Journal Post 12/28

I haven't written in the past couple of days. AHHH it's happening, it's starting to stave off! I think mostly because I was just tired as hell and I should stop trying to be so hooked on routine. Let me do a quick recap...

Woke up at 5 and got ready to leave my door by 5:45 AM. I was just about ready to wait outside my compound when one of my older brothers told me that SURPRISE the gele gele was not going to stop there. Good thing I woke up early, so then I walked all the way to where the parking place was and got there at good time - 6:05 AM on the dot. I think it was easier because there were less people to greet me and still dark, so just less people in general save the ones going to pray. I was the first to get there when a gele gele rolled up - a beat up 16 passenger van and it took awhile, but sure enough it was filled up! I greeted some people, Ceedee's mom came and I love that woman so I enjoyed her presence and felt much more at ease. She was on her way to a meeting in Basse. I really want to get to know her more, on my to-do list. By 6:30 we were off! We saw the sun rise, a car on the road broke down, and were finally in Basse by 7:30-7:45 ish. Unfortunately they took another route to Basse so it dropped me off closer in the town than the transit house. I walked a good 30 minutes back to the transit house with 80 million pounds on my back because I decided to drop off some stuff in Basse in case I ever needed to spend the night. I packed some back up kitchen supplies, toiletries, and a CRAP ton of clothes. Speaking of which, I didn't want to get charged for an extra large bag so I wore 6 skirts, 3 shirts, and my big UMass hoodie and fit all my other stuff in my backpack, hahaha. I looked very frumpy but it worked! Good all the clothes I have are bigger than my frame. ALSO good thing that it's freezing in the mornings so I didn't burst into a flame walking back to the transit house.

There, I went straight to the locker room, threw everything in, stripped down my 80 layers, and finally was ready to surprise my friends!!! Beth and Elizabeth were there sleeping and I had all the intention to roll into bed with them but by the time I went back into the main room they were already awake and talking. EEK! Love them so much AND they had cookies so I had two delicious chocolate ones. Apparently everyone munched on them all the night prior... dammit. Either way, it was delicious. Elizabeth gave me money to buy breakfast sammiches for everyone so I ran as fast as I could to get all those orders while Beth got the water started for tea and coffee. We spent the entire morning catching up because Elizabeth doesn't get cellphone service at her site! Good thing she's the next town over from Basse - she can literally walk her and if she had her bike, she could get here in under thirty minutes. PLUS the road is good, so I'm thankful. She has two missionaries at her site who have been living in The Gambia for a WHILE (15 years?) and that makes me feel better. She was able to go to Christmas mass the night before and was drained because she didn't get back to the transit house until 1 AM! Beth was still feeling a bit icky from her sickness last week but she was able to get in a run and even bike to Basse. Look at these women. I haven't even breathed in the direction of running yet. Could be because I don't have sneakers... Anyways, we caught up and I couldn't stop smiling because I love them and of all the people I'm so glad it was us three ladies. I miss Elizabeth so much, it's so different not being able to talk to her. I texted her ALL the time during training village and she makes me happy. Beth is also the nicest creature ever and, ugh. I was just very content that morning.

Elizabeth wanted to go to sleep some more so she gave us money to go grocery shopping. Beth and I got all our stuff ready and headed out... unfortunately in the middle of the day. We went to the bank first, thinking that since no one really celebrates Christmas it would be open... wrong, closed. SO I was really stuck in Basse for another day because I used the last of my cash to get there! Beth wanted to rest for a bit so we made our little camp in front of the bank's doorsteps and laid down. We called a couple of people to wish them Merry Christmas to be productive :) I also had to tell my family that I would be staying the night. Luckily they understood me. After we were all rested up, we braved the markets on our own and bought everything we needed for our Christmas brunch. It was tough walking back in the heat and I was definitely drenched in sweat so as soon as we arrived, I had to change out of everything. And let me tell you. Wearing shorts and seeing my knees is so liberating. I helped Beth in the kitchen while she did all the hard work (and I ... washed lettuce so as to not mess anything up) and we feasted like champions. It was a simple salad with spaghetti and sauce. We also bought a watermelon but didn't get to it because everyone was stuffed. We chatted a bit, John (a third year who is stationed in Basse), Albert (an older, Ag/Fo volunteer who lives near by and is a frequent visitor to the Basse transit house), and Josh (my site mate/education volunteer and fellow Serehule speaker) came and it was a nice small group. Elizabeth headed home soon after and Beth and I walked her to her car park. We continued onwards to the Internet Cafe and vegged out there for awhile. We were both able to Skype back home and it was everything we could ask for <3

That night, we watched Elf and I made one of those decorative holiday stars! I went to bed exhausted and woke up the next day ready to bank and get home. Good thing when I got there... it was declared a public holiday and closed down hahahahaha. Excellent, day two of no money. Beth was a doll and lent me more. I have officially over 2000 I owe to my family for rent and random volunteers who have been helping me out. She went to the internet cafe while I walked around Basse looking at what there was. I really need a current volunteer who knows their stuff to go with me just so I know if I'm getting ripped off or not! It was good window shopping and doing inventory, though. Beth and I walked back to the transit house after that and got a bean sandwich for lunch. We rested up there, I can't remember what we did, but next thing I know I'm walking Beth back to ferry crossing to drop her off since she needed to head back to site and I went to the Internet cafe. It was good to chat with some people again but I couldn't help but feel guilty that I had to stay... again while everyone was with their families and bonding with them. It's miraculous that I bought toiletries and clothes and such with me and I thank my lucky stars that I was thinking ahead. Damn, I love when you think ahead for yourself and it helps you in the future when you need it. I walked back and decided to do something productive with my time... so I made 5 more of those festivus/holiday stars out of magazine paper and chain/garland things.

THE NEXT DAY, 12/27 AKA yesterday, I wake up and go Elf-mode on the transit house. My partner in crime, Low Chair, he does not wish to let others know of his Martha Stewart side, and I went to town decorating the main living room/hang out area. It's quite beautiful and I will be taking pictures. After that occupied all of my morning, I made a quick breakfast and went to the bank. Josh met me to walk me around and show me places to buy some key things you can't find in village... and then I had to owe him money. Just digging a deeper hole... We finally went into the bank and was met with. Crazy. Ass. Lines. I told Josh to go home and that I'll give him money the next time I see him since I didn't want him to wait with me. The good news was that my phone was charged so I got to text a bunch of random people AND the AC was just turned on. The bad news was that... I waited for an hour. Ah well. I eventually got my money, met a Mariama on the road who was nice enough to walk me to the car park. She goes to school in Kombo but was up in country because her school was on break and she wanted to surprise her friend at her wedding! We went all the way to the car park and that's when I found out... the last car to Kulari left. Awesome, hahaha. It was 1:30 by the time I was there and I thought the last car left at 3 PM. The only car going near that direction was SO far away from my site. I called my Community Rep/HM to see what I should do and he said he could arrange a donkey cart to get me from where they would drop me off but Josh said that would take me hours. Josh advised to stay and I took his advice.

Went back to the computer cafe, derped, did some things I wanted like looked at dress styles I liked and decorative ideas for the transit house, went back, showered and dinnered, and decorated some more. Josh had The Amazing Spiderman on his computer so we watched that while I crafted some more. I feel super awful that I intended to stay in Basse for 9 hours and ended up staying 3 days. I feel like this is the epitome of Peace Corps but I should just learn to go with the flow, haha. It's this damn guilt feeling and my family is so cute - they were going to cook me pumpkin and rice when I got home yesterday but I wasn't able to make it back! Ugh. I bought them a bunch of onions, green onions, and beans so hopefully our meal tonight/tomorrow will be yummy.

Today, as of right now, I'm typing at the internet cafe. In another ten minutes I'm going out to the car garage to wait for the first gele back to Kulari. I honestly cannot wait to be back, and hope nothing horrible grew in my house while I was gone, but I'll write tonight. UNTIL THEN!

Journal Entry 12/24

Soooo I think I'm tiring myself out. I think I have too rigid of a schedule and need to chill. Menstruating Jess is not a happy Jess to begin with especially when added to a new environment and trying to get the hang of everything into the mix. Usually I wake up at 8 AM wicked tired, rip myself away from bed to get ready, and go out to greet/retrieve my breakfast between 8:30-8:45 AM. I officially head out at 9:30 AM to study, greet people or brave the bush until 1 PM, come back to fetch water and wait for lunch which is at 1:30-2 PM. I eat lunch and have a quick break to myself before I go out to study again between 3/3:30-5:30 PM. I head back inside my hut to work out from 5:30-6:30 PM, shower, write/derp/study/plan until dinner comes at 8 PM, eat and brush up, then go out and sit between 8:30-9:30 PM. Sometimes I go to the mosque but I'm probably not ever going to do that again until the next blue moon, I am SO tired at night. I don't end up sleeping until 10:30/11 PM and I'm exhausted the next day. I definitely burned myself out yesterday and crashed after lunch.

I started off the day strong by making my way to my community rep's place all by myself (follow mosques/electricity lines) and greeted people all along the way. Whiiiich might have made me 40 minutes late, oops. I weighed a child who was previously malnourished to check her progress and sat around to greet people. We also checked up on the guy who was sick from yesterday and thankfully he was much better. His family was so nice and gave us bananas for visiting. I walked back home for lunch and there's this kid who hung around HM's place the entire morning who followed me back. He had the same last name as me so he must've been a younger brother or cousin of some kind to me. Anyways, he followed me/walked me home - and he's like 9 or something. I arrive home and tried to separate pounded coos for a while and failed terribly so I went inside to rest up for a bit. I did give one of my sister's and her friend a laugh because I was just so sucky at it, hah. I was completely drained and called my friend Tyler to whine because my period symptoms flared like none other that day and I was particularly whiney. No worries, it too shall pass. The boy who walked me home, unbeknownst to me, WAS STILL THERE AND DID NOT GO HOME. He hid behind the other side of my house so the front part of my compound couldn't see him. He kept on calling my name and knocking at my door and I didn't know what he wanted so I just told him to go home. (I don't invite anyone inside to keep my boundaries high to set a precedence, it's easier taking them away than reinforcing them in the future) The boy kept on lingering and said he was hungry so I told him to go eat my lunch at the front of my compound, not like some creep chilling at the side of my house. Besides, there were benches there! He kept on declining - maybe he was shy? I don't know. I asked my host brother if I could give the boy my leftovers and he said yes. When I turned around to give the kid the bowl, he disappeared. I went back in my house but heard him knocking again and then heard my mom shout at him. "BOY! What are you doing." I think he left like an hour later after that. Also my sister's friend called me to come out (normally no one calls me to come out when I go in my house, I come out and spend a bunch of time when I'm ready) and I asked her why and she said "nothing." Annoying... I would have more patience but it's definitely period time.

I spent the entire afternoon inside and went out for a hot second in the evening. I just felt really crappy that day. Tired. I have to learn to pace myself. I went to bed at 8:30 that night and slept until 6. Today, I did nothing but pamper myself and it felt pretty good despite the nagging guilt feeling. I told my family I had a headache - which was true, and my body just felt worn out but I have no idea how to say that aside from "my body is broken" and I don't know how they'd take that, haha - but sifted some coos with them for 15 minutes. I was better at that than separating it, for sure. I went to fetch water and after that, I spent the whoooole day in and went out to do some letter-writing for about an hour. I did some laundry, washed my rope bag, packed for Basse tomorrow, worked out, organized some stuff, and it was really relaxing. I went out to write a letter and talked to my uncle and my other uncle's wife and she was annoying at first but I warmed up to her after asking to see pictures of her husband (who is in France working). The kids were also particularly annoying me today because they kept on asking me what different things were called in Serehule even though I told them I was writing. I think they got it when I sternly told them I was writing a letter. Even though I didn't study all day, I managed to communicate in okay Serehule. My uncle's wife kept on telling me to take her to America and that The Gambia is not great (lots of people say that, no problem it doesn't phase me) but I insisted, in Serehule, that both are great and that she has not gone to both countries yet but I have, and I can say that both are "sweet" (as they call it here). She was persistent but so was I. I got a little sassy today, too, my 20 year old sister was telling me to pound coos and I said no because I had a headache and my younger sister emphasized what I said. The older one kept on going on and on and I just suddenly spoke in very fast English, like, three sentences and she just stopped and laughed saying she didn't understand me. I agreed and asked if English was hard and I think she got the message. Normally I don't sass back, in fact I haven't sassed anyone back, but today I was just not having it. She always asks me to do stuff and I'm like chill, I'm learning, I'll get to it I promise! She probably thinks I'm lazy because I see absolutely no one here with books (unlike training village), much less a woman writing all day. Whatevs. On a language note, I was able to say "you go to the bush first/you cook first" in Serehule and utilized some new vocab I learned. Also I have the whiniest baby ever in my compound - she's actually my 20 year old's daughter. She is cute-ish but upon the slightest ANYTHING she starts to fake cry and actually just cries over everything, haha. She eats a ton so at least she's healthy!

I rested for the entire night and felt a lot better. I think I have to adjust my daily routine and do things for myself more. Do what I want to do. This little feeling of guilt is pretty hard to come to terms with, and I'll write about that later. I'll have to study extra hard tomorrow to make up for all this lack of Serehule studying. The kids got a driver to stop in front of my house tomorrow morning at 6 AM so that's very nice of them. It would be a drag to walk all the way to the gele when it's super dark out. Christmas tomorrow!

Journal Post 12/22

Today was eventful! I woke up, got ready, went out and met a friend of my mom's who is married into the Touray family (my clan). She kept on saying I was from China so I'm going to nix the fact that my fam's from there or the fact that I was born there and straight up say I'm from the US. Too much inquiry into my background otherwise... HM and Ceedee came by sometime around 10ish but before that I was able to communicate with my family of my rent. I'll probably cook breakfast for myself, have lunch and dinner with them, have them do my laundry once a week, and I'll bring them gifts on the road every time I go to Basse which could be every other week. All just day trips! It sucks though because one of my sisters have something wrong with her eye - it LOOKS like cataracts but she's only 20 years old so I don't know... she says she needs 400 dalasi for that and I'd love to lend her some but I don't want to be known for that so early on in my service (as the money giver/lender). I'll probably pay for my rent on Wednesday for the half month that I'm here and my January rent on the first Saturday so that they have enough and it'd fall on a regular pay cycle. I was thinking of giving my family my rent and such every first Saturday anyways so this works out!

Anyways, HM and Ceedee came by to whisk me away. I finally got to talk to the carpenter and I really want two short tables with wheels. It's near impossible to get them in Kulari so I'm going to have to find wheels in Basse hopefully and bring them to the carpenter. That, or I'm going to have to wait until someone from the US ships them to me... I'm just so hellbent on finding them/adding them. The carpenter super tried to rip me off but HM was nice enough to talk the price down. It went from 600D down to 250 for a table, jeez. I'm getting my bigger table finished first, holding off for the two small ones until later when I can figure out this wheel situation, and we went to someone who makes bamboo beds. I got a quote of 200D for the bed which is a great deal! I just hope no creepy bugs will nest their way inside... I'm going to have to do frequent bug spray downs and wrap my bamboo bed in fabric. Yes I will go to extreme lengths, just let me live. Now I have to invest in the 20 meters to do that! And twine.

Next, we stopped at our final destination which was HM's place where I met Alaji, a Wolof Public Health Official from Basse (the regional big town where I go to stock up on supplies and interwebs). A bunch of people came by (most of them men, figures, men hang out with men and women hang out with women in Serehule communities), and I met HM's neighbor who asked me if I wanted to see a monkey. WAT? Even in English I had to ask him to repeat himself and I did a double take. We all went to his house to see the monkey (he is actually HM's neighbor) and sure enough it was there. His name was Buba, haha. They gave me peanuts to feed to him and Buba ripped it out of my hands. Hit it out. It was pretty cute and smart. I asked the guy - Ibraima - where Buba came from and he said the bush, lmao, of course, where else was I thinking, Petco? So I go back to HMs, chill, Alaji taught me/ran me over the immunization chart for babies (in Gambia they administer 9 vaccines for kids by the way), HM quizzed me, Ceedee was off/on teaching me Serehule, I greeted random people who passed by, and journaled in Serehule. I read it to everyone and they seemed to understand me! Musa the acting Alkaloo stopped by and we chatted for a bit. We ate benechin (fried rice with bony fish and pumpkin) and Ceedee got us COLD WATER fuck yeah! The kids are still warming up to me but it was my first day. Slowly, slowly. Later, HM bought me to a compound where two school girls lived and they understood English and Serehule! They both agreed to be my English teacher! Apparently they're really active in the community, too, during the huge TOSTAN event. I hope they're good teachers. Either way, I'm freakin' psyched to find two gems there! How awesome that they go to school everyday, and they're Serehule's which makes it an even bigger feat because as a whole the group is still super traditional/strict about letting women get schooling. Even if they aren't good teachers, I want to become friends with them and talk to them more. I wanna let them know just how awesome they are in doing what they're doing.

After that, we went to a man's house who's sick and exhibiting symptoms of malaria. HM gave him a shot and we'll go back tomorrow for follow up. I need to brush up on my "get well please" vocabulary... note to self, note to self. Apparently we saw him at the carpenter's, too, and it was so fast that he came down with some hardcore symptoms, jeez. My thoughts are with him tonight and I really do wish him a speedy recovery.

HM and one of my 29834792 my younger brothers walked me back to my home and I gained some confidence on how to get to HM's place which seems like the center of everything - including where the gele geles are which I'll need to get anywhere! I also found out the last reliable gele that travels from Basse to Kulari leaves at 3 PM - very useful information. I just have to follow the line of mosques and phone lines to get to my house, which is a nice landmark. Even HM agrees that I'm super far away and it took him months to figure out Kulari... excellent. Good thing I came during cold season when it's not that hot but still SUPER HOT in the afternoon and miserably cold in the mornings. Such extremes... reminds me of New England.

I worked out again today but with way less zeal... I'm hurting from the past couple of days. I als ogot to talk on the phone with my emotional buddy and acquired fabulous tips/advice to shape my three month challenge. I talked to another pal I met for like 5 minutes at the transit house for EVER who looks like Jesus, it's pretty sweet, but now I'm super tired so I'm turning in!

Journal Post 12/21

Welp, today marks my first time in the bush! I woke up tired as hell, cold, and dying to pee so that is always an alarm clock that I can’t ignore. I left one of my bags unzipped and freaked out because I thought mad bugs would’ve crawled into it during the night… nope, thank God. Got ready, went out to study for a bit to wait for everyone else to get ready, my host brother gave me half a bean sammich, score. A bit later, my grandma told me to wear socks and change into pants… she cares! It was so cute. I did and we went into the bush. It was me, my host brother’s wife (who’s the same height as me… rare), and my oldest sister. We greeted some people along the way and some guy… my younger uncle I think, and he complimented me on my Serehule for only being here for 2 months. Score. It was far away and windy as hell but I was able to make small conversation with the ladies. 

We got there and my younger brothers were already there working. By working I mean all the younger kids are on the ground picking up peanuts while my older brother who’s in his mid-late teens are packing all the peanuts up and waving them in the wind to get rid of the sand. They basically told me to pick up all the rest of the peanuts on the ground and that’s what I did! All these peanuts will later be shelled, pounded, and made into food. The older of the brothers kept on saying “hey” to get my attention and I told him my name was Mariama so he started calling me that, haha. I hate when people call me “hey.” JUST SAY MY NAME. I really like my sisters because they understand me and are silly/joke with me. I saw this really crazy gross squirmy centipede that was lime green with yellow legs and gross small dung beetles. My shoulder hurts fiercely and I can’t believe these women and kids do this all day for a couple of months. The boys are very sweet and tucked a metal bowl (flipped over) like a makeshift chair under my butt while I was squatting, haha, so cute. I’m still learning everyone’s names… pretty hard. 3 hours of squatting later, my shoulders officially kill but my mom comes by and feeds me a piece of a bean sandwich again and my sister gives me a piece of her panketos! This one was interesting and had some stuff in it and was salty. Good nonetheless. OK so then we came back, my family was so happy that I went into the bush, I fetched water and did some laundry. Lunch comes and it's... PUMPKIN AND FRIED FISHBALLS. Hell yes, Jesus I was fed good today. If this is what I get for going into the bush then they're doing a good job bribing me. 

After lunch, I went out to study, barely stayed awake, fetched well water again (bad tap system here...), exercised (feeling damn proud and damn sore), studied, and dinnered. I sat out for a good 40 minutes before retiring. Although I'm studying, all I'm doing is recopying notes to try and learn Serehule again! I'm trying to learn 5-10 new phrases a day but I'm really trying to look for a female teacher to take me under her wing. Tomorrow, HM, my community representative, is going to visit me so hopefully he can help me find a place to put credit on my phone, map out the way to the gele gele garage park, bring me to the Alkaloo to formally say hello, and find me a woman teacher. It's a lot but it'd help me tremendously. Oh, and go to a carpenter. It would make my life if I could get a table with wheels so it could make cleaning a hell of a lot easier. 

It's weird that across the sea, my friends and family are engulfed in the commercial Christmas spirit. I was so happy receiving a package but the gift giving hype really eluded me. I can't even put myself in those shoes anymore. I'm happy if I get through the day not sick, people understand me, I don't poop my pants, I finish my agenda, if no one dies, if my food is good, and I don't get weird bug bites. I feel like I'm appreciating the small things so much more and it's a great big lesson I'm thankful to be learning. The smallest things give me the greatest joy and they're usually not bought. Anyways, I'm going to give it until Monday/Tuesday to officially compound hop... I need to get my name out more, dammit, but I need to know what to say when I'm sitting there!

Journal Post 12/20

So. Today. I feel like I should feel more accomplished than I actually feel because I accomplished everything I wrote down on my agenda! First, I got ready and somewhere inbetween getting ready, Tyler and I thought it'd be a great idea to put all of Motley Crew into World of Warcraft race/class categories and give them special abilities/weaknesses/ and traits on a talent chart. We just RPG'd Peace Corps The Gambia, yes I understand how nerdy we are. I went out with my moms and grandma to the other Touray compounds and discovered that we have a lot of people in our clan. I also discovered that some people are pretty rich as in... tiled floors, fans, electricity, and refrigerators, WHAT? My moms left for work but my grandmother and I continued. I didn't get such a great map like I intended to because there's SO many people to greet! Slowly, slowly I guess. I'm thinking there's 3 phases: sensitization (getting my name out ther), making a map, asking questions for my baseline. I looked at my 3-month challenge agenda and pretty much balked. Guess I have to get started like five days ago. I came back, did some chores, ate lunch, went out to study for 2.5 hours, my community representative swung by to say hi, went inside to sweet and exercise, showered, dinnered, sat outside for a hot second before coming inside. I guess I'm going into the bush for tomorrow morning. My grandma told me to wear socks, haha. My brother has some friends over and they keep on trying to correct my Serehule and I'm like I knowwww I'm on it dude, slowly, slowly! I'm really trying to reclaim language because I swear I lost all that ability in Kombo and I'm really conscious of it. I basically speak in Serehule 99% of the day minus talking on the phone and all the men who want to talk to me in English but I respond in Serehule. I'm trying to learn 10 new words a day but it's really hard when my workbook isn't always right. I need to go out more in the morning, have the afternoon to myself, go back out again, come back inside, and go back out after dinner. I just have to find the perfect rhythm. Maybe I'll shoot for 9-1 greet people or 8-12 depending on my wake up time, lunch and some chores, 2-4 study outside, 4-5:30 exercise/shower, 5:30-6:30 chat outside, 6:30-8:30 free time/dinner, 8:30-9:30 outside? Tentative but it just might work!

Journal Post 12/19

Today was interesting. Woke up and just about ready when... I get a call from Sheriff the Driver who told me I had some packages they were delivering for me!!! HOOORAAYY!!! I just finished my breakfast (which I swear doesn't taste at all good unless I add 5 tablespoons of sugar) when they arrived. I got a letter from Mike and a package from Melanie. I've never been more excited in my life and I felt like a kid again awaiting my presents. Modou the Driver/past awesome carpenter was with Sheriff and actually was the first one to greet me at my door in English so I thought it was some random guy trying to lure me into an English conversation but clearly that wasn't the case. He was such a sweet heart and helped me clean up my roof which meant sticking a broom all up in my thatched wood above me and sweeping away anything that looks like it's going to collapse on me. Which also meant everything that fell down - which there was a lot of - coated all of my stuff. Modou, again being an angel, proceeded to SWEEP everything for me but I knew... the fire has been ignited. It was henceforth renamed "Ultimate Cleaning Day" and thank god my mom sent me those Clorox wipes because they were my SAVIORS. There was an unfathomable amount of dust on top of my bed and it was nasty.
I made covers for my chests using fabric I bought and scraps of that fabric for covering the chest handles so I don't break my fingers lifting them ever again. I ate lunch, finally washed my clothes which involved my grandma taking pity on me, doing most of it and my younger 20 year old sister (who already has a 2 year old baby) helping me hang it dry. I'm definitely going to pay them to do my laundry...

Anywho, I got to wash the rest of the mold off my stuff, unopened my package/read my letter/laughed alone in my hut, swept like 8 times, finished organizing my stuff, EXERCISED and hot damn I'm so out of shape, took all my clothes down and folded them, washed my feet (which feels like a true victory when you can see the bottom of it), showered, and in all honesty I checked off everything I put on my to-do list. It took me 3.5 days but I'm finally what I called "settled" (or as settled as I can get without furniture). I still need to talk to the carpenter to make me two small roll-y tables and one bigger table with wheels... but I was able to ask the prices for some items from my family and that's a mission for next week when I have money. Right now, I still am operating under less than 50D (which is little bit more than a dollar) and only have enough money to get to Basse, the regional "large town" with shops, internet cafes, and the bank. It takes 35 D to get there... let's hope for the best.
I drafted up another plan for tomorrow, dinnered, and went outside. After sitting a little and telling my moms that I was ready for tomorrow, they decided to take me on a late night adventure to the mosque for what seems like story telling time. A number of people were sitting outside/inside just listening to the loud speaker. They were translating the Koran into Serehule and reading it in Arabic. Good thing I had a lot on my mind because I sat there for 1.5 hours not understanding anything! My butt hurt. We finally arrived back but it was good exercise for tomorrow when I go into town with my grandma. I have one mom who can understand me best, then the older mom who I like a lot too, she can understand me somewhat and is definitely the more fierce of the two women. My grandma is such a nice figure who takes me under her wing. I expressed that I had no idea what I was saying but I just liked sitting with them and I also got to meet other women. Definitely in my element. A group of boys started shouting "toubab" and "Chinese" at me but I told them not to do that and to call me Mariama which I hope they understand but honestly they were just kind of annoying. I'll warm up to them slowly. I also had an awkward encounter with a guy who kept on calling me after site visit and I just ignored him because I just didn't appreciate calls at random times in the day! I told my moms that I didn't like giving out my number to men and I think they understood. I told them I wanted to make more lady friends so the folks of Kulari don't think I'm a hussy. It's such a relief that they understand. I have to juggle how I'm presented - but like I said, tomorrow really begins *my* three month challenge - getting Kulari to know me like in Jalanbereh, I plan on starting a map to the pump first, sitting in at least 5 compounds a day for 20-30 minutes, and walking around freestyle greeting people. 3000 people in Kulari (so says my paper PC gave me)... great. I'm starting my regular routine tomorrow which will consist of a mix of getting ready, greeting people/sitting in compounds, fetching water, snack, reading/studying outside, lunching inside, free time to do whatever, snack, exercise, shower, snack, free time, dinner, and sit outside with family. Every time I eat I've been getting a stomach ache and I feel like it's because my stomach's still adjusting. I think I've been eating a lot lately - including coos - and I can't gauge whether it's Aunt Flo that's changing me or my taste buds are really adjusting. Either way, working out needs to happen. I have a couple of things I need to do for my house otherwise I'm ready to make some friends and hopefully find a female English/Serehule teacher! Eeek.

 

Journal Entry 12/18

Well shit its been a full week since I last wrote! Terribly sorry but Banjul, swear in, shopping, and settling in was exhausting! Let me do a brief run through of what happened…

Woke up early, left Jalanbereh, it was a long, long trip back to Kombo/Banjul and I slept through most of it but we finally made it!

Dropped stuff off in the transit house, had a couple of sessions, went back to dinner, went out to some bars, redeemed myself from my last (weak) encounter with the native beer called Julbrew, went to the beach at night, and got rocked by the waves… scars to show.

We got our final evaluations! I scored an advanced low on language and got really sweet reviews by my Program Manager/PCVL/Program Assistant. My Program Manager congratulated me on the work well done, my PCVL said I should relax because I put a lot of pressure on myself (truth) and my Program Assistant said I was really easy to work with, yay.

I received my packaged from my mom!!! YAY So useful it was like opening the Christmas present I’ve been dying for.

Got flu shots, important later

Ended sessions forever for PST, we all rushed home to either Internet or beach. I went to the beach and braved the waves + played Frisbee in the ocean – hard shit being a PCV.

THURSDAY, woke up mad early again because my room was frigid. This counts as day two of early self wake up, wtf. Today was a 4:30 AM wake up call, damn you body.

Swear in ceremony was incredible – Motley Crew (our official group name) looked fabulous and even the PCVs who attended were saying we all looked smokin in our asoebes (AH-SO-BEES; outfits with matching fabric)! Everyone had their own style and the fabric was great. I loved wearing my dress – it came out so good! I took made selfies with everyone and had a permanent smile on my face. I sat through some long speeches but I was busy rewriting my portion of the speech anyways so I didn’t mess up. Finally, Dani (the one who read Mandinka), Becca (who read Pulaar), Malcolm (who read everything in English), and I approached the stadium for our turn at speeching. It was super fun and everyone laughed at me especially when it was my turn (I read very animatedly) because legit only two people in the audience understands Serehule and I’m this random Chinese girl talking it. Whatever it takes to make people laugh! PS I was televised on national TV… no big deal.

We all sang the Peace Corps song but we were HORRIBLE because everyone forgot the lyrics and I couldn’t help but laugh throughout it. We sounded like dying cows. I was also in the front and was bursting out laughing, oops.

Took the oath and became an official PCV!!

I ate, got rushed back to the transit house to change, and was herded into an important sudden meeting.

Went to meeting and all the PCVs already in country were sitting there! They were waiting in the room and the Country Diretor basically told us that in the first time in forever, literally unprecedented, all the oppositional political parties were peacefully demonstrating in/around Kombo. This is significant because usually they’re very divided groups. Now, they chose to come together. This meant that all travel out of Kombo was illegal for PCVs so no one could exit until at least Sunday. This meant that all the new swear ins (Motley Crew) only had a day and a half of shopping, yay. Right after the meeting, more like 45 minutes after the meeting, we all had to embark on our crazy ass shopping adventure that is 18 people going to shop together for their houses.

BUT FIRST We had to go to the bank and wait forever because a handful of us (me including) sent our checks up country and waited at least one hour to get money withdrawn the hard way and held everyone up. It’s 3:30 PM now and they are still gung ho about us getting our beds and other larger things (stoves, gas tanks, etc) for our house. WOMP.

We went to the mattress store AKA big bounce house to purchase our beds. It was very fun and such a tease because I was so tired and just wanted to sleep!

Went to buy gas tanks, burners, and other miscellaneous items which meant a LOT of waiting because, like I said, we were 18 people all shopping at once. People were going all over the place and we had to wait for them to come back to place their order/pay their money, bah. I did do some bargaining in Serehule, however, and that was exciting.

Went back to the transit house, exhausted, changed into schmancy clothes and went to our party! Our own party which we were late for since everyone was already there! It was so weird seeing Motley Crew in things other than village attire and we all looked so hot.

I had so much fun. I ate curry for the first time in ages, DJ’d and I think people enjoyed my choices. I think. I like to think that, just let me dream. I danced my BUTT off. Laughed at people, got laughed at by people. Let’s just say there was a kissing booth involved. I hollered to some songs. I ALMOST lost my wallet but didn’t, thank God! I tested out the water at the beach because a lot of people went skinny dipping but it was freezing and I went straight on board the Nope Train back to the transit house. I slept like a BABY.

Woke up the next day (Friday) and felt like I got round house kicked in the body. Like, something giant steam rolled over me. I shook it off, was fed some left over breakfast, and out the door with Tyler Bear to shop.

We got ripped off at some ritzy place, and begged to return our items. Somehow my charm worked thank God! I bought a bunch of stuff and food and hauled it back home AKA small boy’d Tyler into carrying a huge bag but still broke my own back with all the cans I friggin purchased.

Went to the beach.

Went back to buy some more stuff, officially ran out of money.

Attended the Open Mic Night and had lots of fun. I attempted to play the violin but that shit’s really hard. Maybe next time.

Returned to the transit house to study for a little – YEUP, all while buzzed, and I journaled in Serehule. I Skyped back home and fell asleep soundly.

I awoke to a phone call. Still slept great, though! A PCV named Sebastian who by the way can dance like none other, anyways he was willing to take the newbies out shopping. I mobilized myself, sent out some texts, and a rag tag team was of to Serekunda Market – one of the biggest if not the biggest in Gambia.

I had to borrow money but I bought pretty much everything and bargained in Serehule yet again from many stores. All thanks to Sebastian! It was pretty chill yet tiring but I definitely wasn’t bored at looking everything.

Went back and discovered that seven of my Motley Crew comrades were down from sickness! I think it’s from the flu shot we got earlier in the week. I took care of the two in my room since I was reminded of how nice it was for Elizabeth to look after me when I was sick. I also got a hair cut.

Meandered over to the bonfire to chill with PCVs, went back to the transit house and packed for MONDAY!

Successfully went to the beach every day I was in Kombo! I woke up relatively late but that’s okay since I had all my stuff in chests and ready to go. Watching the staff tetris pack the cars was something else – they’re so efficient! All the luggage easily was twice the height of the car.

Drove 5/6 hours up country – it was not as packed inside as I had thought but I was tired as hell and Dillon being the saint that he was just grabs my head and puts it on his shoulder even though I’m pretty sure I already dozed off on him, oops. Bless his soul.

Arrived in Kulari first, threw everything in my hut, waved goodbye to my friends, and waved hello to my new family. Right now I really like them and I really hope they like me too! I also hope it stays like this for the next two years.

Opened my trunks/luggage to discover that the two stools I purchased in Jalanbereh COMPLETELY molded over and that was pretty nasty. It got on some of my other stuff but luckily my mom sent over cleaning/chlorox wipes so that was fun.

I never have good luck with this – either my oatmeal spills or I get mold all up in my shit.

Ate dinner. Went out to chat. Somehow miraculously negotiated/told my rent to my family and expressed my gratitude for them. I translated a study consent for them which I hope they understood. I had to write it all out first, hah. I think they’re catching onto my quirks. I tried unfiltered juice and didn’t diarrhea – sweet success.

TUESDAY/ Day 1 of official unpacking: my shit was everywhere it was a disaster. Mostly organized everything into my trunks, sun dried my moldy chairs, and had a lot of shit to organize.

WEDNESDAY/Day 2 of unpacking: Much better today. Got my curtains, bed and bed net up – which means a lot for those of you who know how irrationally afraid I am of spiders and bugs, and I braved through touching the cob-webby roof to tie my bed net up. I rearranged it like 5 times, too, but it’s finally perfect! Re organized my trunks, washed my buckets with solution to be extra clean, and went on an adventure and a half to find safe pump water because there was no sun today and the boar hole is solar powered…great. And the pump that’s closest to me is broken. Extra great.

Tired as hell, falling asleep now!

 

Journal Entry 12/9

After I went to sleep last night, I get a phone call from home. Of course. I was so tired that I had to decline and tell them to call back the next day. I have no idea why but as dead tired as I was, I still woke up at 4 AM and couldn’t fall back to sleep! It definitely must be the stress. I created my own monster by trying so hard at get good at language. I studied for a bit before getting up and getting ready. I still had to finish the forms for Peace Corps and felt like I had a million things to do but finally focused on solely studying. My brother’s wife came to give me hand me downs which … didn’t fit me at all because I am the size of an average Gambian pre-pubescent girl. I’ll have to take that to the tailor’s later. Ida comes along at 10 AM and we have our exam – I think I did okay but no jinxing it! I’ll find out the results in the next two days. I finished the oral test, watered the plants, and took my clothes out to wash. Jaara, one of the younger women/jokemates, was there to help me and we chatted a bit. I found out she was leaving to go get married elsewhere/move in with her husband. And here I was thinking she was the wife to my brother all along…fail. So as we’re hanging everything up, the clothing line falls and almost all of my clean clothes fall into the sand, gr. We had to re-rinse and put them all up again. Jaara just hands me her baby and does everything in like, 10 minutes. Now this is a special moment because I’m no baby person and holding up a little wiggling and squishy life in my hands both terrifies me and makes me happy. I still think I suck at it and fear it’ll barf on me but she was good and easy. She just liked me to be standing up and moving around. I was still awkward holding her but I’m sure I’ll be good with them in due time. I knew there was another reason for me coming here, for me to overcome my fear of babies. After she was done, she went inside and took out a baby walker equipped with songs and all and sat her baby down in it. What??? I didn’t know we could afford these things. I went inside to grab all the Peace Corps forms, brought it back outside and sat while she knitted and it was a pleasantly cool day. It was sunny but we were in the shade and there was a transient breeze. It was really quiet and calm with a couple of kids surrounding us because most of everyone was out in the field. This time of year is especially for doing bush work so everyone’s always busy from 7/8 in the morning until 6 PM at night! I went over to Ida’s to lunch, completed all my paperwork and homework, translated the speech in Serehule, and life was good. All I have to do tomorrow is go to Soma to Internet and transcribe and buy a parting present to my family, return my watering can, make a mobile of cranes for Rohi/Alkaloo’s daughter, finish putting together my kusudama/origami flower for my family, lunch, and finish everyone’s present! After that, I can think clearly about my wish list for my new house ,fantasize about Frisbee on the beach, and finally get a good night’s rest!

Journal Entry 12/8

Yesterday was the big marathon march! Good thing I woke up at 2:30 AM. I was awake and couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how hard I tried. I did some origami, wrote in my journal, and got all mentally ready to get up and get ready at 5:30 AM since, you know, Seth my PCVL told me to be ready by 6-6:30 AM. Good thing Peter the Driver pulls up to my compound at the same time that my alarm rang. I yelled out to him to give me 15 minutes and indeed I rolled my naked ass out of bed and was out at the van by 5:45 AM. My phone died and I didn’t get any calls, womp. Fortunately or unfortunately Alicia and I were the first to be picked up so that I had the entire back row to myself so I got to lie down while we picked up the rest of the crew. One of the LCFs/language teachers, Gibril, shows up shirtless out of no where on one of our stops to pick up the trainees, chucks an empty bidong (empty half gallon oil containers used to fill up with water) in the bus, greets “hey hey hey” and leaves, lmao. We finally stop in Jenoi where we had a short breakfast of bread, banana, jam, and eggs in addition to meeting our trek leaders! Laura, the sole pioneering lady, told me she actually knew where Guangzhou (my hometown) was and have been there! We bounded over our love for dim sum and how badass she was traveling by herself down Southeast Asia. I also met Dan, who I call Boring Math Dan, Jeff, and Josh, my Serehule site mate who lives across the river from me and is also a Serehule speaker! He’s an Education Volunteer who’s pretty far into his service. We started marching at around 8-9 AM. The trail was hard as hell but also beautiful and pleasantly relaxing. It was around 12-13 miles I think (not an actual marathon) and overall super fun. I forgot my hat stupidly in the rush to get out this morning but luckily Lizzie, my first roomie back in Philadelphia, didn’t want to wear hers so it all worked out. All of the stopping points (to rest) had great names – Treeception, Dead Man’s Bridge, Living Man’s Tree (I think), Mordor, etc. It truly felt like I was in Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit walking through grass way taller than me, walking on grass that was thatched thickly over mud beds, and just mud/swampy areas where I was certain I would sink and sprain my ankle but DIDN’T sweet success, walked by natural water springs, dry racked earth, stalks of something, thorns, sticks, past massive mahogany and other magnificent types of trees that were so grand, everything was great. I mean does my feet feel like it can fall off about now? Absolutely. But the conversations we had throughout the day and exercise was priceless. We were all so broken by the time we got to the finishing line and everyone was out of water – good timing, too. We took a group picture on the see saw and got on the bus. We also had these DELICIOUS sugar covered doughnut balls that I’ve never had before, more like 5 of time. We went back to Jenoi where most of us took a shower, I missed the memo to pack of course so I had to borrow stuff from people. I put on my gross sweaty clothes again, bleh. After everyone had a nice shower we all went into a classroom and had beers, lmao. Alicia saw me studying and she had none of that so she bought me a bottle, haha. Legit 1 sip of nasty palm or cashew liquor, and ¼ bottle of beer later, I felt the drunk end of buzzed – wtf. I skipped dinner because it was just goat and potatoes and they served it at like 4:30 PM. Bad idea. I walked back to the drinking chambers and tried to identify all of the states on BoringMathDan’s shirt and failed miserably but I choose to blame it on the alcohol. We sat and talked in a cricle before going home. I had like 4 spoonfuls of coos for dinner before passing the eff out at 9 PM.

…Only to wake back up at 2 AM. What. The. Fuck. Maybe it could be that I’m subconsciously really exhausted, or maybe I’m secretly super anxious about all the shit I have to do before Wednesday morning, or maybe both. BUT I laid in bed for what seemed like ages and worked on my present for my family. When I got up, though, I awoke to a hectic ass morning. First, I brushed up and got ready, packed a little because I thought Peace Corps was arriving at 10:30 AM to pick everything up to transfer to site. I tried to call Elizabeth to warn her about it but her phone was off so I had to haul ass all the way over to her place. Rawr. I then trekked to Ida’s house just to find out that the pick up time was changed to 12 PM, retrieved my two wooden stools I ordered from a woman who locally makes them, double fisted both of them to a bitik/shop to buy locks for my luggage, talked all along the way, and finally made it back to my place. Elizabeth finally had her phone on so I didn’t need to go back to her house again to deliver the news of the change in plans. Thank God because it was getting hot as hell. I finished up packing after explaining I was taking my two stools to Kulari for the 1000^th time (I thought news traveled quickly here dammit). I started dragging my first luggage to the road to meet up with Elizabeth next and had to roll it on the dunes of sand in front of my friggin compound. That was a huge struggling moment… The kids tried to help me and one of them got on his hands and knees to push. It was adorable. I told him thank you and that it was quite alright. Of course the school dismissed their students for an afternoon break and Elizabeth and I were swarmed by a crowd of kids. They all just encircled and it was pretty annoying. It was also hot and the kids would not listen to us at all when we told them to go away. Elizabeth went back with one of her sisters to carry the rest of her stuff out while I watched our luggage. Again, the kids were not leaving and just standing around and staring at us despite multiple attempts to get them to leave. When Elizabeth finally came back, I saw her sister carrying a TRUNK on her head with Elizabeth screaming obscenities about how useless men are and how women rule Africa/the world haha. It was quite the site. She paid her sister some money and she goes to help me with my trunk. Christ, these women are strong. If it’s anything watching Dragon Ball Z taught me, it’s that men take 10 episodes to accomplish one damn thing. We headed back to the side of the road with my heavy trunk on top of her head while I (and her 7 year old daughter) tugs my big hockey bag full of food along. The 7 year old is just too adorable and she frequently delivers Elizabeth her breakfast in the mornings. She’s also a Mariama! As you can tell, Elizabeth loves her. Well, at that point, we assembled almost all of our things and were waiting on the road. 12 PM comes along by, still waiting and still encased by a ring of kids. I swear it felt like the entire population of under 8 year olds were surrounding us. They kept on imitating us when we told them to leave. Talk about annoying. I took the advice of one of my PCVLs, grabbed Elizabeth’s shovel, smashed it on the ground three times and pointed at them. Most dispersed but most also came back, fail. So, I took a rock and threw it at the ground by their feet. OF COURSE a kid runs into my projectile and it hits him in the butt. He left, but some more remained, grrr. The Alkaloo’s daughter rolls on by and drove some of them away and I was forever grateful. 1:30 PM comes by and FINALLY the Peace Corps truck comes. Elizabeth and I are starving at this point but luckily we had each other’s company and I was telling her all about Marathon March. We had to go back to retrieve our bikes and drop it off to get transported to site. It would’ve been lovely if that was communicated to us earlier… My stomach was almost as loud as a steamroller but we trudged, trudged, trudged to Ida’s where… SHE COOKED SPAGHETTI FOR US WITH THE MOST SCRUMPTIOUS SAUCE AND A TON OF VEGGIES IN IT. We all unloaded on her what happened to us and it turns out Alicia’s family was super upset she was leaving. Mine’s pretty bummed but clearly they don’t want to see me go but no one has cried over it. Alicia has the youngest family of us all so she thinks they just haven’t handled this type of stuff, IDK. Anywho, we stayed at Ida’s for awhile before heading back because Jalanbereh was just in a funk. I thought I’d have more time to work on my gift for everyone but it turned out Peace Corps had other plans for me and Ida handed me a crap ton of papers to fill out. I did that, studied, wrote up some math assignments, and had no time to study L It was a pretty quick day. I was still so tired from Marathon March and waking up early BUT I did go to Elizabeth’s to clean my feet so that I can finally see the bottom of them! All the mud from the other day was caked on, ew. It took a good 45 minutes for them to look clean again – that’s how dirty they were. I couldn’t do math lessons since I realized my body would hate me if I had to study+test under 5 hours of sleep so I went outside to drop off their homework, and jumped right back in to go to sleep.

Journal Entry 12/6

 Yesterday, I woke up ungodly early again despite my WICKED tiredness to the 5 AM prayers. I did some origami in bed so I could stagger the amount of crap I needed to finish in the upcoming days. I was out the door by 9:30 and despite finishing my chores in record time and even eating my breakfast I was dead tired! I was fighting sleep the entire field trip to the Regional Health Teams and hospitals and I wasn't the only one, hah. One of my colleagues straight up tilted her head back and passed out. That early wake up call yesterday KILLED everyone. We got to eat lunch in Soma at Ramadan Restaurant and I split a delectable chicken and chips dish with Alicia. We finished the day by visiting Kathy, an older health PCV, who mobilized a traveling drama group that acts like a health acting troupe. It was great to see despite not knowing what they were saying - we watched 3 skits on malaria, environmental sanitation, and hygiene. We returned at a relatively good time before sunset, showered, dinnered where I surprised myself by eating a LOT by my standards of coos, out to math, and I think I'm making headway with the young ones of the concept of "patience" and "taking turns." It was the concluding day to our 2-day field trip series and I was tired the entire day. I think everyone could see it. But, it's all over now and it was definitely inspiring. 

TODAY, I woke up replenished and did everything I needed to do to make it to Ida's by 8. Of course I find out we're doing 1 on 1s when I arrive and it's not even my turn until 10:30... dammit. So, I conversed withs ome neighboring kids, they have so much energy and are really adorable, corrected some math problems, made new ones, memorized hand washing lines for an afternoon health talk in Serehule, and studied by myself. Alicia came by for her turn while Elizabeth came out. Elizabeth and I chatted a bit and I pumped her up to finish training strong because we are so close yet it feels like there's a million things in our way. We laughed at how motley the crew was (motley in a good way, because apparently motley has a negative connotation) and in particular, the Serehule group. This was, for many Jalanbereh denizens, their first time with foreigners/toubabs and they get an older, tall White woman, a curvy, medium built Black woman, and a short as hell young Asian woman. Elizabeth also made me laugh at how Peace Corps put the most intense/enthusiastic/dramatic people in the same group. Welp, we made it pretty successfully if I do say so myself.

It was finally my turn to go into Ida's house and we legit just talked in Serehule to prep for the final test. I feel way more confident now but still I'm going to write note cards to study from during tomorrow's Marathon March. Anywho, it seemed like I was only in there for 10 minutes but I think that was enough. Ida really wants me to get to the "top of the class" and I hope I can do her proud. PRESSURE'S ON AH. Apparently scoring advanced has been done before. I studied with Elizabeth outside some more and felt so hungry until lunch came. It was fried rice with a medley of different ROASTED veggies (unheard of) and steamed beef. Ida made this nasty smelling medicine and it was pungent as hell. I hope it helps her, it just reminds me of awful Chinese herbal medicine that made me want to barf more. SO, we ate and debated whether or not Alicia should go on the Marathon March and what to bring. I'll be packing 2.5 liters of water with ample amounts of Gatorade, mosquito repellent, sun lotion, a head net just in case, anti itching oil, a spoon, some napkins, a big zip lock bag full of mixed nuts as a snack, a small towel, my hat, and iTouch. My phone conveniently died but thankfully I secured an appointment with the in country hairdresser - a PCV named Cat who has a knack for cutting hair - and found out the pick up time for tomorrow before it did so.

Finally, the PC staff arrived and we did our hand washing demonstration. It went okay, not the best since everyone was busy and we had a small audience and they were way weary about being observed than actually paying attention to the lesson. Later, Bah2, Seth, Peter, and Katim came over to my place to look at my compost (which is the best by the way says Bah2, suck it AgFos!) helped me weed, and got guidance on the annoying insect problem I have. Apparently sprinkling wood ash on the leaves will do the trick. They left shortly after and  fetched some water. Came back, chatted with the ladies and jokingly yelled that I wanted to be naked because I was so hot and sweaty. They laughed but cleaaarly in an "oh shit" way... why? Because, as one of the younger ladies that I always joke with says, my totally conservative, old, reserved dad was sitting 8 feet away. Oops. Of course. I greeted him, took a shower, studied, dinnered, mathed, and finally went to sleep for the insane trek tomorrow in the bush.

Journal Entry 12/4

I woke up at 5 AM today after sleeping at 12 from making something for my family. Not done yet, gr. I'm making a kusudama ball - Google it, it's pretty - for them to remember me by when I leave. It's a project that I'll be doing for the next couple of nights in order to complete on time. Ida told me my family always talks to her about how they wish I could permanently stay, Kulari's too far, they'll miss me terribly... and that's awfully nice of them. I'll miss them a lot too, for sure. Anywho, I got ready and everything and was the first person out of my compound at 5:55 AM - the constellation was still sprawled across the sky and the treacherous crossing of the sand dunes got tremendously harder. The PC car came right on time and we drove to a meeting point where I ate a pound of boiled peanuts, no lie, and forced some of it on others so I wouldn't feel so guilty with a graveyard of peanut shells around me. Someone also had Oreos and I stuffed one in my mouth and never felt so happy to have one for breakfast. Elizabeth, being the saint that she is, gave me Tina Fey's new book "Bossy Pants" and I look forward to reading that in two weeks when everything's settled down. We crossed the ferry and THANK GOD I bought something along with me to do because we waited a lot. We drove 1.5 more hours to reach our destination, Jawara, where my emotional buddy's (Kelsey) site is. Along thew ay, we stopped to get breakfast in a populated town called  Farafenneh - one of my colleague's sites. There is a bunch of Senegalese traders who sell/stop by there which makes Farafenneh a popular shopping destination in The Gambia. We ran into said colleague's community representative and he even remembered that I spoke Serehule! We also stopped to get the greatest deal ever - a huge watermelon for 25 D and I bought one for my family.

We finally arrived around 11:30 AM. There, we met up with Kelsey and she introduced us to her care group - a mixed gender (rare) group of respected community members who are trained in health techniques with Kelsey and her counterpart (a Gambian who she lives with who actually leads the class while Kelsey sits in the back to contribute) and venture out into the community to teach the village. How incredible and what a gold standard of a care group that was. They had teaching aids that Kelsey helped make (rice bag diagrams), skits, and everything. It was so inspiring. After, we toured around the village to see their pit latrine project which Kelsey helped secure one for every compound that did not have one. After lunch, we were off and finally made it back to Jenoi. We met the group who was scouting our marathon route (very weird and extreme method of bonding for PC The Gambia group) - one of them was Josh - my Serehule site mate from across the river! I spoke to him in Serehule for half a second before getting summoned to head back to training village.

I arrived, fetched water, gave my family the watermelon, took a shower, watered the plants, and went over to Alicia's with Elizabeth to check up on her. We chatted for a while before leaving and I came back to eat the last .5 pounds of boiled peanuts for dinner because dinner was not so delicious tonight. I did laundry, brushed up, and went back out to be with the family for a little bit. I was able to communicate with them that I Couldn't teach tonight because I was so tired and got up very early. I also made them laugh which always feels good because their life is so hard! Even the littlest thing is a good contribution. One of the ladies were in my house when she helped me bring my water in and noticed my Hello Kitty stuffed animal and I had to explain that. They called it my baby and when they asked for her first name, I said "Hello" and "Kitty" for her last name, lol. I seriously have a shit ton to do and it's like final exams all over again. It's the beginning of December and I'm making a Christmas gift for my group and the entire PC staff, making an origami thing for my family, making another origami thing for my friend Rohi, and making ANOTHER origami thing for my teacher, Ida. I have to study for the final exam which I am aiming to score the advanced level. Peace Corps homework is still on the horizon, I'm still in need to prep for a short health talk in Serehule, and I'm prepping for math lessons all the time. AH. Time to get my game face on.

Journal Entry 12/3

Today started off real sluggish. I'm never fully awake in the mornings but somehow I made it to Ida's on time and not scraggly looking. We didn't have a formal class today because we had a ton of homework to catch up on (due today, do today) with Ida's help. It was also really clutch to have a Public Health official in my group because she knows what's up. Anyways, our "class" was truncated by Peter the Driver driving/beeping 28 times in case we didn't hear it the last 27 times of his arrival. He always does that, but do trust me that he's a huge sweetheart and will do anything to help the trainees out. We climbed into the car and sped off to... model school!

Model School is one of our bigger assignments where we had to create a lesson plan and teach a health topic in English. The Serehule ladies picked hand washing for the topic and got everything assembled - teaching aids, A+ lesson plans that was created, edited, and activity/question filled, hell Alicia somehow pulled some strings to get our plan printed out! We really did do practically everything to prepare... except for actually practicing it through once. So, we arrived, had a couple of minutes to sit down while the kids ended their break, and got divided into different classrooms. Not going to lie, but the sluggishness from this morning still lingered on me but I guess years of tour guiding helps me get my go-face on in a matter of seconds. So, we went in aaaaaaand pretty much killed it. Class 9C was really the main component to our success - they were comprised mostly of young women in grade 9 with about a handful of young men. Altogether, there was about 30 kids split into 4 rows facing the front. We really didn't prepare for Grade 9 students since our lesson was geared for kids much younger and they all aced their pre-test so there was no need for a post test. They knew the concept of germs, one girl named Fatou was on FIRE with her contributions and knowledge of hand washing so we invited her up to be the teacher, we had so many great questions asked by the students, which leads to a very crucial component of our success - the students were happy to raise their hands and participate. We included a skit where I really got into acting and the drama was about me getting sick from food poisoning. Good thing I just had a personal run-in with that experience less than a week ago. Not only did students ask questions, but Elizabeth, Alicia, and I thought long and hard to create questions that would stimulate critical thinking and wrote everyone's answer on the black board for all to see. We also had an ice breaker/warm up activity to make sure all the kids were awake, unleashed the rice bag drawing of hand washing, demonstrated proper hand washing which they all knew but this is where we identified an area of confusion - the duration of time one should wash their hands. 30 seconds is the recommended but most people don't conveniently have a clock or a watch so we introduced a song to combat this obstacle. It's called "Scrub your hands" to the tune of row, row, row your boat. Luckily, they already knew it so it was a breeze. We called each row up while I raised the roof with the other three rows to sing for them while the group that was up washed their hands. All of the volunteers heard us, I'm sure. I encouraged everyone to scream and yell and sing. We attracted other students to look into our class because we were basically hollering the lyrics and it was the most fun. We saw a special demonstration of critical thinking when one of the guys asked whether it can be any song - as long as it was 30 seconds or more - to wash his hands to. We asked if he'd like to sing his favorite song for us to see if the duration was satisfactory and he actually said he was an artist and would like to sing one of his own original songs! I set the timer while Alicia started washing her hands and his song was about a minute long which was great. It was overall a fantastic experience and it made the three of us beam. The class was stellar and set our day right.

We debriefed, bussed back home, had lunch, and I studied for a bit before returning home.  I had a pleasant conversation with Rohi/Alkaloo's daughter, watched as Ida ripped apart her host dad for not supporting his wife in her desire to expand their garden because that meant more work for him and he had like, 5 women against him and relented, hahaha. He said he would do it tomorrow morning so he better. I walked back, my namesake told me to take the skirt she made for me which was way too long to the tailor's (so I did) and make it especially pint sized. I did some chores, took a shower... then my site mate texted me that she wasn't feeling well!!! I grabbed my thermometer and went over to her place to take care of her for a bit. I was able to communicate with her family that she didn't want dinner and wanted to sleep/rest so leave her alone, I hope I got through. Anyways, I walked back, dids ome laundry, ate a little bit of dinner, and went outside to math. Math was hugely successful tonight and I got to have side conversations with the women and made them laugh. How? Because I now have the useful word "ass" in Serehule and I can explain why I'm terrified of having children - that they were, indeed, going to hurt my vagina, and well whatever it takes to make them laugh I'm up to do :)

Journal Entry 12/2

I was abnormally tired today. Morning was pretty successful, I got everything I needed to do in record time, got breakfast delivered early, and was out the door to wait on the road by the designated pick up time for Peace Corps (all the trainees had to go to Jenoi once more for a session). I even had time to chat with my family about how I don't have my ears pierced, the topic of "lopijuice" AKA the word for ass/badonkadonk - no lie, they love the fact that I know that word. Talk about power morning. Note that all conversations take place in Serehule and it takes a mental toll on me every time. SO OF COURSE the day I'm not rushed and on time the bus comes 40 minutes late, right? Right. On the plus side, all of us were able to get and eat our breakfasts! Elizabeth and Alicia even got to get a bean sandwich. I didn't even know Alicia's family sold them until now otherwise I'd be buying them every time we had to get picked up for Jenoi.

Okay, so we finally arrive in Jenoi and have our session (it was 4 hours of a history of development, logistical Peace Corps protocol stuff, and all led by Leon, the Country Director who went to UMass for his MPH). Leon's wife Abby was also there and she is just too kind because she brought fried doughnuts and cold drunks to feed us! Yaaaaaay! We introduced each other and reeled at how small the world was since they live in a town 1.5 hours away from me back in the States. Speaking of which, I just found the craziest thing. There's a PCV (PC Volunteer) named Kelsey who I'm paired up with as a support person in case I have any questions of anything, right? Well, I was adding her on FB when I noticed we had 12 mutual friends - way more than we should since I'm still a trainee who hasn't friended anyone yet. I investigate (read: stalk) further and find that our mutual friends are all my Thai friends that I made when I was studying abroad! I called her right away and she confirmed that we enrolled in the same program! Talk about a small world. I have so many things to reminisce with her in the near future.

It was hot as HELL by the time the session ended and I was so, so, so tired. We went back to Jalanbereh and had lunch but I was either fighting sleepiness or dehydration the entire time because I've never felt so drifty in my entire time here. All of my drowsiness was thrown out, however, when Elizabeth and I discovered a freakin rat in Ida's house so we screamed and ran out to get Ida's host mom to ask her to look through Ida's stuff. We saw one of her bags moving and distinct little footstep sounds. So of course when Bai, Ida's host mom, looks through the bag, the rat wasn't there! Elizabeth went back inside to poke at items in close proximity to Ida's bag and it was behind the poster the entire time. Bai ripped her husband from his shower - they're a pretty good looking couple - so he comes out and they chase the rat to the backyard while Elizabeth and I are standing in Nopetown like 10 feet away from the house, watching them through the doorway. Anyways, we resumed our lunch, I studied, and we waited for Ida to return home. We caught up with her, Elizabeth walked me home, I showered, dinnered, mathed, then bed. Pretty regular night.

Journal Entry 12/1

Soma part two. Woke up. Got the early morning routine down to a T and was out the door by 6:50 without rushing. We boarded the regular taxi and were driving away like normal when...we stopped to pick up a friggin goat. Now this poor thing probably knew it was going to be someone's lunch because it kept on screeching his horrible goat cry for help and damn do they sound ugly. It's either the goat or donkey sex noises I hear at night but it's the most annoying sound and they make for the worst neighbors. They also continually remind me of how I'm not getting any but how every other animal is - injustice. Anyways, this goat is just screaming for help and all I'm thinking is when he's going to knock the back of my head in when it starts thrashing in retribution - WHICH it actually didn't do. 

We finally get to Soma, talk to a guy who's part of a team to get the entire country hooked up to internet by 2014 (meaning tele-health care in the best scenario), got online, and got in transcribing mode. About two hours in, we found a current PCT named Nick who was really nice and also 4 of our coworkers biked to Soma! We caught up and I felt bad that I had so much time online because I needed them for e-mails, blogging, and I had a FB date to wait for. On the plus side, I found out that I'll have packages to look forward to in my near future! There was an HIV/AIDS awareness parade that went through the main road just outside of the internet cafe and that was another F Yeah Public Health moment. I finished all that I needed to do, was pretty happy by the time I exited the internet cafe, bought a watermelon for my family, and set off for the bus.

Today, the bus was friggin crazy with crying babies left and right shattering my eardrums. I felt like I was in Satan's armpit with how sweltering it was and how bad I/everyone smelled. I also felt like I was in China all over again with all the crowding and pushing on the bus. It was like a sauna and I was paranoid some guy who was sitting on the floor was going to look up my skirt but realized that it was sticking to me too well to give anything away - thanks sweat! When the bus finally moved, air finally circulated and I felt much better. I hauled my huge watermelon to Ida's (so heavy), had lunch (starvationnnn), chucked my skirt across Ida's house, and got my drawing on. I drew on a rice bag on procedures to wash hands for my Serehule group's one hour class on Tuesday for hand washing. This is right, I am drawing on rice bag because paper is hard to find in The Gambia but rice bags are not. It actually came out superb but it was hard as hell since I had to draw hands... I'll be a master in no time at this rate. I am lucky in that my hands are small enough to be drawn onto the rice bag like a stencil. Any who, for a reward, Elizabeth also bought a watermelon and I got a generous piece of it. As we're chomping away, I teach my site mates the game marry, f***, kill, yes I know this is an awful game, but it was really entertaining and I realize there's a special place in hell for me. After the sun finally started to go, I rushed back home, took a shower, studied forever, and just as ti was turning dark, the tailor showed up and gave me my dress! It's cute as hell and I'm squealing-ly happy about how sweet it came out. I can't wait to wear it AH I'm so excited that I'm going to implode. Everyone in my compound seemed to really like it - I did a mini-cat walk down the main way - but I'm just afraid it might be too short when I sit down but what the hell. It's a pain to get on and off but I bet it'll be easier with time and wash. It also doesn't help when I'm laced with 10 layers of sweat at all times. Anyways, dinner was dinner (coos and sauce - but at least the sauce is hearty and I chose to forget the fact that I'm scooping spoons of oil in my mouth), went out to math, aaaand bed.

Journal Post 11/30

Today was pretty normal. We caught the 7 AM taxi to Soma, went online for 4 hours, went to eat at a restaurant, and found out all the computers were down for maintenance by the time we were back. When I say maintenance, what I really mean is that someone took apart the tower and used a lawn blower thing to blow all the dust out. Our decision to stay in Soma or leave was made for us since the internet was gone which meant we walked to catch a bus. For the first time in all of history for me, a bus that I needed actually came 10 minutes after I arrived. What was even better - three Peace Corps Volunteers came out of the bus! One of them was Shawn - one of the women I reached out to before I got into country for tips and advice. She's spectacular and such a kind presence. I met a new PCV and met up with one of them who I ran into on my way to site visit! He said he heard I was really good at language, I was flattered, but I attribute all my success to my teacher. We talked for a lot, a lot, and it's so sucky that Peace Corps is hiding us away from all the PCVs because they're such cool people. I want to unleash the crazy and ask them everything and anything but I think they'll think I'm weird so I'll hold off a little longer. We came back to Jalanbereh, I spent the entire afternoon organizing and sweating, took a shower, and went over to Elizabeth's to write out our one hour lesson plan. I'm so fucking thankful, I can't even put it into words, exactly how lucky and thankful I am that I'm in a group with Alicia who is a Public Health Official in the States because I'm learning so much from her. Everything she says to me, I hear, I remember, and I store it in the back of my head. I'm learning so much from her just by being with her and I'm so happy she teaches me. I'm also so happy I have Elizabeth, who's like a Gambian mom to me, and she just cares and looks out for everyone. We worked and listened to music for awhile before leaving to go home. We finished our lesson plan but decided that we needed to head back to Soma tomorrow to finish our own business and print our product out. When I went outside for math sessions, there's this one little kid and his name is Ousman. He's a chubster compared to everyone else his age and has quite the center of attention syndrome. He hits everyone if he doesn't get his way - especially kids around his age - and I think he's super spoiled. He's also pretty dirty but has so much life in him. He puts EVERYTHING in his mouth and especially his hands... which  touches everything. So again, this reinforces the fact that he's just a dirty, way too hyperactive kid. He tries to catch my bag and I tell him not to touch. He tries to sit near me and pushes everyone out of the way even though clearly he is not there to learn. He reaches his drool encrusted little fingers at the peanuts I'm using as teaching aids and I tell him not to teach and then he tries to touch my book and again, I tell him not to touch, and now all the kids are yelling at him not to touch me lmao. I'm sorry but he is just ... I can touch him with a 5 foot pole and that's about it. All of the commotion kind of drove him away and finally I resumed normal lessons. The end.

Journal Post 11/29

Yesterday, I woke up after an 8-9 hour uninterrupted hibernation and was unsure if I should push my luck by getting up. After lying in bed and surveying my condition, I courageously sat up and dared to say I was better. I got ready, headed out, my entire compound seemed ready to greet me. Except it was only like, 1/10 of them since they were all at some huge immunization event for meningitis. GO PUBLIC HEALTH! I felt like a completely different person. On my way out, I caught a glimpse of the pump working again and bless the lawds because I was unsure about the well water. A snake-chain of people wrapped around the pump because that was where the immunizations took place. Again, Fuck Yeah Prevention/Public Health!

Anyways, I press onto Ida's and the entire length of the way I'm being greeted and asked if I was doing okay. Apparently news travels fast in the village without Facebook or anything (except for phones... but I doubt they really needed that anyways) but I felt very thankful that they were all concerned! D'aw they cared. But really, it's the culture, you're suppose to always ask/check on you when you're sick whereas in America you kind of want to be left alone to rest. Ida just told everyone yesterday to leave me alone.. Unfortunately, one day off from Serehule totally blindsides my language skills or I just barfed all capacity to speak it. It was nice to know everyone + kids still remembered my name! When I reached Ida's both Elizabeth and Ida were so happy to see me better. Apparently both of them weren't even feeling good yesterday either - they mostly lied down and even had some bouts of diarrhea which is never good. Ida said my family was super worried about me, so cute. We all caught each other up - apparently Ida had a grandchild and I told her about my little impromptu speech. She said ti was my security blanket - that everyone will start knowing me and saying my name just like in Jalanbereh. Also, apparently many of our friends also got sick - one of them actually called us to say her ENTIRE group including the teacher was sick... one of them was sent to the capital... and even the DOCTOR was sick. Damn. So that's why he didn't pick up yesterday! I read Ida the journal entries I wrote or the monologues I wrote in Serehule and realized that one of the prompts I wrote was a response to "What if you got sick, describe your conditions to the doctor" and realized I wrote my own doom wtf, my own downfall! I should start writing my dream life to come true - winning the lottery, having a super successful service, acing the language test, getting proficient in Serehule, picking up another language, kicking ass and taking names etc. So that's exactly why I knew what to tell my family when I was sick because I predetermined my own conditions. I hate myself.

Anywho, Ida and I chatted in English and Serehule until lunch finally arrived. Alicia told me earlier in the morning that she would be arriving in the afternoon since she was traveling from her permanent site visit and mid way through lunch she came! There was much rejoicing. We caught each other up and I found out some more people who were sick and vowed to call them later in the evening to check if they're okay (since it meant so much to me when Elizabeth came to see me). Alicia's story telling is award winning and unfortunately everything that could go wrong did go wrong in the beginning BUT got much better throughout her time there. She is also in the Upper River Region with me, in a town that's past mine but we're pretty much parallel to each other. We talked for a long, long time until Peace Corps staff arrived to do the Mid-Upper Arm Circumference exercise with a group of <5 year olds. This will be part of our baseline assessment in our permanent village. MUAC is a quick measuring method that can determine whether or not a child under five is malnourished. Funny thing is that the tape used for measuring the child's arm in this practice fits around my own mid-upper arm... which tells me I'm equivalent to a slightly obese 5 year old.

We had to gather some kids from around the area and I felt bad because I ripped two kids away from their late lunch to get measured. One of them cried because they were scared we'd give them shots or we're actually scary because we're toubab/foreigners, I'm not sure. Either way, it was very quick and it helped that her father trusted us and brought the two children along. None of them were malnourished and I surprised everyone, including myselef, when I explained what was happening in Serehule. Seth, the Agriculture/Forestry PCVL/RA was goofing off with the little boys who were over 5 but under 10 so they couldn't participate in the practice. He was headbutting small nuts/acorn things at the kids and they were so damn tickled by him while Daniel, the health PCVL, was actually doing his job and helping us! Well, it couldn't be helped since this really isn't Seth's forte.

After the PC staff left, we went to the tailor's to drop off our designs/fabric. It turns out that there are two in town and one of them is literally right behind my compound. The tailor spoke pretty good English and Wolof but not Serehule. There were a lot of nice women who were at his compound - one of them was from my own! She was the one who helped take care of me, Jaara. We gave him our designs and he took a few scraps of fabric, folded it up like origami, snipped away some bits, and showed us a miniature design. It was pretty crazy - like how did he know where to cut?! It blew my mind out of the water. It was getting late so he couldn't get us measured but planned to do so tomorrow morning at Ida's. We leave, I shower, dinnered, and went out to teach math.

Of course as I'm teaching, I get two calls from men. They had to be men from Kulari because I didn't give my phone number out to anyone at ALL in Jalanbereh. I gave it out to HM, which makes sense because he was my community representative, Wujare, which makes sense because he was leading me everywhere, small Musa, which makes sense because he's a small boy and knows great English to help me along, and this one guy named Malick who is the only questionable guy. He literally took my phone, entered some numbers, and it popped up my telephone number even when I said I didn't know it. He seems nice enough but you never know. Anyways, these two phone numbers weren't in my phone which means I didn't know them and the bad part about it was that yes, they were from men, and it was also like 9:30 at night! I am not happy. I said I didn't know who it was and I saw the numbers call me days prior in the afternoon, I just never answered,. Conveniently, I was sitting around a group of women. I answer, it's a guy, my mom takes the phone and she starts mumbling into it like a prank call and they hang up. ALL the women were laughing. My mom shushed them but seriously, she trolled him well. Literally minutes later, I get another call from a different number and I hand it off to my mom. She shushes the women and straight up answers in Serehule. I'm pretty sure she told him to never call again and take a hike. The guy hangs up. One of my sisters get the number from my phone log and calls back on her phone. Clearly the guy didn't expect it, she interrogates him a little, and hangs up. We all laugh and then shit gets serious. I proceed to get the security talk from the women. I'm amazed that I understand what they're telling me but they basically said, "Men are bad. Kulari's big. Don't make many male friends. Lots of female friends are good. Making friends with little boys is okay. Don't give out your number, say you don't know. Don't answer the door if someone knocks at night."

I laugh because they're truly concerned for my well-being when I leave Jalanbereh and the fact that I'm getting this talk in Serehule and semi-understanding. I'm totally okay with surrounding myself with women and I 110% intend to do so. There are lots of empowerment things I'm hoping to do with the women but I feel like in order to get anything done, the whole community needs to get involved - including the men. Also the fact that men make the last decision in anything puts a damper on my desire to just stay with the women and children, gr. I was touched by their concern and said I understood and promised not to give out my number, ever, and told them I would speak in Chinese if I got another weird call. They told me to tell my Kulari moms about this and they would fix it for me, haha. That was a really special conversation I had with the ladies.

Today was pretty normal. I greeted more family than usual, went to Ida's, I swear I really did vomit out my ability to language because everything to 100x harder. Ida left to go to her granddaughter's naming ceremony after lunch and the Serehule ladies just talked and talked and talked and talked and soaked/cleaned our feet and talked and talked. I finally saw the bottom of my feet! It's a lovely feeling I savor because Elizabeth literally bought a salon with her. We didn't even have to warm the water for our feet because the sun did it for us, that was how hot it was. It was really hot as hell and it's suppose to be cold season!? Balls. After the sun was just about setting, we went home. I fetched water, showered, had reliable tap water now, went out to math after dinner, and the women asked if the men called again - which they didn't! Go mom.

Math sessions are going well but I realized I have to ready problems for the older kids in order to have time to spend time with the younger ones. My closest sister, Numa, is really good at adding whereas her brother, Mohammad, excels at subtraction. They have trouble with the opposite haha. Fatimata, the 16 year old who was giving me attitude before but not anymore after my site visit, is behind them but I know she can do it. She just needs to take it slowly but it's annoying when the kids just throw out guesses out there and they're so damn VERBAL about it, it's loud and it breaks their concentration. No one understands the concept of waiting in line and they just keep on tapping me on the shoulder (I think they underestimate how hard they jab at me because that's how hard they jab at each other when they tap you for something) and I am forcing the concept of waiting on them. The little girl who use to be sassy and spoiled is understanding and I reward her for it. Anyone else who doesn't will just have to learn the hard way. What's also great is that most of them are coughing into their elbows now, and whenever someone doesn't I call them out for it and all the kids call them out for it, too. Slow behavioral changes, slow. I feel very proud when anyone remembers, however. It annoys me the most when I specifically say one person respond but they whisper answers into the responder's ear and it's usually WRONG and it entices the responder to just say what their friend/sibling said. I'm trying to skip the turn of the person who breaks the rules and I think they're slowly catching on. Right now, I'm making the older kids re-write the problems they get wrong and drilling problem after problem into them. If they get a problem wrong more than three times, I stop teaching the younger kids to focus my attention on them and they usually get it right away. For the younger kids, I surveyed their ability to write (which is... they're unable to write, they can't write the letter 2 or 5, and some of them get confused at 4) and backtracked a little to start with simple addition. I'm using peanut shells and asking them to pick out 1-10 in one pile, 1-10 in another pile, and ask another child to tell me how much it is altogether. I figured writing is beyond them at this stage, but it will come with time. I know they want me to write equations for them like I do their older siblings but they're totally overestimating their ability. At least they have the desire to learn.. I just have to guide them realistically. I can see improvement, however, since the youngest know 1-10, they might not understand the numbers completely but that's where the peanut counting is coming in. It's exhausting as hell, especially when the older kids interrupt me when they're stumped or they think they're right but it's actually wrong, or when people come into the compound and greet and greet and greet or someone tries to answer for someone else, ugh. Overall, it's a nice routine, and I think they really appreciate it and I feel like I'm actually getting math through to them!

Journal Post 11/27

Welp, it's 3:30 AM and I've been up for the past hour. Why? I suppose it's my turn to deal with The Gambia Revenge because I vomited twice last night. I guess 1.5 months is my quota for being healthy because shit just went down. I'll start from the beginning. Yesterday went a bit like this...

Woke up. Twas cold. Got ready. Stumbled into breakfast. I was smart and didn't eat the onions and sardines and instead opted for the bread and chocolate bread option. We had language class and it really dawned upon us hard that there's only 2 more weeks left of training and a MILLION things to do. Fuck. We have three assignments due by next Tuesday - I gotta take some kid's Mid Upper Arm Measurement to determine whether or not they're malnourished, plan a one hour class about hand washing for kids and young adults in grade school, and some draft of a community action plan. On top of that, our final language exam is in two weeks! We had a bunch of sessions after that and found out that it was our last time in Jenoi, ever. My village site mate Elizabeth is a saint and mobilized everyone to chip in some cash to give to the kitchen ladies because they are so good to us - kind of like what the Resident Assistant's do with the maintainers at the end of the semester. I scrambled to make a mobile of cranes and one of the PCVs who were helping lead one of the sessions had pretty origami paper in her bag! Talk about great timing. I also found out this SAME PCV - named Colette - is from Cape Cod and transferred to UMass for a period of time in the 2000s! What a small world! We bonded over the small Western Mass. town and I told her all of the new stuff happening there, haha.

The sessions we had all day were technical and pretty fascinating - we sorted through trash and weighed babies. First, we talked about how to sort/deal with trash and how it's such a huge problem in The Gambia and there needs to be more emphasis on reduce, reuse, recycle, and we learned about creative ways volunteers have adopted to reuse trash! Seriously, it's brilliant. I hope to be a genius like that but I don't even know how inspiration for those ideas even strike. It was smelly and dirty and we even had a dying mouse that we had to kill in the trash we were tasked to pick. Awesome. After that, we weighed babies and tracked their weight on this "Road to Health" chart which maps an infant's health through their first five years of life based on weight.

Lunch happened - it was some kind of rice with a vegetables on top. After we ate, Elizabeth and I presented the gifts to the kitchen staff and they were very happy and did a little dance. Impromptu dancing always occurs. I even got to the a picture with my favorite kitchen staff of all! I snapped a few shots of the training camp, walked back to the kitchen to grab a few pieces of watermelon, and finished up with a lesson about personal health and nutrition in the Gambia. As everyone was packing to go home, my stomach started feeling a little weird, but nothing urgent. I applied some Chinese medicinal oil on it and put my hand on my stomach for warmth (I think this is just what my grandma accustomed me to when I was a kid, so I feel like I'm perpetually rubbing my stomach like a weirdo). We stopped in Soma so that the trainees could get a road gift for our families since we haven't seen them in nine days!!! I got a sizable pack of milk biscuits from the toubab/foreigner store. Ida also went with me to go fabric shopping for the Christmas gift I'm making everyone because unfortunately she didn't get what pattern I wanted in Kombo. However, I will use the fabric she got me regardless, and you'll see how very soon. I ended up getting scraps of see-through silk, three strips actually (2 turquoise and one sunburnt orange) for 25D. Not bad! I hope it'll suffice. The origami stars I'm making are small and it's a cute little travel present. I did just realize I have to make, like, 300 more... but that'll be saved for days where I have to wait forever for a bus to pass time. It's very important you always bring a book or something to do while you're waiting for something, because there will be waiting.

I arrived back home and it seems like every kid in Jalanbereh materializes out of thin air to greet me. Many of the kids from my compound rush out of my compound to hold my hand and lead me back home. Everyone was yelling my name, saying hi, it was such a warm welcome to be home. I feel like they're my posse, and they're my little force field against unwanted male attention which I get way too much of in Kulari. Anyways, I said hi and distributed the crackers to my family but rushed inside because I was racing against the sun to unpack everything before it set. Unpacking was a success but my stomach is feeling less and less of a success with every minute. I intended to go outside to take a quick shower but discovered and INFESTATION of these ant things where if you squish them they unleash this acid that can chemically burn you in my goddamn pit latrine. If you can imagine the horror as you see the silhouette of a hundred big ants emerge from a hole in the ground where you're suppose to have your genitals near, but they're red and have the potential to chemically burn you, you can imagine my horror as I dump water down it in frenzy. I was stupid to do that and waste water instead of insecticiding the shit out of them, but I'll remember to do it later. The battle concluded in a stalemate when I realized the sun was setting and ain't nobody got time to shower at night while bugs collide into you from all sides. I decided to resume mass destruction tomorrow. My stomach is really, really queasy after dinner but as soon as I stepped back into my house, dinner was delivered. I took one whiff of what was delivered to me and felt an overwhelming need to hurl so I slammed the lid back shut and sat down with my hand on my stomach, rubbing that medicinal oil again. I bet I looked like a loser from outside because I was just hunched over in my one chair with my lamp spotlighting me.

After 15 minutes, I decided to go out and explain to my family that I didn't feel well, I'm sorry I can't talk but I want to rest, but they were all so excited to talk to me! I felt bad but that but that feeling wasn't as strong as the need to barf. I set my dinner down, walked back into my house, bee lined straight to the back door, and hurled. I swear to God I hurled at least 1.5 pounds out. I could see and smell my lunch, in fact it was the same color and the rice wasn't even digested. It's weird that I could smell it, though. I was having like an out of body experience just watching myself retch and if you ever played Diablo, you know those monsters that barf out little crawly monsters to hurt you - well that's what I felt like with my hair in my face and just hurling my life out. I was like a fountain spewing gross red half-digested rice. As soon as I finish vomiting, I look to my right and see my compost pile. I think, "Damn. Why didn't I just barf there? My vomit is organic...right?" So the next thing I do is call my PCVL/RAs and asked if vomit could go into the compost pile. Lo and behold it can! I mean shit I didn't want to waste a pound of rice, that could be used. So then I grab my shovel and next thing I know there's a sheet of vomit on top of my compost. I felt really good but I could never imagine myself in a small country in West Africa shoveling my own vomit into a compost pile at night. You know after you barf, you have this moment of clarity? Moment of health? Well, that happened, and I was almost crazy enough to go back out but I decided against it and got ready to go to bed. This is at 8:30 PM by the way.

I couldn't really drift off to sleep even though I was tired yet happy that I vomited and got it all out. I kept on laying, laying, laying there waiting for sleep to take me over but at 10:30 an arrow of nausea pierced me in the stomach and I wanted to barf. This barf-feeling could not be suppressed and try as I did, I ended up throwing up in my mosquito net, all over half my sheets and blanket. SWEET. Halfway through vomiting I managed to throw out everything I kept in a zip lock bag next to my pillow and dump my stomach contents in there but to no avail because of course there was a rip in the bottom small enough for all my vomit to drip through. And back onto my sheets. Needless to say I am a mix of confusion, sickness, and annoyance at that moment but I kept it cool, mostly because I didn't have the energy to do anything else. I cleaned up my tent by using the rest of my sheet and blanket to soak up all the vomit. I didn't want the rats or ants or whatever lives in my house at night to get all up in my vomitty sheets so I just threw it in my empty water bucket and put the lid on it. I was drained but realized I still needed new sheets but I only bought ONE sheet to Gambia... but guess what Ida bought me... two meters of fabric which I'm not using which is also long enough to extend past the length of my body. I threw the piece of fabric down, laid down, and went straight to bed.

I woke up at 2:30 and haven't drank water since my last vomit movement. Why? Because I didn't have time to wash my water filter and I have absolutely no reliable water source since the tap was broken. I'm thinking, "Well shit because I know I lost a metric boat load of electrolytes but I'm not dumb enough to drink well water at this point because I know my stomach can't take it... what do I do?"I decided to journal, forget my overwhelming thirst, and promised to call Ida at 4:30 AM before the 5 AM call to prayer and ask her to send someone over with some packaged water. At 4:30 AM I called Ida and was she awake? No. So I feel like shit for making her get up, on top of already feeling like shit, and she said she would deliver the water to me and to call the Peace Corps Medical Office. I dialed them up after that but they didn't respond. It took awhile before the Nurse called me back and I told her the scoop and they told me to keep them updated with my status.

Soooo I'm lying in bed, afraid to get up less I barf again, but I'm dying to pee. I don't feel queasy but I also don't want to risk elevating my body. At 6:30 AMish, Ida personally comes to deliver water herself, I ripped three packages of water and dumped it all into my three water bottles, had 1 liter of water and 1 liter of water with Gatorade. Ida was nice enough to communicate with them I wasn't feeling well, leave me alone to rest, wash my vomitty sheets after I rinse them through first, etc. She also got me a small cup of tea but all I tasted was plastic because it was boiling water in this small plastic cup and ugh it doesn't taste good but it was warmth in my stomach which felt nice. I drank through the plastic, showed Ida out, and went back to sleep for another hour. I woke up and decided it was time to get the rinsing over with. I don't know how I mustered the energy to do so, or the brain power to figure out how exactly I would rinse my sheets, but it worked and now I have even more vomit in my compost pile. I took the sheets out, health waning, told them what was happening and my mom noticed that my skin was hot. Great. They told me to go back into my house and that they'd make white porridge/congee for me, hell yeah. I went back into my house, sat, drank a lot of water, and waited for my breakfast to come. One of the ladies came into deliver it and actually returned my bucket which I had the dirty sheets in, which means they washed that shit right away. That was really sweet they were on top of taking care of me. She told me to eat it all and I really tried but my biggest desire was to lay down and sleep. I had a couple of spoonfuls before submitting to my bed again and she cleaned my place up a little, too.

I went to sleep for another hour until Elizabeth comes knocking at my door to check up on me. My head feels a lot stuffier than last night and I'm a bit dizzy but I let her in. She feels my temperature and determines that I have a bit of a fever, so I lie down while she gets me Tylenol and Ibuprofen and instructs me to drink water. She is such a mom and I love her for it because when you're sick in Africa, it's really nice to have a mother figure to be there for you. It's really funny because every time she gives me something I have to get up, unzip my mosquito net, go through another mosquito net, take the thing she wants to give me, retreat back into my first mosquito net, zip my mosquito net back up, and lie back down. It's pathetic, but there are no bugs getting through here. YOU SHALL NOT PASS. Elizabeth was a saint and took care of washing my water filter for me, instructed my family to fill my bidong up again because I used all the water in it to wash my sheets, and left to go to Ida's. She said she wasn't feeling well either, really achey all over. I wish I could do more but I couldn't.

I went back to sleep until 1:30 when Ida came to deliver me lunch. At first I didn't hear her and I think I scared her, haha. I got up to let her in but the smell of food reminded me of all my vomit last night so I didn't take any of it. She brought my breakfast congee out that I didn't finished and got me a tall glass of hot water. I put green tea in it and damn did it taste good. She left after checking up on me and she wasn't looking too good herself. Concern? Or just felt like shit? I couldn't decipher, I was too lost in my fever. I took the tea with me to bed and drifted off to sleep... only to be woken up an hour later because I felt like my butt was wet. My first thought: Fuck, did I pee myself? Because I'll be really upset. It turns out I didn't wet myself, I just spilled my tea. No worries, so I just take off my pants and resume sleeping. Half an hour later, the woman who delivered my breakfast comes to check up on me and tells me that my sheets are dry. I'm lying in my bed with panties and a tank top on and think, shit, since I threw my pants across the room and she was looking in from my window. I wrap the fabric I used as my sheet around me, got up to get the clean sheets, threw them back in bed, and went back to sleep. Fast thinking. Bless you Ida for getting me those two clutch meters of fabric.

By 4:00 PM, I wake back up and I'm drowning in my sweat. I deduced that either my fever broke or it was actually hot. It turned out to be both. I sat up and drank a bunch of water... and actually felt pretty good. That's a relative term. I was still hot and clammy as hell but had enough energy to wash my tent from any vomit shrapnel from last night. It was a success and luckily there wasn't much that tainted my tent. My energy reserves were just ending as Elizabeth walked over. I let her in and laid back in bed. She was happy that my fever broke but took my temperature anyways. It was just below the normal which explained why I felt dizzy and was a bit clammy. Right after she took my temperature she asks me who owned a fancy car in my compound and I said no one, but a minute after that, wailing broke out which only meant one thing - someone died.

SOMEONE DIED. While I'm feeling like death. This fricken timing is ridiculous. I gather 5 minutes for myself and watch as a stream of people pour into my compound and more women join in on the chorus of wailing. It is loud and can't be mistaken for anything else - it is all mourning. I finally receharged myself enough to go outside and ask what happened. They were all dropping the word "death" and the name "Bambo." I recognized the name but I never actually met the guy. I knew he was the son to one of my dad's two original wives (not my direct mom or namesake) since I wrote it down during my family tree assignment. As soon as the car started driving out, the gates to my compound closed and the women all gathered in a group, crying together. I was consoling them while Elizabeth went inside to call Ida. Elizabeth passed the phone to the person I was consoling and then told me Bambo was one of my brothers. He was completely fine in the morning and was out with his friends until he literally dropped down and died. I felt awful because I legitimately didn't know who he was! Elizabeth deduced it was probably an aneurism. Ida informed me that Bambo was born physically deformed and my family encouraged him to stay out of my way because they thought his physical appearance would scare me. Of course it wouldn't! But my family didn't know that. So, he ended up as my NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR who listened to music in his backyard and I've never been able to see him.

Anyways, I hit another wall and and to retreat back into my house. After 20 minutes, I realized the sun was setting fast so I went outside to dump a few cups of water on my body and went back inside in time to catch Ida. She explained the situation to me. They think Bambo was sick internally but was perfectly fine on the outside so no one suspected anything wrong. It was just a perfectly normal day for him fetching firewood in the morning, going to his friends house, and while they were talking he just collapsed and died. The way death is so incorporated into every day life here is disturbing. It's literally a part of the circle of life. While my health is returning, my next door neighbor dies. While a child is born, another dies. It's hard to wrap my head around because it's so sobering. I even feel detached from it because it just happens all the time and it's absolutely awful. They absolutely mourn here for the dead but the body's usually buried before sundown on the day that the person passes, and life goes on. It goes on, albeit solemnly, but it goes on. In the States, if someone passes, it lingers on and the body usually isn't even buried until a week later. I'll have a deeper post about death in The Gambia and my feelings toward it later.

Ida told me to call the Med Office to update them, which I did. Both she and Elizabeth were on their way out since it was getting dark fast. As I was waiting for my dinner, Elizabeth ran back because she thought she left her keys in my house but it turns out she took mine, had hers all along, and had to run back. My dinner came and I felt bad they still had to cook for me even though there was a recent death. Crying would break out here and there, and I could see a queue of flashlights ambling in and out of my compound as both the men and women prepare for the funeral. One of the women came to deliver my dinner but as soon as I peeled back the lid, I saw a flurry of black specks all up in my congee and a twitching ant. I totally didn't blame them but I took the dinner back out and crashed in bed once again. This time, I fell asleep for 8 full hours and all I could hear while I drifted off was very abnormal silence that fell over my compound.