hello hello
i'm working on the pictures situation. i have some really good ones, of friends in training village and the awesome mural in my house, but uploading them is a little bit of an issue. but i am on it slowly slowly, and, inshallah, they will be posted this evening or tomorrow. so cross your fingers and check back soon!
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
swine who?
hello.
we are rounding on the swearing-in date (it's friday, big day, big deal!) and it's one final push through policy workshops, tests, and more policy sessions. by the time i'm a full-fledged PCV i might not know everything there is about agriculture practices in the Gambia, but i will be throughly versed on the IT policies and procedures. which is more important? we may never really know.
today was kind of an important day, we had our big tree id test (no results yet, i may have a problem here if i didn't do well) and we got the results of our language tests. i scored intermediate high, meaning i get to stay! and that i speak a little bit of Mandinka, i suppose. i have no idea how they graded it because i've heard part of my tape and you can't make out any words, it's just me and the instructor giggling as we act out the scenario designed to test my skillz. we were supposed to be negoitating rent for a theoretical apartment, but we were just yelling numbers at each other and laughing. i wish real haggling were this much fun. and yesterday we took "second-language lessons" (as if any of us have gained a first here!) and i chose Wolof, a language commonly spoken in the more urban areas. it is also very common in Senegal, and due to my proximity to the Gambia's only neighbor, i decided i should be able to throw a few phrases around. also, all of the fishermen are Senegalese, so if i want to know anything about fishing here (and i am damn curious about how much overfishing is occuring, etc) i need some Wolof under my belt. and a good counterpart. i really like Wolof, it's different than Mandinka, but that really just means i won't get them confused. also they have more than 90 pronouns, because they don't conjugate verbs, just pronouns. the way languages develop is really fascinating to me. i had never really pondered it much before coming here. but when you live in a place where you hear different languages spoken every day, and most of your friends are multi-lingual, you have no choice really but to wonder. in my village, i have been greeted in Mandinka, Wolof, Pulaar, Jola, French, and English. and i've heard other languages spoken around me, small tribal dialects that strongly mirror some of the more common languages but have their own accents and inflections that make them nearly indeciphrable to my untrained ears.
and really, we're all starting to divide english into 2 languages, english and "gambian english." you definitely speak different english to your american friends than you do to a Gambian, no matter how good their english is. it's actually very helpful to be learning a language, because if i don't know a word in Mandinka, i don't use it in english when conversing with someone who has english as their 3rd or 4th language. it's suprisngly effective, keeping communication simple for both of us. but you have to be careful, otherwise you'll catch yourself speaking Gambian english all the time and then you'll lose your vocabulary. even for this blog post, i'm digging deep.
but i should go. i titled this post as such because i got my H1N1 shot today, which cracks me up, being in a Muslim country where there is no swine save for a few rouge bush pigs. i know, i know, it's not really SWINE flu, but i still think it's almost as funny as when we visited the health clinic in training village and saw the "breaking the pork-worm cycle" posters hanging in the waiting room.
there is no pork in this country. if someone tells you they are serving you pork, it's flavored chicken. but no matter, breaking that cycle is important.
i'll let y'all know if i get thru swear in or they send me home.
but i don't think they're going to buy me a plane ticket anytime soon. i'm here to stay.
we are rounding on the swearing-in date (it's friday, big day, big deal!) and it's one final push through policy workshops, tests, and more policy sessions. by the time i'm a full-fledged PCV i might not know everything there is about agriculture practices in the Gambia, but i will be throughly versed on the IT policies and procedures. which is more important? we may never really know.
today was kind of an important day, we had our big tree id test (no results yet, i may have a problem here if i didn't do well) and we got the results of our language tests. i scored intermediate high, meaning i get to stay! and that i speak a little bit of Mandinka, i suppose. i have no idea how they graded it because i've heard part of my tape and you can't make out any words, it's just me and the instructor giggling as we act out the scenario designed to test my skillz. we were supposed to be negoitating rent for a theoretical apartment, but we were just yelling numbers at each other and laughing. i wish real haggling were this much fun. and yesterday we took "second-language lessons" (as if any of us have gained a first here!) and i chose Wolof, a language commonly spoken in the more urban areas. it is also very common in Senegal, and due to my proximity to the Gambia's only neighbor, i decided i should be able to throw a few phrases around. also, all of the fishermen are Senegalese, so if i want to know anything about fishing here (and i am damn curious about how much overfishing is occuring, etc) i need some Wolof under my belt. and a good counterpart. i really like Wolof, it's different than Mandinka, but that really just means i won't get them confused. also they have more than 90 pronouns, because they don't conjugate verbs, just pronouns. the way languages develop is really fascinating to me. i had never really pondered it much before coming here. but when you live in a place where you hear different languages spoken every day, and most of your friends are multi-lingual, you have no choice really but to wonder. in my village, i have been greeted in Mandinka, Wolof, Pulaar, Jola, French, and English. and i've heard other languages spoken around me, small tribal dialects that strongly mirror some of the more common languages but have their own accents and inflections that make them nearly indeciphrable to my untrained ears.
and really, we're all starting to divide english into 2 languages, english and "gambian english." you definitely speak different english to your american friends than you do to a Gambian, no matter how good their english is. it's actually very helpful to be learning a language, because if i don't know a word in Mandinka, i don't use it in english when conversing with someone who has english as their 3rd or 4th language. it's suprisngly effective, keeping communication simple for both of us. but you have to be careful, otherwise you'll catch yourself speaking Gambian english all the time and then you'll lose your vocabulary. even for this blog post, i'm digging deep.
but i should go. i titled this post as such because i got my H1N1 shot today, which cracks me up, being in a Muslim country where there is no swine save for a few rouge bush pigs. i know, i know, it's not really SWINE flu, but i still think it's almost as funny as when we visited the health clinic in training village and saw the "breaking the pork-worm cycle" posters hanging in the waiting room.
there is no pork in this country. if someone tells you they are serving you pork, it's flavored chicken. but no matter, breaking that cycle is important.
i'll let y'all know if i get thru swear in or they send me home.
but i don't think they're going to buy me a plane ticket anytime soon. i'm here to stay.
Friday, January 1, 2010
New Year's Day
hello, friends. i am sitting in the peace corps transit house, in a very un-Gambian situation. there's a tv blasting super troopers in the backround, a fan is going off, and i'm on the internet. it's pretty different from what i'm used to. but very nice. we are all here for a week and three days, after which we are scattering back across the country to settle in to our new sites and undertake the "3 months challenge," where essentially we are expected to try projects and fail, and try again, until we find something that works. after the 3 months we have what is called in-service training, where we learn a LOT more technical skills. i think we are all excited and nervous for our 3 months challenge, but it's really time for us to try out all the cool things we learned over the past two months.
in between then and now, however, we have a LOT to do. we have another language test, some technical tests, and a swearing-in ceremony that will take place at the US ambassdor's private residence but be televised all over the Gambia. it may sound like a big deal, but there's really only one tv station here and it's not fully scheduled, so it's a nice way to fill the time slot. it does add a little pressure to us, though, because our swearing-in ceremony is supposed to include skits. yikes. the peace corps has given us the day off to sleep off the party of last night, and then our slew of tests and presentations begins in earnest bright and early tomorrow. yahoo.
but i am now going to write a little update on some things i've done that i feel are worth posting
-celebrated Christmas with 35 of my closest friends and some European tourists
-taken a long walk to the river with 5 young boys to see Senegal. i taught them to skip shells and they took a boat across. then, upon the boat's owner discovering they did not have fare, came directly back to the Gambia with a little arguing and splashing. on the way home they taught me the Mandinka word for "fart," a key part of their vocabulary
-met a traditional birthing attendent, who showed me her tools and her delivery area. the tools were quite a hodgepodge, including string and a rubber stopper like the one on the end of a turkey baster. she explained to me some of the process, but in Mandinka so unfortunately it was entirely lost on me
-rang in the New Year on an estimated time with a wonderfully crafted ball-drop consisting of a soccer ball wrapped in tinsel. Julia is truly a genius. there were also balloons.
-listened to the popular Gambian song "A Fo Die" up to 15 times in one night at one of the parties in Kaiaf. these affairs are quite the experience, everyone gets very excited when the generator switches on and the music starts, and then it quickly turns into a middle school dance. there are small clumps of girls and boys, segregated by age as well as gender, all over the party and they almost never mix. i have not seen a single Gambian couple dance together, and i probably never will. despite the cliques, everyone stays at the party until the fuel for the generator runs out, which sometimes doesn't happen until 3 or 4 in the morning. and they all wake up the next day to pray. impressive.
-cooked a tradtional dessert, pancatos, with a bevy of Gambain ladies. yes, there was lots of input from outside parties. but they were delicious.
-gone on a 30 k (18 mile) walk. it was originally supposed to be a 26 k walk the peace corps trainees do every year, but our guide got lost and we spent 3 hours bush-whacking before turning back. we were walking for 11 hours. but it was pretty fun. it definitely famalizrized me with the flora of the rural Gambia. i was not too worse for wear the next day, but some other people had some fairly alarming blisters. all in all, it was a good experience, though maybe not recommended for all.
-started a compost heap in my backyard! i am really into compost here, since the Gambia does not have a trash pickup-all the garbage here winds up in heaps behind compounds or in roads. i am hoping that i can use the tourism angle to get my village interested in more aetheistically-pleasing waste dispoasl practices. it is possible to compost paper, food scraps, cloth, and lots of other trash that ordinarly winds up in their compost heaps. they may be doing it so more tourists will come, but they will also be making richer soil for their gardens (they have awesome commmunity gardens there) and protecting their future. so hopefully i can get them on the compost bandwagon. i think about that a lot. but i'm starting small, and thinking big.
-deepened my opinion on how important international aid is. with that, i have also been feeling more and more strongly that it is irresponsible not to research the charity you may choose. after seeing wells go unused because the women in the village can not operate them, or machines that would change everyone's life for the better remain broken because there are no resources to repair them, it becomes much more real. i think i have written about this before, but i want to urge everyone again to check out the charities they are contributing to. are they getting results? are they on the ground, following up with the people they are helping and adapting their help as time progresses? there are some great NGOs around, but there are also some that simply have the best intentions and but just don't fit the communities needs. an example i have been thinking about recently-one of my friends is living in a village by the riverside, and they have recently been hooked up with a charity, who is going to purchase them 3 big items if they raise 10% of the funds. one of the items they were considering is a fishing boat with a motor, which on the surface sounds reasonable: they live near fish, and that's a great way to make money. however, after a few minutes of conversation my friend learned that no one in the village can fish, or in fact swim, and they are all afraid of the river. a seemingly good request can easily end up as a boat that sits on shore until the bottom falls out.
but despite my soapbox moment, there are good stories here too. you can see people's lives being improved, by taps installed by british ngos, by community gardens, by health clinics and education outreach. NGOs do make a difference, and sometimes just by showing people they are there to help, they give them the hope they need to make a change. so don't think it's all bad, because there are a lot of good things going on.
and now that i've preached i'm going to find some lunch and go to the beach. it's a holiday. eat some black-eyed peas and think about the year to come. 2010 has so much promise, and i'm excited to see what each day will bring.
-
in between then and now, however, we have a LOT to do. we have another language test, some technical tests, and a swearing-in ceremony that will take place at the US ambassdor's private residence but be televised all over the Gambia. it may sound like a big deal, but there's really only one tv station here and it's not fully scheduled, so it's a nice way to fill the time slot. it does add a little pressure to us, though, because our swearing-in ceremony is supposed to include skits. yikes. the peace corps has given us the day off to sleep off the party of last night, and then our slew of tests and presentations begins in earnest bright and early tomorrow. yahoo.
but i am now going to write a little update on some things i've done that i feel are worth posting
-celebrated Christmas with 35 of my closest friends and some European tourists
-taken a long walk to the river with 5 young boys to see Senegal. i taught them to skip shells and they took a boat across. then, upon the boat's owner discovering they did not have fare, came directly back to the Gambia with a little arguing and splashing. on the way home they taught me the Mandinka word for "fart," a key part of their vocabulary
-met a traditional birthing attendent, who showed me her tools and her delivery area. the tools were quite a hodgepodge, including string and a rubber stopper like the one on the end of a turkey baster. she explained to me some of the process, but in Mandinka so unfortunately it was entirely lost on me
-rang in the New Year on an estimated time with a wonderfully crafted ball-drop consisting of a soccer ball wrapped in tinsel. Julia is truly a genius. there were also balloons.
-listened to the popular Gambian song "A Fo Die" up to 15 times in one night at one of the parties in Kaiaf. these affairs are quite the experience, everyone gets very excited when the generator switches on and the music starts, and then it quickly turns into a middle school dance. there are small clumps of girls and boys, segregated by age as well as gender, all over the party and they almost never mix. i have not seen a single Gambian couple dance together, and i probably never will. despite the cliques, everyone stays at the party until the fuel for the generator runs out, which sometimes doesn't happen until 3 or 4 in the morning. and they all wake up the next day to pray. impressive.
-cooked a tradtional dessert, pancatos, with a bevy of Gambain ladies. yes, there was lots of input from outside parties. but they were delicious.
-gone on a 30 k (18 mile) walk. it was originally supposed to be a 26 k walk the peace corps trainees do every year, but our guide got lost and we spent 3 hours bush-whacking before turning back. we were walking for 11 hours. but it was pretty fun. it definitely famalizrized me with the flora of the rural Gambia. i was not too worse for wear the next day, but some other people had some fairly alarming blisters. all in all, it was a good experience, though maybe not recommended for all.
-started a compost heap in my backyard! i am really into compost here, since the Gambia does not have a trash pickup-all the garbage here winds up in heaps behind compounds or in roads. i am hoping that i can use the tourism angle to get my village interested in more aetheistically-pleasing waste dispoasl practices. it is possible to compost paper, food scraps, cloth, and lots of other trash that ordinarly winds up in their compost heaps. they may be doing it so more tourists will come, but they will also be making richer soil for their gardens (they have awesome commmunity gardens there) and protecting their future. so hopefully i can get them on the compost bandwagon. i think about that a lot. but i'm starting small, and thinking big.
-deepened my opinion on how important international aid is. with that, i have also been feeling more and more strongly that it is irresponsible not to research the charity you may choose. after seeing wells go unused because the women in the village can not operate them, or machines that would change everyone's life for the better remain broken because there are no resources to repair them, it becomes much more real. i think i have written about this before, but i want to urge everyone again to check out the charities they are contributing to. are they getting results? are they on the ground, following up with the people they are helping and adapting their help as time progresses? there are some great NGOs around, but there are also some that simply have the best intentions and but just don't fit the communities needs. an example i have been thinking about recently-one of my friends is living in a village by the riverside, and they have recently been hooked up with a charity, who is going to purchase them 3 big items if they raise 10% of the funds. one of the items they were considering is a fishing boat with a motor, which on the surface sounds reasonable: they live near fish, and that's a great way to make money. however, after a few minutes of conversation my friend learned that no one in the village can fish, or in fact swim, and they are all afraid of the river. a seemingly good request can easily end up as a boat that sits on shore until the bottom falls out.
but despite my soapbox moment, there are good stories here too. you can see people's lives being improved, by taps installed by british ngos, by community gardens, by health clinics and education outreach. NGOs do make a difference, and sometimes just by showing people they are there to help, they give them the hope they need to make a change. so don't think it's all bad, because there are a lot of good things going on.
and now that i've preached i'm going to find some lunch and go to the beach. it's a holiday. eat some black-eyed peas and think about the year to come. 2010 has so much promise, and i'm excited to see what each day will bring.
-
Thursday, December 31, 2009
7 minutes in heaven
hello friends!
i have 7 minutes left, so i'll try and make this post nice and short. i am on my way to Kombo for New Year's and more traning. i am in a town called Brikama with some friends, and then we will take a gelly-gelly together. I have been travelling since 7 this morning, but it was not bad. there were 3 fishmongers on the gelly i took, which means that everything smelled like fish. but they were nice enough. i also happened to meet one of the teachers from the school in my new village. he was very nice and had worked with a peace corps volunteer before (though 10 years ago), so hopefully he will be a good contact for me when i am done with training.
i have spent the past 4 days in village. it is unbeliveably beautiful, far more than i expected. there are palm trees and fruit trees and the beach is perfect. tourist heaven. my family is very nice, too. at least 4 of them speak good English, including my host father, who is really nice and very well-connected, everyone in the village seems to be related to him.
well i am sure over the next week i will be able to make a lengthier post. sorry to cut this one so short. thanks to everyone who is reading and sending me love and support...it helps so much! i hope you all have a safe and happy new year. take care of each other!
i have 7 minutes left, so i'll try and make this post nice and short. i am on my way to Kombo for New Year's and more traning. i am in a town called Brikama with some friends, and then we will take a gelly-gelly together. I have been travelling since 7 this morning, but it was not bad. there were 3 fishmongers on the gelly i took, which means that everything smelled like fish. but they were nice enough. i also happened to meet one of the teachers from the school in my new village. he was very nice and had worked with a peace corps volunteer before (though 10 years ago), so hopefully he will be a good contact for me when i am done with training.
i have spent the past 4 days in village. it is unbeliveably beautiful, far more than i expected. there are palm trees and fruit trees and the beach is perfect. tourist heaven. my family is very nice, too. at least 4 of them speak good English, including my host father, who is really nice and very well-connected, everyone in the village seems to be related to him.
well i am sure over the next week i will be able to make a lengthier post. sorry to cut this one so short. thanks to everyone who is reading and sending me love and support...it helps so much! i hope you all have a safe and happy new year. take care of each other!
Thursday, December 10, 2009
email is slow!
i am in an internet cafe in Soma, a town about 10 k away from my training village. i will try and email as many of you as possible, but the google email server is very slow here. so if i don't get many fired off, just know i love you all and miss you too, of course.
things have changed so much since my last post! i have a new family, my host family, which has a whole different structure than any family i've had before. i have a father, who has 3 wives, and many children, most of whom have grown and moved, but many of their children still live in my compound in Kaiaf. my "small father," or my uncle (but still a father) also lives in our compound. he has two wives and so i also have many nieces and nephews running around. it is a very confusing family tree. more branches and less of a trunk.
but they are wonderful. they have named me Fatou Sanneh, which is a fairly common name here. there are 3 other Fatou Sannehs in my family alone, and at least a dozen scattered around Kaiaf (which has about 2,000 people). one of them is my niece, and she is less than a year. she is probably the cutest baby to ever have lived. she lets me hold her sometimes, but i suspect this is only because she wants to play with my hair. i have plenty of pictures of my whole host family which i will post as soon as i can.
i live in a luxurious 2-room hut, complete with a desk, chair, bed, and water filter. it is pretty swank. the well is a cool 10 minutes from my house, so i get to greet the whole village with a bucket on my head about every other day. i have 4 windows, 2 more than the average peace corps trainee. be jealous. i was coexisting peacefully with a very spastic lizard, but he has since moved out. i am relieved by this mostly because he really liked to sit on my screen door and dive-bomb my foot everytime i opened it. friends!
most days i have language lessons, and then visit (some work) in the garden. we have a pretty sweet little garden at the village school, and it is growing fairly well. we even built a scarecrow for it (it mostly makes the Gambians laugh, instead of scaring anything). we are attempting to grow squash, eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, and okra. so far squash is the best. when i am not in kaiaf, we have technical traning at a place called Tendaba, where european tourists come to birdwatch. i am learning about "advanced composting" and tree id. among other things, of course. very exciting stuff. they are teaching us how to use dilute urine as fertilizer. it is awesome. i hope that didn't disgust everyone. it helps plants grow...
but i am about to wrap this up with my BIG NEWS. this week we learned our permanent sites and i have gotten really lucky! i will be living on the southwestern coast. my hut is 15 minutes from the beach! i will be working on several different projects, including possibly collabrating with a URI professor and the WWF doing wildlife surveys (of turtles!).i am near a reptile farm so i may get to do some environmental ed, as well. i will not know exactly what i am doing for awhile but things are looking GOOD. i am so very excited to see my home for the next two years and stroll on down to the beach. i am also looking forward to many visitors...why not make your next beach vacation a Gambian one? come work on your tan!
i probably will not have interent again until late december or early january, so MERRY CHRISTMAS/ HAPPY HOLIDAYS everyone. i'll be thinking of you all. and maybe, next time i post, i will be a volunteer instead of a trainee.
keep your fingers crossed.
things have changed so much since my last post! i have a new family, my host family, which has a whole different structure than any family i've had before. i have a father, who has 3 wives, and many children, most of whom have grown and moved, but many of their children still live in my compound in Kaiaf. my "small father," or my uncle (but still a father) also lives in our compound. he has two wives and so i also have many nieces and nephews running around. it is a very confusing family tree. more branches and less of a trunk.
but they are wonderful. they have named me Fatou Sanneh, which is a fairly common name here. there are 3 other Fatou Sannehs in my family alone, and at least a dozen scattered around Kaiaf (which has about 2,000 people). one of them is my niece, and she is less than a year. she is probably the cutest baby to ever have lived. she lets me hold her sometimes, but i suspect this is only because she wants to play with my hair. i have plenty of pictures of my whole host family which i will post as soon as i can.
i live in a luxurious 2-room hut, complete with a desk, chair, bed, and water filter. it is pretty swank. the well is a cool 10 minutes from my house, so i get to greet the whole village with a bucket on my head about every other day. i have 4 windows, 2 more than the average peace corps trainee. be jealous. i was coexisting peacefully with a very spastic lizard, but he has since moved out. i am relieved by this mostly because he really liked to sit on my screen door and dive-bomb my foot everytime i opened it. friends!
most days i have language lessons, and then visit (some work) in the garden. we have a pretty sweet little garden at the village school, and it is growing fairly well. we even built a scarecrow for it (it mostly makes the Gambians laugh, instead of scaring anything). we are attempting to grow squash, eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, and okra. so far squash is the best. when i am not in kaiaf, we have technical traning at a place called Tendaba, where european tourists come to birdwatch. i am learning about "advanced composting" and tree id. among other things, of course. very exciting stuff. they are teaching us how to use dilute urine as fertilizer. it is awesome. i hope that didn't disgust everyone. it helps plants grow...
but i am about to wrap this up with my BIG NEWS. this week we learned our permanent sites and i have gotten really lucky! i will be living on the southwestern coast. my hut is 15 minutes from the beach! i will be working on several different projects, including possibly collabrating with a URI professor and the WWF doing wildlife surveys (of turtles!).i am near a reptile farm so i may get to do some environmental ed, as well. i will not know exactly what i am doing for awhile but things are looking GOOD. i am so very excited to see my home for the next two years and stroll on down to the beach. i am also looking forward to many visitors...why not make your next beach vacation a Gambian one? come work on your tan!
i probably will not have interent again until late december or early january, so MERRY CHRISTMAS/ HAPPY HOLIDAYS everyone. i'll be thinking of you all. and maybe, next time i post, i will be a volunteer instead of a trainee.
keep your fingers crossed.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
packing it in.
the house is in quiet chaos right now. we are all trying to prioritze and cram our lives back into the bags we carried over, and make sure we can find it all after our big move tomorrow. it's so exciting and scary and everything, like the first day of college but with a language barrier to make it even crazier. my mandinka is absolutely not at the conversational level yet. but maybe my host family and i can pass the afternoon counting to ten together. we will figure something out.
today was a big day, we got a pit latrine demonstration (fully clothed) and i just had to re-examine that i'm opting to use one of those things for a very long time. but don't worry, it's cool, i'm down for this experience. i'm actually pretty excited about having my own little hut and space here, and if you have to use a pit latrine, it's pretty nice that it's a private one. so i'm not ready to complain just yet. my next post may be very different, though. we also learned about dealing with our new roommates, including bedbugs, cockroaches, mice, bush rats (larger than chiuauas) and other creepy crawlies. they say it's good to have lizards around because they eat the spiders. it's a whole food web in my own home!
after some life-in-the-village training we journeyed to the actual city of Banjul (not just the Combo) and went to the marketplace. it was pretty hectic, and we stuck together in small groups, just like you'd think. but the merchants were pretty nice and i got some good fabric to make a skirt and some curtians for my sweet new hut. they're orange and very durable and i should have plenty of privacy but in a very cheerful way. what more could a girl ask for? the fabric here is hilarious, some of it is just beatiful and some of it is covered in chickens or fans or other random patterning. it's the luck of the draw. and the haggaling! i'm going to have to learn to bargian asap. the "i'm going to walk away" trick works great. i can't even begin to imagine how savvy i'm going to be in two years. but i'm psyched to see.
so tomorrow morning i get yet another round of shots and then we're taking a bus to our respective villages. it's sad to split everybody up, but when we reunite again we'll be so much more educated about the culture. i think it will be great to see what everyone has learned. there will be 3 other volunteers in my village with me, and i'm happy to say we plan on playing plenty of card games and looking out for each other. so think of me fondly and i'll post when i can, but just know i'm learning and integrating and missing everyone and sending my love home.
and playing with adorable Gambian babies. i hope my village has lots of those.
y'all take care now. loveya.
today was a big day, we got a pit latrine demonstration (fully clothed) and i just had to re-examine that i'm opting to use one of those things for a very long time. but don't worry, it's cool, i'm down for this experience. i'm actually pretty excited about having my own little hut and space here, and if you have to use a pit latrine, it's pretty nice that it's a private one. so i'm not ready to complain just yet. my next post may be very different, though. we also learned about dealing with our new roommates, including bedbugs, cockroaches, mice, bush rats (larger than chiuauas) and other creepy crawlies. they say it's good to have lizards around because they eat the spiders. it's a whole food web in my own home!
after some life-in-the-village training we journeyed to the actual city of Banjul (not just the Combo) and went to the marketplace. it was pretty hectic, and we stuck together in small groups, just like you'd think. but the merchants were pretty nice and i got some good fabric to make a skirt and some curtians for my sweet new hut. they're orange and very durable and i should have plenty of privacy but in a very cheerful way. what more could a girl ask for? the fabric here is hilarious, some of it is just beatiful and some of it is covered in chickens or fans or other random patterning. it's the luck of the draw. and the haggaling! i'm going to have to learn to bargian asap. the "i'm going to walk away" trick works great. i can't even begin to imagine how savvy i'm going to be in two years. but i'm psyched to see.
so tomorrow morning i get yet another round of shots and then we're taking a bus to our respective villages. it's sad to split everybody up, but when we reunite again we'll be so much more educated about the culture. i think it will be great to see what everyone has learned. there will be 3 other volunteers in my village with me, and i'm happy to say we plan on playing plenty of card games and looking out for each other. so think of me fondly and i'll post when i can, but just know i'm learning and integrating and missing everyone and sending my love home.
and playing with adorable Gambian babies. i hope my village has lots of those.
y'all take care now. loveya.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
i just can't get enough of this whole "internet" tihng
so enjoy the constant posting while it lasts. all the feedback i've been getting says my posts are really "newsy," which i take to mean "awesome" and not boring (haha) so i'll try and keep it up. or, as the flight of the conchords say, be more constructive with your criticism.
today was a very long day, we started out with a rousing morning of language lessons and immunizations. thank god i have two arms so i can alternate sore spots. after that, we had a health session where we learned to take blood from our fingers for malaria smears. pricking my finger with a tiny lancet is not something i've ever wanted to do, but nobody fainted or anything so it was a successful morning. and i still have a finger. we also started a trainee-wide game of killer (where everyone has to shoot somebody else in the group with a rubber band with no witnesses) but i got out pretty early on. it's hard to concentrate. this afternoon we had several gardening workshops, working in the new Peace Corps volunteer garden. I planted some sage-who knows if it will actually ever sprout. it was more for practice, and to give us ideas about our own gardens. i can't wait to get a permanent location and start my very own garden. though i might actually be more excited about my very own compost pit. january can't come soon enough.
but i am le tired and tomorrow is a big day for us trainees, last day before we all spread our wings and split to our training villages. to drop a little bit of Mandinka, fo saama!
which means till tomorrow.
today was a very long day, we started out with a rousing morning of language lessons and immunizations. thank god i have two arms so i can alternate sore spots. after that, we had a health session where we learned to take blood from our fingers for malaria smears. pricking my finger with a tiny lancet is not something i've ever wanted to do, but nobody fainted or anything so it was a successful morning. and i still have a finger. we also started a trainee-wide game of killer (where everyone has to shoot somebody else in the group with a rubber band with no witnesses) but i got out pretty early on. it's hard to concentrate. this afternoon we had several gardening workshops, working in the new Peace Corps volunteer garden. I planted some sage-who knows if it will actually ever sprout. it was more for practice, and to give us ideas about our own gardens. i can't wait to get a permanent location and start my very own garden. though i might actually be more excited about my very own compost pit. january can't come soon enough.
but i am le tired and tomorrow is a big day for us trainees, last day before we all spread our wings and split to our training villages. to drop a little bit of Mandinka, fo saama!
which means till tomorrow.
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