Like shooting fish in a barrel.

While watering my garden I noticed a lot more men walking towards the marsh with half football shaped baskets. I asked if they were going to the river to fish but they just pointed towards the bush. Once I got out to where I could see the marshland I saw that men from every compound in my village were out in the water with nets and baskets trying to catch fish. The area normally fills in with water during the rainy season but as the heat goes up and the rain stops coming the fish slowly get concentrated in the pond.

As I was walking over to see the action everyone started to run out of the water. I thought “snake? Biting Worms? Bees?” but right as everyone got out of the water every started yelling “AHHHH!” and sprinted right back into the water. It was a sort of surprise attack. If there was a movie about fishermen war-ing with fish in a pond this would be a pivotal battle scene.

As I walked around and saw people’s catches I noticed two types of fish. One was a run of the mill fish, small, undistinct, full of bones. The other was Catfish. That pond had some arm length sized Catfish! Thank goodness I never swam in there. I saw at least 2 in the small area I was watching. To make sure the fish doesn’t flounder its way back into the water they hit it several times with a thick stick, more of a thin log really, and let it sit there till they come get it when they are done. Little boys run around with rice bags and collect the goods their older brothers and fathers have caught. Much like America, people wanted pictures with their huge catches.

Before watching fish massacre I had gone to my ever dying garden to water and bird watch.

Thats right! I bird watch....

I never really considered myself to be “outdoor-zee” but the older I get the more I find myself outside, and it’s not just because I basically live outside now. In the last couple months I have gotten into bird watching (“birding” to those of you under 35yrs) and though that might sound lame, it’s actually pretty fun.

My village is the place to be for birding. There are reserves, and boat toured marshes, and national parks, but if you aren’t close to any of those and can only afford a geli ride then my place is great to see some colourful life. This is coming out more as an ad (there IS a “guest house” aka hut in my village that a visiting foreigner could sleep in, money goes to the school) but when it comes to seeing bird life I lucked out with my village selection.

There are 4 places that are good to see birds. First is my host family’s garden. There, I see birds like Bee Eaters, Finches, Weavers. In the marsh that is next to the gardens I see Rollers, Herons, Egrets. In the bush I see Starlings, Hawks, Hornbills. At the river I have seen the really colourful guys, more Bee eaters, Parakeets. Everything is about a 15 minute walk from each other. It’s awesome and though I am slowly showing myself to be the crazy lady that is staring off into the bush with a weird looking “camera” aka binoculars, I like getting to be out of my hut seeing what’s out there.

$$$$

I just finished reading Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux. It is a book about the author’s travels from Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa overland. It took him months, he took bush taxi’s, trains, buses; any way that the locals took. Other than his ever present distain for tourists and aid workers one of the themes in the book was how little the big events of the west mattered in the remote villages that he was travelling through. He would listen to the BBC and hear about the Dow getting lower and lower and think “and none of it matters over here”.

He wrote that book almost 10 years ago and now that I’m out here, far away from the events of the West, I am seeing the delayed effects of economic crisis effecting rural places. It’s not that what happens in other places doesn’t matter, it’s that it takes time to affect places in the out reaches. When the economies of Western countries deflates, tourism in tourism dependent countries deflates. When the war in Libya disrupts oil delivery to Gambia the power doesn’t come on every day in Basse like it’s supposed to. When the gas price rises internationally it doesn’t matter how much that old woman argues with the aparantee, the 6 mile ride is no longer 10 dalasi, its 15.

Every day I hear my host mom’s talk about the price of fabric. It’s going up and up. I hear “blah blah blah wax fabric blah blah expensive blah blah should be 40 dalasi, blah he said 100!” I nod in frustrated support since recently I tried to buy some that should be 15 dalasi and was told 20 as a last price.

I understand that things are hard in the states. People can’t live off the land like they do here, but when the prices rise, and the income stays the same, at almost nothing, what will people here do? They don’t buy that much anyways. Rice, sugar, tea, oil, fabric, cement, tomato paste. It’s not like people live in excess here.

It’s odd how you get used to living with no power, having to bike an hour for a cold soda, and getting excited when the power comes on so you can finally charge your phone. I’m used to that stuff but I can still see that there isn’t any posh-ness to living here. An amazing house in Kombo and well stocked fridge are about the same as an average family home in America. It’s $10 to buy a tub of Cream Cheese! $2 for a can of sliced peaches! $3 for a jar of black olives! Now I’m just ranting really.

I guess I’m just trying to debate Paul Theroux that things are, in fact, connected. Though, they seem to hardly impact each other at the time. Events big and small, both in the East and West, affect things.

Crying baby! Everyone's gotta have one of these pictures about it. Above is a picture of the pond by my garden full of tadpoles. The one above there is a picture of my Host Grandma and I in our garden. The top is two host brothers digging a latrine in my compound.

"Toubob! Give me your bicycle!"

Not a day goes by that I don’t hear the word “toubob”. As I ride my bike I hear the word screeched across a field from a group of excited children. Sometimes people will try to greet me, starting with “Toubob, how are you?” To my dismay my village has developed the terrible habit of calling me Fanta Toubobo. Toubob is the word people here use to say white person. I’m sure they aren’t trying to offend, but it gets tiring. When I tell people not to call me it they say “what?, you’re not white?”. Yes, I’m white. I know I’m white, but come on people. I tell them that I don’t go around calling them Ebrima Mofi or Aminata Mofi AKA Black Ebrima, Black Aminata. Sounds bad, right?

Being PC is not on the agenda of most up country Gambians. If you read my last post it was about Gambian body image in relation to American body image and how the Gambians around me aren’t afraid to call me fat. But trying to tell my host family to stop calling me fat is like trying to tell my village to stop calling me White Fanta. The more I say “don’t” the more it reminds them to do it.

This might be a weak comparison, and I have no intention to offend, but I know what it’s like to be the “other” in a society. To be the judged or stereotyped minority. I’m not going to compare it to what African Americans had to deal with/do deal with, but I think I understand more than the average white American. I never start with a clean slate here, when people meet me there is an assumption and through getting to know me assumptions change into actually knowing who I am. Here it’s assumed that I’m rich, I can’t do ANY manual labor, I know how to read, I love to study, i can’t do laundry, I can take people to America easily/give them a Visa, I want a black husband, or that I’m a doctor. I mean, people put assumptions on each other all the time regardless of race or place, but it just seems more effecting to me here.

The thing that makes it less frustrating is knowing that in 8 or 9 months I will be back in Toubobadu (white people land) and won’t be called the white equivalent of the N word in the 1950’s. For some Americans they don’t have that escape. America is their home and sadly they have to deal with prejudice without an escape somewhere else.

I’ve had people refuse to sell me stuff, jack up the price on items, literally stare but ignore my greetings, avoid me, and children cry and run in terror at my arrival in a compound. Gambian mothers will tell their children “the white woman is going to beat you!” then thrust their children at me to make them cry. Most of this stuff isn’t an average, these are rare but memorable occurrences that have happened in the last year and a half. I don’t think the Gambians around me are trying to be rude, but they just don’t realize how wearing it can get for me and most have never had to deal with being in the out group

~~~

Like always here are some random pictures from my Random life.

Pictures includes 2 little boys that I see OFTEN and are neighbors. THe one looking straight at the cmera is named Foday. The one looking from the side is named Ebrima. His mom is my closest friend in village and is always a fun person to talk to .

Then there is my host sister Fatou Mata who is about 6. She drives me crazy in the way that all 6 year olds do, she is loud, sassy, extremely playful, but also sometimes moody.

There is some writing on a gate door. Gambia is full of weird, slightly creepy, slightly misspelled wall writing like this.

THis is the inside view of my bidong showing off the weird stuff that comes out of our handpump. I definitely filter my water and I think the stuff is algae. Its like rust, but slimy looking, disappears if you shake the water, and its kinda gross to imagine that I filter that out of my water daily.

This is a map of Africa that highlights all the countries I'm NOT allowed

to go to as a PC volunteer because of safety concerns. As you see, I can't really go anywhere right now. Terrorists are slowly moving out and making countries unsafe for us.

This is one of my counterparts doing his fishermanly duties. He basically sits in a boat that put him just right above the water and puts out/takes in nets in the morning.