Journal Post 11/10

I just told someone very near and dear to me today that shit just happens here every day. Lots of things checked off the bucket list.. and here they are:

I woke up at 5 to the 5 AM morning calls which sounds like the microphone is placed on my roof blaring, some man singing and calling to prayer. I am not by any means exaggerating since I am right next door to the mosque. I did everything I needed to do to meet Ida on the road by 7:05 AM. We were off in a taxi with a flopping chicken in the back by 7:10 AM and luckily the chicken calmed down when we started moving... like lulling a baby to sleep. Anyways I tried speaking some basic Serehule to the driver but Ida had to clarify for me, as always. By 7:40 AM, we arrived in Soma and I was waiting for the internet store to open. I ate peanuts and stared at this gross half a pickle sized beetle (I later found out that this was a dung beetle) which looked more like a cockroach...for 20 minutes. Thrilling, I know, but it was just so nasty and gross, it was on its back and it looked super greasy and it was trying to wiggle its way somewhere...bleuuughhh. I spent another 15 minutes trying to read and pointing at any kid who toubab'd me and called them toubab which thoroughly confused them.

When the shop owner came (and I was expecting to wait a LOT longer), I went inside and looked at all the grasshoppers and cockroaches around the room. Splendid. It wasn't awful but still pretty bad. I thought I lucked out with waiting but I was very wrong. I spent the next hour waiting for internet because the servers were down or something in the entire area. Luckily I packed my book along with me. Sometime around 9:15 the internet was back and all was well. I logged on and the top 3 most popular websites on Google Chrome on the computer was titled "tranny sex" "hardcore porn" or something equally rated. Typical internet cafe is typical. I spent the next 3 hours typing furiously away to transcribe all my journal entries which I FINISHED like a boss (I felt so accomplished, not only did I type like woah, but every keyboard is sticky... it's the little obstacles, man), sent some quick emails/Facebook messages and called it a day by 12:30 PM.

Apparently I paid for 4 hours so I gave one of my Peace Corps friends the extra time - luckily he was there. Someone I knew from school just started her application to the PC and I'm so proud. Since I left, there has been two of my friends who reached out to me for more PC info and I'm so excited! While I was online, I briefly skimmed one of my PC colleague's blog and she's so much more eloquent than me. Meanwhile I'm all... "today I had sugar in my congee...dammit." They also have a lot of pretty pictures but my iTouch died and I'm waiting for a new charger :( Pictures are on the horizon, I promise. JUST KNOW that what you read in my blog is in my journal which is neither witty nor eloquent, just a vomit of raw words describing my day before I pass out.

Anyways, I walked out of the store when I was finished and some kids who I told my name to YESTERDAY remembered and waved at me! That was special. They don't even speak any languages I know! I took a shortcut to the bus stop and lo' and behold the bus was not there. My teacher Ida called me to see how I was and the minute I hung up with her, a gele gele/passing passenger van came by. I hailed it down and asked for the fare - 35. "Eff that," I said, "make it 20." Then they were all, "Ok ok 25." So then I boarded and found that I was the only foreigner and woman in this 15 passenger vehicle and there was a grand total of 4 other occupants ... all host country nationals and all men. It kind of raised my awareness of where I was at first. I talked to the guy at the back of the gele gele who is like the cash collector (we call him the Apparenti) and he spoke Mandinka. He knew no Serehule so I lied and said I've been in Jalanbereh for two years and blew his mind away with my Serehule greetings. I also threw in the 5 phrases I knew in Mandinka to get fancy. He liked to tap on my wrist while he talked, so although I was all smiling and all "ASALAAAAMALEIKUM" my eyes were looking at the windows to see if I was small enough to throw myself out should I need to evacuate. I also looked for things near me I could use as weapons, couldn't figure out how to unlock the back door (which had no handle), soooo I put my phone in one hand with Ida's name highlighted and finger positioned ready to hit the call button and my other hand on my pink breast cancer awareness pepper spray ready for action. Go ahead and laugh, I was being extra cautious my first time! Anyways almost 3/4s of the way to Jalanbereh, we picked up a woman and her daughter and I felt a lot safer. As I was hopping off the gele at my stop, the fare collector tapped me on the shoulder and told me he wanted me to find him a wife. Why? Because he liked me since I was nice to him and he wanted to remain friends. Of course that is how you remain friends, okay gele man.

I went to Ida's house for lunch and both her and Elizabeth were astounded by the time it took for me to return. Honestly, it was record time without any hitches. I think I'm the first one in my training group to take the public transportation by myself, I feel on top of the world. We reeled at the lack of training days we had left (which is not much) over lunch. Today, we had yassa, and it was delicious. I loooove the cook at my village and she's actually related to me on my mom's side! My immediate mother I learned my lesson not to eat so much today, so I'm patting myself on the back for that. Ida told me that when she returned to Jalanbereh this morning, a cohort of little kids from my family were on an adventure to deliver my breakfast. She told them I was in Soma and sent them back home. I guess the kids didn't tell my mom so the eldest mom and my own mom marched off to Ida's house absolutely beside themselves. They demanded to know where the hell their daughter was. Hahahaha I'm truly touched by their concern. They must've been like, "O HELL NO" status because not much will make my eldest mom AND my immediate mom hike over to Ida's. Ida laughed and said I was in Soma on the internet and they looked at her deadpanned and was like, "And you're here?" Ida said she trusted me and that I was a big girl, lol. So then they all laughed and chatted for a bit and told her they miss me every time I'm in Jenoi because I'm usually everywhere at night teaching the kids. That was very sweet :)

After lunch I went with Elizabeth to get soap and we both bought two watermelons for our families. When I returned, both of my aforementioned moms were sitting together while the kids zeroed in on me like magnets. They told me they went to Ida's house in the morning hahaha. I gave them the watermelons and they were so happy. I then told them I needed to wash clothes and they called out one of the younger women to do it. I didn't want to trouble her too much so I played dumb and said we could do it together. She, Jaaxa (who I also teach English to and we're pretty close), comes out with her baby's miniature shirts and I come out with my bucket load of kid-sized clothes.

Halfway through washing (which goes like this: bring clothes and soap out in a bucket. Acquire two additional big basins. Amble to the well and fetch two huge basins + one bucket full of water. Have someone fetch a stool for me while they haunch over... because that's how they were trained. Wash once in 1st basin with soap and suds, scrub, twist to get the water out, throw the article of clothing into the 2nd basin. 2nd basin - repeat, throw into 3rd bucket. 3rd bucket is final rinse. Empty dirty water from 1st and 2nd basin, empty 9/10s of the clean water in the bucket into one of the now emptied basins. Add a palm full of this blue/indigo powder into the remaining water in the bucket so that it turns vibrant indigo and they like to dunk shirts into this thing. I still haven't figured out what exactly what this powder is, other than the fact it turns my white shirts a light shade of blue. One final rinse, twist dry, hang it to dry, and you're done and exhausted!), I realize washing baby clothes with their half yard of fabric was a way better use of anyone's time so I tried focusing on that. Now, my laundry strategy will be to wash clothes with someone who is doing laundry for their infant, because I can do that for sure. I don't trust myself with my own clothes to get it clean.

After laundry, I turned over my compost and to my relief no animals were hiding in it. I also planted 3 more rows of okra. I went to fetch water at both the well and water pump and almost had an accident bringing the water home. It's always the last leg/setting the bucket down that kills me. Luckily, all the women noticed I was having issues and came to my aid. I swept, watered, refilled my water filter, I WAS ON A ROLL. I finally called Elizabeth around 5 to see if she'd like to go bike riding and she said yes.

It all started out innocently and fine. Elizabeth came out with a long skirt but of course she had to hike it higher when she was biking. Knees were shown, le gasp. I write this because it will be an important detail later. Here, in The Gambia where 99% pretty much is Muslim and women DON'T show their knees, that is not allowed. We biked for a bit with some complications - my bike seat is all up in my crotch with no ways of adjusting and I was fighting a perpetual losing battle to keep my helmet from falling off/strangling me. As for Elizabeth, her bike can't change gears and it's generally too tall for her. We reached our stopping point and turned around to bike back. Unfortunately, my helmet was just about to fall off my head so I yelled back to Elizabeth (who was behind me), "I gotta stop to fix my helmet!" I guess she didn't hear me and was only focusing on the road in front of her front wheel so she was looking down. Next thing I know, I hear "Oh God - AH!" and I look behind me just in time to see the =O face as Elizabeth, this 58 year old tall, South Carolina woman, careening into me. She took me down. I did an awkward fall on my side and dropped down while she also fell to her side. I felt like I was having an out of body experience watching the two of us on the ground in the middle of the road surrounded by the bush with NO ONE around us as far as the eye could see. We both had on the "holy shit did that just happen" face and spluttered, "holy shit did that just happen?" We checked ourselves for injuries and luckily we weren't hurt super bad, just some scrapes. I got a 2-3 inch scrape on the side of my right calf and a tiny scrape on my left elbow which is annoying for its size. Elizabeth, unfortunately, got it worst - her left knee was pretty scraped up, the top of her left foot had a small scrape, and a small, small wound on her elbow like me. We pat ourselves down and planned to quickly get back to Elizabeth's to patch ourselves up. WELL that would've worked if my bike chain didn't fall fall down and I don't know how to fix it. Elizabeth biked for a bit until she noticed I was behind her and rode back. We walked home together.

On the plus side, we noticed a lot more things but our wounds were stinging. They really aren't that bad but it was a bloody which made it look a lot worse than it actually was. I was just worried for Elizabeth. The whole ordeal was freakin' hilarious to me and it still us. Watching us crash into each other was pretty funny but I won't be laughing if this shit gets infected. We finally got home to Elizabeth's place and we made a bee line straight to her shower area to doctor ourselves up. We made a great time. I went to bleach the water while she got the medical kit. We washed our hands and went to work cleaning/cutting the dead skin off with nail clippers off each other. Both our elbows were fine but our legs took up the majority of the time. When we were pretty much done cleaning, Elizabeth took a bucket bath/peed next to me while I cleaned my feet and we bonded over the crash experience. Peace Corps style.

I'm convinced we scorned the knee Gods and paid for it dearly. Anyways we got each other's backs and dressed our wounds and after I limped back to my place. I had to explain to my family where my bike was and the whole crash but on the plus side I turned in early to write this epic of a story.