I just returned from a 2 week vacation in America, blog post pending, I will skip over that to bring you this weeks events. Events that made me feel not only that I belong here but that I am helping to bring the slightest change. Which is a rare feeling to have as a volunteer.
Sowe, the head of the women's club came to me Tuesday and asked me to hold a meeting on compost. I had brought her to a garden training back in July, and she had taken all we taught her and applied it, growing the first upland rice fields of Tenengfara. As well as, starting cashew and mango orchards, she did this all on her own, only coming to show me what she had done. Sowe had gone to a training in town that taught her how to make compost. I suggested to her that we hold the meeting in the garden, I do nothing Wednesday except read a bit about compost as a brush up, thinking like all other times that I'll be leading the meeting, I look up some mandinka words like compost and shade, and head to the garden with my shovel. In the meantime, She has taught 2 of the elder men in village how to make compost. I just handed them my shovel and watch as the crowd grows to over 60 women and 4 men, the most men I've ever seen at a training. They demonstrate how to make the compost pile, then translate in 4 languages how it was to be done. And you know what, I truly understood the mandinka, it was amazing that my brain had just absorded all this knowledge in a year and a half. The women although not outwardly excited, listened and Sowe was just beaming from ear to ear. The men even asked questions. And a compost pile was built, people learned from one another as I stood watching them just use my shovel.
That's what I'm here to do, to do or bring something by sharing and then standing back and doing nothing. I love that Sowe is now a women who believes in herself enough to teach others, to stand out as an individual in a society that only respects the community. It was beautiful and I truly can't believe that it happened in my time. I thought maybe another 2 years from now, but that I witnessed it, my heart is just full of thanks.
Leaving the meeting I bring my two girls, Mariama and Aramita, and little Tia to the tailor. I had bought them fabric for their first ever school uniforms and they were just shining light bulbs when the were measured by the tailor. They can chat about nothing else besides Sunday when they are supposed to see the finished products. I hope this will empower their learning even more. As I am trying, slowly, slowly, to show the family how education is the most powerful tool a person can have. Tia even got measured too because he and I will have matching asobe pants. I remember this time last year when he couldn't even walk the distance to the tailor, I have been here a long time.
On the way to the tailor's, the four of us, me and the three children were passed by a "Gambian tourist vehicle," coming from the tourist camp. There were two white young men sitting in the back, clearly tourists, who were staring at us as they drove by. I saw a glimpse of myself through their eyes, this young dirty white women standing in the middle of a cow path wearing local dress with 3 small black dirty children dressed in what they could consider rags. The question in their eyes was 'what is she doing here?' My answer, " I am living."
This is the most recent chapter to my life story.
That's what I'm here to do, to do or bring something by sharing and then standing back and doing nothing. I love that Sowe is now a women who believes in herself enough to teach others, to stand out as an individual in a society that only respects the community. It was beautiful and I truly can't believe that it happened in my time. I thought maybe another 2 years from now, but that I witnessed it, my heart is just full of thanks.
Leaving the meeting I bring my two girls, Mariama and Aramita, and little Tia to the tailor. I had bought them fabric for their first ever school uniforms and they were just shining light bulbs when the were measured by the tailor. They can chat about nothing else besides Sunday when they are supposed to see the finished products. I hope this will empower their learning even more. As I am trying, slowly, slowly, to show the family how education is the most powerful tool a person can have. Tia even got measured too because he and I will have matching asobe pants. I remember this time last year when he couldn't even walk the distance to the tailor, I have been here a long time.
On the way to the tailor's, the four of us, me and the three children were passed by a "Gambian tourist vehicle," coming from the tourist camp. There were two white young men sitting in the back, clearly tourists, who were staring at us as they drove by. I saw a glimpse of myself through their eyes, this young dirty white women standing in the middle of a cow path wearing local dress with 3 small black dirty children dressed in what they could consider rags. The question in their eyes was 'what is she doing here?' My answer, " I am living."
This is the most recent chapter to my life story.
