Back to Village

Things have calmed down now and we have settled back into our village.  Ben settled back into managing the bee project with Luis, and I was just approved for my library and resource project at the school.   We started working on it 2 days ago! 

Recently we helped Luis harvest a wild hive from Luis’s friends’ restaurant in the city.  We drove to the city, dismantled the hive, and the next day Ben and Luis took it back to his farm in a European bee box.  All three of us ‘got got’ (stung) but it was still fun and the bees are doing well at the farm.  It’s hard to explain why this is a crazy thing to do so I’m hoping the pictures will do a better job of it than I could.  Elma, Luis and Maria’s daughter, told us we looked like Ghostbusters.

Lots of bees!

Ben trying to smoke out the bees

Ben had a few meetings with the women’s tie and dye group. They are having trouble collecting money from people who paid on credit.  The money has been due for 2 months now so Ben had a meeting and explained that if they give back the fabric and allow others who can pay now to buy the fabric, then the kafoo will be able to do more jobs and at the end of the year would have more money.  They were surprisingly receptive to this idea. 

I have also been helping with our school garden and another school garden at a neighboring village with our sitemate Jessica.  I gave both schools seeds and instructions on how to plant an intensive moringa bed and made a small handout for one school to keep track of their produce.

Breaking ground (they all got stickers afterwards which they loved)

Also, we really appreciated all the care packages that came around January!  Thank you so much!  Miss you friends and family!

"Going up and down"

I like how Gambians talk about traveling or being busy.  Instead of saying you have traveled or went out they say ‘you have been going up and down’. And as I mentioned back in January we got to do some traveling.  We went to Dakar, Senegal for the West Africa International Softball Tournament (WAIST) and then flew to Tanzania to meet my parents for a safari.  Both Dakar and Tanzania were great, and all our travels went smooth.  WAIST was a lot of fun and felt like we were in America.  We hung out with lots of other Americans, ate fajitas, cheese, ice cream, nachos, hot dogs, played softball, went to a mall, and to an island with a nice beach.  I realize this list of food may not impress most people reading this, but to volunteers, it is what we dream of.  Dakar is West Africa’s biggest city and it has a lot of good restaurants, venues, and beaches.  We are excited to go back someday.

Tanzania was also fun and cold, which we really enjoyed.  We stayed in Dar El Salam for our first 2 days and enjoyed walking around the city, going to the Indian Ocean, and eating delicious street food.   The food was a lot of Indian food with different spices and curry than we are used to here in West Africa.  It was delicious and fun for us just to walk around and look at everything that is so completely different from Banjul.   From there we took a bus to Arusha where we met up with my parents.  From Arusha we took a 10 day safari! We took lots of pictures, and saw lots of animals!  It is definitely something anyone can and should do!  Our favorite thing was seeing the lioness with her cubs. 

Indian Ocean

Guided tour

one of our 'tented' lodges

top of the crater

Lion cubs!

Our ride

Maasi women

When we returned from Tanzania, my parents came back to Gambia with us and visited the Gambia coast and our village.  The village really enjoyed seeing my parents visit and ask us about them; likewise, my parents really enjoyed seeing our village and listening to us speak mandinka.  Right after my parents left, Ben flew to Georgia for Andrew and Sarah’s wedding.  Ben had a great time with the Turner family and came back with funny stories and lots of food from America!

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