Summer Fun
Hello everyone!
In the last few months, I have helped with pre-service training both at Camp Tendaba and in Kombo. On the 4th of July we were in sessions when we heard people screaming. We went outside to discover that one of the huts was on fire! Apparently, the owner had overloaded the electrical circuit, it shorted out, and because the paint was petrol-based, the whole thing went up like a matchstick. Immediately people formed long lines leading from the river and the pool to the burning hut and passed buckets of water to each other. Volunteers jumped right in, too. I stayed with the woman who owned the hut while she cried. The only things that were saved were some clothing.
Not long after that I had to go to Kombo because I had been having stomach pains that wouldn’t go away. Turns out the malaria medication I was on, doxycycline, had given me an ulcer! So now I’m on malarone, which the nurse made sure to inform is “the expensive stuff.” If anything happens to me on malarone I’m not going to say anything, because after switching my medication twice the only option left might be medical separation. I’m in my final year and I will not let that happen.
I’ve moved to Dabong and am settling in. The night before I left Dankunku I bought attaya and ley for the family and we had a small party. When I left the whole family prayed over me and little Fatou started crying and wouldn’t let me hug her goodbye. I ended up crying (I hadn’t thought that I would) in the truck as we were leaving. The family called me just the other day to greet me, too. I didn’t think I’d miss them so much, but these are people who took care of me for almost a year.
My new compound is HUGE, though my nuclear family is mid-sized. The compound is so big because my host father has three brothers who also have their own families, and most of my host father’s children live in the compound (he has four wives, but only two, the first and the fourth, live in the compound). My host father’s name is Tofey (toe-fee, not toffee) and he thinks it’s the best thing if I call him “Ba Tofey” (father Tofey). The first wife also likes me to call her “Nna” which means “mom,” but I can call the fourth wife by her first name, Hawa. Everyone thinks I’m great because I’m trying to learn Jolaa, and from what I can tell, it seems to be made up of pieces of Wollof, Madinka, and Pulaar with some weird words of their own thrown in. Apparently Gambian Jolaa isn’t the “real” Jolaa (that would be the Jolaa in Cassamance, which is Southern Senegal where there’s rebel fighting because they want to be their own country).
It’s interesting learning about Cassamance. Apparently it used to be part of Guinea Bissau but the king decided he didn’t want to be ruled by the Portuguese government so he signed a treaty with the French government to be part of Senegal for a period of 100 years, at which time they would be their own country. However, the date came and went and the Senegalese government has decided they can’t let Cassamance go because Cassamance is the fertile side of Senegal. Northern Senegal is desert in comparison. So, during the rainy season when there’s underbrush to hide in, the fighting starts up again. The fighting isn’t currently where I’m at right now—it’s further East—but wounded rebels have been taken to the Bwiam hospital for treatment, something the Gambian government doesn’t at all agree with. One of my host brothers is a soldier with the national army, so if anything big happens the family will let me know.
Anyway, I was only in Dabong for a week before I had to leave to help with site visits. I went with a girl going to Boiram, a good-sized Wollof village. I went there a few times to visit Nancy, the volunteer who lived there before, so I got to see her family again and they were all happy to see me. I took the new girl to the alkalo and we had a double translation. The host father, Ibu, speaks all three of the main languages, so the alkalo spoke in Wollof to him, then Ibu translated it into Mandinka for me, and I translated it into English for the new girl, then vice-versa whenever she had something to say. And just being in Boiram for a few days made me pick up Wollof again so that I was able to speak some small sentences. I felt like a language rock-star, though I’m far from it. I think just being forced to hear another language everyday awakens the language cortex in the brain so that learning other languages at the same time becomes a bit easier.
Swearing-in for the newbies happened on Friday, so I’m officially a second-year volunteer now. I’m looking at master’s programs right now (I’ve decided that after my time in The Gambia is finished, I need to come back to America. I won’t be coming home for Christmas as originally planned in the hopes that I’ll be able to close my service early to attend Keith’s graduation) and from there I want to go to medical school for pediatrics. Being a white person in The Gambia automatically qualifies me as a doctor and I’ve enjoyed talking with people as they’ve come to me with various ailments—“No, if your finger swells up to twice it’s normal size you should go to the clinic, not the local marabout.” “If your stomach is paining you, drink mint tea to help ease the pain”—and trying to figure out what ailment they have based on what little I know and my “Where There is No Doctor” book. **Disclaimer: I always tell people to go to the local clinic to make sure it’s not something serious**
I haven’t met my counterpart yet, and I’m a bit worried because I hear he treats volunteers as if they’re beneath him and merely another teacher. I want to let him know I don’t want to work Mondays so that I can help out at the hospital, that I only want to teach grade 10 biology so I can work with the other science teachers on organizing and maintaining the science labs, and that I want to work with youth groups both at the senior secondary and the upper basic schools. We shall see. Inshallah, things will work out, otherwise, he might just see how stubborn and independent American women can be. I let myself be bossed around for one year; I’m not about to let it happen again.
So that’s my life in a nut-shell at present. I think when I come back to America I will have a t-shirt printed with “slowly-slowly” to remind me of my time here. I only need to learn it in Serer and maybe Monjago.
Ndanka-ndanka—Wollof
Domanding-domanding—Mandinka
Seda-seda—Pulaar
Ja-ekung, ja-ekung—Jolaa
Honi-honi--Serahule
~Hannah :-)
In the last few months, I have helped with pre-service training both at Camp Tendaba and in Kombo. On the 4th of July we were in sessions when we heard people screaming. We went outside to discover that one of the huts was on fire! Apparently, the owner had overloaded the electrical circuit, it shorted out, and because the paint was petrol-based, the whole thing went up like a matchstick. Immediately people formed long lines leading from the river and the pool to the burning hut and passed buckets of water to each other. Volunteers jumped right in, too. I stayed with the woman who owned the hut while she cried. The only things that were saved were some clothing.
Not long after that I had to go to Kombo because I had been having stomach pains that wouldn’t go away. Turns out the malaria medication I was on, doxycycline, had given me an ulcer! So now I’m on malarone, which the nurse made sure to inform is “the expensive stuff.” If anything happens to me on malarone I’m not going to say anything, because after switching my medication twice the only option left might be medical separation. I’m in my final year and I will not let that happen.
I’ve moved to Dabong and am settling in. The night before I left Dankunku I bought attaya and ley for the family and we had a small party. When I left the whole family prayed over me and little Fatou started crying and wouldn’t let me hug her goodbye. I ended up crying (I hadn’t thought that I would) in the truck as we were leaving. The family called me just the other day to greet me, too. I didn’t think I’d miss them so much, but these are people who took care of me for almost a year.
My new compound is HUGE, though my nuclear family is mid-sized. The compound is so big because my host father has three brothers who also have their own families, and most of my host father’s children live in the compound (he has four wives, but only two, the first and the fourth, live in the compound). My host father’s name is Tofey (toe-fee, not toffee) and he thinks it’s the best thing if I call him “Ba Tofey” (father Tofey). The first wife also likes me to call her “Nna” which means “mom,” but I can call the fourth wife by her first name, Hawa. Everyone thinks I’m great because I’m trying to learn Jolaa, and from what I can tell, it seems to be made up of pieces of Wollof, Madinka, and Pulaar with some weird words of their own thrown in. Apparently Gambian Jolaa isn’t the “real” Jolaa (that would be the Jolaa in Cassamance, which is Southern Senegal where there’s rebel fighting because they want to be their own country).
It’s interesting learning about Cassamance. Apparently it used to be part of Guinea Bissau but the king decided he didn’t want to be ruled by the Portuguese government so he signed a treaty with the French government to be part of Senegal for a period of 100 years, at which time they would be their own country. However, the date came and went and the Senegalese government has decided they can’t let Cassamance go because Cassamance is the fertile side of Senegal. Northern Senegal is desert in comparison. So, during the rainy season when there’s underbrush to hide in, the fighting starts up again. The fighting isn’t currently where I’m at right now—it’s further East—but wounded rebels have been taken to the Bwiam hospital for treatment, something the Gambian government doesn’t at all agree with. One of my host brothers is a soldier with the national army, so if anything big happens the family will let me know.
Anyway, I was only in Dabong for a week before I had to leave to help with site visits. I went with a girl going to Boiram, a good-sized Wollof village. I went there a few times to visit Nancy, the volunteer who lived there before, so I got to see her family again and they were all happy to see me. I took the new girl to the alkalo and we had a double translation. The host father, Ibu, speaks all three of the main languages, so the alkalo spoke in Wollof to him, then Ibu translated it into Mandinka for me, and I translated it into English for the new girl, then vice-versa whenever she had something to say. And just being in Boiram for a few days made me pick up Wollof again so that I was able to speak some small sentences. I felt like a language rock-star, though I’m far from it. I think just being forced to hear another language everyday awakens the language cortex in the brain so that learning other languages at the same time becomes a bit easier.
Swearing-in for the newbies happened on Friday, so I’m officially a second-year volunteer now. I’m looking at master’s programs right now (I’ve decided that after my time in The Gambia is finished, I need to come back to America. I won’t be coming home for Christmas as originally planned in the hopes that I’ll be able to close my service early to attend Keith’s graduation) and from there I want to go to medical school for pediatrics. Being a white person in The Gambia automatically qualifies me as a doctor and I’ve enjoyed talking with people as they’ve come to me with various ailments—“No, if your finger swells up to twice it’s normal size you should go to the clinic, not the local marabout.” “If your stomach is paining you, drink mint tea to help ease the pain”—and trying to figure out what ailment they have based on what little I know and my “Where There is No Doctor” book. **Disclaimer: I always tell people to go to the local clinic to make sure it’s not something serious**
I haven’t met my counterpart yet, and I’m a bit worried because I hear he treats volunteers as if they’re beneath him and merely another teacher. I want to let him know I don’t want to work Mondays so that I can help out at the hospital, that I only want to teach grade 10 biology so I can work with the other science teachers on organizing and maintaining the science labs, and that I want to work with youth groups both at the senior secondary and the upper basic schools. We shall see. Inshallah, things will work out, otherwise, he might just see how stubborn and independent American women can be. I let myself be bossed around for one year; I’m not about to let it happen again.
So that’s my life in a nut-shell at present. I think when I come back to America I will have a t-shirt printed with “slowly-slowly” to remind me of my time here. I only need to learn it in Serer and maybe Monjago.
Ndanka-ndanka—Wollof
Domanding-domanding—Mandinka
Seda-seda—Pulaar
Ja-ekung, ja-ekung—Jolaa
Honi-honi--Serahule
~Hannah :-)
posted by Hannah | 7:32 PM
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