Looking like a jockey never looked so good.

Looks like a made a new friend...


This man looks crazy but he had some amazing dance moves and singing skills. If I ever have a fast internet connection I will try to put some video up. Now, on to the blog...

I got to test my host mom’s affections and hospitality for me recently. She’s a great person, just a little older than me, laughs all the time, and loves any type of social event. She is pictured below btw. Though we live in the middle of no-where, she works in the fields, and spends most of her days outside I think she could still be considered a bit of a girly girl. It’s odd that of everyone I could get to take me out there, she happened to be the person.


I have been telling my host family that I want to go out to the rice fields to see them since the rains started. They all kinda laughed it off but I was finally able to persuade them and my host mom (Bana) said she would take me out there when she got back from weeding in the bush. Every time I talked about going out there everyone told me about the water. “it’s so deep!” “It’s freezing and disgusting!” “There are bugs in there that will come up and bite you!” None of this really scared me away but even we walked out there one woman showed us her bleeding battle wound from this rice field creature. When we were getting to the beginning of the stream we finally saw the thing they were trying to scare me away from. They said “Fanta come look come look! You want to go out there?” What was this terrible creature of the underworld that has my family fearing so strongly for me you say? A leech. I’m not stoic nor Bear Gryllis or anything but I was a bit underwhelmed. Leeches don’t even hurt, it’s not something to completely freak out about. I looked up at the women around me, said it was no problem, and got scoffs of exasperation.
A funny part about all this is how little I knew about rice fields. I imagined that it was a lowered pool of water with dry raised banks. It’s not. As we walked we slowly got in more and more water and deeper mud. When the mud was getting to our ankles I thought “I wonder if it’s going to be like this the whole way. . .” We went from ankle deep, to calf deep, to sometimes hip deep. Grass surrounded and sometimes the path would open into lily pad laden open areas. The mud was deep so we would trudge through the sharp grassy areas so we wouldn’t fall.
Before I get into anything more I want to go over my dress for this occasion. Women wear a mix of things. I saw one woman putting on socks to go out there (seemed like a good idea), another with pants and cloth with string holding it tightly to her ankles and waist. I took a more German approach by wearing bright yellow soccer socks, strap sandals, and capris that I eventually tucked into the socks (fierce?). My host mom wore her normal complete which she promptly got dirty by falling in the mud when we weren’t even 3 inches deep in water. This was the start of a fun afternoon for me, and a lame one for her.
After 20 minutes of walking through the grass and water we finally got to my host grandmother. She was surprised (not just by my awesome fashion sense) and kinda just went, “so you are here now....thats nice”. My host mom seemed a little worried since, as mentioned before, she isn’t very outdoorsy after all. We headed back after just a short time because lurching in ass deep water is probably not on the Peace Corps list of helpful health techniques. On our way back there was a point when my host mom shouted “Fanta! (my Gambia name [I know, like the drink, hilarious...]) move move!” I moved, looked to my pant leg that she was staring at and saw the strings of my capris but my host mom thought it was a leech swimming vigorously for me. She yelled out and started to haul ass back. Mind you, we were still hip deep in slippery mud and water. I wasn’t able to stop her to tell her that it wasn’t a leech until we were on dry land.
I plan on going again so I can get some pictures but for now I am going to wait a little while to make sure I don’t pick up some dirty mud/water disease. My toe has been hurting all day. You know what that means, looks like I might be leaving this country sans one toe.

Here are some more random pictures from



This is my host mom doing her sisters henna tattoo to look foxy when she goes back to her new husband and compound.


This is a shot of my village during a dust storm.


The moon after a dust storm.


This is the river during the dry season. Great for the environment, right!?


One of my host mom's and a neighbor pounding.


My fingers after getting the henna done. They do it on the feet and hands for special occasions.


This is my hut. Pretty classy, I know. I have a better roof now too.


This is me and Kane's attempt to put me on his back like the women here do with their babies. It worked, but was terribly painful for Kane.


Gettin' yur hur did is a bit more extreme here.


They really love Obama here, or at least use him as a marketing ploy all the time.


This is my house getting a new roof.

Getting a new well in our compound. They seriously dug this thing in two days. That is so fast. It took me forever just to get my compost dug.

Spare me the speeches.

Note: I didn't edit this at all because I don't have time. There is a rant at the end which is probably badly worded and more diary than anything else.

Hello all you out there in Toubabadu. Gambia greets you. Since getting back to site I have started more serious work, fasted, travelled back to Kombo for training, welcomed a British visitor, and gotten in my first Gambian argument (it was basically like talking to a wall about a dead horse).

Work is going alright. I went to the hospital in Basse and have started to work with the HIV support group for the region. It’s going to be outreach education, grant reporting, office structuring, and teaching computer literacy. I plan on helping at the monthly support meetings and finding ways to both educate the group and structure the meetings so everyone can get some say and whatever kind of support they need. Even on that first day I learned so much about HIV in this country, the situation with ARVs here, and some helpful and not so helpful ways people have to get their medicine. The good news is that the ARV’s are free, the bad news is that sometimes people can’t get them when they run out. Missing doses, even a couple, will build up resistance in the body so, of course, it’s important people can get to the meds when they need them.

The other work I am trying to get going on involves education. Once again I am an education volunteer in a health volunteers role. There is a nursery school in my village that me and another volunteer are going to be doing some intense daily teacher training. We plan on having one of us in the classes every day for the first month of school to watch the teachers, help them implement the daily routine, lessons, proper punishment, and post class debrief of the day. This is a new school so they are still trying to work out the kinks. Other than my villages nursery school I want to work at a orphanage school in Basse to get their computer lab together and educate the teachers on computer literacy. I think knowing how to type and use my facebook hardly qualifies me as computer literate but I will try my best.

Fasting. It’s kinda lame. Maybe the fact that I’m not doing it because I’m religious is why I dislike it so much. I don’t have the emotional strength from Allah to be stoic about it. I think those around me aren’t THAT big of fans of it either. Everyone seems more short tempered, falls asleep all over the place, and bitches about the new price of things (but me too). 10 dalasi for a bag of sugar?! Seriously, wtf. People are fasting food, sex, smoking, and drinking. That’s right, DRINKING! We live in Africa people! You are out in the bush all day weeding! Drink some friggin’ water! I fasted (mostly) for the last week. I gave up today. I wanted to make coffee, eat some circle cheese on bread, and chill today, fasting would have gotten in the way.

Here’s the break down.

4am- Eat. I don’t know what they eat since I refuse to get up at that hour just to eat. If I happened to wake up for a minute, sure, but I’m not getting out of bed to eat some cold rice if I don’t have to.

4:30am-7:29pm- suffer, aka fast.

7:30pm- Drink tea, eat beans and bread. If you are lucky, or ritzy like my host family, you get mayo and ketchup in the mix. I’m living the life.

8pm-9ish- Fall into sleep coma.

9pm-Everyone prays then eats dinner. (It’s like 2 dinners! Gluttons...geez)

This is the tea, beans, and bread for my family.

To the disdain of my village, I went to Kombo again. I had to go for my groups Reconnect. I went there with high hopes and was excited to see everyone (which really was great) but due to semi unforeseen events the week went terribly wrong. The good news is that I got some good food (ants were only in it once and quickly was replaced with chicken curry), got to see my entire group sans one, and got far more language training that I could even think of language questions for. Once again I got to enjoy the beach and in the mix we had a huge Dirty 30 birthday bash for 4 people turning 30. It was an 80’s themed scavenger hunt that took us to all of our favourite spots. My team was like the A team of scavenger hunting. I got to speak German, Erica’s shirt got us free rides, and we had some impressive karaoke skills. In the end it was a sprint to the finish, we got second L.

I came back to my village to find a British woman visiting. My village has a “guest house” that they use as a fund raising resource for the nursery school. The Brit has been a blast and I have been really enjoying her visit. The kids are around her 24/7 but, since she is a teacher of problematic teens in England, she has been amazing with all of them. I’m not saying that Gambian children are all problematic (unless you’re an animal) but she is really patient and doesn’t get stress out by so much attention. She has had a couple meetings with the school head teacher and gave us some great ideas that Ashley, the teachers, and I can use in the upcoming school year. Her visit has led to the last topic, the arguement.

Yesterday was by far one of the most stressful days I have had in village. Normally my village is great but yesterday I had to pull kids off each other, kids demanded I give money (for the first time in village), I kept getting called Fanta Toubob, and it all came to a climax with the school committee demanding that Ami give gifts to them. Ami (her “Gambian name”) bought present like soap and cups for people she had met here who had treated her well. She had a box of things and the school committee wanted her to give them out in a “naming ceremony”. The problem with this is that 1. She already was being called by a Gambian name, 2. It’s Ramadan and no one is eating during the day, 3. No one is going to drum or dance when they are so hungry. She didn’t ask for the naming ceremony and they called it that as a way to get her to give out these gifts. Long story short it ended with me and another volunteer getting into a disagreement with a member of the committee who also became irate over soap. It’s soap! Not a raft in a flood, or veggies during hungry season. He basically told us that we were being rude because the committee built the house and should get gifts. We told him that they are only doing this because she is white, she paid to stay in the house so she has already given her due, and that it was extremely rude and greedy to demand that she gives gifts to people she doesn’t even know. It’s a gift, she can give it to whoever she wants. We were told “you only know 1/4^th of this culture. You are PeaceCorps , you are here to know our culture and act like us”. You can braid my hair, put a kompleto on me, and get me to eat rice with my hands but I’m still American. Besides, I have never seen them treat one of their visitors like this. Culture my ass, you guys are just exploiting her because she is from the West.

I feel embarrassed when I see NGO’s or other Westerners come here, enjoy the people, then on the last day get treated so rudely that it forever tarnishes their view of this place. The last days are when people demand money, things, call us rude, and try to guilt the hell out of us for material things. I have seen so many people leaving saying “these people are so greedy” “so lazy” “so rude”. I just wish they could see the nicer parts of the culture, why do Gambians have to ruin a good thing? I hear people say “oh, they are acting like this because they think you are a tourist but you’re PC, you are different”. Why is it ok to treat tourist like shit? I’m from a city with a ton of tourists but I don’t go out of my way to exploit them. The worst I think is “ah! Come on buddy! This is a one way!” All the people up country that are visiting are up here out of good will but people don’t realize that they don’t owe you shit, they are here to help you, and the last thing you should do is demand something. The argument was a moot point, no one was going to concede, and I think I have possibly lost a counterpart over it. Oh course not every day is like this. I rant about it because it was an outliner of my villages normal behaviour. This is possibly a look at what it’s going to be like in a year and a half when I COS. At least I will be ready for it, somewhat.

This is my flooded out compound during a rain storm.


This is what Gambia comes to look like after a ton of rain.


This is mold that is slowly growing on my bed frame. I am going to clean it in about an hour of two.


I saw this guy on my way here. I slammed on my breaks at got a shot of him. He was so bright and fluffy he stood out like a sore thumb.


These guys are all over my back yard.


My host dad's wrecked geli


My "Laundry Room"/backyard


This is a night shot of a storm that rocked my village.

PS I had to bike an hour, wait for the internet to work, and upload pictures for 3 hours for these 10 pictures. I hope you enjoy them.