Hello, Goodbye!

I was hoping to write a long blog entry before heading back to site, but I just don't have it in me right now. I just finished a week of in-service training, and it was great! I learned about everything from beekeeping to fruit tree grafting. I even got to harvest my first honey from an African beehive (imagine killer bees, but more aggressive). It was so much fun, and I only got stung twice! The rest of the week I enjoyed going to the beach and hanging out with my Peace Corps buds I hadn't seen in awhile. I'm headed back to site tomorrow. I've been gone from site two weeks and it feels like too long. Time to get back to work!

Sweating Under the Mango Tree

Here's a couple of entries from my journal, to give you some idea of what my day to day life is like, and how much it varies:

Thursday, March 27, 2008

I really had to write today because today marks my being here 6 months in The Gambia. It's kind of hard to believe that 1/2 a year has passed already since I came here. For so long it seemed like time was moving by so slowly and it made 27 months seem really daunting. But all of a sudden, the last couple of months have gone by quickly and I'm almost 1/4 of the way done.

It's a good feeling to make it to 6 months. It's a pretty big milestone and according to the chart Peace Corps gives us, the hardest part is over now. And it feels that way even though I never felt that being here was that difficult. But now I have a home, a family, I can communicate in Wollof, I have work to do, friends (both Gambian and non-Gambian), a new puppy, and things to look forward to and plan.

The 6 month mark has also gotten me thinking about how far I've come since I got here, compared to when I first got off the plane and had no idea what to expect. The past two days I was in Leba, a small Fula village where my host family is originally from. My host family is actually Fula and speaks Pulaar even though I learned Wollof in training. Everyone but my mother speaks Wollof, but they speak Pulaar with each other so I'm trying to learn Pulaar now also. Anyway, my sister Tabara invited me to go along with her and my other sister Mare to visit their family in Leba. It was an offer I thought I shouldn't let go by, especially since Tabara will be getting married in a couple of weeks and moving to a neighboring village.

It was, I admit, an overwhelming experience, and in fact, reminded me a lot of my first day in training village: not understanding the language, not being able to communicate, being overwhelmed by all the people, the yelling, and babies with ringworm and snot-smeared faces crying. I felt a little like I was Tabara's pet the whole time, because I was always sitting waiting for her to tell me to follow her somewhere, or to tell me to come eat, or sleep, or bath or whatever, because I didn't know when or where to do any of those things and she was the only one besides Mare who spoke Wollof. She was great, though, and never showed that I was a burden on her in anyway. I'm sure it wasn't easy for her having me there, not only because she had to constantly be watching out for me, but because she probably got a lot of flack from other people in the village for bringing me in the first place.

The whole experience made me realize that even though we live here for two years, and supposedly are living as close as possible to the standard of living as the people here, our lives are very removed from what life is actually like here. For one thing, there is no such thing as personal space. The concept is completely foreign here, because from the time you are a baby you are always with other people. Even after just two nights I couldn't wait to get "home" to my personal space. Also, in the village I realized how spoiled I've become by town life. There was no fish or vegetables in their food bowls. Besides what they grew themselves (cere and milk), all they had was rice and a little bit of oil and onion. Everyday really is a struggle just to get food in the food bowl.

There were some big differences between going to Leba and my first day in training village though, that make me realize how far I've come in 6 months. For one thing, even though I can only speak a little Pulaar, I at least speak some Wollof so I could still communicate with some people. Second, not only did the food not bother me, I really, really loved it! I couldn't get enough of the fresh milk and cere (pounded millet). Third, I was there with a Gambian friend, who cared about me and was watching out for me. Fourth, my first thought in training village was "I have to do this for two years?", where as now, I thought "This is only for two days, and then I get to go home." Yes, my site feels like home now and I was really happy to be back today. I took a luxurious bucket bath, put some clean clothes on and went to the office and worked for a couple of hours then spent the rest of the afternoon reading Newsweeks in my house. It was great! Except for the fact that it was so hot that I was dripping sweat. Funnily enough, this will be the most permanent home I have had since graduating high school, and its beginning to feel that way.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

I got sick on Monday and didn't start feeling better until this afternoon. I'm pretty sure I drank some bad water, because I remember drinking some unfiltered water at the office and thinking it tasted funny, almost carbonated. But I've had to drink the same water dozens of times when I ran out of my water and never had a problem, so I didn't think much of it.

A couple hours later it hit me all of a sudden. I was working on one of the office computers with Malick, one of the Agricultural Extensionists, typing a list of the 1st Quarter achievements for the Agriculture sector, and then within one minute I realized that, uh-oh, I need to go the bathroom now and then I need to go home and lay down and be near my latrine.

I had body aches, diarrhea and a low-grade fever that lasted until this morning. Tuesday during the afternoon was the worst because I had to deal with the unbelievable heat on top of being sick. But today I'm feeling better and went back to the office because I had a lot to get done.

I've been really busy at the office lately. Monday, we had a staff meeting, which was long but productive. After that I worked on consolidating the data we collected for a community group assessment that the staff conducted in the 27 communities we work in. I was put in charge of consolidating all the data from the reports in one document, which turned out to be a lot of work. I was supposed to have it done on Tuesday but since I was sick I had to work like mad today to get it done, and I still wasn't feeling that good. We also had our first meeting with the Agriculture staff, which went well once it was started an hour late. I called the meeting and set the agenda, and I'm trying to institutionalize it into a weekly meeting. It's definitely something that is needed and I hope it will help mobilize the Agriculture sector to start performing at a higher level.

I actually put in a full-days work today working from 9:00 to 5:15 with a 15 minute break for lunch, intermittent short breaks whenever the power shut down (at least 10 times a day) and my computer goes off (I've gotten used to saving documents every 10 seconds now) and another short break in the late afternoon when we found a snake in the storage room and everyone in the office was mobilized with sticks to kill it.

It might sound ridiculous that putting in a full days work is such a rare occurrence for me now, which I admit, it is. But you also have to consider the heat. It's getting above 120F in the afternoon now, according to my thermometer (which doesn't go above 120F, and yes I keep it in the shade) and the office has solar-power to run the computers, but there's not even enough extra power to run a fan, let alone AC. We don't even have lights installed since we only work in the day time anyway. The reason the power goes out so much already is because there's not enough juice being generated to power all the computers at once. Whoever is the last in the office in the morning has to warn everybody before they turn their computer on because it will invariably knock out all the other computers momentarily.

And so because it gets so hot, and there's no relief inside the office, everybody pretty much stops working after lunch. So you can appreciate the dedication and super-human strength it took for me to work through the afternoon, not feeling good, periodic power outages, watching a big, supposedly poisonous, snake getting killed, and sitting at the computer with sweat literally dripping off me and soaked through my clothes.