision ceremonies occur the boys/men are taken out to a sacred location in the bush where the actual circumcisions are done. This part of the week long event was a ceremony about celebrating the beginning of the transition in the boys/men lives. As celebrations go in Jola communities, there was a lot of dancing and displays of extraordinary feats. Because this is a circumcision ceremony all of the dancing and feats were done by the men of the village. The men were in an elaborate dress that included Chia pants (huge puffy pants), lots of Jujus (objects that either protect the wearer from evil, harm, or illness) and decorative shirts with Jujus woven into them. I mentioned extraordinary feats. The point of the Jujus for this particular occasion was to protect the men from cutting themselves. Throughout the ceremony the men demonstrate the effectiveness of the Jujus by first showing the spectators how sharp their blades were by cutting through sticks and then they try to cut themselves with knives, hand saws, and swords. And because they were wearing these jujus the men did not cut themselves, the jujus prevented it. A traditional music is also played throughout that has drums, flutes, and metal plates that are hit together to give a kind of bell sounding effect. Not only do the men attempt to cut themselves they also do a lot of dancing as does the watchful crowd. The atmosphere was filled with excitement and joy. It was truly a celebration. The ceremony started around 5pm and went on until dark (830 or 9pm). Although the ceremony was over, the village continued to be full of action and life. We left the village around 930pm but it seemed like the party was just getting started. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay. Because of the size of the ceremony there was just so much going on that it was hard to focus on one particular aspect of the ceremony. It is also hard to write about the ceremony because of this. However, we took a lot of pictures and video shots as well. We will try and upload as many as possible. But you may just have to wait until we get back to see them all and for us to tell you what was occurring in each photo or video. Cheers! James

I just wanted to share a little bit with you about the World Cup.

As many of you are aware of the 2010 World Cup is taking place on the continent of Africa, in South Africa. Although, the event is taking place thousands of miles away from The Gambia there is a tremendous amount of excitement in the air. Soccer (known as football to the world wide community) is a hugely popular sport in Africa, and in The Gambia. As a result, most of the Gambian population is following the tournament very closely. Video clubs, bars and restaurants, the streets in front of the Africell building (a cellular phone service provider where a monster TV screen has been setup) are full of people, Gambians and non-Gambians alike, watching each game.

It has been a really cool experience to be in a place where football (soccer) is bigger than life during the World Cup. I hardly remember what it was like in the US when the World Cup was there. I wasn’t that young that I would forget. I just think the significance and impact of this event was not appreciated as much because football is not as popular as other sports in the US. Nonetheless, I am glad that I have been lucky enough to be here when this event occurred.

Cheers!

James

In Peace Corps The Gambia, we love the question "would you rather..." followed by two equally unappealing choices. Here is mine...

Would you rather...have a Larium (anti-Malaria medicine) induced hallucination of small cockroaches crawling on you in bed, or have actual cockroaches crawling on you in bed? Personally I'm not sure if I'd rather have either of these happen, but the reality is, I'm not sure which of these DID happen. I was laying in bed last night reading and thought I felt something on my arm so I looked over and saw a small roach crawling on me. So I flicked it off my arm. I felt the contact between my hand and the bug. I looked on the floor to see where it went so I could kill it. It wasn't there. I looked in my bed to find it and kill it. It wasn't there. So this left me wondering if it had ever been there in the first place or if what I felt on my arm was a piece of my hair that had been blown by the fan so that it only seemed like a roach. I calmed down a little and got back to reading and finally decided I was tired enough to fall asleep. I woke up later to something crawling on my leg. I used my other leg to flick whatever it was off of me and turned on my light to find it and kill it. Again, I saw nothing on my floor and nothing in my bed. Could it have been the string from my anklet? As I was drifting back to sleep, I couldn't stop thinking about roaches, and then the roaches turned into earwigs, and were all over me, but I couldn't find them. Hallucination or reality or both? I'm just not sure.

There are roaches in my apartment so it is entirely possible that they were crawling on me. But generally they live in my kitchen. I don't know how to get rid of them. My kitchen is not dirty. They just live there. I've got a plan to wage war against them. I'm going to bring my small refrigerator outside, because they live in the seal around the door, and spray it with strong bug killer and leave it in the hot sun, and spray it again. Then wash the whole thing with bleach, and try to fix the seal so they can't get in there to make their home. Then, I'm going to empty out all the food and dishes from my kitchen (for the second time) and spray the whole thing with the bug killer. Then, I will have a fly swatter, so if they start to come back I will kill them upon arrival. I have resigned myself to knowing that I will probably lose this war, especially since the rainy season is starting. But I just need to eliminate one variable to in order to figure out if the crawling feeling I have in the night (this is not the first time) is due to my medication, or actual bugs.

At the end of March a project that I had been working on with a few other PCVs finally came to fruition. My friends and fellow Gender and Development Committee members, Stripes and Steven, and I had been working on putting together a Girls' Leadership and HIV education camp since November. Stripes and Steven worked hard and got the grant proposal funded by PEPFAR (The U.S. Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). I came in to help them design the programing. We came up with an awesome schedule focused on critical and creative thinking skills and Health Ed. It was a week long camp where the girls were given a problem (Odyssey of the Mind style) to solve. They were put in teams and each team had to create a bridge out of kabob skewers and glue. My friend Kris is an architect and she and her Gambian counterpart, Aminata, ran the bridge building sessions. They were a huge success. The bridges were weight bearing and we measured how strong they are with a bucket of water. Most of them could hold a whole bucket full, but the ones that broak received the biggest applause cause it was exciting to see them break under the pressure. We also had the girls working on Dramas which were Health related. My friend Amanda and an NGO called Nova Scotia Gambia Association ran the drama sessions. The dramas turned out really well. It was so cool to see the girls come out of their shells. Beyond these two projects, we had many PCV facilitators come in and teach decision making, communication, leadership, team building, reproductive and sexual health, and of course, HIV prevention. To make it even better, we had a concurrent teacher training. The teachers had sessions on classroom management, alternative note taking, creative visual aids, teaching Health and sex education, etc.

We had 33 students and 11 teachers come to this camp. There were at least 15 PCVs from both the Health and Education sectors. Everybody loved it. The girls got so much out of it, as did the teachers. It was also very rewarding for the PCVs. I had several PCV friends come up and thank me for asking them to facilitate because it felt so good for them to interact with motivated, smart young women, and to know that they are making a difference.

I didn't take many pictures here, but I'll work on getting them from friends so that you can see what it was like.

Oh and, I have a title now, beyond PCV. I'm the new Gambia Gender and Development (GamGAD)Country Coordinator.

Love,

Tavi

As many of you know, my dad is an excellent carpenter. These pictures are mainly for his benefit, but I'm sure that many of you will be blown away by what you are looking at. First of all, the logs on the ground are African Mahogany. Mahogany is illegal to cut down here. And MAYBE people follow that law. Much of the mahogany comes in from Senegal to the south of us, where there are still trees. The way that desertification works, is that the Sahara to the north of us is slowly encroaching on the Sahel where we are. In The Gambia we've lost 80% of our trees, which is the main reason why the desert is coming. African Mahogany is a beautiful tree. I'll take a picture of one soon so you can see just how cool they are. Anyway, once they get cut down and brought into The Gambia they go to the saw mill. By saw mill, I mean one man chopping the sides of the trees off to make 'flat' boards. I think they have to do this because they do have a saw, but it's not big enough to fit the tree through. It makes me sad that these great trees are getting cut down. And, even sadder because they aren't even being made into anything cool. They are being used to make rough benches, and to hold the cement on the top of latrines up. They aren't being used in an artisan manner and so...they are just being used like any other tree. And not being replanted.

I realize that many of my posts may seem negative. It's so easy and kind of fun to describe the challenges that we face here. I mean, it's hard to resist telling you about the time that I got so hot traveling down to Kombo that I lost my ability to speak, let alone do the math required to figure out the change I needed to give back to my friends. My speech returned to my upon drinking a bag of cold water. These stories are the stories that still seem worth telling after getting used to being here. I bet that most PCVs say at some point during their service report that things stop seeming so wild and just start feeling normal. I guess that's why it's called re-adjustment when going back to the States.

But instead of telling you a crazy travel tale, or a story about getting harassed, I'll tell you about three really nice things that happened in the last three days. Maybe three days ago I was walking home from the Peace Corps office. I have a back route that I can take to get off the main road and away from the noise of the cars and their exhaust. This little school girl came up and said, "Hello, how are you?" I replied in the typical way, "Fine, fine, how are you?" She said she was fine and then said, "I just want to sing you one song." If you've been following our blog, you know that most of the time we talk to kids on the street they ask us for money. Not because they think we'll give it to them, but just because. So, she wanted to sing me a song. I tell her I want to hear her song so she takes a deep breath and starts singing a song about sugar. "Sugar in the coffee, Sugar in the tea, Sugar for...What is your name?" I had been surprised that she hadn't asked me my name right off. That usually follows "How are you." I told her that she needed to finish her song then I would tell her. So she starts over, "Sugar in the coffee, sugar in the tea, sugar for Mary, sugar for me...." It was really cute. I told her my name, she told me hers and I walked her to school.

Yesterday I was on that same walk and made some friends. There was a woman all decked out leaning against a very nice car. This meant that she had on the full 'complet' of tie and dye. And a huge 'tiko' (head wrap). The fancier they are the puffier the head wrap. (A complet is a whole outfit made of the same fabric. They are all the rage here.) Anyway, I greeted her, "Salam Malakum" and she greated me back, "Malakum Salam, Nanga Def?" The 'nanga def' part is Wolof and asks if you are at peace. I don't speak Wolof but I had just learned how to say 'Degana sosee rek' which means I only speak Mandinka. So, she swiched to Mandinka and told me to come talk to her for a minute. So I walked over and leaned against her nice, black SUV and she said, "nso ila naglasso." "Give me your sunglasses." I was a little surprised that she said this. I told her "Hani" "No" and looked her up and down, and then at her car and said, "Nso ila moto." "Give me your car." She said "A taa" "Take it." So, now we are friends. She told me that her compound was there on the corner and asked what I was doing here in The Gambia. It was just really nice to have a conversation in Mandinka and to have a chance to meet the neighbors. I walk by their house everyday, and now I will have someone to greet and joke with as I walk by.

And, at the end of the day yesterday I was walking home from a friend's house, and it had cooled off so it was a very pleasent 85. Everyone was outside chatting and being neighborly. Generally if I see people outside of the compound walls, they are men and it's kind of a drag. But, yesterday there were women chilling on the side of the road and kids playing football in the middle of the street. It just made me feel good about being in Africa.

Peace,

Tavi

Greetings from West Africa and Happy New Year!

The New Year started off with a bang. Tavi and I went up-country to meet up with some of our friends to celebrate New Year's Eve and it was a great time. It turns out New Year's Eve occurred on a night of celestial significance. It was a full moon, a blue moon, and there was a partial eclipse of the moon. A rare event indeed. So, not only were we celebrating with our friends, we were witnesses to this spectacular lunar event. Not to mention the fireworks.

We travelled up-country a couple of days before the new year to get settled in and unwind. The first thing we did when we arrived in Basse was to dine at one of the many fine eating establishments. Fatou's to exact. Where you can not only dine on a superb plate of chicken and chips (fries for those of you state-side), but you can also treat yourself to a plate of fried beef and onions or even a rather large and tasty meat pie. After we filled our bellies we made our way to the transit house to procure beds and shower. Eventually every bed in the house would be filled as there were a number of us there for the celebration.

Once we settled in it was about time for happy hour and then dinner. So we travelled a short distance down the road toward downtown Basse to try out a new bitik bar run by a Nigerian man and his wife, who does the cooking. The place turned out to be a hit. The beers were priced right, the people were friendly (not creepy or bothersome), and the food for the most part was good. Although we were skeptical about the pre-cooked chicken and fish under a candescent light in a box with Plexiglas sides. Specifically, how long had the chicken and fish been there? An hour, a day, or longer? Aside from that the plate of the night was delicious. That night it was beef benechin. After taking our fill of liquid refreshment and eats we made our way back to the transit house rather early in the evening. Since we had travelled all day from Kombo to Basse, we were tired and in need of rest. Once we reached the transit house it was not long thereafter that we went to bed. The next day was New Year's Eve and we had a lot to do.

January 31st. We and our friends had a lose plan for the evening activities and we were at the point of procuring the necessary supplies. However, we needed breakfast first. Mine consisted of a bean sandwich with two fried eggs and hot sauce. Most everyone else had the bean sandwich only. Once we were powered up it was time to gather supplies for the celebration. The celebration would generally involve a party, liquid refreshments, fireworks, local pork and other foods. Oh, and a small campfire to sit around because during this time of year the nights get cold for the climate. To get everything we needed and have things ready by nightfall we divide necessary tasks up. The women were to get the ice, minor food items and one of the liquid refreshment types needed. Myself and another male volunteer were tasked with acquiring the other type of liquid refreshment, the pork (4kg), and the fireworks. Since nothing in this country happens when it should or as quickly as it could, this took both groups the duration of the day after breakfast to accomplish. But once we had everything we were ready to go.

Everyone rallied around early in the evening, shortly after sunset. The punch was made the other refreshments were cold and the pork was cooked and ready. All that remained was the small campfire, which was easily accomplished as firewood was not a problem to locate. Everything was in place and we were ready to celebrate the New Year. As I had mentioned earlier, there would be as lunar event that evening. Shortly after nightfall, a full, blue moon rose in the east. An hour or two later we noticed something different about this moon. It wasn’t as full as it was earlier. It took a while to figure it out but we concluded that we were witnessing a partial eclipse of the moon. We knew this because the side of the moon obscured from our vision was not the side(s) typically obscured during the waxing and waning of the moon. The eclipse was very partial and remained that way for a few hours, after which it returned to a full moon. The night was full of celebration with friends, a warm campfire, and fireworks. I almost forgot the fireworks. The fireworks were a nice treat. We found a bar in town that was selling them. The fireworks consisted of your typical bottle rocket size and fire crackers, but nonetheless they were exciting and a nice addition to the New Year. When New Year’s Eve came the full moon was pretty much directly overhead and it was so bright out that we did not need artificial lighting. The fireworks were set off and the fire was stoked for a bit to increase its granger. In conclusion, this New Year’s Eve would be remembered as the best one we had in The Gambia, and definitely would be rated as one of the best ones overall.

Cheers!

James

The move down here has been pretty bitter sweet for me. Yes, we have all the amenities, like electricity indoor plumbing and James has a lot of work which is good for him. I'm starting to get busy as well, so that feels good. But, we really miss our family and the up-country experience. Also living down here equals constant harassment. When you walk down the street here, the cabs all honk at you to get your attention. Cabs try to hale people here, not the other way around. They yell out the window, 'taxi!?' It's pretty funny actually. The people selling things come up and stick whatever it is that they are selling in your face (phone credit, pirated movies, hats, sun glasses, apples, cashews, etc.) Then you get hissed at or kissed at to get your attention by young men. Or they just yell 'hello! hello!' at you until you either acknowledge them or get far enough away that you can't hear it. This is just a start of how it is. You can review the 'bumpster lines' post that i wrote a while ago to get an idea of the things that get yelled, literally, in our direction. If you're lucky that's all you get, but if not...well I'll fill you in. We female PCVs all have our own ways of dealing with this. It makes us all angry. Some people let their anger get out and they yell at the jerks, or make comments under their breath. I generally just try to ignore it and if I can't I just try to be honest by saying something like. "We live here, we are not tourists and we don't want to talk to you." That may or may not work. It's crazy to feel like a total bitch, and that is exactly how I feel when I walk down the street every day. Like you can't look at any men in the eye, or acknowledge their presence otherwise they will ask you to marry them and take them to America. And not all men here are bad, obviously, so It just feels worse to know that you could be ignoring someone really cool just because you can't risk looking at them. I feel like I have to close part of myself off otherwise I will go crazy. This sounds all fragmented and like I am going crazy. Haha. I'm just trying to help you understand my life right now. So, I'll tell a real story.

I understand being a minority. I understand being a target. I know how it feels to walk down the street and wish I could disappear. There is a lot in American History that people can learn about and sympathize with, but maybe never truly understand. I am beginning to understand.

Four days ago I was walking with my friend Kris (woman) to the beach. The beach is my new hobby, really. I find that since being down here, with no recreational opportunities, I started losing my mind. So, I decided to start swimming in the ocean. Distances that will get me in good shape and challenge me like hiking, skiing, or kayaking would. Plus, I can do it any time of day because the water is cool enough. (Otherwise I would have to do some activity before 8 or after 6, when I'm either sleeping or drinking...just kidding...kind of.) My friend Kris is also into swimming, so we decided to give it a try and it's been helping with my mental health immensely. The other day, though, when we were walking to the beach there was this group of maybe 6 to 8 men sitting around in the shade on the street. (They are not inside the wall of their compound...heaven forbid they miss something on the quiet street they live on. It's not uncommon to see such groups of men because so many of the NEVER work. You NEVER see groups of women like this because they have to bust their asses to keep food in the food bowl.) So they had their plastic chairs out they they were just chilling. Whenever I'm walking and I see a group like this it gives me anxiety as I try to brace myself against what ever they might say to us. Part of how I deal with it is try to greet them in local language. A lot of times that helps. But this time (like many others) they started cat-calling. 'You are an empress.' 'You are looking good girls.' 'Oh, beautiful white lady!' 'Lookin' good!' And so on. In my usual style, I tried to block this out. Hard to do when it was feet from us. As we pass they start making all these sound effects and more comments along the same lines. Oh, the sound effects. That made me lose it,internally. But I turned around and calmly yelled, "It is not ok for you to talk to us like that. You are harassing us. We live here and we walk down this street daily and we don't need to hear this." Instead of stopping, or apologizing they yell back, 'It's ok. you are a beautiful empress,' and continued with the sound effects. You know, sounds of truly appreciating our asses. Ah!!! Just typing this is making me so angry. I have never felt so constantly angry in my life. You know me, most of the time I'm pretty laid back. Needless to say, I turned to my friend Kris and start dropping F-bombs. 'Who the F do they think they are!' 'They can't F-ing talk to us this way!' and, 'I'm so F-ing glad my friends who truly lose it in these situations are not here.' Because if they had been there there would have been a fight. Really, living here makes normal people want to fight. And the men who do this just don't understand that what they are saying is intense sexual harassment. We've been trying to think of comparisons to help people understand this. It's like going to a bar and having the creepiest men come up and start hitting on you and asking for your number. They say, "How are you? You fine? What's your name?" And you tell them no, and they don't go away. So you move, and they follow you and continue asking for your number. Then you tell them to go away and they look at you and say, "Why do you have to do that. It's nice to be nice. Don't do that, we are all one. Why do you hate Africans? We are one blood, I just want to be your friend. So, how about that number, will you marry me?" And it's not just one man in the bar who does it, but 50%of them, so you don't want to talk to the other 50% because it's not worth the trouble.

Oh god. This is my life right now. I have all the time in the world, some cool projects that keep me just busy enough. I'll never have this much freedom in my life yet, I have nothing to do for physical activity but walk or run on these same streets, and the one thing I want to do (go to the beach to swim) is such a pain in the ass that I can't go there alone and even if I go with a friend it can be a pain in the ass. And when I try to explain this, I feel like such a baby. Like it's not as big of a deal, and that I should feel how lucky I am that I can go to the beach and be tan and get in shape and do what ever I want, and not wake up and go to work by 7:00 a.m. Instead, it takes incredible internal strength and motivation just to walk out the door alone.

Don't be alarmed. It's not all bad here. But this is a part of my life now, so I thought I'd share.

Love,

Tavi

Well, it has been quite a while since I have written blog post. 8 months in fact. In that post I told you about some of the experiences we've had to that point, including spear fishing, the Gambian perception of April Fools and how I played my own April fool’s joke. Since then T has done a tremendous job keeping everyone up to date and informed of what it is like to live and work in The Gambia. I know all of you really appreciate that, and so do I. I am grateful to be sharing this experience with her, and all of the other experiences we will share throughout the rest of our lives together. Thank you wife. I love you.

Since my last post I have been trying to define what I am doing here. Both for the benefit of the Gambian people, and for my own personal and professional growth. For most of the first year of our service we were stationed in a small to medium size village (700-1000ppl) in the central part of the country. While living there T and I worked with a couple of villages mainly on community garden projects. Aside from that our time there was more of a cultural experience that has had a huge impact on our lives and continues to do so. We have made numerous friends and a lifelong connection with our host family. Our host family is among the most hardworking and caring people we have meet in The Gambia. Living with them was like living with family. They treated us like family, not renters, and in turn we treated them like family. It has been by far the greatest experience of our service to date. However, Tavi and I also came here to assist the people of The Gambia. Unfortunately, after many months we became frustrated with the lack of work available for us in that area of the country. We made numerous attempts to make meaningful professional connections however, they fell short of what we expected and needed for our professional growth and development. After a lot of discussion between us and others, particularly other volunteers and some PC staff, we decided it would be in our best interest professionally and personally to transfer to the Greater Banjul Area. Many, if not most, of the government agencies and NGOs have their main offices located in this area. As a result there are more opportunities for us to utilize our knowledge and skills in a way that will be of benefit The Gambia and to our own professional growth. The decision to leave our host family was the hardest choice we have made since we decided to leave our friends and family for two years of Peace Corps service. The day we moved was a bittersweet occasion. On the one hand we were leaving a loving and caring family, and on the other we were moving to a place that would provide us with the professional growth and challenges we sought. Since then we have become noticeably happier to both us and other volunteers. However, we have maintained our connection with our host family in Jakaba. They have family members who live within an hour’s travel from our apartment, and they are just as welcoming and caring. Although we technically do not have a host family at this point we still have our Gambian family in Jakaba and nearby.

One of the main reasons we transferred to the GBA was the opportunity to grow and challenge ourselves professionally. Starting in January, Tavi will be working with a Canadian NGO, the Nova Scotia Gambia Association. They mainly work in the area of health education and outreach, and as many of you know T was a health educator in the states. So this job is a right fit for her. T is excited to start as she has many ideas of how she could contribute to NSGA’s mission. Not to mention, she’ll have the opportunity to gain valuable experience working with an international NGO. In particular, she has proposed a public service announcement project, where the students create their own PSAs utilizing either radio, TV, print, etc… to promote a certain aspect of health education. She did a project similar to this with her students back home and it had excellent results. Tavi has also been participating in a number of other activities, including volunteer/trainee training and the Gender and Development committee.

As most of you know I have a background in Environmental Science and Natural Resource Management. One of the reasons I wanted to serve in Peace Corps was the opportunity to work abroad while utilizing my knowledge and skills to the benefit of a developing nation. I also wanted to serve because of the opportunity to gain a unique experience that would further my professional and academic career. Unfortunately, my post up-country could not provide either of these for me in the capacity I sought. Transferring to the GBA resolved these issues and has also given me the opportunity to work on a greater variety of projects. Most of my efforts are currently focused on a ecology project involving a partnership between the Department of Parks and Wildlife Management, the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly WWF), and the USPC/The Gambia. The project’s focus is on the development and implementation appropriate NRM tools and policies, increasing the number of personnel trained in environment and natural resources management, and coordinating efforts to provide comprehensive and effective technical solutions to address the environmental and development challenges faced by The Gambia. Generally, the work consists of conducting field surveys of flora and fauna in designated protected areas, managing and analyzing the data through the use of GIS software, providing technical advice on management issues, assistance with the revision and/or creation of NRM policies, providing specialized training to DPWM personnel, and various other tasks. I am grateful to have the opportunity to work on a project of this type and magnitude. It is sure to be a challenging and rewarding experience. Aside from this project, I am participating in the training of volunteers/trainees and I will be a member of the Project Advisory Committee for the PCTG ENRM sector.

Tavi and I are looking forward the next and last year of our service as it has the potential to have a long-term impact on our professional and academic development. We are also looking forward to our return home at the end of our service. It is especially hard this time of year to be away from our family and friends. This will be the second year in row that we have missed celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years with everyone back home, and next year will be the third. But as the saying goes here “we are just managing”, “slowly, slowly”. However, we have been lucky enough to make close and lifelong friends with other volunteers. As a result we have spent the last two holiday seasons with many of them. For that we are grateful. For the New Year T and I are heading up country to celebrate with a large group of people. Many are friends from our training group and some will be from other training groups. It should be a great time.

Last but not least, we would like to thank everyone for the care packages, pictures, cards, and other items from home. It means a lot to us to receive those things, and we greatly appreciate it. Also we want to wish everyone Happy Holidays and Happy New Year.

Cheers!

James and Tavi

Being away for the second holiday season, of three that we'll miss, was harder than the first. I didn't realize what was making me grumpy until James pointed out that maybe I miss home. I guess he's right. We kept ourselves busy. We had a Solstice party and did our best to cook Indian food. I think we did ok, but made way too much. I'm learning, slowly, slowly. We had a secret Santa exchange and James got two pork chops from our friend Josh. So we had a supper rich and supper good Christmas Eve dinner. Then on Christmas day we went over to our Admin. Officer's house for dinner. It was nice, but the phone calls from home were the best parts of the day.

The following pictures, aside from the first one are in chronological order, but may be a little random.

If we were the picture Christmas card type, this would be this year's card. So imagine that it says something like, "Wishing you the best this Holiday Season." The real story is that we went on a boat ride, aka booze cruise, for Halloween. So I was Jane to James' Tarzan.

We got this chair in Ghana. I've been meaning to post a picture of it. We got a pretty sweet deal on it.

This was back in Jakaba before we left. We were going to a meeting on Georgetown Island. I'm standing in front of Sorghum which is a type of wheat that some people grow here. It's tall.

Our host sister Kaddy and her bananas. A big part of this culture is sharing and giving. So to teach little kids this you find out what they like best, in Kaddy's case bananas, then ask them to give you some of it. In Mandinka you say "nso." Kaddy says "mbong" in response to this. Mbong means "I won't!" and comes with a funny arm movement. Her older siblings think this is so funny that they ask her for her banana until she cries.

Our host father killed a Nile Monitor Lizard. It was so big, maybe 4 or 5 feet long. We ate it and it was amazing. The best meat I've eaten in this country. They were going to throw the skin away, but James had visions of wallets, so...

I got to help nail it to the tree, and rub salt on the hide to dry it.

After we moved down to Kanifing, where we are now, we had our friends Jes and David over. David had some nori from the States, and we had Wasabi thanks to my Dad. So, we made sushi (not raw fish sushi, cooked shrimp sushi). It was so amazing.

That brings us to Halloween. This picture was taken moments before I jumped off the deck of the boat to get the swimming started. I asked James if he thought it was ok and he said, "What and make the boat have to stop and turn around and pick you up." I said, "Yes, that would be what happens." But everyone wanted to swim, so I knew it'd be ok. As soon as I jumped in, everyone followed suit. Yeah!!!

James went back to visit our family in Jakaba. I think this picture is funny because James likes to tease Fatoumata (host mom) and this is the look she gives him.

The rest of the pictures are from Tobaski. We went to our host father's older brother's compound to celebrate Tobaski. If you are unfamiliar with Islam, which I assume many of you are, I'll give you a brief description of what Tobaski is. This is one to the two major holidays in Islam. The other is the day that Ramadan, the month of fasting, is over. I have to apologize before hand for this account as I don't know my religious history very well, so I might butcher this. (There's a pun there, oops.) Well back in the day, Allah/God/The Almighty told Abraham to kill his son Isaac. So, Abraham got a knife and was about to slit Isaac’s throat, but Allah/God/The Almighty put a ram down in Isaac’s place, so sparing him. Now in celebration of that sacrifice Muslims sacrifice a ram, sheep or goat the tenth day after the new moon in Nov. It's a big deal here and the spend a lot of money buying the kids and women new clothes and shoes. They eat so much meat. And go around the village greeting their friends and family. They also give plates of meat away for charity. Last year I posted pictures of the slaughtered ram. This year I won't do that. But I will say that as our host uncle was butchering the sheep, he hung it from a tree, as opposed to on a dirty piece of corrugate. We were impressed. There was even some hand washing with soap. On a side note, I'm really happy that we met this branch of the family. They are all really chill, and the compound is a little out of the village, so it's quiet. I'll be looking forward to spending time out there because when you live in the urban area, you miss out on the village goodness.

I'm pealing cucumbers that this woman Sallymata grew. She's cutting up the sheep meat.

This is coos (millet) which is a main staple of the diet here. They pound it until it's like flour, then sift it, and then steam it. It's pretty good prepared this way, but they also take what they sifted out and make it into porridge, and I really dislike that.

These two women both live in our host uncle's compound. Sallymata is in blue and Arabiatulai (Fofna) is in pink. Sallymata is our host uncle's wife, Fofna is married to another host uncle, but he lives in Spain. They are both crazy gardeners. The water table is supper high in the garden cause they are close the river. So they just dig holes down to the water, about 4-5 feet, and water their gardens with this. They harvest their crops and sell them in the major market down here called Serakunda. We are standing in a field of tomatoes. I figured Mary Beth would appreciate this.

Now the ladies are all dressed up to go out on the town.

This is our host uncle. We call him BakeBaa (three syllables) Alhagie. It means Big Dad and is what people call their father's older brothers. It's different than uncle because only your mother's brothers are uncles. It means that if your father were to die, that one of the BakeBaas would become your father. His kids are considered your brothers and sisters. But your mom's brother's kids are considered your cousins, so you can marry them. Anyway, he's a pretty cool guy. He keeps bees, and imports and sells lumber. I told him that if he sells trees he ought to plant some. He's into that.

I guess no blog post with pictures would be complete with out pictures of kids. So...They're all dressed up ready to go. This little guy wouldn't put down the baby goat. Kind of cute.

You know you're a teacher when...you think that the only way to turn things around in a country, that may or may not be developing, is through education. I guess if one were interested they could write books on why education has not historically been a major priority in developing nations, and how that holds the population back. I'm sure there are all sorts of political and/or corrupt reasons that I guess I'll just leave unsaid because I'm not some sort of African Scholar. (On a side note I have two book recommendations if you are looking to understand Africa a little better. 'Dark Star Safari' by Paul Theroux and 'Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles' by I Can't Remember.) Back to the point.

Maybe two months ago I was helping my host sister Yai with her homework. She's eight, and in Grade Two. English is obviously not her first language and none of her family members that still live in Jakaba speak English either. The ones who do speak English don't live there. She started school last year and school is taught all in English. Ugh. This seems wrong on so many levels. They learn all the normal subjects for Elementary school, but they learn it in a language that they don't speak and may have never heard before starting school. She brought home her report card after the first year to show her parents. Her mom can't read and her dad reads and writes Arabic, so although it was a nice gesture, it was a little meaningless. But because I was there, I was able to look at the report card. It was terrible. She got in the 60% range for everything. In the states we don't really even grade the little kids. And, how was I supposed to tell her parents, and what did the grades even mean? How did she compare to other students? I think she was in the upper middle of her class. After this I tried to help her more than I had been. I had her copying letters they way we learned how to write and doing phonics. I tried to teach her how to say 'I don't understand' and 'please help me.' This way, she would be equipped to get the help that she needs. This brings me back to what happened a couple of months ago. Yai brought homework home. It was a paragraph from her English Language class. The class was told that who ever didn't read the paragraph would be beaten upon return to school the next day. She's eight. So, I sat down to help her read the paragraph. It was probably at a second or third grade American school level. It seemed to be written for people who speak English already. There were hard words in there like, 'because,' 'should' and 'see.' She couldn't read any of the words, actually, except 'is,' she got 'is' consistently. I had her sound out the letters and tried to teach her to string them together to make words. Granted she had no idea what she was saying, but at least she was practicing with the sight/sound thing. It took over an hour to get through something like 6-8 sentences, letter by letter. I translated the story for her into Mandinka as we went; the whole time getting more and more frustrated about this situation. Let me re-cap. The teacher gave a class full of eight year olds an English paragraph to read when they can't speak English or read words, and told them if they didn't do it he would beat them. About 30 minutes after Yai and I finished, another little girl came over who I hadn't ever met. She wanted my help because she too wanted to avoid the beating. I was pretty tired of going through this paragraph letter by letter, but I told her I'd help her. I figured I could just have her practice letter recognition and phonics. This girl didn't eve know all her letters. The entire paragraph she mistook every 's' for 'z.' And, she didn't know how any of the letters should sound. This enraged me even more and I started telling my host mom and another guy in our compound that they need to go to the school and tell the teacher that this is ridiculous. These parents are doing everything they know how to do to give their children a chance to know more, to be better, to have more opportunities, and the system just shuts them out and lets them down. No wonder The Gambia is so far behind. How can they get ahead when people are held back by a shitty system, and lack of opportunities if they do make it through the system. The teacher never asked about the paragraph.

I'll start with the thank you to Patagonia. For those of you who know me best, I'm slightly obsessed with Patagonia clothing. It's an obsession that started early in life thanks to Fred at Teton Mountaineering. Well, the clothing that I brought with me is getting pretty worn out because of the hand washing and hot sun so I wrote to Patagonia to see if they could help me out. And, help me out they did. I asked for some capris, and some tank tops, but thought at most they would send me a shirt. Surprise, they HOOKED me up with 10 pieces of clothing and threw in a shirt for James. I feel like the luckiest PCV in the world right about now. So THANK YOU PATAGONIA for being even more awesome than I thought.

On to my story about travel. I hesitate to tell this kind of story because it's a little scary, but I'll tell it anyway for your entertainment. Don't worry I learned my lesson and will do my best to avoid this type of situation in the future. My dad already knows this story, otherwise I would not post it.

Maybe two months ago I decide to go up to Basse from Jakaba (before we moved) to visit some of my friends up there. James is working, so he isn't with me that day. It starts off fine. I get a gele gele (aka, rattling death trap) to Georgetown Island, cross the river, the island, and the river with no problems. But, when I get to the other side, there is no gele gele in sight. I don't want to be stuck waiting, and there was a pick up that the rest of the people waiting started running for. It is going my way, so for the first time ever, I jump in the back (to go about 6 miles). As soon as I get in I realize what a stupid choice I made. My dad's voice enters my head saying, "Don't ever ride in the back of pick up trucks, Tavi. That's how people die." I look down at the floor of the truck bed, and it's covered with sharp metal objects for welding and axes. Bad move. The entire way to Bansang, where I switch to a gele gele, I am just hoping to make it there alive. I do, obviously, and will never do that again. I get in my next gele gele, and am feeling pretty good to be alive. For the record, every time I get into a a gele gele, I picture what I would do if we get in an accident. That's how safe I feel in these vehicles. We almost make it to Basse in one piece but then at one of the police check points our gele driver was told we couldn't go any more because, as the direct translation goes, "the foot was not good" on the gele. So all 30 of the passengers are out on the side of the road pissed, wanting their money back and trying to flag down other vehicles to take us the last 30 minutes of the ride to Basse. It's not looking good. It's about 3 in the afternoon, and I'm worried that I'm going to get stranded because so many people are trying to go in the same direction and all the cars that are passing are full. Then, a Winnebago pulls up to the check point. There are white men in the front, and I stupidly think it's a family on vacation. What!? That is one of the more ridiculous things I have thought in this country. But, before that thought leaves my mind, I find myself flagging them down to get a ride to Basse. They agree, and I get in the back of the Winnebago and find myself faced with two Lebanese men, in the front, and three Gambian men in the back, and all of them give me creepy smiles, and the Lebanese guy in the passenger seat kisses my hand in greeting and asks for my phone number. I start freaking out. I text James and my friend Rachel to let them know what's up. I am so nervous that my hands are shaking, and so car sick because I can't see out the front. They offer me water, and a Sprite. They want to hang out when we get there. I just try to agree with what ever they are saying, while looking around to see how I can get myself out of this situation just in case, you know, anything bad happens. There are copper pipes on the floor that they are bringing to a cell phone tower to fix. I figure I would start swinging if anything starts to go down. But nothing does, obviously. They offer to take me to the Peace Corps house in Basse. I say no, get out on a corner, and immediately head into a store, but I leave the Sprite in the car, so they back up and a guy jumps out and brings me the Sprite. Later that night the phone calls start coming. Over and over and over. These guys just keep calling. Finally my friend Mike answers my phone for me and explains that he is my husband, and that this is his phone and that they need to stop calling. It works. It didn't work when I told them this. Oh, to be a woman in this country.

Happy Holidays!

Love,

Tavi

Well, tourist season is under way here and with that comes a ridiculous amount of harassment. For your reading pleasure I have collected a list of bumpster lines that we (women) commonly hear walking down the street.

"Hey, nice girl"

"Hey, beautiful lady"

"Hey, lookin' good"

"You're so pretty"

"Hey, white lady"

"You fine, You ok, you alright"

"How are you, you fine"

"Hey nice lady, you are very pretty, I really love you"

"American queen"

"American empress"

"Hey boss lady"

"My princess"

"You are looking so fine"

"I like your figure"

"You got a clean heart"

All of these lines are always followed by, "You alright?" "You fine?" "So, you're ok? If I walk with James, this doesn't happen much. But then they say, "Hey, nice couples."

If it weren't so creepy and annoying, it might make a person feel very pretty. But it is just creepy and annoying. So, I just blatantly ignore these men who call out, and avoid eye contact with other men who I pass on the street. In addition to these lines, we hear hissing and kissing sounds to get our attention. Ugh. It gets tiring. I can't wait for the tourists to go back.

I’m sure you are all equally aware of how long we’ve been gone as we are. At least I like to think you all miss us as much as we miss you. The other day I had a bit of fun though. James decided that he didn’t want to partake in this adventure because he had too much work. I’m still waiting on my NGO to get there act together, so I’m not working there yet. (I am keeping myself busy though.)

To celebrate our group’s one year anniversary, most of us went to this place called Kartung. This is the last village on the south side of our country, right on the coast before Senegal starts. We stayed at the Equator Lodge, but instead of staying in the rooms, most of us camped. It was a very relaxing couple of days of lying on the beach, swimming, eating. Not much showering. The best part of this little get away was the bio-luminescent plankton in the ocean. We went down after it got dark and my friend Adrian started shuffling around in the wet sand. Sure enough there were little sparks of light that showed up when the sand was disturbed. There were a few of us down there and we started wading into the water and splashing and looking at the waves. Next thing we knew we were soaked. The ocean kind of lulled us in when the waves weren’t big, then next thing we knew a big wave came. So we decided just to go swimming. It was amazing. Sometimes the plankton would stick to our bodies. They looked like tiny fireflies. It was one of those experiences that I feel so lucky I had. I don’t think that many people can say that they have swum with glowing plankton. Life is great!

This post is dedicated to Liz and John's son Jude because I know he likes looking at pictures of bugs. I also know that I have a lot of nerdy friends and family members who would get a kick out of looking at bug and other nature pictures. So this is for all of you...you know who you are. Nana, I know you don't like bugs, but these ones are a good distance from you, so you're safe. Enjoy!

The following few are of Banana Spiders. They like to hang out in banana trees. These pictures are from training. I can't remember if I put them up last year. (What, last year!?) They just came out again. I need to take some pictures of them because there are some places where you see so many in webs along the road. Hundreds probably.

James saw this bug when he was on his Turtle Surveys at Tenji Park.

This picture was taken during the dry season. The bird nest is in hanging in coos stalks.

This bird is so beautiful. The picture doesn't do it justice, but you can get the idea. During the dry season, when they are burning the grass, the birds fly around the fire and eat the bugs flying out of the burning grass.

This beetle was on our mango tree in the back yard.

I spent two hours sitting on an upside down bucket watching this butterfly. I figured there would be no other time in my life when I would have two hours to sit and watch something like this, so I did it. My camera battery died after this though. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures of it. It is on the corrugate that separates our latrine area from the rest of the back yard.

This was a lovely surprise when we got back to our site after being gone for a month. James started cleaning up and hundreds of ants started running around all over our floor. We called our host sister Jansaba in to help us kill them. We smashed them with shoes, and got so sweaty that it was dripping all over the floor. This was the source of all of the ants. Right next to our bed. Yuck.

There are beautiful butterflies in Ghana.

This was probably about 6 inches long. We saw these all over in the beginning of the rainy season.

James took so many pictures of bugs in Ghana that our friends thought he ought to pose like this to show you all what a nerd he is.

This grasshopper was huge. I'd say about 3 or 4 inches long.

Nice funky shaped spider in Ghana.

Now that I have internet more often, I'm looking forward to posting more often. If you have questions about anything over here, you should ask because things are starting to feel normal. I do have rants planned about the education system, and health care system, so be on the look out.

Love,

Tavi

P.S. Congrats Mel and Brad and Meaghan and Brian, who are expecting their first babies this summer. And to Audrey and Darren who are expecting their second. I can't wait to meet all the babies who were born while I was in Africa!

When we signed up for the Peace Corps we figured it would be the first time we have stayed in one home for two years. For me this would have been quite an accomplishment since I've moved once a year, every year since I graduated from High School. (Ugh.) But, it turns out that even in Africa we can't finish out a year in one place. We are planning on moving down to Kombo very soon. I think maybe at the beginning of November.

Why? We decided that we weren't getting what we need professionally living up country. Peace Corps, I'm learning, is all about what you make out of it. (Just like the rest of life.) I also learned that people want different experiences while serving in Peace Corps. Some people really love just living in a small African village, talking with the locals, living how they live, feeling hungry when they are hungry. And some people feel like Peace Corps is about suffering and going without the comforts that we are used to. I hear PCVs telling each other stories about how much they are suffering. I don't think they realize that's what they are doing because the stories are often funny ones about eating random organs, about getting stuck in the pouring rain, about how long it takes to get to the road, or to Kombo, about how long they went in village before needing the company of Toubabs, about riding in buses with no breaks, about shitting in their pants. I call this character building when I'm in one of these situations.

Anyway, we joined the Peace Corps for many reasons, to live abroad, to see the world, to help people out, and to gain experience that would help us get to where we want to be professionally. I wanted to find out what other jobs there are besides teaching, and James was hoping to get some practical experience so he is more marketable in a crazy economy in a state where everyone loves the environment. But,in The Gambia, living in village means sitting and chatting and getting to know Gambians, and trying to get them to change some of their behaviors, like sleeping under bed-nets, and not cutting down all the trees, and washing their hands before they eat with them, and breast feeding with out giving water for the first six months. Slowly, if these changes are made, it might allow for some development. (Although, I think that strong top-down leadership might also help.) Living in village here doesn't really provide the types of professional opportunities that we were hoping to get, so we're moving....

We moved. I typed the above when our move was in the works. We were picked up from our site on October 30. There were tears. It was so sad saying goodbye to our host family even though we'll be seeing them again soon. I held it together until our driver, Alhagie, got to our house and asked if I was ok. I lost it. I will say it was the quickest packing and loading up job ever. When 25-30 Gambians are seeing you off, they load up all of your stuff. We didn't have much, since we came here with two big bags each. We have accumulated a little, so we loaded 4 big bags, three trunks, and some other random stuff plus two book shelves. It took about 10 minutes to get all of that in the car. Our bikes got thrown on top, and we were off.

We are pretty much settled in our new apartment. It feels amazing to have space to call our own. We will be in this apartment for the next 15 months. It's just the right size, has a kitchen, small dining room (so small, I don't really want to call it a dining room), a sitting room, one bedroom and one bathroom. There is electricity which means we have a fridge, which means we can have cold things. James and I are thrilled because we can be on opposite ends of the house. And because we both have jobs now, we aren't spending every minute of our lives together. I'm pretty impressed by how well we handled seeing each other every minute of every day together. As my mom used to tell me, if you spend to long with one person, you get sick of each other. Well...we handled it well and still really like each other :). We have had people over for awesome dinners last week. I have decided that it's ok for my life to feel normal. We are so used to living here, that it actually feels like living in Florida. We have tan tile floors, and pink curtains. I know that someone fresh from the States would probably think I'm crazy for comparing developing West Africa to Florida, but it's warm, sandy, and did I mention the pink curtains?

Now we have work to do. I haven't started with mine yet...for those of you who know me best, you might know I'm a bit of a slacker. I don't really like to think of it that way, I like to think that I just know how to relax. Anyway, I'll be working for Nova Scotia Gambia Association. They have a web site if you want to check it out. They do Health Education around the country by training peer health educator groups in schools. Mostly they use drama, but I see some potential to expand this and do a public service announcement media campaign. This is all in my head at the moment, but soon I'll start working and see what we can do. They also have a branch in Sierra Leon, which is intriguing to me. Maybe if we go there on vacation next year, I'll check out what they have going on there too.

James is really excited about what he has going on. He seems to be less of a slacker than I am...naw...but his project has already started. He's doing ecological surveys in the national parks in The Gambia. He and another volunteer are taking over this project from two volunteers whose service just ended. They have already gone out and looked for sea turtles twice and up to Kiang National park to look for other little creatures, like bush mice, bush rats, and monkeys. Maybe he'll write more about what he's doing sometime. He's working with the Department of Parks and Wildlife, and the WWF...not wrestling silly, wildlife. Needless to say, this is just the type of experience that he needs. And, it's right up his ally, because he loves going off in the woods looking for animals and signs of animals.

So, that's the big news over here. We are healthy and happy these days. It was touch and go for me for a little while about whether I wanted to finish this madness, but now I know I can. It's like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. A lot of volunteers, the more introverted ones, have a hard time living with a host family. Even if the host family is great, living with 10-20 other people in the same compound can be very stressful. Now, that particular stress is gone and I feel like a million dollars.

I will write again soon and post pictures soon.

Love,

Tavi

We took a luxury bus from Kumasi to Butre and Busua on the coast west of Cape Coast. It is important to note here that this bus had AIR CONDITIONING and INDIVIDUAL SEATS. This is just another example of how far ahead Ghana is than probably most of W. Africa. We had a short stop in Cape Coast on the way where Maggie bought fried octopus on the street. It was so tasty. We had reservations at a place called the Hideout which was definitely off the beaten path.

We arrived there pretty late and we were the only guests there, but they made us some tasty drinks and a good dinner. We stayed here for three days, and we were all glad we came here last because we decided if we had come here first, we wouldn’t have left. It was wonderful. The beach we were on had two fishing villages and a couple guest houses, but the other two were closed. Butre was the larger of the two villages, and was a nice little village with marks of Peace Corps.

If you are so inclined there are home stays available in that village. We hiked over a hill that separates the Busua beach from the Butre beach and discovered this nice little surf shop.

Busua is definitely touristy, but not quite built up too much yet.

The beach there is nice, but I think the beach in Butre was better, cleaner and quieter. But, at this surf shop, we ate BORRITOS and looked out at a beautiful island.

This is quite the treat because we didn’t think we’d have an actual tortilla for 27 months. For those of you who don’t know me well, this is a little bit of a hardship since I grew up eating tortillas several times a week.(Ok, at least once or twice a week, if not several.) So, the burrito was a big deal. For the three nights we stayed at the Hideout we just chilled on the beach and swam in the ocean and went for walks. It was great. The only downside of being there was lack of access to street food, so it was a little more expensive. But I want to go back there when we have jobs because it’s really not that expensive. We spent $40 a person for 3 days of sleeping, eating and drinking, and I assure you we didn’t really hold back. When a beach resort can easily cost $150 a night, just for the room, I’m feeling like we found a little, affordable, paradise.

From Butre we went to Cape Coast for our last two days and one night. We stayed with Uncle Sam and his family in Cape Coast. A sister of a friend of Maggie's did a home stay there not long ago, so we had that as a hook up. This family was very wealthy, and Buddhist. It was pretty interesting because they were so well educated so we could have great conversations.

They also have a German woman staying with them right now, so we hung out with her as well. We checked out the city of Cape Coast. We didn't go in the slave fort though because we were feeling bad about how much money we had left.

We also went up to a park called Kakum, just north of Cape Coast.

It is a rainforest park, and had canopy walk ways which is really cool. They have a little visitor's center where people can learn about the ecology and we saw several school groups there learning. It's great that the Ghanaians are learning about their environment starting at a young age. The walk way was really cool. The trees are so tall, and it caused a little bit of vertigo to look down.

After our canopy walk we headed back to Cape Coast for some last minute shopping. We wanted more batik fabric. We said goodbye to Uncle Sam and Victoria and got into a 15 passenger Chevy van to head back to Accra. This van was so fast and so comfortable. We flew out of Accra at midnight and then the real adventure began.

The Dakar airport is a nightmare. Especially if one is unfortunate enough to arrive at 3:00 a.m. We had to wait until 4:00 a.m. for someone to drop off Alex's camera, and we didn't really want to get a car in the middle of the night since the road can be sketchy, and we didn't want a driver struggling to stay awake. So we tried to go upstairs to a cafe that is open all night and order waters because we were all dehydrated. They wouldn't bring us water because we weren't spending enough, so we had to leave the cafe. This whole time we were being accompanied by one or more Senegalese who wanted something from us, but I'm not sure what. Maybe to get us a taxi somewhere. Needless to say this was very annoying. They liked to take turns trying to wear us down and charge us a ridiculous amount. They used tactics like telling James that Alex was an idiot and that he didn't know what he was doing, and trying to tell James that he needed to make the decision because he was the 'leader.' Then, this one guy got angry with us and told us that we were ugly like monkeys. Hmmmm. Finally we decided to take a taxi to the port where the bus waits to take people back to Gambia. We hung out for about three hours waiting for the bus to be ready. We were sleeping on the curb next to a homeless guy. Finally the driver showed up, along with the mechanic and aparante (money taker). We got going around 7:30 a.m. and were feeling really good about being able to sleep finally. But three hours later, we woke up on the side of the road to the mechanic trying to fix the bus. We waited for four hours for them to create a gasket out of a cardboard box, and to 'fix' the breaks.

But the problem was, they didn't fix the breaks, they just decided to get going without them. You know, drive carefully and slowly. We were obviously pretty freaked out by this, so we wanted to make sure that we could get out of the bus in Kaolak and take a different car. But driver really didn't want to give us our money back, or our luggage. It was crazy to have no control over the situation. Finally we stopped on the way out of Kaolak, and I said, very dramatically, "I don't really feel like dying today, please give us our money and our bags." I was told no one would die, which I believed, but we still didn't want to continue on the bus, it just seemed like an unnecessary risk. We were able to get a car from Kaolak, thanks to a woman who James met in the immigration office. He was trying to get some official to care that a bus was rolling down the road with no breaks, but they didn’t really care. So he was telling another traveler this because she spoke English. Turns out she has some sort of roots in Peace Corps and ended up giving him 10,000 CFA which is around $20. She saved us. After being awake for about 40 hours, minus the 5 that I slept in the plane and on the bus combined, we arrived back at the stodge at midnight. We’re not in Ghana anymore Toto.

Here are a couple more photos. Check Picasa too, for the rest of the photos from our trip.

We love Ghana. Before we left for the Peace Corps, my friend Meaghan expressed her concern that I would not want to come back to the States. I have found that for the most part I am looking forward to returning to the States, but I would say that if we would have been sent to Ghana, her concern would have been merited. But I guess I’ll start at the beginning of the trip.

We left the Stodge at 6:00 a.m. to get to the first ferry. We were traveling to Dakar where we would fly out at 4:00 a.m. the next morning. We were in for a long day. So we made first ferry no problem, and got a sep plas (7 passenger car) to Dakar. The first part of the trip went really well, we had great luck with prices and time. We got to Dakar around 5:00 p.m. and went to happy hour, followed by Korean food. We felt like country bumpkins driving into Dakar. It is a huge city with things like tall buildings, and really, really good food from all over the world. After dinner we headed to the airport and tried to get some sleep until our plane was going to take off.

At this point our good luck ended for a few hours. As we were checking in for our flight we learned that we wouldn’t be able to board the plane because we didn’t have a visa. We obviously knew we needed visas, and we checked several different sources to find out how and where to get them. We don’t have a Ghanaian Embassy in The Gambia, so we were told we could get a visa at the airport on arrival. Well, this wasn’t true, so we weren’t allowed to board the plane. We tried really hard and woke several people up at 2:00 a.m. to try to make our way on the flight, but no luck. So we were stuck in Dakar. This is where being a PCV has a perk. There is a transit house in Dakar for Senegal volunteers, so we got a cab and after trying to communicate in French and Wollof, we made our way to the transit house and slept on the couches. The next flight was going to leave two days later, so we had to get our visas in one day from the Ghanaian Embassy there. We were able to do this, and explore Dakar a little bit. It was fun to navigate the city with a combination of our friend Alex’s limited Wollof, and our friend Annie’s limited French. It wasn’t a problem really. We checked out the Center for W. African Arts, which was cool, and we ate a lot of really good food. This was quite a treat for us. One day we had Lebanese, and another day we had Ethiopian.

We also found this really posh bar on accident, and felt like we didn't quite belong there. After gorging ourselves for 2 days, and getting our visas, we went back to the airport for round two. This time, we were able to get on the plane.

We arrived in Ghana at 7:00 a.m. and after calling several full guest houses ended up staying at a place overlooking the ocean.

Maggie and Alex decided that they would take a dip in the ocean so the ventured down the cliff and went in. Later we found out that there is raw sewage in that area. No wonder they got hives from going in. We started experimenting with the street food in Ghana as soon as we got to Accra; the street food is amazing. In fact yesterday, James and I had a hard time thinking of what to eat for lunch because we got so used to being able to find cheap, really good food, the whole time we were there. We stayed two nights in Accra. We checked out the big, central market and walked around the city center.

We met a couple of other volunteers (not Peace Corps), one American and one French. We joined them for dinner and learned a little about the country from them. We went out for drinks and met a lot of other ex-pats from all over. The best thing about going out was that there were Ghanaians there. Men and women were out together, enjoying each other’s company and dancing together. This is a stark contrast to here where we hardly ever see Gambians out drinking, let alone with their partners. It was refreshing.

After Accra, we traveled to the Volta region where we stayed in Hohoe for 2 nights. The drive out of Accra was beautiful, and comfortable. The roads are so much better than they are in Gambia, so the cars don’t get trashed as easily. Also, the cars aren’t over-loaded with people, or livestock. There was even a bridge.

We were basically really impressed with the level of development in Ghana the entire trip. We met other PCVs and supposedly, the northern part of Ghana is not nearly as developed as the south. But PCVs in Ghana live in apartments of some sort for the most part, and it seems like many of them are posted to places where they have actual jobs, and organizations that they work with. We couldn’t, and still can’t, help feeling a little jealous. Most of the Ghana volunteers have electricity and running water.

While in Hohoe, we hired a taxi driver named Baby Rasta for the day. It was Sunday when we wanted to explore the area, so there wasn’t really any cheaper forms of transportation available that day. Sundays are a big deal in Ghana because most of the people, in the south anyway, are Christians. We went to Mount Afadjato, which according to the guide book, and to the Ghanaians, is the tallest mountain. But, in reality it’s not the tallest mountain. They just say it is because it’s the tallest free-standing peak, which is right below a range where there are taller peaks.

The hike up was beautiful, if a little tiring. We were all feeling pretty bad about our levels of fitness as we haven’t been up anything higher than three flights of stairs in the last year.

The trail up was through a closed canopy forest, which is a big deal because we also haven’t seen one of those in the last year either. We saw coffee and avocado trees mixed in with the others. The views from the top were amazing. We could see a waterfall on the range nearby and rolling hills in every direction.

This hike was a great example of eco-tourism. They have an entrance fee that we had to pay, and a ranger went with us as a guide. He said that some of the fees go back to the village nearby so that they are rewarded for protecting their forests. So smart. There are big trees because of this.

As we were hiking down the mountain, we could hear the church service in the small village. The service was loud drumming that was booming up the mountain. No wonder things close down on Sundays; going to church means intense drumming sessions.

After we got back down the mountain, Baby Rasta took us to Wli (pronounced Vli) falls. This is the highest waterfall in West Africa at over 1000 feet tall. The pictures that we have are of just the lower falls.

You can’t hike to the upper falls in the rainy season because it’s too dangerous. This was quite the tourist destination for both non-Ghanaians, and Ghanaians. It’s really cool that Ghanaians actually travel around their country and see the beautiful sights. This is something that we just don’t have in Gambia, maybe because it’s not as beautiful, and maybe because people here just don’t have extra money they can spend. The walk to the falls was beautiful, and easy, after our trip up and down the mountain. The falls produce an amazing about of spray, and we got soaked just standing next to it. James, Alex, Annie and Maggie all went swimming in the pool below the falls, but I decided I was ok with going swimming in the spray next to the falls, besides, someone had to take pictures.

On the way back to Hohoe it started to rain. As we pulled into the town center, there was a man completely naked standing under an awning out of the rain. On this trip we saw at least two naked men. We don’t see that in The Gambia, so we found it funny.

While staying in Hohoe, we ate a lot of beef and sausage skewers on the street. They are about $0.75 each and two of them are really enough for dinner. They also had gizzard skewers, so we thought of my grandfather a lot because he likes to push pickled turkey gizzards on unsuspecting guests. Alex would pass the grandfather test, as he actually purchased, ate, and liked gizzard on a stick. Mmmmm.

After Hohoe we headed to Kumasi which is a huge city in the center of the country. There is a population of 1.5 million there, which is the same as the population of all of Gambia. Kumasi is the center of the Ashanti region. The Ashanti tribe is known for their craftsmanship and culture. They still have a king to this day. They weave kente cloth which is beautiful, and they carve stools, and have wonderful statues and masks. We tried to do our souvenir shopping here.

In Kumasi, there is a Peace Corps transit house where we stayed for three nights. There is a PCV who stays at this house who is on his fifth year as a volunteer. I think that says something about how nice Ghana is. He is probably in his 50s, and has just decided that he’s got a good gig going, so why go back to America. He’s now applying for a job with PC Ghana, so I guess he’s pretty comfortable there. Anyway, we explored the city on our first day there. We checked out the cultural center which was nice. There are several artists who have workshops there and of course the sell their art, so we bought some beautiful paintings for about $10 each. It’s the first time that I’ve been able to afford a real painting that is bigger than 5x7. We also found the central market there, which was a bit of a challenge because the maps in the guide books were a little off, and the directions we got from people were also a little off. In the guidebook it says that viewed from above, the market looks like a shanty town. Well, we found a shanty town instead of the market, and because it rainy season, the streets were so muddy. I had seen several people walking around with socks under their flip-flops, and I wondered why, but when we got into the shanty town mud, I understood the purpose of those socks. When we finally did find the real market, we ladies bought fabric, kente cloth, and beads. After we finished up there, we headed back to the transit house to celebrate Alex’s 27th birthday. We made a big pot of chili, some guacamole, and pina coladas. The avocadoes are about $0.20 each and the pineapples are about the same. All in all it was a good day.

The next day, we went to Lake Bosomtwi. This lake is sacred to the Ashanti people because they believe that their souls go to this lake after they die to say goodbye to the god Twi. They don’t use dugout canoes there because they feel that the separation alienates the spirits in the lake. They instead paddle on planks, using calabash bowls as paddles in their hands.

We saw several young men out fishing on these planks.

We took a walk on a road that goes around the lake and ended up at a beautiful guest house where we ate lunch, had a couple drinks, and swam in the lake with souls and Twi. While all of this is great, we did see a speed boat moored in the lake and in the guide book there is mention of jet-skis. I truly hope this lake doesn’t go the way of Walloon. Sadly, I can picture this lake in 10 years with more and more houses and guest houses built up along the shore.For now, it's just nice.

That's it for today. Tune in soon for the rest of the story...Check out Picasa too for more pictures of our trip. Miss you all.

Love,

Tavi

We are leaving for Ghana tomorrow morning at 5:55 a.m. We are so excited to have a vacation, but it doesn't quite feel real yet. We are flying out of Dakar, so our first adventure is getting there. We'll take a lot of pictures and try to think about interesting things to say on our blog when we get back. Until then, stay lose.

Thanks Elaine and David for the care package!

Love,

Tavi

This was the day that our host mom collected a ridiculous amount of water.

Bath time...no soap though

mmmm...this is a yummy cat fish head. She was so thrilled to eat it. I don't understand how American kids get so picky. She loves dried fish (so yucky). She ate a can of sardines...she just eats everything.

It's really interesting to watch kids develop and think about childhood development. This little girl is probably 20 months old. The other day, she was peeing on the porch (this is normal) and for the first time she pulled down her underwear before peeing. My host mom and I were watching her and host mom looked at me and said, "Now Kaddy is a big girl, she pulled her pants down." No one taught her this, no one congratulated her on being so smart, no one got all uptight about her peeing on the porch, she just learned by observing others I guess. The next day, Kaddy was standing on the 'kiting'(what the buckets of water are sitting on above)and she started peeing. I'm not sure if she had on underwear this time, if she did, she didn't pull them down, but she was holding a cup of water. She stood there and peed, then looked at the cup of water, and poured it down her front and onto the kiting to wash away the urine. She's growing up so quickly.

Thanks Kevin and MaryBeth and Doug and Jo for the care packages. We really appreciate them! Thanks others of you for the birthday cards and letters for James. It makes us feel so good to hear from people at home.

Love,

Tavi

We live in the tropics! I think about this sometimes and become really happy. This generally happens when it's probably around 80 and breezy and it feels great outside. When it's 100 and 90% humidity, I become less excited about this fact. But I do like walking down the street and looking around and seeing palm trees and hearing the birds, and having access to tropic foods. We've been here for ten months. A new group of education volunteers is swearing in tomorrow. We are no longer the 'newbies.' It's crazy to talk to them because it makes me realize that I really do know a little something about living and working here.

It's Ramadan now, so people are fasting from sun up to sun down. It's a little intense because they don't even drink water during the day. This makes people generally a little grumpy. I thought about fasting, but got a bad fever for a couple days which turned into a cold and I decided against it. I also decided that if I am going to fast, it is not going to include MSG when I break fast. To me fasting seems like a clensing thing, and Ramadan seems like it's more about suffering all day until you break fast in the evening with the same types of foods that are eaten all the time...MSG included. As you can imagine, James never intended on fasting. He just tells people that his stomach doesn't agree with not eating. Ramadan will be over in about two weeks, but we'll be in Christian Ghana for the end of Ramadan. Our host sister, Jansaba, was a little disappointed with us for not being around for the celebration at the end of Ramadan. We're not disappointed though, we'll be soaking in another W. African country.

The following pictures are from a trip we took to the rice fields. We didn't work this day, but we have gotten our feet and hands dirty in the rice fields before.

Just nice

Rice waiting to be transplanted.

This tractor was stuck in the rice field.

So, I had fun playing on it.

Working alone. She's planting rice seedlings in her field. It's called tuturoo in Mandinka.

Having fun during a break between two plots.

Playing in the rice fields. These girls are all around 14-16 years old.

Here come the moms...better get to work.

getting to work

These women do this all day long.

This type of work really hurts my hamstrings. No, I learned my lesson, I did not join these girls.

Bringing rice seedlings for her friends. This girl had to take the leadership role sinice this is her family's plot.

I feel like this girl could have been a basketball player. Look at that follow through. Instead, she is 15, and beautiful, and can't read or write, or play sports. She's a girl...girls don't play sports or go to school.

Close up of tuturo

We have been down in Kombo for too long, I think. But I don't really want to go back up country, so we will go up after J's birthday. I seems that I'm in a phase where I'm struggling to be happy here. That being said, I wrote a grant proposal with one of the communities we're working with and submitted it to the United Nations Development Project (UNDP), so I feel pretty good about that. The proposal is for a garden that this community needs. It will have a chain-link fence and all metal fence posts(as opposed to mahogany and rose wood posts), it will have two nice concrete wells, and we will develop a live fence for when the metal one fails years from now. The live fence will be Jutropha, which produces a nut that you can press for bio-fuel, or pesticide, so hopefully the community can eventually use their live fence for more than a fence. We will also be creating a community compost pile for the garden members to use. I'm pretty certain it will get funded in the next couple of weeks, which is sooner than I thought. The total cost that I'm requesting from UNDP is around $13,000, which seems like a lot, but the wells are deep, and metal expensive but better than contributing to deforestation and cutting down tree limbs for fence posts.

Rose Wood

African Mahogany (Which is illegal to cut down, but you can cut limbs off the tree, so that's what this is.)

James is starting a cool project with GIS. He and two other volunteers are going to try to create a pretty comprehensive map of The Gambia, and PC's roll in The Gambia, volunteer projects, and sites, etc.) He's pretty excited about the prospect of gaining some practical experience with GIS, so that's good for him.

On a different note, we are going on VACATION next month to Ghana. We're going with three other PCVs. It will be a really nice crew to travel with I think. We are flying out of Dakar, Senegal to Accra, Ghana in about a month and we're taking two weeks to check out some of the country. I think we'll be trying to hook up with PCVs down there so we can get the inside scoop on what's good. I've heard nothing but good things about Ghana. It seems like there will be some good art work and culture, and hills. We really need a vacation, so we're pretty excited. I know it probably seems like we don't do much, but just living here is like a full time job sometimes.

Tengi

James got his first bought of Dysentery last week. So, that was fun. He was doing wildlife surveys on a beach south of here at a park called Tengi. They were looking for sea turtles, but only saw three dead ones. Anyway, somehow he got some fecal mater in his mouth, either via food or water, and it happened to contain Dysentery. He started getting sick around 4 in the afternoon, and went to the Med Unit at nine that evening. He was lucky that the Department of Parks and Wildlife could give him a ride to the Med Unit. The nurse gave him an anti-nausea shot, and some antibiotics, so he was able to get better pretty quickly. He was lucky to be down country, as opposed to our site, because he wouldn't have gotten treatment nearly as quickly. We do have antibiotics that we can start taking with permission from the nurse, but I'm sure we would have waited a day or two to call, just to see if he got better. He lost about 7 to 10 pounds over night, but has started gaining it back. He was only sick for two days.

Sunset at Tengi

I got hit by a guy on a bicycle yesterday, which is maybe why I'm feeling a little sorry for myself today. We were crossing a busy road and there was a long line of cars, and I stepped out from in between two cars, right in front of a biker. He was going really fast, but in slow motion I feel like I could have moved out of the way. James says he was going too fast. He hit me in the face with his head, and that impact knocked me on my ass. He fell off his bike, and got up and started apologizing immediately. My cheek bone is pretty tender today, but mostly it just hurt my ego.

Hope you are all healthy and happy.

Love,

tavi

It's really good that we have a bit of a porch because if we didn't we would have had at least 6 inches of water in our house.

We put out buckets to collect water. Our host mom was way better at it than us though. She collected maybe 1000 Liters of water during one storm.

This is James, post shower, dealing with our water collection buckets. By post shower I mean he actually took a full on shower in the rain. I tried to, but as soon as I soaped up, the rain stopped, so I had to rinse with rain water that we collected.

The rains have come. The storms here are crazy because you can see them from so far away because it's so flat here. The lightning is also really intense, like a strobe light sometimes. It's so green now, opposed to the brown that we were used to. As many of you know, green is my favorite color, so I'm thrilled to be able to see it. It's amazing what a difference green makes on the landscape.

Maybe we have gotten busy over here, or maybe things are not as shocking as they were when we first got here but here are a couple pictures to keep you interested.

Dad and the boys ploughing the field with Rufus.

This is the oldest guy in a village that we work with. He can't really talk, but he's really enthusiastic.

He saw James taking his picture and got really excited. He did a little dance...

Garden work day. Digging post holes...

Making repairs to the kitchen roof before the rains come. Our family didn't repair theirs and half the roof blew off, so they had to repair it after that. I'm pretty sure the women got rained on a few times while making lunch.

I got bit by a Tetse fly. Those bites are itchy and painful.

Me and our friend Haija with Kevin on his naming ceramony day.

James at work on our Anniversary.

This little boy was born June 15. His name is Kevin, after James' dad. (He also has a Gambian name which is Sambo Lamin.)

We just got back from a all-volunteer conference. It was marvelous. We stayed at The Gambia's only 5 star hotel. Usually, this is not really my/our scene, but it was so different than our normal living conditions that it felt nice. Of course I was thinking about how crazy this world is, that there is a five start hotel right next to pretty extreme poverty. But, the bed was so soft, and the pool and the beach so nice, the air conditioning felt wonderful. I was able to sleep with out my hair getting soaked with sweat. In addition to relaxing, we had a few sessions. Both James and I led sessions as well. It was pretty fun to hang with all of the volunteers although, I am ready to get back to site.

Happy 4th everyone. I think the 4th is one of the hardest times for me to be away from home. I just have visions of the family hanging out in lawn-chairs eating brats and it makes me homesick.

Love,

tavi

Here's a short little story for you all. Our little sister Kaddy had Thrush which is a fungal infection of the mouth and throat. She couldn't eat for 2 days before they took her to the clinic. She got medication and so I was able to figure out what was wrong with her based on the meds they gave. I had asked my host mom what Kaddy had and she said koyoo, which means white. Anyway, the drugs worked and after about 3 more days of non-eating she started to eat. As you can see from the pictures, she is not a fat baby, so I was pretty worried. I kept on thinking about I.V.s and how good they are. When she had recovered they bought a chicken so that she could eat some good protein. She was eating a chicken drum-stick and started crying when it was all gone. They then bought her a tin of sardines and she ate almost the whole thing. I was so happy to see the oil running down her chin. It was scary...not being able to eat is not good. At least she could drink water.

So I had some time to sit around and upload video today. I'm busy typing up a summary of a community needs assessment for one of the villages we are working with. We'll continue to take more video and post them more frequently. I hope you enjoy.

There are also some pictures on picasa.

The woman on my right is our host mom's mother. She's sweet and has a brother in France so she likes to kiss me on both cheeks when she sees me.

Jansaba and me

Taking a break from village: Our friend Dave fileting the very large lady fish we bought at the Bakou fish market. It was over two feet long and we paid $8 for it.

Our friend Adrian and I preparing a rediculous amount of fish with a rediculous amount of butter. We don't eat butter very often, this was the first time in six months that I had access to butter.

Here Fatoumata was separating the peanuts from the shells. These particular peanuts are seeds for this year's crop.

I tried it for a second, but was spilling the peanuts in with the shells, so I stopped.

One of the weddings had a kora player there. This is the ancestor to the banjo.

Our mom can dance

Main Street Jakaba

Before

After

Our host mom, Fatoumata, and me in her new bitik (store)

James and Jansaba dressed up for a wedding

I'm standing in our living room. The building directly behind me is the kitchen. Notice the ass in the background.

My new shirt, a local favorite

It's really hot

The girls. I'm with Yai and Kaddy here.

She's cute

All dressed up

Cutting boards don't exist here

Dancing

I'm helping cut onions for the wedding feast

Cooking Dinner for the Wedding

Thank You

I’m so happy to report that people have already donated enough money for 70 bed nets, 35 for our village and 35 for Wuli District. Thank you so much for those of you who donated. It will mean a lot to the people here to have bed nets. Malaria is very bad. The rainy season is just starting so soon I will unfortunately be able to elaborate on how bad it is.

Traveling in The Gambia

I knew that today would be interesting because it started with cow’s feet for breakfast. This is the first time that we had this delicacy, which I have to admit I didn’t fully try. It was in a really rich broth though so I dipped my bread in that. James decided that if people ate pig’s feet then why not try cow’s feet. It was pretty fatty (other wise known as all fat) hence the rich broth and, he said it wasn’t bad. I was about to try some but as I was going for it James said, “You even got a hoof on yours.” Sure enough, at the end of the bone was the half of the hoof so I couldn’t bring myself to try it. I’m ok with that. I’ve tried enough other animal parts to feel like I’m expanding my horizons.

The rest of the day wasn’t that interesting, but I thought it’d be a fun way to start an entry. We traveled down to Kombo and travel days are always long and hot and dehydrating. We left the house at 11:00 a.m., much later than we wanted but we were waiting for James’ boss to show up on site visit. We got dropped by PC in Wassu and got a ride 40 minutes later. We were feeling great about this ride because the gele-gele wasn’t crowded and we had window seats. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I said out loud, “Wow, we are really lucky today, this might be the most comfortable gele-gele yet.” Of course our luck changed when we got to Ferrafeni. We got on a super crowded gele-gele there where we were squished 5 people across when really only 4 people can fit in the row. James, ever the gentleman, sat in the middle seat with not much padding over the metal bars that had been welded together to make the extra seat. To make matters more uncomfortable there wasn’t a back to this seat. Needless to say he wasn’t in the greatest mood. Let me remind you that it’s probably around 110 degrees during this whole trip. At some point during this two hour leg of the trip, a couple people got off the gele, so James was able to find a more comfortable seat, and it cooled off to 100, so that was nice.

The ferry is quite the scene here. When we arrived there was a huge line of cars. It made us happy that we would cross without one. When you go to the ticket window there is no such thing as a line. You just have to push your way to the window and hope that you make it to the front with out getting pick pocketed. We have the added perk of not being forced to wait in the holding pen before boarding the ferry. We can wait with the cars which is really nice. We made the mistake once of waiting in the holding pen and it was really intense. There were hundreds of people waiting to fit through a small gate. As the anticipation builds the people crowd closer to the gate even though it is not opening. It’s the kind of scene where if you fell, you would get trampled. I will avoid this at all costs in the future. Once the ferry shows up, the ride is between 30 minutes and an hour.

In all it took us 8 hours to get to Kombo which is maybe a 2 hour drive in the states. And it’s a lot hotter, and there is no air conditioner. And, it’s not advisable to drink much water when traveling because you don’t have much control over stopping and going when you need to. And, if you do stop, then chances are the public latrine will be disgusting. The public latrine in Ferrafeni is so fowl that you can smell it least 10 yards away.

The New Things (or are they old?)

Sweat is the new air conditioner.

The shadow is the new mirror.

Sour milk is the new yogurt.

80 degrees is the new 60.

Bug bites of unknown origin are the new entertainment.

Bean sandwiches are the new taco.

People Here Love Obama

There is Obama-Lube motor oil. There are Obama restaurants. A community group we are working with is called Obama Yiriwa Kafo (Yiriwa means development, Kafo means group). At every market there are Obama shirts and bags. There are Obama posters up in restaurants. There are Obama stickers everywhere. When you walk by people they yell out Obama.

Dirt Floors

Our host mom’s floor is dirt. People don’t spend much time inside, so it doesn’t really seem like that big of a deal. But the fact remains that her floor is dirt. So the other day she was repairing it in preparation for the rains. I was sitting around and started to smell manure and went out to check out what was going on. Our mom was pretty hyper and told me what she was doing in a very hyper way. She had a mixture of mud and manure that was pretty thin and she was spreading it on the floor to fix up the dents that had occurred over the last year. I will say that it looks nicer now.

Our host family is pretty well off by rural Gambian standards. Our host mom probably makes around $300-$400 a year and our host father also works. They also have family overseas (in Spain and France) so they have a little help coming in from the outside. Our host family has dirt floors. But they have cement walls around their compound and their houses are made of cement instead of mud bricks. They have corrugate roofs instead of grass. This all signifies that they are well off.

I have a hard time understanding that the people we live with live in poverty. Sometimes I’m shocked when I look around and realize that it’s true. That this is what poverty is. But I think that urban poverty is much worse than rural poverty. Every time we come to town I realize this again. On our last trip down yesterday I saw kids walking through heaps of trash that edge a muddy marsh area, which is also full of trash. Dirty pigs also walk through the same heaps of trash, routing around for food. The only thing I could think of was the fact that these kids are walking barefoot in garbage and pig shit. I don’t know what they were looking for, but I’m fairly certain it wasn’t food. Where do you draw the line on defining poverty?

It rained

for the first time this season on 6.2.09. We danced with the kids. And then we slept inside that night because it was raining lightly outside. We both woke up in the middle of the night in a pool of sweat. It was so disgusting. Our mattress is foam, so I accidentally thought of it like a sponge. Yuck. I had to roll over out of my pool of sweat and hoped that maybe it would dry before I accidentally rolled back in it. I’m trying to hone the ability to fan myself and sleep at the same time. It hasn’t rained since, so we’re back outside for the time being. I think we’ll be hanging up a tarp so we can sleep outside in the rainy season.

Mangoes

I accidentally bought 27 mangoes the other day. They cost just over $1. The women at the market sell mangoes in piles of three. I wanted a certain kind of mango (Sierra Leon) so I asked our host mother to help me find them. When she asked how many I wanted I said 9. I meant 9 mangoes; she thought I meant 9 piles. It was an ok mistake to make though because those mangoes are really, really good. I dried a bunch of them, and gave a bunch to the family. Every time I think about 27 mangoes I laugh. That’s a lot of mangoes.

The Meaning of the Word ‘SAD’

The other day I was pretty frustrated and sad. I was missing home, frustrated with ‘work,’ or the lack there of, and hot. So James and I were in Kuntaur and I was going to work the weekly vaccination clinic. The women were all waiting around and the nurses were just starting to show up. James was looking for a chair to borrow and ran into this guy who claimed to be second in charge. He was drunk (which is rare here in this mostly Muslim country). He was bossy and bothering me. He wants us to go over to the Public Health Officer’s house to talk to him. I’ve been there enough to know that the PHO will show up when he shows up. But he comes out of his house and tells us that he just has to have tea before he sits down or he won’t be able to get up from the table. The women in this country are really busy. They do everything related to surviving, and they are all sitting there waiting for this young guy to have his breakfast by 11:00 a.m. I guess it must have pissed me off because I walked into the ‘lab’ and started crying, hard. James tried to keep the PHO out and let me collect myself, but instead he came in. He thought someone in America must have died for me to be crying like this. So, I decided to sneak out of there and go for a bike ride and get my act together. I rode over to the river and read for a while and then peddled home the long way around the rice fields. By the time I got back I was feeling better, but for some reason I decided it would be a good idea for me to share my emotions with my host family. I mean we are here for cultural exchange, and I figured this was part of it. But that was a VERY bad idea. I started crying again and tried to explain that I was sad. My host sister who is 14 did not know the Mandinka word for ‘sad.’ She had never heard it. Can you imagine a 14 year old not knowing the word sad? I tried to explain in Mandinka that I just missed America and that I was just sad and that I’d be fine. This is not an easy thing to do between sobs. My host mother got very upset and was wondering if maybe I wanted to go back to America. It took me a while to convince her that I did not want to go to America. At some point she must have called her husband and he came home from work to figure out what was wrong with me. When I said I was just sad, my host father new the word that my 14 year old sister did not know. But, just being sad wasn’t a good enough reason for my tears. James finally said that it was work that was frustrating and that I am very smart and the work here isn’t stimulating enough. (This was also in Mandinka and didn’t include words like frustrating or stimulating or enough. It sounded more like, “Kaddy’s brain is sweet and the work here is difficult because it’s writing only.” But they understood.) That will hopefully be the last time I cry in front of them. I learned my lesson and that culturally, it’s inappropriate to cry in public after the age of 12 unless someone dies.

Hope you are all well and enjoying the early summer.

Love,

Tavi

We have seen a lot of music here. Drums a lot of the time are these big bidongs (plastic containers sometimes called 'jerry cans' for transporting water). Women have good rhythm and they will have random dancing sessions, pretty much every time they have a meeting. I have only heard Mandinka rhythms and seen Mandinka dancing, but I guess the dances and rhythms of the other tribes are different. We have also heard the kora, which is the ancestor to the banjo. It's pretty cool to hear, but pretty different from the banjo. And, the other day at this wedding we also saw an upside-down gourd (a bowl) floating in a bigger metal bowl filled with water. It created a crazy base sound and vibrations in the water. It was really cool.

The dancing is super energetic and intense. Like I said above each tribe has their own style. Mandinka dancing includes some pretty loud stomping and intense arm swinging. There is also some flashing of stomachs or breasts. Evidently Wollof dancing includes flashing of legs/thighs, etc. At the wedding we were at, shirts flew off and got thrown away by other women. It's a crazy thing to see. Dust is flying, shirts are flying, arms are flying and legs are stomping. It's fun. I'm going to learn how to do it. Oh, the other thing is there is scandalous booty shaking that occurs. Most people here have very nice booties and know it, so they shake them in your general direction if you are watching them dance. It's fun.

I hope this was a nice change from the depressing topics of HIV, Malaria, and inherent violence.

James and I will be back down to Fajara (computer access) in June. We are coming down for our anniversary and for an all-volunteer meeting. I'll do my best to keep writing while I'm away, so I have a lot of interesting little stories to tell.

Love,

Tavi

Here is some interesting reading about the country we live in. Some of the information is slightly alarming, but don't worry, it's safe for us to be here. Peace Corps is very careful with us. Please know that I will not comment on the politics here, and perhaps any comments on this particular article should be emailed to me rather than publicly displayed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/africa/21gambia.html?_r=1

Love,

Tavi

Everyday, at least once, I hear a Gambian child say, "Toubab, give me..." followed by "minty," (candy) "money," or "pen." Mostly (not mostly, every time) we say no, and mostly it get's really old to hear every single day. But there was this website set up by two RPCVs (returned volunteers) from The Gambia with the aim of raising money to buy bednets for areas in The Gambia that have the fewest resources. This brings me to "Toubab, give me bednet."

Every dollar donated is matched by Against Malaria which is an NGO. Each bednet costs between $4 and $5 and every dollar donated goes to buying nets, there is no overhead taken out. The goal is to raise $40,000, which will be matched to become $80,000. This will buy 18,000 bednets which will be distributed both in my village and in an area called "Wuli District" in the most remote part of The Gambia, the Upper River Region. Wuli means hot in Pular, one of the 3 major languages here. The fact that it's so hot, and so remote means that this area has some of the highest rates of Malaria in The Gambia.

I just had Inservice Training where we learned more technical skills that will help me do my jobs here. During IST we had a representive in from the National Malaria Control Program and he said that there were not enough bednets in this country for every bed to have one. So unlike pens and minties, the people here actually need bednets. They also need to use them, so along with raising money this program will work on education and statistics to measure reduction in Malaria as a phase two.

SO YOU CAN HELP...HERE IS A LINK TO MY FUNDRAISING SITE. If you know me, you know I don't like asking people for things, so I hope you all realize that this is really important. I know times are tough back home, but if you can consider helping people protect themselves against Malaria.

ANOTHER WAY YOU CAN HELP IS TO PASS THIS LINK TO OTHERS, even if you can't donate maybe someone you know can. You can even copy and paste this blog post and email it to other people.

http://www.AgainstMalaria.com/tavibrandenburg

Love,

Tavi

5/16/09

As a lot of you know I'm pretty interested in sexual and reproductive health, so I thought I'd share some observations with you. Here in The Gambia people practice polygamy. According to Islam a man has to draw the line at four wives and only take another wife if he is going to continue to treat them all the same and meet their needs equally, financially and otherwise. This is obviously virtually impossible, being human and all. Now, the fact that Islam draws the line at four wives is good because evidently back in the day when there were kings in West Africa, before Islam, men (kings and other rich guys) could have a hundred wives. Ok, so now HIV is here which makes polygamy a little dangerous. (This means a monogamous relationship, that I always talked to my students about, includes a lot more risk because there are more people involved.) This isn't even taking in to consideration that many people have affairs. Maybe they have affairs because marriages are generally arranged, so people aren't necessarily in love with their spouse. Back to HIV (and we might as well throw in other STIs). There is the obvious, if one other the wives gets HIV, or the husband does, then all the other wives are also likely to get HIV and then it can be passed on through breast milk or the birthing process to a baby. But the not-so-obvious is that they practice wife inheritance here. This means when a man's brother passes away (maybe of complications related to AIDS, for example) and no one knows what he dies of, brother's wife is 'inherited' by one of the other brothers in the family. If the husband died because of AIDS complications, she is likely HIV+ and probably does not know it, and will then pass on the virus to the new family. I don't even know how to feel about this right now. Yesterday it made me cry.

The other common way that HIV is transmitted is through traditional tribal practices. Here it is considered beautiful by many people to tattoo their gums black (ouch), or to give themselves scars using a razor blade and rubbing ash into the cut. A lot of times they share the needles or razor blade when this is occurring. They also practice male and female circumcision here where many times they are using the same blade on all the boys or all the girls being circumcised during the ceremony (usually held every couple of years in each area). Now let's pretend that a mother passed HIV to her baby (unknowingly because she hasn't been tested) and then sends that baby to a circumcision ceremony. Oh, this makes my heart hurt for so many reasons.

I'll try to think of something more upbeat to write about next time, like eating Hippo meat.

Lots of Love,

Tavi

There seems to be a lot of violence in this culture. It's not overt, in your face violence most of the time, and I rarely ever see real beatings occuring, but it still seems to be a violent culture. For example, the funny joke is, "I'm going to beat you!" But it sounds so much more harmless when it's in Mandinka and not English. It actually sounds like the funny joke it is. Another example is teaching young children and babies how to "beat" their siblings, and small animals (or stuffed animals. Now this beating really is lightly hitting, but still. So, we have our one year old sister who is now learning how to beat her older siblings and a stuffed dog that was given to her by the previous PCV, with a stick. So this is all a little funny, but then the problem is James and I were riding our bikes home and we saw 3 four year olds actully hitting small kitens with straw (not a stick, but still).

The favorite toys for babies and todlers around here are knives and other sharp objects. There is quite the different level of baby proofing that occurs here. Like, "I'm going to beat you if you eat dirt," to our one year old sister. Or ha ha, Kaddy at dirt for breakfast, lunch and dinner. (Dirt here is really germy, not like the clean dirt in America.)

Speaking of eating dirt, I'm not sure if I wrote about this already, but it's funny, and grose, so I'll write it again briefly. Our little sister Kaddy really eating likes mud more than dirt. One time she was eating mud that had been made mud by her own urine. Yum.

That's all for now.

I added a few more photos to picasa. Link is to the right: Photos 3.

We are headed back to site tomorrow and we're both a little nervous about culture shock. When you've been in The Gambia for 6 months being in the Kombos feels like being in a 'developed' country. When you first get here it doesn't feel like that at all. Anyway, it'll be interesting to go back to 'the family' structure, and to the heat. We heard from some of our friends that the heat has finally come to up-country. I think it was pretty hot before we came down here, but evidently that wasn't the realy heat.

I'll be back down on May 11th for some more in-service training. This time it's heath and community development. I don't think James is going to come down with me but you never know.

Stay well. Love, Tavi

4.27.09

I really need to work on this whole writing-things-down-when-they-happen thing. It’s crazy how many little things happen that are interesting and I think to myself, I really need to write about this, but then I don’t and so now I may or may not be able to remember everything I wanted to write. I’ll get better at this.

First of all, thank you all for sending us care-packages and letters. It really makes our month to hear about things going on at home, and the treats have been amazing.

A while ago I went up to Bansang to visit our friend Marnie and to go to a Regional Health Team meeting, and then I went to near Basse to visit our friend Rachel. James stuck around at home. This was the first time that I’ve traveled alone here in the Gambia. It’s not really a big deal up country, but I feel like when I come back down to Fajara in a couple of weeks I’ll be a little nervous to be alone. Anyway, it was really nice to have some time with the ladies. When I was visiting Rachel we went for an awesome walk to the river and to a cliff that over looks the river. There is a great view from this cliff and a nice little swimming area where we hung out most of the day. Mostly we chatted, but at one point we got to watch a man take a bath with sand. He made a nice little pile next to the water’s edge so that he had access and then, just like you would use soap, he scrubbed his whole body with sand. It was a little funny, but practical non-the-less.

Gambians don’t like it when you go out under the sun during the middle of the day. Every time we do, we get scolded. “The sun! The sun is hot! The sun!” Yes, but we needed to go under the sun to get where we were going. They also try really hard to keep you where ever you are until at least 5. This is the case even if you show up somewhere at 9 in the morning. I mean I guess that’s how long a work day is in the states, but it can be pretty challenging to be stuck at someone’s house. It will just take practice saying ‘no, I have to leave now.’ They just don’t want you to miss lunch, or to go anywhere under the sun in the middle of the day.

Our host mom has discovered that James is stubborn. They ‘fight’ about him going to fetch water for us and now he tries to sneak or run. One time our mom said, “If you go to the pump I’m going to put on pants and we’re going to fight.” It was pretty funny (sorry it I wrote about this already, I can’t remember). Anyway, lately she has been saying. “Bakari kungo bambanta baake.” Which means: Bakari’s head is very strong. I told her that James’ mom would agree on that one. It’s nice that they are starting to get to know us. The thing is, our host mom is as big, or bigger, than James, solid muscle and she’d probably kick his ass if she did ‘put on pants’ and fight him.

TIME ALONE

I don’t get much time alone (I’ll expand on this below). This is because we live in a two room hut (actually bigger than the cave Katri and Dan were living in for a while, but with less stuff). We spend a lot of time together, which I am happy to say is working out really well. Who knew that you could spend every second with another person and still like him or her, even love him or her, at the end of the day? Well, it’s possible. We are working together a lot more than I thought we would too. So anyway, I don’t get much time alone. One day James when to the garden with our sister to help her out and I was at home by myself. I took a bucket-shower and was hanging out in the back hard writing in my journal and really appreciating this time to myself. There wasn’t much noise in the compound for a few minutes then a baby started crying. I noticed it and was reflecting on time alone and having quiet in my life, and then one of the host brothers brought the crying baby to our front door and started calling my name. I started crying. It’s hard adjusting to ALWAYS having something going on, especially coming from being an only child in a pretty quiet house hold. I’m getting to the point that I might forget how to act when I have time alone.

THE BUMPSTERS IN THE BIG CITY

The other day, I went for a walk on the beach. We are down in the Kombos for the Ag-Fo in-service training. I was feeling really good about this walk because I was going by myself. I don’t get much time to myself, really any time to myself. But I experienced what the other women here experience more frequently. Bumpster is a nice term for man-whore. The very first set of pictures I put on the blog included a picture of some of our friends acting like bumpsters doing push ups on the beach. So these guys come from all over The Gambia to make money by attracting the attentions of mostly European ladies. I think the secret hope of all of these guys is to get a free trip out of The Gambia by marrying one of these ‘nice ladies.’ So, when a woman walks down the beach, there are a lot of attempts to get her attention by saying things like, ‘Hi, nice lady,” or ‘Hi, boss lady.” Yuck! “What is your nice name?” So, I was on my way there and this pretty fancy BMW SUV roles up and I hear them say, ‘excuse me.’ I forgot where I am for a minute and just thought they’d be asking me for directions. I thought that it was weird because I don’t look like the typical candidate for direction giving in the Gambia. Anyway, I took a step toward the car and realized that there were three really big (as in strong-big, not fat-big) Gambian men in there. I started walking away pretty quickly because it just seemed sketchy and the driver gets out of the car and comes toward me saying excuse me, I just want to talk to you. I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable going near a car full of men. He was like I just want to talk. I’m still walking away at this point and he asks if I care to give him my number. Hell no! What are you thinking, creepy man? No, I don’t care to give you my number.

The rest of the walk was pretty uneventful until I got to where I was about to turn around and I saw a huge jelly-fish (over a foot in diameter) and alive still. So I’m checking it out pretty intently when this other bumpster comes up to chat. This guy knows some of the other PCVs in the country and so James and I had talked with him before. He seems genuine enough so I don’t know if he’s a real bumpster, but I think so. Anyway, he was trying to get me to give his (friend’s) number so that a PCV who he knows can call him. He was telling me to have her call before 8:30 in the morning because that’s when he leaves the compound for ‘the struggling.’ What is ‘the struggling’ you may wonder. Well it includes going to his brother’s house to watch T.V. before reporting to the beach to do whatever bumpster-ish activities he does. It’s not easy.

IT’S NOT EASY AND THE SUN IS HOT

Gambians really like to state the obvious. I talked already about the Gambians not liking us to go out in the hot sun. They also don’t like us to go out in the hot wind. When we are about to do something they don’t want us to do, they will say, ‘but the wind is big!’ Yes, the wind is big, but we have to get someplace, and we can tell that it’s windy. If it’s dusty, they will say, ‘but, the dust is happening.’ We like to turn this around on them because they obviously do work even if it’s dusty or windy or hot. It’s always dusty or windy and hot. They also like to say other obvious things like, ‘you are sitting.’ This generally happens if they don’t have anything to say and they’ve already exhausted the greetings. And we reply, ‘yes, I’m sitting.’ Sometimes we’ll say back, ‘you are standing’ and they thing that’s really funny. Every morning when we get up we have to open the door and greet the compound. I already wrote about what we say, but the funny part is that they always ask whoever opened the door where the other is. It’s obvious that the other person is in the house because there is only one way to leave the house and they would have known if one of us left early. But always I have to say, ‘Bakari is in the house.’ Where the hell do you think he is?

Another saying that we love is, ‘it’s not easy.’ This is generally said by those Gambians who speak English. I was at the clinic working and the nurse who was there said this over and over about working upcountry at the clinic. No, it’s not easy, but it’s not that hard either. They say this about everything they do. The other thing that Gambians who speak English love to say is; we are just managing. It’s not easy.

IN-SERVICE TRAINING

We just finished our IST yesterday. This was the ag-fo IST, but I went to it too because they were learning cool stuff. We spent two days mostly talking about bee keeping, then two days about fruit trees and tree grafting, and then we went to this awesome farm to discuss gardening. The bee keeping was awesome and we’ll definitely bring this back to the states with us (the concepts, not the bees). We are planning on making some bee hives when we go back to site and try to bait some bees. Then we’ll get some bee suits and other gear to protect us from the crazy and aggressive African bees (that’s an exaggeration). They are more aggressive than the European bees that we have in America, but neither of us got stung through our suits. I got stung once when I went bee keeping with a local during training, but they didn’t all come and attack me like I was expecting. Anyway, it’s amazing to open up the hive and check out the comb and decide whether to take it or not. We also learned about processing the honey and the wax. We learned some lotion recipes that I’m pretty excited to try out as well. So that’s fun. Aren’t you all excited that we will have bees when we come back to the states? We are. The other things we learned were cool in the nerdy way that things are cool. We learned about soil additives like bio-char and bokashi compost, regular compost and quick compost. We also learned about low-tech methane gas collectors. Bio-char is basically carbonizing plant material with out burning it so that the carbon is retained and can be added to the soil. Bokashi is evidently very in-vogue right now in the gardening world. You can go on-line and order fancy kits from Japan or you can make your own. We probably won’t use the whole principle because it’s a little complicated, but it seems pretty cool. I won’t write much about compost because as you all know, compost happens. The methane-gas collector was pretty cool. I know that in VT there is ‘cow power’ being marketed, but I didn’t really know how it was collected or anything. It’s cool and worth looking into.

In two weeks I’ll be back down to the Kombos for the Health and Community Development in-service. I’m looking forward to the excuse of getting out of the heat again so soon. I have heard that it’s really hot up country, but it feels good next to the ocean.

15 YEAR OLDS CAN MAKE ME CRY

I thought that only 15 year olds in the States could make me cry. Well, they make me cry here too.

For breakfast a lot of times we get coos porridge (Monoo) and I really don’t like it. James will eat it, but I just don’t want to, it’s yucky. So, on those mornings I’ll make oatmeal. One morning our sister came into our house and caught me not eating. She gave me a little grief about it at that point. I cooked my oats and then we went to the lumo (market) and for lunch we had bean sandwiches, my favorite, so when we got home neither of us were hungry for the lunch that was waiting for us when we got back. James ate a little of it, but I failed to stir up the food on my side of the bowl before giving it back to her. When I gave it back she asked if I ate and I said no. So she started giving me this guilt trip like you wouldn’t believe. You’d think she was a Brandenburg or something. ‘What happened? Why didn’t you eat? You didn’t eat breakfast, and now you’re not eating lunch. Is the food not sweet?’ Wow. And, because I’m a Brandenburg I’m very susceptible to guilt trips. I looked at her and smiled then got up and walked in the house and started crying, hard. For the record, I was already feeling down and this just tipped me over the edge. I thought to myself while I was crying that I should be crying because of a teenager, but I was. What I learned from that, don’t forget to stir up the food bowl before returning it.

WORK

We are mostly working with villages to plan gardens. This means getting groups registered with the Gambian government so that we can apply for funding. The other day, before IST started we went to try to get this done. We have heard nightmares about trying to get this simple task accomplished. The first place we went was the tax office so that we could get a tax identification number. That was great and way smoother than we expected, but then we went to the justice department and that was horrible. There is a women working there who is in charge of the registration process who took one look at our friend Scott’s paper work (he went with us to register a group in his village) and said, oh, you can’t have that name. Then she looked at ours and was like, and you can’t have that name. I’m not sure what the word means that she didn’t like of Scott’s, but ours translates to development. There are evidently too many groups with these same names. The full name of the group we were trying to register was Obama Yiriwa Kafoo-Bakadagi (Obama Development Group-Bakadagi). She didn’t like that Obama was in there either; she said that she didn’t want to get involved in other country’s politics. The village picked out this name, not us. Anyway, James got pretty angry about the whole thing. I guess to make an annoying story short, Scott and I went back over and just had to change the names and re-type the first page (actually we had to re-type all of Scott’s constitution because he didn’t have an electronic copy) of the group constitution in order to get these groups registered. It was just amazing to see a non-functioning bureaucracy stand in the way of helping poor people better themselves.

Other than Gardens, we are trying to figure out what we want to work on. We are focusing on trying to gain practical, professional experience. Let’s face it, gardens are great, but we both need to be competitive when we get back into the U.S. job market. James has several ideas about how to accomplish this. He is thinking about putting together a couple of manuals, one on tree identification and one on integrated pest management for gardening. He’s also interested in doing some GIS mapping of The Gambia. He’s been in contact with a designer of a peanut-sheller that is designed for use in developing nations. I’m having a little more trouble deciding how exactly I can design my service to be more ‘professional’ in nature. I’m thinking that I’d like to get an idea of the Health curriculum here and try to create something that the schools can/will use, but we’ll see about that. I am actually focusing a little on teaching English as a second language right now because our host mom and a few other women in the village have expressed the desire to learn English. Plus, I’ll be able to help our 6 year old sister, Yai. The problem is I don’t know how to teach English as a second language, so I’m trying to learn. The other thing I’m trying to learn right now is how to teach phonics/reading and writing to Yai (she’s the first one in the family to go to school). I’m surprised that I’m not more focused on Health, but I just don’t want to weigh babies for the next two years, and I didn’t come to Africa to keep records for the nurses. Basically we have a lot of work to do secret-brainwashing people, but it’s not all clearly defined or easy to describe or understand.

HOPE YOU READ ALL THAT

I realize that was a very long posting following James’ long posting. I hope people actually take the time to read all that, and I hope that it was somewhat interesting. Oh, and yes, we do sleep under a bed net like they do in the movies. It’s kind of a hassle and I look forward to the day that we don’t have to sleep under one. I do appreciate the protective aspects of the bed net, including its ability to keep not only mosquitoes, but also big spiders, snakes, and rodents out of our bed.

Lots of Love,

Tavi

So, it has been a little more than five months since we left the states and it feels like we have done and seen so much. The thing is we will experience so much more.

We started our journey by flying from Vermont to Philadelphia for two days of pre pre-service training (staging). From there we took a bus to Newark, NJ to wait seven hours for our international flight. From Newark we flew to Brussels, Belgium and then to Dakar, Senegal and finally from there to Banjul, The Gambia. All, in less than twenty hours. Now our ten weeks of pre-service training has come and gone, we have completed our first three months of service, and next we have an additional intensive and hands-on technical training seminar in the Kombos.

During our time in country to thus far we have experienced a lot of firsts in our lives. We lived in two African villages, eaten with our hand (the right only) from a food bowl, participated in a naming ceremony (Kullio), taken bucket baths daily, woke nearly every morning at or around five by the call to prayer, experienced the local mode of transportation (Bush-Taxi or Gele Gele), witnessed the events of a significant Muslim holiday (Tobaski), drank locally brewed green tea (Attaya), observed two funerals, hiked twelve miles in the bush, taken a wildlife viewing boat trip up one of the many tributaries of the Gambian River, watched the African sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset, and have gone to a wedding. But there is more and it is difficult to explain or share all of it with you. There are the stories about what happened when, and then there are the little things. At the time they are seemingly unimportant and meaningless but later when you have had time to reflect and think about them they mean so much more. You think to yourself wow or why. While these little things mean a lot to us. They are of little significance to those who have not experienced them. It will be those little things that make this journey ours and no one else’s. It feels and sounds a little selfish, but that it what makes this experience unique to us.

However, the stories are easier to share and allow us the opportunity to provide you a glimpse of our journey. Some we have shared with you already and others we have not simply because there are so many. Don’t worry we will try to share as many of them as we can with you. Unfortunately, some will be lost to time or forgotten memory.

Fishing at Site

Fish of various types are a key source of protein in our area as well as the rest of the country. Our village is located about 1 km from the river and is also near tidal irrigated rice fields. The local population often goes to the river or the canals in the rice fields to fish. Some fish with nets, others with spears, and only a few with rods. Some even catch fish with their hands. However, those fish are usually burrowed into the banks of the canals making it relatively easy to catch them by hand. Our host family usually goes to the canals to fish with spears and their hands; sometimes with a net. Spear fishing here is a fascinating event to witness. There are numerous people in the water up to their hips walking about throwing spears into the water. Most of the time they are only a few feet apart. Amazingly, no one gets speared; at least we haven’t seen it happen.

On one occasion I went fishing with my two oldest host brothers (Lamin and Secco Lamin) and my host father (Kalifa). We went to lowland area near the rice fields which had a small stream flowing through it. When we arrived a number of other people from our village were there. Usually, when one person goes several others follow because they don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to catch fish. Most if not all of the men and boys were fishing with spears and the women were fishing by hand. It was to narrow and choked with vegetation to use nets and rods. After surveying the scene I decided I would try my hand at it, but I would also remain separate from the main group. There was a bit of a commotion over the whole thing. Most were surprised that I was in the water spear fishing.

After a half hour to three quarters of an hour I had no luck. As I was making my way to dry land a few people noticed that I was bleeding from my legs. I didn’t get speared by anyone or myself. Apparently, there were leaches in the water and two of them had been attached to my legs. Everyone seemed to be extremely worried that I had come in contact with leaches and that I was bleeding. I even heard one person say something about the hospital in the local language. All of this started to concern me because I had no idea what they were so worried about. I began to wonder if the leaches here harbored some thing that would make me sick. Once I got back to our compound I decided to call the on-duty nurse and find out if there was anything to worry about. She said there were no parasites or viruses to worry about although there may be an allergic reaction. However, that did not occur. In the end not many fish were caught that day and I was safe. Since then we have come to find out that Gambians generally freak out when they see blood. Especially, toubab(white person) blood.

Funny Story.

Before I begin this story there are two things that you must be aware of. First, Gambians are aware of the concept of April Fools, however, they have not yet grasped a full understanding of it. Second, most if not all Gambians are deathly afraid of snakes.

Back in early March our host family, mainly our siblings, started to play little pranks on us. After each of which they would say “April Fools”. Since then we have heard stories from other volunteers about “April Fools” pranks that Gambians have played on them. While the Gambians understand the concept of pranks in general they don’t realize that April Fools is a one day occurrence. As the pranks continued we decided we would get them back with a joke of our own. However, we had trouble coming up with a good one.

So, April first came and the day had gone by without incident. That night a number of us including our host family and some of their friends had been hanging out in the compound. We had been chatting and enjoying the relatively cooler night air when our host father (Kalifa) said something that reminded me of my goal for that day. Get them back for all the pranks they had been playing on us. I continued to chat waiting for the opportunity to play a prank of my own. Twenty minutes or so later, I jumped up and ran a short distance away from everyone else. To make it appear that something was amiss. Several people asked what happened. At which point I said saa (Mandinka for snake). Everyone and I mean everyone jumped up from where they had been sitting or laying and scattered. Flashlights were instantly shinning looking for the snake. When they were unable to spot the snake they started to look towards me to point out where it was. This is when I completed my prank and said April Fools. Everyone paused for a second and once they had realized I had played a prank on them they started laughing. I had done such a good job of tricking everyone that we continued to talk for days after. Our family had even told a number of other people in the village about it.

Another thing I forgot to mention was that Gambians have a sense of humor. There are traditional joking relationships between families, regions and ethnic groups. A lot of times when you initially think someone is giving you or someone else a hard time they are generally joking with you. Because of the way they approach jokes and pranks is different from how we approach them it takes a little while to recognize their sense of humor.

4.26.09

James and I are both working on blog posts right now, but I figured a few pictures would keep your interest. We are thinking about spring right now. 80 degrees gives me the goose bumps. Really. We are still healthy and we'll post again in the next couple of days.

Looking out over the Bakou fish market.

A view of our home. I'll post more sometime, don't worry.

This was a really nice gift from my host mom. Ummmm, do I have to wear it?

My host uncle fixing a fishing net. He did a really nice job and did this for 4 days.

James and our friend Jes practicing Gambian Transportation

Very effective sex ed over here.

Our Trucks.

Me with our host mom (left) and host aunt (right).

James and I with the 'happy couple' on their wedding day. The bride did not smile once the whole day. I asked my mom why and she said it's because the bride is thinking about how her life has changed now and she isn't happy about it. We've seen her since though, and she's smiling.

James giving Rufus a hair cut.

It's mango season. One host sister teaching the other how mango eating is done.

This is our 14 or 15 year old sister. I taught her how to write her name. She didn't get to go to school when she was younger, but she's smart and wants to learn. She does the majority of work around the compound. She cooks lunch and dinner for the family which takes a few hours a day. She does the whole family's laundry (by hand, obviously). She goes to the community garden to water the family garden beds, and she goes to the rice fields when the family goes and sometimes when the don't go. When she works in the rice fields for other people she makes $3-4 a day. She's dressed up in this picture because she got to go to the town soccer match. This doesn't happen very often. She's supper sweet and gets mad at us when we sneak and do our own laundry, or when we don't eat what she made us. If any of my students are reading this, please feel lucky that you have the opportunity to learn. I know sometimes school is a drag, but at least you can all read and write your names, and other things.

Our mom came down to visit and to say goodbye to the volunteer who we replaced (Beth). We went to the beach and then made supa-maketti. It was nice.

Ok, that's it for now. People are waiting for the computer. We'll post more pics and our blog posts soon.

Lots of love and miss you all.

Tavi and James

We tried really hard to upload a lot of photos, but the Internet is so slow here. There are a few more in the photo link to the right. Hope you enjoy.

Dan asked for a bug/wildlife story. Below is a picture of a really big spider. That spider was crawling up James'shorts as he was putting them on. I saw this and commented, calmly, about a big bug crawling up the shorts. He took them off. Next thing I know he's jumping out of his boxers as well, as the spider was crawling up them as well. The spider ran behind a book shelf and we hunted it down. After killing it James exclaimed, "That thing was near my junk!"

We are headed back to site today. We have mixed feelings about this. It will be good to get home and good to see our family, but the beach is really nice here. Hope you are all well.

Love,

Tavi and James.

3.10.09

We are finishing up a lovely 6 days in the Kombos. The stodge (which is the hostel where we stay when we come down) is right near the beach, so we’ve had some lovely beach time. Things lately have been going really well. We came down here for a couple of meetings to get a garden project started in a village near ours. There was some grant money that just came through, so we’ll be able to get started as soon as we get back up country. It’s pretty exciting to have some work finally. There are actually three villages all together around ours that would like community gardens. At this point a lot of places don’t have gardens, so during the dry season, when they could be growing stuff, they don’t have much to do. So, it’s pretty cool to be able to jump in and work on this.

UPDATES

An update on the little boy that the car that we were in hit. Evidently he lived and is recovering. There is a volunteer on the island (McCarthy) so we were able to check in with her about his status. Evidently the boy is in nursery school, so he was probably 4 or 5. It’s crazy now when we walk places I get so nervous. People here are crazy drivers.

Another update about the boy who we helped who had gotten kicked in the mouth by a donkey: we’ve seen him a couple of times and his lip is completely heeled. The other day we were riding through his village and we were called over to his compound. We were with a couple of Gambians who spoke English, so they were able to translate for us. It turns out his family was so happy that we helped their kid that they gave us a huge bag of peanuts and a chicken. We didn’t have a camera with us, so we couldn’t take a picture, but we had to bike back home with a chicken hanging from the handle bars, upside down with the feet tied together. It was quite the funny sight. We were pretty touched that they thought to give us a chicken. A couple of times Reggie the Rooster freaked out on the way back and started flapping and squawking, and once it fell off and hit the ground with a thud. But it’s pretty exciting to know we have a chicken waiting for us when we get back.

Our family is still really awesome. The other day I went to the garden with Jansaba, our 14 year old sister, and she gave me a massage after because I had worked so hard. (I hadn’t really worked that hard either, I just helped her water the family garden beds.) Another time she essentially made me give James a massage because he had gone to fetch water…hmmm.

FOOD AND LIVING AT SITE

We have been cooking a few nights a week, and I’m pretty excited about the re-discovery of lentils. We just when shopping and bought food to bring up with us. We spent the equivalent of $52 on food that will last us for 2 months. We’ll supplement with veggies from up country. We’ve had some lettuce from our garden in the back yard which was a big hit. We have tomatoes, green beans, cilantro coming up which is nice. I can’t wait for these to be ready. We’ve had fresh milk a couple of times and sour milk too. The fresh milk is amazing, we had it with sugar in it and it was such a great treat. (Not even cold if you would believe it.) Also I have had it on coos, which is millet that they pound and steam. It’s good, it reminds me of cream of wheat in consistency. The sour milk is like yogurt, but thinner, and they put sugar in that too. We have that sometimes on the rice and raw peanut porridge, which is really good. I’ve also had sour milk cold out of a fridge (amazing how exciting fridges are when everything is warm). Water and sugar were added to the sour milk and then I drank it. It was like a smoothie (kind of) and really good, and cold.

We’ve gone swimming in the river a couple of times. It’s amazingly cool and very refreshing. There is a nice sandy area along the river where we can swim. The water is pretty cloudy. Really you can see about 6 inches down. As most of you know, I really like to swim in clear water, but when it’s 100 degrees out, and getting hotter, it’s worth it. We checked with some locals about whether there are crocodiles or hippos there and they said no, so that’s a relief. I guess the only think that we have to worry about is schistosomiosis (not sure if that’s the spelling…I think not) which is a parasite that goes in through your skin and can cause some damage further down the line if it’s not caught. We get screened when we leave, and I believe after we’ve been here for a year, so we should be fine.

SOCIAL LIFE

Last night we had a lot of fun. We went to Bakou fish market which is just down the road from here. We saw some of the boats coming in…really long ones that the fishermen got surfing on the pretty big waves as they were coming in. Then they beach and get swarmed by others who buy fish and re-sell it in the market. It was quite the seen. There is a cool guest house/bar that we sat and watched from above. We had a couple beers and some BACON WRAPPED SHRIMP. The owner is obviously not a Muslim. The shrimp was amazing. We were with a returned volunteer, Sarah, who is here doing some work at the medical school and it was a lot of fun. After our appetizer, we went down to the market and bought some red snapper, eight little fish (maybe 8 inches long) for 50 delasi ($2). We came back and cooked them up. They were tasty, but the problem was Gambians don’t really know how to gut fish well, and they didn’t fillet it, obviously, so I feel that I need to learn how to do this. I know that those of you who will be coming to visit will love to go see this market. It is really cool and there are all sorts of fish available there. Sarah took pictures; we didn’t have our camera…stupid us. We sometimes don’t take it places because as soon as you get your camera out 20-50 kids are surrounding you yelling ‘picture me, picture me!’ It’s really overwhelming.

We are going up to site tomorrow. I have to say that I have mixed feelings about going back. It’s really nice to be down here and have access to good food and the beach. But I do miss the family and it’s time to get back. On Thurs, we have our first Gambian wedding to go to, so that will be fun. I don’t think I have the right clothes for this event, hopefully I can borrow something. James had an outfit made, so he’s all set. On Friday our friend Jes is coming over for the weekend, then I think on St. Patty’s day we’ll be headed to Basse for a couple of days to partake in a ‘pub-crawl.’ I’m not to sure about how many pubs there are to crawl to, but it should be a good time.

THE HEAT

What else? The wind up at our site is really hot. It’s tricky because you think the wind is going to feel really good, but then it’s like a sauna that is blowing in your face. It is dry heat right now, so amazingly 90-100 degrees doesn’t feel quite so bad, but the hot wind is crazy. We have been sleeping outside which is amazing. We go to bed around 10, and probably around midnight, it’s cool enough to put a sheet on, at 5 a.m. it’s cool enough for me to put on a small fleece blanket (James usually sticks to the sheet). It starts go get hot again by 9 a.m. When we sleep inside, like we did right before we came down here, the sheet doesn’t come on until 5 a.m. it stays so hot in the house. The walls just radiate heat. We are thinking about getting a solar set up so that we can run a fan during the hot season. Although ‘kando naata’ (heat came), it hasn’t really hit in full force. May evidently is the worst month, and then the rains come and cool things off, and make the humidity out of control.

ON DEVELOPMENT

There are times when both of us wonder what the hell we are doing here, but then Gambians tell us we are great people for applying to get sent to Africa, and they seem genuine, so it makes me feel like we’re doing the right thing. But we really miss everyone. We are here doing ‘development work’ and I’m not quite sure what that means. It’s crazy because I know that people are living in ‘poverty’ but they seem ok. There are a lot of happy people. I know it’s not malaria season yet, and that this will change my perspective on things, but it’s just hard to know how to help people ‘develop’ when the model of ‘development’ that we have seen is the States. I don’t know if we have it right…so it’s hard to know what to strive for. The education system here is a joke. The kids memorize spellings, but can’t recognize letters. But then I met this woman who had gone to secondary school and who seemed really smart and she was living in this village, married to the chief, doing what with her education? I’m not really sure. There is just such a lack of opportunity, so even if a Gambian can afford to go to secondary school what do they do with their education? Either leave the country, or move to the city, or the same think that their ancestors have been doing for thousands of years. It’s just hard to know where to start, how to help, and I wonder who I am thinking I can change anything.

THANKS

We have received many letters and packages from friends and family and it is so amazing to get little pieces of home. We miss you all so much and it’s just nice to read your words and have wonderful treats to eat.I will say that we both had tears in our eyes when reading some recent letters. They were not tears of sadness, but tears of...maybe happiness for having such great friends and family.

Love,

tavi and james

2/3/09

I’m sitting here in our new house and James is cooking dinner. Tonight we are having chili. Yum. We had a good day today. Lately we’ve been waking up at around 7:30 or 8. We go outside and greet the family, asking them how the morning is, if they slept well, and if they are at peace. It’s a nice ritual. Then we have coffee (thanks Missy!) and either cook oatmeal with wheat bran and dried fruit (thanks for the fruit all!) Yes, they have oats and wheat bran here. It’s a big hit. Or, we have rice and raw peanut porridge (called churro), which is really good, but lacks fiber. Then we try to figure out what to do for the day. Sometimes we go for a bike ride or a walk. The other day we went from here to this village called Sukuta which was a nice ride and good to see a bit of the area. If we would have gone a little further we would have hit the river, but we decided to turn around because in the next village we got to, school was letting out, and we didn’t want to deal with the hundreds of “toubob’s” that undoubtedly would have come our way. It can get pretty tiring after not very long to stand out as much as we do. Sometimes we do work in the back yard of our house. We have started a compost pit and a garden back there (thanks for sending the seeds MaryBeth). The compost will do well pretty quickly here because it’s so warm, things rot fast. We planted some various peppers, tomatoes, carrots, basil, cilantro, parsley, lettuce and arugula. I have visions of touboule, salsa, and tomato/basil goodness. We have a two burner propane stove, so we’ll be cooking a lot. (I am realizing right now that there is so much to say, and this posting will be all over the place…get used to it.) The food that our family prepares is pretty darn good. We are actually really lucky in this regard because one of my friends was telling me that she had 27 straight meals of coos, which is millet, with sauce. Some people like it, but I don’t really. Anyway, our family actually prepares salads for us with bread sometimes, and beans and other non-rice containing meals. Our mom calls beans ‘health food.’ Sometimes, our mom even gives us ingredients so we can cook our own breakfasts like, eggs (they have a layer), potatoes, onions, and tomatoes. I haven’t really told our friends here this though because they are really not eating as well from what I can gather.

Today we went over to the clinic that is here to help out with the ‘Reproductive and child health clinic’ day(RCH), locally referred to as noos. Baby weighing and immunizations happen at the clinic. We helped out by trying to help with the record keeping that they must do. It went really well and I met my counterpart who seems really cool. He’s a community health nurse, trained in nursing for two years. James helped out too at the clinic since we are just trying to meet people and get out of the house some. I was really impressed with how organized this clinic day was. They occur once a week, so I guess they have it down. But I have heard horror stories about how these days go, with mom’s fighting each other and no order, and crying babies. We just saw a lot of crying babies, but no fighting women.

I have been feeling pretty homesick on the days that we are lazy about making stuff up to do. I miss everyone a lot. More than I was anticipating. (I hope that doesn’t come across the wrong way.) I have dreams (pretty vivid due to the Larium, probably) where I’m hanging out with my friends and when I wake up I’m sad that I’m done hanging out. The other night James and I were lucky enough to have dinner with Katri, Dan, Amanda and Mark. It was a very tasty dinner too. So, I was thinking about homesickness and why I’m more homesick than I anticipated and I came to a conclusion. I was expecting myself to react to being gone the same way I would have when I was just out of college. And, as we all know, I’m not just out of college. After I was done with school, we were all going off on our own ways, so it felt normal to move to VT sight unseen, or go to NZ and travel around. But now, I have been in Vermont for long enough to meet so many good friends, and they are all there still, and I am sitting in Africa (with James of course) far, far away from the people who I love. So, that’s my conclusion. I don’t know if it makes sense to anyone but me. I did run it by James today and he said that it makes sense. But the Larium dreams are real enough to make me feel like I’m actually having quality time with some of you, so that will have to be good enough for now.

The other day we were heading to the clinic to try to meet people (it didn’t happen that day). We were riding down the road to Kuntaur and we heard this crazy screaming and saw a donkey cart up ahead. The donkey cart wasn’t moving and there was a boy standing next to it. As we got closer we realized the boy was screaming crying. And then we saw that his lip was split right open and the donkey’s hind leg was hung up on the donkey cart. The boy was half-heartedly trying to get the foot down. From what we could tell, the donkey must have kicked him in the face, but not straight on, otherwise he would have had some jaw and tooth damage. Alas, he just needed some stitches, and we told him to go to the clinic and he told us that he didn’t have any money. First of all, it ended up being free to get his lip stitched up, second, he thought he had to pay 5 delasis, which is not very much (that’s how much a loaf of bread costs). But we told him that we’d pay, so he went to the clinic. And now we’ve seen him around and his lip is healing nicely. That day we made a difference.

The other donkey story is that James named the family donkey Rufus. It’s funny to hear our brothers and sisters try to say this word.

Today was also a good one because we are no longer living out of bags. This feels like a big achievement since we’ve been unable to unpack all the way until now. We had two bamboo book shelves made, one for our clothes and one for the books and manuals we have accrued since being here. It feels so good, and more like home. The shelves were pretty expensive on our budget, but worth it for sure. They were 1500 delasis, which is $60. They are really nice, and you’ll have to come visit us so you can see them…

Thursday we are going to Basse, where we will post this entry and some pictures if we can. We are meeting up with some of our friends up there and we’ll be doing some banking. Evidently there is soft-serve available there as well. Although, I’m not really missing ice cream that much. They have these wonderful things here that they call ice, which is frozen juice of various flavors in a small plastic bag. You bite off the plastic on one corner, and spit that on the ground while looking around to see if anyone notices, but they don’t because everyone here litters. (There aren’t any garbage cans anywhere.) Then after you bite off the corner, cold, icey juice is all yours, for one or two delasi. Some of them are baobab (sitoo) juice, and some are hibiscus (wanjo). The expensive ones in Fajara where the beach and the PC hostel (The Stodge) is, are only three delasi and they are so delicious.

If you want to pronounce any of the Mandinka words I have included here, the pronunciation is a lot like Spanish, especially in terms of vowels.

We miss you all, and hope that you are enjoying life where ever you may be. I was just thinking about how it’s really cold where a lot of you are. It’s pretty darn hot over here, and we have two months to prepare for the really hot weather. I’m pretty nervous about this. Love, Tavi and James

2.7.2009

We are in Basse right now staying at the transit house there. We met up with a few of other PCVs who were in our training group. We had banking to do, and it’s been really nice to catch up with people after three weeks in village. It seems like people are all doing pretty well and are really liking being in village and done with training. Last night we went out and had a few beers and some meat and onion sandwiches. They were awesome.

On the way here though, we had a very sad experience. We were on our way and had just crossed at Jangjangburegh (Gorgetown) and we were on the island. To get from one ferry to the other you have to take a taxi because it’s pretty far to walk in the heat. So there were four of us and we all load in this taxi and start cruising over the island. We get to this group of people and we were going pretty fast. James was in the front seat and I was right behind him, and all of a sudden this little boy, probably six, came running out in front of the car and we hit him. We were probably going about 30 or 40 mph at this point, maybe not quite that fast, and we hit him. James just sat there and said ‘Oh my God, Oh my God’ over and over. Our two friends, Jes and Jasmine, and I were in the back seat. We were all stunned. When I saw the boy run out I thought to myself, ‘isn’t the boy going to stop? Isn’t the car going to stop?’ I can’t believe that neither of them stopped. The driver jumped out and scooped the boy, unconscious off of the road and ran around to the passenger side. We all jumped out and he sped off to the clinic. I can only hope that the clinic has the equipment and medical knowledge to help this boy. When we got out of the car there were people around wailing. So many people. We were also crying, and then we started walking to the other side of the island, in silence. What could we say?

We are leaving tomorrow to head back to sight. When we get back I decided that I am going to start going out on trek with the nurses to the surrounding towns. That will give me something to do, help me meet people and practice/learn Mandinka. I think James will also start trying to meet some more people who he can possibly work with.

It will probably be another month before we make it to the computer again. I’m sorry that we can’t post pictures up here because the internet is just too slow. I hope you are all well.

Love tavi and james.

1.15.09

Where to begin???

We are now Volunteers

Yesterday (January 14th) Tavi and I took the Peace Corps oath of service and were sworn in as volunteers. The ceremony was held at the US ambassador’s residence, which overlooks the beach. On top of the great ocean view the property was really well landscaped. There are numerous trees and flowering plants and lots of grass. Grass is something you usually don’t see here. After the ceremony there was a catered reception on the grounds of the residence.

Last night the volunteers who have been in country for a while had a BBQ/party for all of us. It was really nice to have a hamburger and some chili. After the BBQ we everyone went out to the tourist area (referred to as Sene-Gambia) for karaoke and then dancing. It was a great time. It is currently the height of the tourist season so there were a lot of people out and about, including all of us, which made for some entertaining karaoke. Neither Tavi nor I did any singing but Tavi was able to get plenty of dancing in. We didn’t get back to the transit house (aka the stodge) until after three.

Today we went shopping in Serekunda one of the large market areas in Kombo. Kombo is the area surrounding Banjul. You can buy just about anything there, including really tasty egg sandwiches for about 20 dalasis (less than 1 dollar US). Tavi and I were able to buy most of the items on our list. For those we did not find or buy we can purchase them up-country at a weekly market (called a Lumo).

Tomorrow we are headed back to our site and home for the next two years. We are both looking forward to getting back there and beginning our volunteer experience.

Our site and host family

About two weeks ago we left our training village and went to our permanent site for a few days. The idea was to meet our host family and to become familiar with the village and surrounding area. Our house is pretty sweet. We have two large rooms and a big backyard. The backyard is big enough for us to have a garden, a small tree nursery, a compost pit, and a place to hang out and relax. The rooms are big enough where we don’t feel cramped. So we have plenty of space to settle and make it home for the next two years.

Our host family is extremely nice and caring. They treated us like family the minute we got there and made us fell right at home. Kalifa Sillah our host father has two wives, Fatoumatta and Mariama, only one of which we have met because the other lives in her home village. However we should be able meet Mariama when we get back. Between the two wives there are about 10 -15 kids. We have met about 10 of them. The kids are great. The boys are always willing to help us out with any little or big thing. The same is true for the girls.

The village is a lot bigger than our training village and has about 700 people living in it. However, it is in between two other villages so there is more like 1400-1500 people living in the immediate area. Just as in our training village everyone has been really nice and happy to see us. That helps make us feel more at home and comfortable with our surroundings.

Our work (Not sure yet)

It is too early to say exactly what we will be doing the next two years; however, there is the potential for a number of different projects for both of us. Basically the next three months we are supposed to become familiar with the area, people, local cultural norms, and local dialect of language. While also observing what some of the community needs are and what the community would like. So it looks like we will be going on a lot of walks and bike rides to visit other people in the village and the surrounding villages. We will also be going to visit other volunteers in nearby sites. I almost forgot to mention that we will probably be drinking a lot of attaya. Attaya is a special green tea the locals brew quit frequently. It is really good. When I say brew I mean that the process takes a long time, up to an hour before the first brew is ready. But it is well worth the wait. I have even started to brew it, and the next three months will provide me with some time to perfect my brewing technique.

We added some pictures to the blog and we hope you enjoy them. We will try to add some whenever we update our blog. Thank you to everyone. Everyone who has sent us a care package, a card, a letter, and called us on the phone. We really appreciate it.

Cheers!

James and Tavi

These are in somewhat reverse chronological order. At some point in the next few months i'll dump all the pics onto flickr so you can see everyting.

Sunset at our new site.

James on the marathon march...some tall grass!

By the river on the march. It was a nice day.

Our new home. We are on the end of that row house. We are so happy to have the field as next door neighbors.

Carrying water in the local fasion. Training village.

Next this kid put charcoal in his mouth. This is my host brother in training village.

Soooo yummy.

The picture above is what this chicken turned into. This little girl was probably 4.

James' host mom with enough rice for 4 people.

James at the naming ceramony. (Meet Bakari)

Making panketos (fried dough) for the naming ceremony. (I'm Kadii Sillah now.)

View from Arch 22 of banjul.

A banana spider. huge.

Practicing to be bumpsters. We'll explain another time.

Kairaba Ave. The main street.

Where class was when we first got here.

Below is the beach. Yeah.

1.11.09

Today we had a day off. It feels like the first day off in a long time. We woke up and made an awesome brunch complete with pancakes, French toast, eggs, sausage and potatoes. It was pretty amazing after only having rice, bread and cookies for breakfast for the last 2 months. We then headed to the beach and lay in the sun and swam. It was so nice. James and I both passed our language tests that we had yesterday, so we are all set to be dropped in a place where we can have very limited conversations with others. The landscape here is pretty nice. There are some pretty big trees around, mostly mango trees, but also silk cotton and some others that James must know. It is papaya and citrus season right now which is nice. However, papaya is actually kind of gross in my opinion. Some are ok, and James generally likes them.

We had our site visit last week and our family is awesome. Our host father’s name is Kalifa and our host mother is Fatumata. They are both really cool. Kalifa’s mother also lives in the compound and her name is Mama. Kalifa has a second-wife who is called Mariama. We haven’t met her though because she’s sick and with her family. She just had a baby called Barak Obama. The former volunteer who was at our site is a huge fan. There are 10 kids all together; we’ve met 7 of them. It’s a little intense. They are so generous though and are really good about speaking slowly and clearly so we can ‘understand’ a little better. Also, on our first night there I tried to give money for our food during site visit and Kalifa said, ‘The Peace Corps is not money, the Peace Corps is kaira dorong (peace only).’ Really cool. So, we went and got two kilos of potatoes and one kilo of onions and brought that to them. They were really happy with that. Kaira dorong is the response to some of the greetings, like ‘peace is?’ ‘peace only.’ Other greetings include, ‘how is the morning?’ ‘the morning is here only.’ or ‘it is here.’ for short. Everyone’s favorite is, ‘hope there is no trouble?’ to which you reply, ‘no trouble’ or kaira dorong. Sometimes these greetings go on for a really long time, and repeat themselves several times. Now you could have a dying family member at home, but the greetings go unchanged. After greeting has stopped then you say how things really are. What I really like about all this is how oriented toward peace all of this is. This is a very peaceful culture and the Muslims here seem to really be upset with fundamentalist Muslims because the take on Islam here is that God doesn’t really want people killing other people. I’m happy to be learning more about all this.

1.15.09

Yesterday we swore in as PCVs. We took the oath of office. Pretty crazy that we will be living here for the next two years. The swearing in ceremony was very nice, complete with us getting certificates and walking across the stage and singing ‘the volunteer song’ in Wolof, one of the languages here that we don’t speak. We had an awesome bbq that the previous swear in group prepared for us followed by some karyoke and dancing. It was one of the later nights that we’ve enjoyed getting in at 3:00 a.m. after eating a lovely shwarma. There are a lot of Lebanese people here, which is nice because they make really good food that is different than the usual rice and peanut sauce. Our mom is a pretty good cook, but she sells dried fish so everything has dried fish in it. I’m happy that she does this because that means that the family is getting more protein than most, but really dried fish is going to get old pretty fast. We went shopping today to get all the goods that we need to set up a house here. We have a mattress, a two burner stove, a propane tank and some other random small stuff. We’ll get more stuff up at the Lumo (market) in Wassu. Our host family has a donkey cart so we’ll be able to load stuff on that.

We have been surprisingly healthy and happy so far. We’ve had a few minor break-downs and periods of homesickness, but for the most part we are holding our own. A couple members of our training group haven't been so lucky and are suffering some pretty serious diarrhea and weight loss. We’ve been pretty careful about what we eat and drink. We filter our water in big filters then put two drops of bleach per liter. It’s not enough to really taste, but I am curious about the effects of bleach on the body. I assume we drink chlorinated water in the states, but I’m not sure.

We start our ‘three-month-challenge’ tomorrow. This is unique to The Gambia, but is a pretty good idea. The goal is to stay ‘at site’ for 3 months to get to know the community, practice language and do a community needs assessment. I think we’ll have to leave at some point to do some banking, but for the most part we’ll be in that area for 3 months with out much of a break. We are looking forward to getting our home set up and planting a garden (thanks for the seeds Mary Beth). I have an art project in mind and we are going to start drying food. We will make a solar drier out of a trunk with screens in it and two holes to promote some air flow. It’s going to be tomato season soon, so we’re looking forward to trying out drying those. I want to get it up and running before mango season because dried mango is amazing and because evidently there are tons and tons of mangos rotting on the ground at the end of the season. We’ll try to dry other things that we grow in our garden and that we buy at the lumo. Mostly I’m looking forward to not having to do anything except what I said above. We are not supposed to start any projects right away, so I’m viewing this as a little vacation/personal development time.

The weather right now is pretty amazing. It gets nice and cool at night and doesn’t get too hot during the day. I’ve noticed that it’s getting windy during the day and I think this is only going to increase leading up to the hot season. I’m nervous about the hot season.

I think this may give you all a better idea about what we are going through right now. After we have been in site and when we actually have time to journal more often we will probably have more interesting stories.

We love you all and miss you.

tavi

where to start. we have been having quite the experience so far and it's hard to figure out how to put it in words. it has been really nice here lately. not too hot and today we are lucky enough to have some clouds. We rode our bikes to Soma today so that we could check in with everyone. CONGRATS katri and dan on your new addition to the fam. we can't wait to meet oliver henry.

We have been getting some care packages and some letters, thank you so much for those! it means so much to us when we are able to have some contact with you all. we miss you lots.

For the other families of trainees who may be reading this, we are all doing well. our training group is amazing.

We had a great christmas at tendaba. on christmas eve we went on a 27 K 'marathon march.' which was a really nice hike through the bush. we saw some great views and tavi got some great blisters. We had to walk through some pretty sticky mud too. tavi started to freak out, internally,just a little when she saw the crabs and mud skippers crawling around. the next day we went on a really nice boat ride up one of the tributaries across from tendaba camp. we saw so many birds, and a couple of crocs. we will upload some pictures when we get to kombo.

we go on site visit on sunday. we are looking forward to a change of scenary and to see our home that we will be living in for the next two years. we are really excited to meet our family too. We have been told by the volunteer who just left our site that our family is awesome. we will stay at our site for 3 days and then we will head to kombo for the last of our technical training and our final language test. we will be sworn in as volunteers on jan 14. and then we will head back to site on the 16.

we will both miss our training families. there is a little girl in my compound, my name sake, and she is so cute. she's 17 months old and is amazingly mobile. the other day the food we were eating was pretty spicy, so she got up and walked into the house to get herself some water. it is truly amazing to see a little girl take responsibility for herself.

in december tobasky was celebrated here. it's a huge muslim holiday where sheap are slaughtered and people dress up really nicely for salibo, which is when the go around and ask for minties or something. it was pretty intense because so many people were in town and it gave the kids an excuse to surround us and ask us for minties and their pictures taken. i don't have many good pics of that time because if you got your camera out it equaled 20 kids screaming-picuture me-. insane. So james' fam killed 3 rams. it was intense to watch and then he went and was watching them /butcher/ the meat. that means, he saw them hacking at the meat and bone, with bone chips flying. And, they asked him if he likes meat so he said yes, and they gave him a handfull of sheep meat. raw, in his hands. he was like, what do i do with this, since we don't have a stove or anything, so his mom cooked it up for him and we had it later. my family slaughtered a goat and i for sure ate some organ meat of some sort...i was a mental test for me to swallow it when i really just wanted it out of my mouth. the next day i was helping my mom cook and i asked what she was making and she told me peanut sauce, which i really like, so i was really happy. then she told me that the goat's head was in there. what. that wasn't the best time for me in terms of food. but in all it was a good experience.

we miss you all so much. happy new year. more soon as we'll be in kombo.

love,

tavi and james.

If you feel like reading some Peace Corps literature, follow this link.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/mytoolkit/invitee/assignment/country/welcomebook.cfm

It's a long document that explains a lot about The Gambia and what we should be expecting.

Tavi's reflection for the week: saying goodbye is going to be sad.

We received our invite and we are going to The Gambia leaving this country on Nov. 6th after 2 days of orientation in the States. More on this topic later.

t

The best news of the day is that our invite is in the mail. We'll find out in the next few days where and when we're going. Yeah!! It will have taken us less than a year to get through this application process when we leave in Nov. Crazy!

I told myself I'd wait to create this blog until we received our invitation. Well, we are still waiting. This is the way of applying to Peace Corps. You wait and wait, just to wait some more. Aside from causing me to obsess over the entire world, it's not that big of a deal, this waiting. James approaches the waiting process differently than I do. Could it be that he has more patience than I. It seems so.

We started thinking about applying in Oct. of 2007 and got around to submitting our application at the end of Feb. We had an interview on March 21 with the Burlington Peace Corps recruiter. Then we waited and waited until June for our nomination to Sub Saharan Africa leaving in November. We were surprised that we were nominated for November. We then handed our medical forms in at the end of July and at the end of August we were medically cleared. Now we wait for an invitation, but it sounds very possible that we will be leaving later than November.

The most recent waiting is for tomorrow at 5:00 when I call our Placement Officer to update her and be updated. I think I can wait that long.

--tavi