I am a volunteer now!

After the whirlwind of a combined swear-in and All-Volunteer conference in the urban, touristy part of The Gambia, I can proudly declare that I am a card-carrying Peace Corps volunteer (although most days that card stays safe inside my house)!  The swear in ceremony took place at the American Ambassador's house, possibly the cushiest backyard  I have been in thus far in the Gambia.  I mean, with a view like this.....

She gave a speech about her past experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer herself and at the ceremony were other important Gambian officials.

The graduating Fula Class and teachers of March 2011!

And the whole group together, everyone looking at a different camera.

I have been living the past 10 days at my site in Wallaland in the Upper Badibou District of the North Bank Region.  It is very close to Senegal, in fact I could ride a donkey cart across the border (though i should technically let my Program Manager, Safety and Security Coordinator, etc, etc know of my whereabouts before i do).  Wallaland has the most welcoming people, and since they are Fulas, numerous cattle.  I am enjoying my time there so far, and although i can get frustrated with not understanding most of what is being said, my language will improve very rapidly in a village with only a handful of english speakers.

In my compound, I have one mother, Jabu.  My host brother, Salif , is the head of the compound, and he has one wife, Sarjo, who is about 25 years old.  There are 6 children in the compound, the oldest about 10.  We are a young family.  Unfortuneatly i don't have any pictures of them yet.

I have spent a few of my first days here making my hut into  home.  This includes the backyard where i have dug a compost pit and also a garden bed for intensive moringa tree leaf production.  I will later dig another bed for my other garden veggies.  Between the pickaxe, shovel, and water fetching to loosen the soil, I am so proud of my little patch of dirt here.  This picture was taken just after I sowed the seeds, so hopefully in a few days they will be sprouting.  Thanks to all of the lovely cows, there was plenty of manure to mix in for soil improvement.  The soil is very clay-y here.

The front door to my home!

Now the goodies:  Here is my chariout, my water filter tht sits on top of my wardrobe, my cooking area, and my deluxe red plastic chairs (really quite comfortable).

This awesome tree shades me in the morning.  My backyard has the only corrogate fence in the village, so it is pretty easy to guess which house is mine.  In the afternoon sun, the corrogate turns into a 4 walled radiator and you need to put on sunscreen if you want to go outside to use the bathroom.  No joking.  And the real heat hasn't come yet!

There are some quirks that I am noticing everyday about life here.  Cell phone culture is interesting, as they are a relatively new thing in the society.  It is never considered impolite if your phone starts ringing, whether you are in a meeting, at a naming ceremony, or whatever.  That's a changeup for me.  Also, ringtones are amusing out here.  I particularly enjoy when Gambians, who are largely Muslim, have Christmas carols or other Christian affiliated music as their ringtone.  Given, this ringtone is usually accompanied by a techno beat.
It is the start of mango season!  Already, kids are pulling unripe mangoes from the trees to gnaw on.  Having bought a couple at the market, and waited for a day before i ate the last one, I was struck with a question I can't yet honestly answer.  Is a fermented mango better than no mango?  Also in season right now are cashew apples , which i enjoy and am thankfully not allergic to.

I will likely have a lot of work opportunity at a community gardn for the village.  My counterpart, Buba Jawo, and I have discussed live fencing, tree nursury, gardening, and even bee keeping projects designed to improve villagers lives and create income generation.  Thing is though, it really will take village support to pull off any of these projects simply because of the manpower needed to haul water up 60 feet from the garden well.  I will hold meetings to find out what the villagers feel their needs are before  really begin any serious project work.  To be most effective, i need to be able to talk and understand people, so the Pulaar language is my current homework.

I am becoming accquainted with Farafenni, the nearest city, and since i can find my way back to this internet bar now, I can make more posts in the future.  Now though, it is lunchtime and my brain is fried.  I'm going to go find the chicken sandwiches that this town is famous for, and later go to the market to buy veggies for the next week for me and my family.  I got my banking done earlier this morning, so I'm getting in the swing of things.  WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

From the left, Stephanie, Baboucarr, Scott, and Emily, plus some kids who always seem to pop up everywhere.  We were dressed in traditional ceremony dress for our Naming Day celebration.

This is most of my gang of small boys in the village.  My brother Sarjo has the soccer ball and standing above him in the grey tan shirt is my other brother Ousman.  Small boys get into trouble unless you send them to do things like fetch water or go buy Attaya (green tea) from the bitik.

This is a small part of the Bakoteh Municipal Refuse site.  There are methane fires burning throughout the dump.  People say that it is a big improvement over how the place used to look.  Teaching myself how to litter has been an interesting process.  The village has grown around the dump, and even up to the fences, for some people earn a living by sifting through the trash and selling the valuable parts, others live by feeding the dump workers.  Be thankful that pictures don't transfer smells ; )

On a 25 km hike a few days ago we passed a village with amazing stencil and painting artwork, but I forget the village name.  This is only some of the artwork, it was really impressive.  Right now, I really dig Baobab trees.

These were my Language and Culture Facilitators, Baboucarr Sallah and Ida Keita!

I'm Still Alive!

Greeting from The Smiling Coast Of Africa!

Today I sit and update from the Peace Corps Office in Fajarra, due to my brief stay at the medical center for a spell of "reedu doga" or "running stomach".  Either way, I am definetly on the mend and should be released by tomorrow.  One benefit of this is that I finally have the ability to climb on the internet for more than 15 minutes and write a post.

During my almost two months in The Gambia, I find that my opinions and feelings about this place change greatly and rapidly from bewildered  to frustrated and anywhere in between.  I think that this is a result of being new here and jumping in as an alien to a new culture and language.  Almost every interaction is so different from American culture it is taking me time just to figure out what people regard as normal and common behavior.  This is particularly true in the marketplace where people agressively want you to buy things and haggling is encouraged, in the way that the two genders largely don't have contact with each other in public settings, and in the incredulous stares and flat refusal by many Gambians to sample a peanut butter/banana/chocolate sandwich that I make for a snack.  All in all though, I am very excited to be here, and have largely enjoyed my time thus far.  Public transportation and roadways are exhilirating and frenetic experiences, and although you need to shove to get a seat on the "gele gele" (the 10-16 person van) people are all very friendly and chatty once the ride has started.  I need to shove extra hard to find a seat that my legs fit in.

Here are my vital statistics:
I am called Bubakarr Bah.  In my training village, Yuna, I live in a family with 7 brothers and 2 sisters, one of whom i see regularly.  My family treats and feeds me very well and are awesome, welcoming people.  While my parents don't speak English, the older brothers do and the younger brothers are learning.  Bucket baths are delicious, especially when you leave a bidong full of water to heat up in the sun all day.  Pit latrines will never break unless they do so much that you fall in (I keep my fingers crossed, mine seems sturdy).  I have a gecko that lives in my ceiling and sings to me at night.

I have been living in the Fula village of Yuna.  This is my father, Kali Bah, my mother Raama tu Laahi Camara, and one of my brothers, Sarjo (the child born after twins is always named Sarjo, whether male or female).

This was my two room house in my family's compound.  The big tree behind my house is a mango.  Between the two buildings leads to the backyard where the sheep are kept at night (all livestock roams free here during the dry season).

In Yuna I went to school with two other Toubabs (white people) named Stephanie a.k.a. Fatumata Bah and Emily a.k.a. Yiali Bah.  I have had two different teachers of Pulaar, the language of the Fula people, while at Yuna, Babacarr Sallah and Ida Keita.  They are great teachers for Language and Culture and I feel that I am learning very fast.


Village life is not quiet.  Few cars have efficient mufflers, sheep are ornery, people shout greetings at each other from across the town, the mosque loudspeakers announce prayer time 5x a day, the donkeys call to each other at any hour and remind me of the Tuskan Raiders from Star Wars, somebody, somewhere is always drumming, and for the first month a group of boys marched around town at sunup and sundown, drumming and singing to fill their circumcision ceremony tradition. 

My pre-service-training is ending and I have already moved out of my training village and said goodbye to my family.  I want to post more pictures of them, but blogspot is not cooperating with the computer right now...

Tomorrow I will go to Wallalan, my permanent site for the next two years, for a 3 day visit.  I will meet my new family, the imaam, the alkaalo (town mayor) and other village notaries, and get a handle on that village.  I then travel back to headquarters for my swearing in ceremony.

There are many things to be written about, but I feel I am in a phase where I am still trying to figure out where things are and why things are the way they are here.  I have more pictures, at least, let me try another computer.

Some updating

First of all, many thanks the the template weblog of Sarah and Jacob Cohn.  I hope to thank you in person someday for the great blog design that I copied.  Other than that I've just been troubleshooting and weighing my backpack.  I think I'm packing 76 out of 80 allowable pounds so far, maybe could condense more.

FIRST POST!

Well, I've created my weblog, but it is Christmas Eve.  My family is due to come over at my house at three in the afternoon (it's about 2) and I still need to shower.  So, I will have to add photos and other information about what i hope this blog can become at a future time.  For now though, i have an address to spread so that people can keep current with where I am in the Gambia for the coming two years.  Woohoo!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I may use this one....or maybe a google docs.   I'll keep you "posted".........get it?   ahahahhahahahahahhahahahahha