My first taste of Gambian life

I’ve been in the Gambia for over a month now and today I have my first chance to get online and post something other than a short blurb on Facebook.  So for starters I should say that I have really been enjoying myself so far.  The people here are amazing:  my host family, the Peace Corps staff, my fellow trainees, and the Gambians I have encountered in my community and elsewhere.  After leaving the airport on our first day here, we were taken in a van to a place called Yuna village resort.  Even though it wasn’t a resort in the sense that I would normally think of a resort, it felt like I was being pampered by staying there the first week.  I expected to be roughing it starting from day one.  Much to my delight, the beds were nice, we had running water, a shower, a toilet, cold drinks, and great food—the most noteworthy being omelets with cheese for breakfast.  Kharles, I can finally see for myself how little cheese people eat in Africa and I understand why you think I and most other Americans are so weird for eating it all the time! 

During our first week we learned the basic greetings in the three languages the members of my training group are now studying (Mandinka, Wolof, and Pulaar).  Also within the first week and a half our group of 17 trainees shrank to 15.  Just a few days in, one guy decided it wasn’t the right time for him to be here, and one girl, who seemed unhappy from the beginning left without any explanation to the group.  Besides just taking me and the others by surprise, their ETs (early terminations) made me wonder if I was really cut out for the job the Peace corps wants me to do.  After the initial shock of it all, though, I determined that I really do want to be here and I think I can be an effective volunteer.  Yay me! 

The girl’s ET had an even bigger impact on my situation than that of the others.  I had been assigned to learn Mandinka and moved in with my host family and had stayed with them for two days.  We went through our naming ceremony, in which I was given the name Fatou Jaiteh—the same as my host sister and also my host mother—and I had unpacked my things and started to settle into my little house and new life.  Then I was approached by our program director and asked if it would be possible that I switch languages and host families because they didn’t want to lose the Wolof school where this girl was going to be working.  What?  Really?  Did they really think that they could uproot me from the very life I was already beginning to adjust to?  I responded, through tears, that if they needed me to make that change, then of course I would do it.  After all, one of the core expectations of the Peace Corps is to be flexible.  So, I packed up my things and moved to the other side of my town, Mariama Kunda, into a new family’s compound, into a new room, into a new mindset.

I’ve been staying with my host family for almost a month now and they are great.  My host brother, Momadou, and sisters, Fatou and Rohey, have great English and have been a huge help to me, especially when my host dad, Amat, tries to speak to me and I have no idea what he is saying.  By the way, pretty much every Gambian family has at least one Fatou and one Mohammed/Momadou/some version of that name.  So I still have a Toma (the word Gambians use to refer to someone with the same name as them) here in my family.  I wasn’t sure if I should change my last name or keep the one from my original family, so I ended up keeping both.  I now go by Fatou Jaiteh Ngum, or sometimes just Fatou Ngum, but I also will answer to Fatou Jaiteh.  J

My room is on the end of a row house made from mud bricks with a corrugated tin roof, equipped with my own backyard and pit latrine area.  We don’t have running water or electricity here, although my family does own a generator, which they fire up occasionally to watch their tiny TV.  My ceiling is lined with a bunch of large plastic bags sewn together, which has been a blessing and an annoyance.  Rats and possibly lizards take advantage of the space between the bags and the roof to run around and take shelter in at night.  No matter how annoying this can be, I am certainly glad they are staying up there and not down inside my room, especially in my bed!  Silver lining… J

Let’s move on to food.  The staple here is rice, which means I eat rice at least once a day, but often both for lunch and dinner.  Usually the rice is accompanied by cooked carrots, cabbage, eggplant, and either fish, chicken, or, on a couple occasions, SPAM (…I know…).  I eat lunch at my language teacher’s house with Rachel, the other trainee with whom I do language classes, and Gibril, my language teacher.  However, since it is the glorious month of Ramadan, Gibril hasn’t been eating with us.  Ramadan is 29 or 30 days in which Muslims do not eat during daylight hours.  This means they get up before the sun rises to eat breakfast, and don’t eat or drink anything until about 7:40 at night when the sun goes down.  Then Ndoguu, the best meal of them all (in my opinion), happens.  The first few times my family broke their fast they made rice or cous porridge, drank tea sweetened with an absurd amount of sugar and some milk.  Delicious! J  Ice is also a staple for breaking fast.  One evening I biked with Momadou to the nearby town Brufut to buy ice to put in their water and juice.  Lately Ndoguu has been less fancy and we just eat bread with butter and drink sugary tea or Nescafe, the closest thing we have to coffee here.  This is also what I eat for breakfast every morning.  Needless to say, Gambia isn’t known for their culinary expertise, but we make the best with what we have here.

This past week we did a “Model School” at the local school with 5^th and 6^th graders.  I taught the 5^th graders one lesson per day:  3 English and one P.E. class.  I was not really looking forward to playing the role as school teacher but surprisingly I really loved it.  The kids are all super adorable and so smart.  It made my job very enjoyable and easy.  When children start first grade, many of them have never spoken or heard the English language before.  There are quite a few local languages spoken throughout the Gambia, but school is entirely in English.  Not only are children learning Science or Math or History, but they are learning to speak a different language at the same time.  Anyway, being in contact with kids really made me miss coaching gymnastics, and it also got me excited for the next two years when I am working at my school.  (Side note:  my job title is Primary Teacher Trainer, which means that I am there to support the teachers at my school and help improve the school and teaching as a whole.  I am not going to be a teacher, as I might have told some of you before I left.  This is a recent change in the Peace Corps and it is really great because I am not taking someone else’s job as a teacher, I am there to help the existing teachers improve their techniques and their schools in general.) 

The next few weeks will be filled to the brim with technical trainings, language training, a visit to my permanent site, a field trip to Janjanbureh (an island upcountry), a hiking trip, and much much more.  Oh, and next week is Koriteh, the end of Ramadan, which is celebrated with lots of food, dressing up in your finest Gambian garb, braiding hair, getting hennaed, and going around to other people’s houses demanding money or candy, similar to Halloween in the states.  It should be a blast and I’m sure everyone will be very happy to not be fasting anymore.  Go them. 

Okay, til next time.  I’ll keep ya’ll updated when I can!

Xoxoxoxo

Stephy

P.S. Please feel free to leave comments and ask questions as I’m sure I left some stuff out that you might be curious about.  Thanks!