You go where?

So as not to disturb our friends, family, and random blog readers – we wanted to let you know that it may be awhile before our next entry.   January 12, we are traveling to Dakar, Senegal for West Africa International Softball Tournament (WAIST) with Peace Corps volunteers from all over West Africa.  Afterwards we are meeting my parents in Tanzania, and then my parents will come back to Gambia with us for a week.  Right after my parents leave, Ben will be going to America for his ‘little’ brothers wedding (Congrats again Andrew and Sarah!). That said, the reason for the future blog hiatus will most likely not be due to illness, death, or natural disaster (Lord willing and the creek don’t rise), but because we will be traveling around Africa!

Christmas and New Years

We had a fun Christmas and New Years but definitely missed our family and friends!  On Christmas we had a breakfast at our Peace Corps transit house in the city and spent the morning watching Christmas movies, had a white elephant exchange, and spent the afternoon on the beach.  For New Years Eve, Luis invited us to spend the night at their home in the city where we had a traditional Spanish new years eating shrimp, lobster, soup, cheese, fried cheese, chorizo, homemade sangria, and Spanish wines!  We also partook in the Spanish ritual of trying to eat 12 grapes in one minute, a tradition where I failed miserably and Ben only kinda failed.



Winter in Village

We are now experiencing the ‘winter’ weather that was present upon our arrival to Gambia, and we are enjoying it for sure!  We have officially lived here for one year and are right at our mid-service point, which is also exciting. Right now in village our people are busy harvesting and drying their coos, and we are eating oranges off the tree.  In the past 2 weeks, we’ve had 3 football games against neighboring villages with discos following the games that last until about 3 am; which frankly, is too much.  Ben has resumed his career as Berefet goalkeeper, no worries.  We’ve also had a couple of naming ceremonies as well, one of which also had a disco – I guess winter time is also disco time here in the booming cosmopolitan of Berefet.

Sibou and Yaya's winter gear

Palm collecter

We’ve been kept busy with bee work as well as tie and dye making.  We’ve had a good amount of bees colonized recently which means come April we will have lots of honey to harvest! Bee keeping in Africa is different in the sense that you try to catch wild swarms rather than buy or divide existing hives like in America. You ‘catch’ the wild swarms by putting out boxes with wax or good smelling things that the bees will be attracted to and then want to remain in your box.  This past week we had 4 swarms on the sides of our boxes! Joerge, an industrial beekeeper from Spain who came this past week, was really impressed by this.  He came to teach Luis how to rear queens but told him that we have so many bees there is no need to rear queens.  Right now is the flow period for the bees, which means their building up their homes, foraging lots and starting to make honey.  It also means that this is the peak time to catch swarms and we are definitely seeing that now.

The tie and dye kafoo recently did another job and are making a decent profit with Ben’s guidance.  He’s been thinking and discussing with Solo the groups possibilities for spending the money and came up with a great idea to have the women open a shop.  This would be great because there is only one shop owner in our village, and our women owning their own shop would be so beneficial to them!  I’ve been looking at a couple different school gardens, as well as our women’s gardens and giving tips and making plans for when we return as well.

Tie & Dyein

Drying

Ben and Jeorge bee keeping

Finished fabric!

Musu Gitteh, head of tie & dye operation

Swarm of bees! Jeorge and Ben

On the road again

This past month of December we were both traveling a bit.  Ben went up north of the river to visit a COSing (close of service) volunteer with our counterpart Solo.  They went to see a duck/poultry/guinea fowl project that this volunteer had developed.  Solo and his brother are interested in starting a duck project so we thought it would be good to see a successful one across the river.  Solo also really appreciated the opportunity to travel north of the river to a Wolof village near Senegal.  Like most Gambians, he hasn’t had the opportunity to travel very far from our village.  Him and the Peace Corps volunteer’s counterpart exchanged numbers and became good friends.  Solo is planning to have ducks at his compound by next month and we are also buying a couple ducks for him to keep for us since our compound isn’t quite big enough for a duck project.

I went on a 5 day hiking trip with 5 girls to a region of southeastern Senegal called Kedegou.  It was a great trip but it was too bad Ben couldn’t come.  We hiked two days to two waterfalls, and also hiked up a hill to a bedik village of about 8 compounds.  The bedik village looks like picturesque Africa with mud, grass huts and no signs of western or arabic influence.  We stayed at a lodge one night and at the regional peace corps transit house the rest our time there.  We had a good time talking with Senegalese volunteers and making pizza in their mud-brick oven!  It was really fun to experience a completely different part of West Africa.  This area has tribes of fula, bedik, and bassari who seem to be more relaxed than the wolofs, mandinkas, and jolas in our area.  They also learn French in school so it was fun to hear French spoken everywhere.  And we were all impressed with how developed the remotest part of Senegal actually was.  Things like sidewalks, bridges, paved roads, restaurants, and shops were all new and fascinating to us Gambia volunteers.  We especially loved the hamburger made with delicious buttery homemade buns we ate in Kedegou – Oh, the differences between and French and British colonies! In terms of landscape, it was wonderful to see hills again.  We also got to see monkeys, baboons (smaller and different from the ones we have here), different bird species, and my favorite – warthogs!



Kaddy Getuh’s Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and want to learn how to do other things good too

The new headmaster and I are making strides at the new library and resource center.  When talking to another volunteer, she informed me of a woman here in the Gambia who likes to help Gambia schools and has a long history of working with Peace Corps volunteers.  So I headed up to our school and the headmaster and I came up with a plan to turn an old building into a library and resource center.  We wrote down our ideas and I called this woman up.  She discussed our idea and told me to compile more information on the exact costs it would require for the building and resources.  The next day I went back to the headmaster and we got these details and I headed into town to meet with Sally to discuss the feasibility and funding.  The meeting went very well and Sally gave me tips and asked me to go back to the head master and hash out a couple more details we were missing.  She said to email her all the information and she was sure we’d be able to get funding from her charity in the UK.  Her charity is called ‘Friends of Gambian Schools’ and here is a link to their website: http://www.friendsofgambianschools.co.uk/.  She also told me she would help me get resources to put inside the library!  Yay!

The headmaster was very excited to hear this news on Monday when I returned, and he excitedly told me they would never forget me here and I’m guessing by the look on my face he determined that this was not enough, so he went further on to say that they would name the building after me.  Which raises some questions…..Is this the real reason we moved to Africa? It may be.  Do I deserve the honor to name a mut hut with cement plastered on the outside, fashioned in this sense, a library? Yes.  And, lastly, is the title of this blog appropriate for me to have painted above the door of the library and resource center? Absolutely.  This vision alone is what will get me through the tough times on this project, for sure. 

some students and staff in front of the school

Current building we plan on turning into the library

Current pencils the students are using

Tobaski

We got the opportunity to celebrate for the first time the muslim holiday of Tobaski.  The holiday consists of washing a goat/ram/cow and sacrificing it, and eating it until you run out of meat – about 5 days later.  Everyone prays, then the men and boys play football and the women and kids get dressed up and walk around town asking people for money or prayers.  I chose prayers and started getting creative by making up my own mandinka prayers.  I figured out that if you say the words Allama (may God) and then follow it with anything, pretty much the other person has to respond with Amin.  I prayed for money, wives, husbands, dogs, rice, medicine. Oh, it was well received.  The Spainards also came out to the village to celebrate Tobaski so we split our time between our family (rice and goat meat) and a Spainish BBQ (chicken, chorizo, cheese, and vegetables).  If I had to sum up this holiday in 3 ways it would be: ram slaughter, waxy fabric, and fake hair.  And of course, we took some pictures….

Tobaski, Ben is wearing his gift from President Jammeh

Musekebba lookin good!

Sarata

Howa

Bees! They're Everywhere!

It is no longer the rainy season, which means we no longer have weird things growing on us, can sleep inside, and the humidity level is back down to zero!  The weather is nice now and we are very happy to have left the humid rainy season behind us.  And as the rainy season ended, it became time to clean up some bee hives and put out new boxes for this dry season.  A third year Peace Corps Volunteer and his Gambian counterpart came out to our village for 4 days to inspect hives, harvest honey, and help clean up the apiaries (bee compounds).  Luis joined us for parts of the four days and was so impressed with the training that afterwards he told Ben he wanted him to be his ‘Project Manager’ of the bee project. 

Luis, his shirt says 'Crazy white person' in mandinka

Beekeepers

The bee's didn't like this box so they started making their hive in the tire!

Luis can somehow smoke through his suit without getting stung - talent.

Honey!

And that is the story of how Ben and I inherited 100 bee hives in the African bush, with about 25 colonized hives.  That is to say, we have our work cut out for us now.  Our host dad, Lamin, is working with us on the project and is getting paid a very good Gambian salary of 100 dalasi a day (or about 3.5 USD’s).  We were a little nervous about this at first because Luis has a very western mentality of work and our villagers….well, they do not seem to share this mentality (weird, I know right). But Ben has done a good job of explaining to Lamin exactly what Luis expects of him and how to make Luis happy, and what would make Luis not happy.  Such as, not showing up for work for 4 days like another villager who was previously working with us on the bee project.   Not only will Lamin be getting paid here in village rather than him having to go fishing in the river or Senegal, but he will learn how to bee keep which could lead to a profitable side business now or business when we nor Luis are here.  Right now, however, his sole interest is the 100 dalasi a day, and it looks like all three of us will be busy with bee work up until the next rainy season.  We are enjoying this project and Luis is having a bee specialist from Spain come out next week for a whole month, which is fantastic – except the specialist doesn’t speak a lick of English!  So we will most likely speak to him in a nice mixture of mandinka, English, French, Spanish, and hand gestures.  We are still excited about this because he has over 500 colonized hives in Spain and we’ll learn a lot from him regardless of the language barrier.  And working with Luis is pretty fun too, he’s led an interesting life and we just can’t wait to tell ya’ll all the stories he’s told us! He’s lived in Canary Islands, Mozambique, Malawi, Costa Rica, and Spain the past 30 years and has traveled the world on ships as well.  There is rarely a dull day with Luis!  Also, he frequently blasts Pink Floyd out of his land rover coming into the village and when he gets out of the car yells ‘HEY Teacher, Leave those kids alone!’ to the Gambian children standing by in shock.