Food Security

When submitting my Peace Corps application and accepting the offer to come to West Africa, I had images of what I might find when I got here and general ideas of how my life might change.  I know now as I am at the very beginning of service that what my expectations and stereotypes were are nothing of what reality here actually is. Sure, it’s ‘African Hot,’ I sweat like I’ve never sweat before (it’s sort of like living in a sauna) and hope to never sweat like this again, dirt is a general and permanent condition, and eating rice all-day, everyday is not enjoyable or nutritious. Being the only white person within 20K, I am a celebrity, a celebrity without the perks of V.I.P. invitations, great meals, red carpets, or beautiful clothing. My perks come ‘African style,’ when sad all I have to do is find a child; their happiness is contagious and radiating.  There’s something infectious about riding my bike across the African desert and having 50 small boys, dressed in rags, abandon their soccer game, just to run full speed towards me screaming my name, to simply shake my hand. It’s a starting theory that there are so many kids, not just because kids come as Allah wants them to come, but because the kids keep everyone happy. But even the adults seem to live unnoticing of their surroundings, my mom laughs constantly, at almost nothing! She’s starting to wear off on me, I have some hard moments where I would give anything to be in a grocery store or simply spend time with all of you at home, but I also have moments where I couldn’t image myself anywhere but here. Africa’s starting to get to me.

Hearing facts about people without food globally, when I was in America, is very different than actually living it. Here in The Gambia, the rains last year were terrible and the crop production was something like 75% below average (don’t quote me I don’t remember the exact statistic). The seasons are not only defined by weather, they are defined by hunger. In New England, we have spring, summer, fall, and winter. Here there is the wet season, the dry season, but also the hunger season. As the rains are suppose to begin any minute, and already have TWICE!!, we are in full blown hunger season. It’s not unusual for families in my village to miss one or two meals per day. And it’s not only my village, although I live in the Central River Region which is historically the poorest region in The Gambia. When I first started missing meals, I thought it might only be my family but was confused because that’s not the way society works here. If one family has little to eat, other families will help feed them. So, with the help of an English speaker in my village I conducted ‘compound-to-compound’ interviews with each family. I asked basic baseline survey analysis questions, ‘how many people live here?’ ‘how many children go to school?’ ‘what is the source of income?’ ‘do you buy rice by the bag or by the cup?’ ‘how long would a bag of rice last?’ I won’t go into the details, but I will say that it was a rough day. People are hungry and it’s common that they don’t know where their next meal will come from. My village is one of ten in The Gambia to be receiving funds from the U.S. Ambassadors Emergency Relief Fund. The amount of money is something that America doesn’t even blink to spend and is more money than my village has ever seen at one time. The money has been designated to be spent on food security items, among other things. Even with a small village of 33 compounds (200-300 people) the food security is so lacking that at this moment even with 2 bags of rice given to each family, it would only last some families 2.5 weeks.

Hunger is real, it is frightening, and it consumes all thoughts. I have a trunk of food from America (THANK YOU!) and there are times I feel so guilty that I have food that I can’t look at it. It took me about a week before I gave in and had a ‘trunk day’ were I ate until I was so full I just laid on the floor in a combination of being stuffed and being hot! Now I supplement my diet with small things from my trunk. I share small things with my family, I don’t have enough to feed everyone and it wouldn’t be sustainable if I did because then no one would have food. It breaks my heart to hear my younger siblings cry from hunger, to bike to work and have teenage students ask me for food. As a volunteer, it’s my job to be an outlet to exchange knowledge, to present ideas, to identify resources that could be more effectively, and to attempt new things to increase the level of food security and agricultural production. I won’t lie or try to lighten the truth, it’s hard, terrible, depressing, difficult, it physical hurts to be hungry, I think, I cry, I call my family, Evan, I call other volunteers, I cry some more, they support, advise, tell experiences, offer to come visit, we are here for each other at all times.

When I become overwhelmed, I take a moment to center on why I am here, the beauty in the landscape, the beauty in the people. Or I take a moment to attempt to be American, to have a hip-hop dance party with my younger brother who loves Eminem J , to visualize a typical American day, or lay in the heat of the day and read a book. Then comes moments that make me realize that I couldn’t leave now even if I wanted to, I come into the compound and my younger brother, Baba, who is 2, screams with this half-toothed grin, “ISATOO NAATAA” ‘Isatou came.’  Africa is always here. 

Off to the Bush

Pre-service training is complete! We "the red-headed step children" are all headed to site for 3 permanent months of dedicating ourselves physically and hopefully mentally to our service. Swear-In was a success and a wonderful day. Post-swear in was appropriately celebrated. I am in love with each of the people who swore in along side of me. They are incredible people and I am lucky to be on this journey with them. Not only will they be my constant source of English companionship, but the people with whom I laugh until I cry and cry with until I laugh. And I am overwhelmed with the support and the love show to me from friends and family back home. Thank you, you will make this experience easier. 

I will return to the land of communication at the end of June for an all volunteer conference. Until then, have fun and think of me sweating in the African heat.

Site Visit...Check

The sight that I woke up to on the first morning.

Site visit complete, Tenengfara is a 30 compound village with approximately 200 people. My father’s name is, Babo Fatty, mothers are Yamati Camera and Bandi. Yamati has 3 children, Aramata (5), Baba (2.5), and Isatou (2 months). There are a few older boys living in the compound but I haven’t yet figured out how they are related to the family. My dad makes bamboo furniture; I’ve got the HOOK UPS! Check out my Bamboo recliner chair, hello relaxation! The Alkalo (village leader) is very nice, his name is Mama Konteh, he checked on me each morning to make sure that I had had a peaceful night. There isn’t much agriculture happening currently but the women are very interested in a village garden and the men are very intrigued with the idea of beekeeping in a nearby forest. I will be learning greetings in all the languages because Serehule, Mandinka, Pulaar, and Wolof are spoken in my village. Oh, and its hot. Hotter than you have ever imaged. Like living in a sauna, the air you breath is hot, the wind is hot, the sun is death. Food= rice. Although my family did butcher a chicken as a welcome meal, I was so honored! 

Donkey's playing in the dirt

Donkey's!!!

Fula Girl, everyone loves my camera and wants their photo taken

Gosh, this boy kills me and his mother is so nice she keeps checking in on me! 

My little brother, Baba. He really likes juice and Mangoes. 

 I have tried several times to compose a literary image for everyone back home of my village but because it is a completely different world and I haven’t yet figured out the similarities I will share a story. I had brought an apple from breakfast the day I first went to site visit. I cut it up and began sharing it with my family. They asked me what it was. It hit me that they had never had or even see an apple. I told them to eat it, they loved it and Yamati who only takes one of anything I share took a second piece. There are so many things about me that are foreign to them; an apple is only the beginning of our differences. I feel humbled by the depths of their hearts to open, not only their home, but their hearts to me. My younger siblings will think of me as their older sister. I am so lucky to be part of their family.

yes! thats right, asked for a special chair and got it the next day! 

Thank you to everyone who has sent me mail. I truly appreciate everything, all the food, the letters, the magazines, the AMAZING neck cooler! Ahhh its amazing. Very excited to begin in Tenengfara. Friday is Swear in day, official day I become a Peace Corps Volunteer. 

Coming Home

The refugees have come home.  This is the way that I have felt the past month in Senegal. It was wonderful and the people were amazing, but the 12 hour car ride from Thies, Senegal to Farajara, The Gambia felt as if I was a refugee returning to my homeland. This was an odd feeling to have since I had never been to The Gambia before. The Gambia is nicknamed the ‘smiling coast of Africa’ and it is a great way to describe it. The majority of the people I have met so far are smiling all the time with an aura of peacefulness about them. 

Western side of the Atlantic, Day 1 in The Gambia

In the Gambia, I was staying in Madiyama with the Darbo family. They were a great family with many young children running around. One young boy, Omar, about 1 year old laughed every single second I was around. It was this gurgling, bubbling over with pleasure and pure glee laugh. How can you have a bad day with that kind of joy around all the time?

That’s not to say that bad days didn’t happen. They did. My language group and I got food poisoning. The things one’s body does with strange food inside of it is something I never thought. I will spare you the details this time but next time I’ll give you the full story. It’s like a get out of jail free card. But being sick is exhausting, all we could do was lie around for 3 days while we got our strength and hydration back. Then we went on MARATHON MARCH! Which is absolutely my thing, it’s like hiking mountains only flat. It was 20K across the varieties of terrain that Gambia offers us. Salt marshes, forests, desert, ocean…the landscape was spectacular. But we also had to squish our way through the mangroves which involved swimming so I didn’t bring my camera, thus no photos. You will just have to trust me that it was breathtaking. Also, I have this huge problem with the feeling of squishy things seeping between my toes. Walking through about 10K of this type of ground will cure anyone’s issues. After my toes got so cramped with me trying to curl them together to prevent the mud to squish through, I just had no option but to let them relax and accept that this was a change that was going to happen whether I wanted it or not. Toward the end of the march, I started to get sick again.

Spent the next few days trying to convince myself that I was fine, which I wasn’t went to the medical office, ran some tests. Went back the next day for extreme dehydration due to diarrhea and vomiting, and got some handy IV fluids and THE WORST SHOT OF MY LIFE (WORSE than the 3^rd Gardacil). It was for nausea, and I have no idea what it was but it was terrible. It immediately made me fall asleep for several hours and any time I woke up for the next few hours I feel as if I was drunk but glued to the bed, a very heavy feeling. Turns out I had a parasite of some kind, took 4 pills of some parasite killer drug and after a few days of good rest, I’m as good as new.

Although being sick is by far the hardest thing that has happened to me so far. I felt like death and I didn't have my care system, my mom, friends, Evan, around to help. So not only did I get sick but I got depressed for familiarity and comfort. Comfort people and comfort foods. The med office has a hot shower, which is incredibly valuable in times of depression. And I had phone calls from my parents, my sister, and Evan all in a row. They were coordinating in the states as to whose turn it was to talk to me. I was loved and cared for even across the ocean and can't thank them enough for their help. Also, my PCVL (PC volunteer leader) brought me a veggie panini. The wonders that good food can do for one's body and mind. The fellow trainees also support one another immensely. We've known each other for about 2 months and I feel as if I have known them forever. 

Said goodbye to the Darbo family, I’m not sure if it’s getting easier or more difficult to transition. I didn’t connect to the family here as much as the Mangung family of Senegal. Partly, because I was sick and lying in bed the majority of the time I was with them. Plus, the family of Senegal and I had this amazing ability to communicate with charades, and we really understood each other. After a few days, I felt like I was family. Here I still felt like a guest. But it was a much more relaxing atmosphere.

On Wednesday, all the trainees get to go to their Permanent site.  My permanent site…..drum roll…..Tenengfara! It’s on the south bank about halfway between Basse (the western ‘city’) and Kombo (the eastern ‘city’). I have heard it’s about as stereotypical Peace Corps experience as one can have.  I will have a one room mud hut, straw roof, with a mud fenced in backyard and latrine area. No internet. No electricity. Very hot. Very dirty. But its sorta kinda near the river, and an island called Baboon Island which ….has Baboons on it. You can’t go onto the island because it’s a sanctuary but I can take a boat tour and see them. Anyways, I will blog all about my site visit when I return.

TODAY! I received my first letters and packages. Two letters and two packages! It was a glorious victorious day. I feel so loved and am so happy with all the food I got.  There is something wonderful about receiving letters and packages that I didn’t know were coming. The surprise factor is very high and I will treasure everything I receive. Thank you so much to everyone who has sent or is sending things. I promise that I will soon add a list of things that I would appreciate having here. But I also love being surprised. Fashion magazines, news magazines, protein bars, water ENHANCERS with no sugar but electrolytes are at the top of the list right now. 

Gambian Bambino

 Kora- a traditional music instrument. This was our naming ceremony. My Gambian name is Isatou Fatty. Yes, make your jokes :) But the instrument is beautiful and the musicians always having these incredible chanting voices.

 This is a typical meal, rice ( the Gambians believe no meal is a meal without rice), Darrango sauce which is one of my favorite, its a peanut sauce. This meal had beef in it.

Awa, one of my younger sisters. She has these huge beautiful eyes and had a way of talking where her tongue would stick out of her mouth. Too adorable. 

 Young man giving me some attitude.

Awa and Friends, playing with a knife. Typical toy, its very blunt but still its children playing with a knife. 

Left to Right: Teeda, Fatou, Omar, Fatou, Me (Isatou), Isatou, and Omar. Some of the kids in my family. Notice that names are repeated very very often.

African Beauty

 A building with a mural at the training center in Thies, Senegal

 Rupert The Training Center Kitty

 The Beach the first week of Community Based Training (CBT)

 My Bedroom, mosquito net and all

 Kadi and Isatu, some of my younger siblings

 Isatu, the youngest sibling until a baby was born to my mother the last sunday I was at site.

 Amadoo Mangung, Seri Sane son. This pretty much describes his personality

 Awa, the one who went missing, classic pose

 Sophie with Papa on her back.

 Everyone has favorites. These are mine. Seri and Anna

 Fatu, another favorite, she is severally mentally handicapped and such a wonderful girl to have lived with

 Washing horses in the ocean to heal wounds.

 Me and Isatu, my name is Isatu as well...soo 2 Isatu's

Mamadoo Sanko, a little terror but adorable

April's Fool

First, I must admit that I am much lazier about blogging than I thought I would be. Partly due to the limited access of internet, but also I have find myself so consumed with my two new families- the Senegalese and the Peace Corps. But I owe it both to myself and to all of you back home to share some of what has been happening on the other side of the Atlantic. I have now been ‘in country’ for almost a month. There are many things that I feel I must share- like the recent successful democratic change of power here in Senegal (story to come). But today was a remarkable and typical day- rolled into one and it deserves to be shared.

Today is the first of April, April fool’s day known to many, Palm Sunday to more. (well in America) I find that I forget many of the ‘holidays’ that used to matter. St. Patrick’s Day was observed 3 days after it happened, perhaps that’s due to the mandatory limited accessibility to the ‘beverages’ that are commonly consumed or that Africa has begun to infiltrate me to the point I’ve forgotten my second favorite holiday.

Per usual, I woke up at 5am to the daily call to prayer, which can be described somewhere on the spectrum of a societies awe-inspiring dedication to their religion and a dying cat, the fact that its being blasted on the world’s worst PA systems is an added benefit.  When I first got to Senegal, I had a lot of trouble sleeping through it. Now, I wake up and within 30 minutes have fallen asleep again. Around seven, I crawled out from under my mosquito net, grabbed my pail of water and headed from the cement hole. Stopping at the water tap on the way back to my room, I greeted my grandmother “I sama, I sinotta baacke” “good morning, did you sleep well?” She answered honestly, which is rare for the culture, as everything is answered in the positive, even if it’s not true. For example, one could be on deaths door, but when asked if they are getting better, they will answer yes, I am getting better. She said that she had not slept, that my ‘sister’ Fatimata had given birth to her baby early in the morning. They took me into her room to see her, she was lying on the bed and immediately handed me the baby girl. The father was sitting on a mat on the floor, brewing Attayaa, the international ‘green’ tea with about a 2:1 ratio of sugar; 2 being sugar. They will have a naming ceremony in 7 days, so the baby has no name yet, but she’s beautiful and perfect. It was obvious to me that she had the baby at home, and either she has a high pain tolerance or I can sleep through anything because I didn’t hear a peep and she is in the room next to mine, and the walls are thin here. They said she had had her baby around 4am, by 8am she was in the courtyard washing laundry- by hand. I haven’t had that much exposure to women and labor, but I doubt that mom’s in America would be doing laundry 4 hours after a home deliver.

I traveled to my second compound, where I eat and socialize. There I had breakfast, half a loaf of French bread with lettuce, eggs, onions, and MAYO. This is not typical; most trainees have just bread with maybe butter or African Nutela. I worked to have my breakfast changed from oil/butter to eggs, not an easy thing when you can’t say any of those things in Mandinka (the language I am learning).  I told my family I was going to the beach and would be eating lunch there. I met up with several fellow trainees and we walked a few ‘blocks’ over to meet up with some other trainees. From there we walked to the beach. The walk can be described as SAND, M’bour is a town in the middle of a beach, TOUBAB BONJOUR (HI WESTERNER). I don’t do the walk justice, to emphasis; every single person under 14 is yelling TOUBAB BONJOUR at us. We are of course making a huge spectacle of ourselves; I mean how often does one see 10 westerns together.

The beach is beautiful and presents us all with a much needed/long overdue mental health day. We are typical Americans, lying on blankets, listening to music, enjoying the surf, sand, and sun. We swim and enjoy the fact at our whole bodies are wet all at the same time (unlike bucket bathes). A few of us leave early to find a restaurant for lunch. The place we had in mind is closed on Sundays. So we walked about a mile back to the beach to a different restaurant. We stopped at most places along the way trying to find someplace open. But there were slim choices. One place had rotting meat, and we left quite quickly.

It was worth the wait, walk, and onset of ‘mungry’ mad&hungry. I had roast chicken with onion sauce on it, with double fried French fries. Plus MAYO & Ketchup. It was nowhere near the standard sized American plate, but I ate the whole thing and am still not hungry closed to midnight. I guess that’s what happens when one hasn’t had much in the way to protein in a week and a half. Lunch was more ‘beautiful’ than the beach. I had a relationship with my chicken. For dessert, we all shared a chocolate crepe. Simply, it was heaven.

Walking back a young boy threw a rock at me, he failed but I turned around and pointed at him and asked him if he was serious, in English of course, he ran away but knew I was in the right to beat him. Beating is a common and accepted practice in this society. Men beat women, women beat kids, kids beat kids, and it repeats in a cyclical fashion. If at least one member of the family isn’t shedding tears, find the nearest person and give’em a good smack.

I came home to discover that one of my younger sisters, Awa had been missing since breakfast time. She finally showed up around 9pm and would not say where she had been. She was beaten by her father and grandmother; in a more sever way than anything I have heard of being used in the US. She was sent to bed without food.

I am glad Awa showed up. As an American, my first thought of a 13 year old girl going missing is abduction. They seemed to be more mad than worried, knowing that she had just run off somewhere than been taken. I talked with Seri, Anna, and Willie (a few of my sisters) at dinner about beating children, Seri has a 2 year old (Ammadoo) and Anna has a 2 month old (Papa). Both of them said that they use communication instead of physical force.  It’s nice to hear that society is changing a little, but I doubt that their husbands will follow their wishes. The next day I witnessed that my doubts were correct.

Dinner was my favorite, lettuce with grilled fish, onion sauce, and French fries. We eat from one large metal bowl, while sitting on a mat on the floor. Depending on the meal, I get a spoon to use or use my right hand to eat. Before coming here, I had thought the use of the right hand for all but one activity was a leftover from tribal times. It’s not.

Passing out after a day like this is really easy even in the midst of screaming wives, crying children, the soothing noise of mono being made, and the constant crackle of Quranic verses being broadcast.