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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.