Hello Hello!

Yes, I am alive and well; I get that question a lot!! In the last two months in my permanent village I have been spending a lot of time getting to know all the people and how life works in Sare Demba. Mostly this is accomplished with very elementary conversations in pulaar and lots of attaya! My host family is really small with just my host mom and two sisters who are 23 and 9 years old. Our compound has a row style house with 3 rooms and a separate small square hut that is my house. The other two rooms of my family’s house are rented out to the teachers at the school. My host family is great and I enjoy spending time with them especially when learning to cook Gambian style and laying out in the compound looking at the stars and trying to keep cool at night. It is definitely my favorite part of the day to talk and banter with my sisters while watching the gorgeous night sky.

February was definitely wedding season; we had three marriage programs in a matter of weeks. Programs usually start on Tuesday evening and go through Saturday. Tuesday to late Thursday night the party is at the girl’s compound, in the middle of the night Thursday the girl and the party move to the guys compound. This can be within the village or sometimes to a completely different village. My village enjoys a good party, all the visitors and dancing, and the celebration usually lasts into the early morning hours every day! (I did not make it much past midnight) My sister made sure I was looking my best for the festivities, so I had my complet on, henna on my feet and of course never leave home without earrings. People might not know you are a girl if you don’t wear them, or at least that’s what they tell me. It was definitely interesting to learn more about Muslim marriage traditions, but I must admit I am glad they are over for a while. I think the one will be my sisters program around August.

I started working with the women’s group in village. Through a local NGO, WASDA, they are maintaining to projects. The first is a woodlot that they planted almost two years ago. There were over 1,000 seedlings planted in 2008 and now we are trying to clear the grass that grew during last rainy season and water the trees every so often. The watering if a really difficult task because the closest well is about 100 yards away. The trees are expected to live until rainy season, but a little water once in a while definitely isn’t going to hurt them! The other project is an animal husbandry project with goats and sheep. Their goal is breed goats and sheep so that eventually every member of the group can have their own pair and start their own income generating animal breeding projects for their compound. The women are teaching me a lot about what goes into this project and quite enjoy coming to find me to make sure I help wash the animals! (pictures coming in April)

Last week I completed a community needs assessment in my village. With the help of my counterpart, I organized village meetings to discuss what resources Sare Demba has and what they need/want to have in village. Because the culture here is so male dominated I split the village into three groups: men, women and youth. This way everyone would feel more comfortable sharing their opinion and I hoped to gain the most complete picture possible. I also asked each group to pick 5 people to represent them and together these 15 people will be the committee I hope to work with to create long term goals and an action plan. I’m not sure exactly how this is going to play out, but we have a good start.

In a couple weeks I will be back in Kombo for In Service Training. We will be having training on specific technical skills including beekeeping and animal husbandry and many more. I’m excited to learn more about animal care and husbandry projects in the Gambia so that I can be of more use in my village. It will also be the first time in 3 months that my training group is getting back together, so it makes it even better!

Thank you very much for the letters and emails; I love hearing what is going on with you in America! In April I will have internet access again and will post another update then.

Happy New Year!

Hard to believe it is 2010 and even more hard to believe that I have been living in Africa for 2 months. Tomorrow morning we are officially done with training and will be sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers. For the last seven weeks or so I have been living in a village named Fula Kunda with 5 other volunteers. I was placed in the Jallow compound and quickly learned to love my host family. A few days after arriving in village we (all the trainees) had a naming ceremony. My family choose to name me Musukeba Jallow after one of my sisters. On facebook, there is there is a picture of me during my naming ceremony. Typically a naming ceremony would be done 7 days after a baby is born. A village elder shaves the baby's head and a goat is slaughtered at the same time, during a traditional ceremony. At our ceremony they mimed shaving a little hair and then we danced with our host mother. Our host families also provided an outfit for us to wear. I will have pictures up eventually. (unfortunately I forgot my camera adapter in my village) In village, we had language classes everyday with our Language and Culture Facilitator (LCF). I am learning to speak pulaar seeda, seeda (slowly, slowly) My class was held underneath a Mango tree in the middle of our village.

In village after classes were over for the day I hung out with my host family. They helped me work on my pulaar and spent a lot of time laughing at all the crazy things I do. One of my family's favorite stories is from sitting around the fire one night. All of a sudden something ran through the fire and then right underneath where I was sitting. My reaction of course was to scream and pick my feet up off the ground! We laughed for a long time about that and host family likes to inform everybody that "Musukeba susani ululu!" (Jenna is scared of a cat!) It would have been funny if you were there. The head of our compound passed away a few years ago so now there is are two co wives and their children living their. I became fast friends with my host sisters Musukeba, Hebi and Dado. These are also the three people that made it possible for me to survive because they carried water for me! The working water pump was far from our compound and I am weak there is no way I could make it back with a 20 liter bedong on my head! Actually the one time I tried I was wobbling so much that Dado made me put it down before I fell over and she came back to carry it for me after taking the huge bucket of water she was carrying home. She still enjoys doing the impersonation of me not being able to walk! I'll have you know that I can now carry a small bucket of water on my head and repeat in my head seeda, seeda (slowly, slowly) which is what Dado repeated to me as she followed me to make sure I didn't die!

While in Fula Kunda we celebrated Tobaski. Tobaski is a muslim holiday that fell just after Thanksgiving. A lot of family from Kombo (city) comes to celebrate with their families, so my compound took on an extra 10 people or so. One of them was my host brother, Modo, from Kombo and he brought with him a ton of food including the live goat that was to be slaughtered after prayers on Tobaski. Unfortunately the night before Tobaski the ram somehow got untied and it ran away. My family searched that night and the next morning informing all the neighboring villages that they were looking for a ram, but it was not found. My brother kept telling me that he was very confused because he has "had many Tobaski's but never has he lost his ram." It is unheard of to celebrate Tobaski without slaughering a ram so he somehow found another to purchase and we ate that as part of our Tobaski feast. Two days later Modo heard from a neighboring village that they found our ram! Unfortunately, I mean luckily for me (not), we had ram twice that week. All of the trainees were able to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas together at a tourism camp. For thanksgiving Peace Corps imported food so that we could make our Thanksgiving favorites. Our dinner was so delicious! On Christmas Eve we did the Marathon March (hiked 30 km) and on Christmas Day we were able to take a boat ride through part of the Gambian River.

Just before New Years I was able to visit my permanent site for a few days. Within a few minutes of arriving at my site my family asked my name, decided it was very funny and renamed me Isatou Bah. (Isatou is my first name and Bah is my surname) The family that I live with is very small. I live with my host mother, Egatou, and two host sisters Isatou and Egatou. They live in one room of a 4 room row home. There is just one other person who rents a room from them also. I have my own one room square hut adjacent to their house. I am so excited that i have a thatched roof now! I also have a private backyard with my pit latrine and slab for taking a bucket bath. I am also really fortunate that there is enough space that I can put my own garden in my backyard.

I am the first volunteer in my village so part of my job will be introducing them to all the "crazy things tubabs (white people) do!" While in village I was able to meet my family and be introduced to a lot of people in the village. I found out that they have an awesome school garden and tree nursery. As well as pretty big animal husbandry projects going with sheep and goats. I am going to have a high learning curve to catch up with that one! Tomorrow morning all of the trainees are being sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers. I am so excited to be done with training and to be able to move out to my village and get to know as much as possible about it! Next time I have internet I will be able to tell you all about it (and add some pictures!)

Take care

~Jenna

Salaamaaleekum!

I have finally arrived in Gambia after 28 hours of travel. I am one of 35 trainees who are apart of the environment program, like me, or the health and community development program. So far we have had two days of training including learning greetings in 3 languages, mandinka, wolof, and pulaar. Its pretty overwhelming to try and learn all three at the same time, which makes me even more excited to find out what language I will be speaking for my service at some point next week. Next week is when we move out to the training villages as well and I start living with a host family in a family compound. Right now we all live at the PC training house and are definitely being spoiled.

As the plane was landing I was struck by how amazingly green and gorgeous this area is. There are a ton of trees and beautiful flowers between and along the compound walls. So far the temps have been in the 90s, but we're told they should be cooling off in the next couple weeks. Sounds like perfect timing to be heading out to the village. I can't wait to learn what life is really going to be like for the next 2 years. :-)

I'll let you know what village life is like when I get back!

~Jenna

Hard to believe, but November 3rd has finally arrived. Tomorrow I start my travels to the Gambia, Africa. I am going to try and maintain this blog while I'm there...... hopefully it works out better for me then facebook did. ;-) At this point, I only know some basic information about the Gambia, but I thought I would share a little bit of that quickly before heading out.

The Gambia is the smallest country Africa and is located in western Africa. It is almost completely surrounded by Senegal except for a small coast line on the Atlantic Ocean. Fun fact, it is slightly smaller then Connecticut. (thanks Grandpa K) There are 5 major different ethnic groups and approximately 6 different languages throughout the country. I do not know which language I will be learning yet since I do not know where specifically I will be living during my 2 years of service. I am working under the broad spectrum of an environmental volunteer and I will have more specifics for you on exactly what that means as I go through training and move to my village.

I am really excited to have the opportunity to live in the Gambia for a couple years; the Peace Corps is something I've wanted to do for a long time. After graduating from college I started my "career" of full time service in the United States with two years in AmeriCorps NCCC. Somehow it seems fitting for me to move on to a couple years of service in Africa.

I look forward to updating you all on life in the Gambia soon!

~Jenna