Video From The Queen of Companies 2010 Pageant

Clervi's Pageant Footage
Check this out. I still can't believe that I was a part of it and now I'm heading back to my mud hut. The Gambia is transitioning into the modern world in interesting ways.  Thoughts?

My Life this April

(Sorry no pics this time...)
Wednesday March 31: Rise at 5am, travel to Barra with Amadou in his gelly-van. Highlight: Farrafenni Chicken Sandwich!

2nd Highlight: Getting into Kombo with the whole afternoon.

Thursday April 1: Lesson plans, beach, Frisbee. Prepping Bokashi compost juices- yum!

Highlight: Dancing at the Kora. Pool (Billiards), Chillin with friends, meeting various new friends. Roll into bed somewhat late/early in the am…

Friday April 2: Visit Gambia is Good farmyard with Adrian. Spend a great day at the garden getting ready for IST.

Bummer: Got in a car crash on the way back/our gelly rear-ended the one in front of us. No damage, the drivers quickly checked, yelled and then drove on. Early bedtime!

Saturday April 3: Happy Birthday Jonathan! Lesson plans all day. NCAA Basketball Tournament at night! Woot! Start time: 11:00 pm. End time: 4:00 am? Early.

Lowlight: Lost the tournament pool very badly, and lost a bet to Scott… goodbye 300 dalasis.

Highlight: Basketball! In the Gambia! And beer.

Sunday April 4: Church at Bakau Methodist Church. The church is on the ocean at a beautiful site. It was full and there was an incredible drama presenting the easter story. 11 PCVs attended church. Lowlight: the longest sermon ever- church was 3 hours long. I think I’m about churched out for a few months… Highlight: He is Risen!

Also: lesson plans, Julbrew Party at Fransiscos. Won a sweet Vimto soccerball for the Hella Kunda boys team! Shenanigans ensued… Yet another early morning…

Monday April 5: More lesson planning and preparation for IST. Friends coming in for IST. VSN meeting with Co-Coordinator Leah. Serrakunda Market for sweet jeans and fukajai (aka dead white people clothes) with Adrian.

Tuesday April 6: First Day of IST! Rise and shine with the Ashley Wake-up call!- Sweet morning tunes and a kind good morning notification. Breakfast at Fransisco’s, Sifoe for beekeeping. Highlight: Co-Officer of Fun with Adrian. Crunchy rice for lunch special. Cashew fruits (Stripes and Bjorn). Early to bed.

Wednesday April 7: Another awesome wake up call by Ashley. Bee- Themed day at Sifoe. Using my mad creative skillz I constructed a smoker suit with an emergency blanket. It was quite a hit. Taught a session, made friends with the Sifoe crowd.

Highlight: Great run down Bakau Road! So needed in my life at that point. Early to bed again.

Thursday April 8: Ashley Wake up call. Sweet tunes. IST at Wellingara. Great sessions, some VSN work, seed exchange, Adam Njie. Dinner at Bamboo Garden- Chinese food, yum! Casey claims to be my musical soulmate. Sweet.

Friday April 9: Ashley Wake-up call. Awesome tune-age. IST at Wellingara. PLASA tree planting. General Rocking at life. Dinner at the always tasty Bakau Guest House. I had a delicious ladyfish filet.

Saturday April 10: Ashley Wake-up call. Music for the soul. GiG garden day! My big day with gardening/composting sessions in the am and Integrated Pest Management in the afternoon. I think they went well. Then off to Safari Garden for some Pool Time! Then some Dinner Time! And the night was just getting started! On to Churchills for the ancient art of karaoke! We sang ALL the songs. All of them. There were none left to sing. Made friends with the DJ. On to Kora for some dancing and general rollicking good times. And other stories. I may have gotten home late.

Sunday April 11: The Ashley Wake-up call was somewhat late, and the tunes were usurped by another Ipod. Oh dear. But we carried on and made it to IST at the empty stodge house. Paperwork, catching up, coffee and dark sunglasses all morning. Also, co-officers of fun gave the best trivia game ever for Fabulous Prizes! Seriously- a KTB hive and a solar cooker! What’s not to love? Then the afternoon: Sandplover beach! Woot! Lazy on the beautiful beach. After dinner an elite group of fun havers journeyed to Mamba for delicious cocktails and beers. And then to WOW for dancing. Early am…

Monday April 12: Day off, but there is still work to be done! Banjul and the Forestry Dept with my tooma. Julia (aka we are both Adama!) That was fun. Then what… probably nothing, just catching up on work. Making certificates for the IST venues as thank-you’s. Early to bed/fell asleep on a chair.

Tuesday April 13: Getting ready for all vol, I must have done something on Tuesday… A Ha! Serrakunda Market! That’s right. With Kasey. Found some sweet purple stilettos and bought them. Looked for asobe, but alas, none to be found. Got a great Gambia t-shirt instead. At night, Kora for pool with Kasey and Leah, Ricky and the boys. Other activities followed. Home rather late…

Wednesday April 14: Ashley Wake up call! This time to everyone, and at 6:30 am! Oh PC, we do love you so much sometimes… Off to the Sheraton for the All-Volunteer Meeting. In a conference room with no A/C for the am… lame. But, we had infinity pool in the afternoon. And lunch buffet. JulBrew Party at Francisco’s in the evening. Yours truly announced the contests and was generally hilarious. Note to all: You MAY NOT wear a horizontally striped shirt, and vertically striped pants and expect me to take you seriously. I don’t care how much money you make. Or who your friends are. Not gonna happen. Unless you’re blind, then we can talk.

Highlight: I am an awesome beer drinking contest MC.

Thursday April 15: Ashley Wake-up. All vol day 2. Early back from the Sheraton for Open Mic Night! Awesome performances by everyone! YaYa did an amazing poem, URR represented and fun was had. Adrian can sing, Brendan played the Kora and translated ‘Lean on Me’ into Mandinka! Rock On! Then we went to WOW! And danced all the dances.

Friday April 16: Last Ashley Wake-Up. Excellent Jamz as per usual. At All Vol Ambassador Barry Wells gave an excellent speech. We had some meetings and talkings, and then lounged by the beach during peer counseling sessions. A great end to all vol. Worked on my tan. Went to bed at a reasonable hour.

Saturday April 17: Sleep in! Worked on the newsletter with Adrian. Sat Night: Dress up as if for prom. Marnie’s friend Williams produced a beauty pageant, and in a gross oversight/boon asked Marnie and three of her friends to be judges. Me, Kasey, Marnie and Zach were 4 of the 6 judges at this high profile, cooperate-sponsored event.

We pre-gamed a little at Kora, and then walked over to the Jerma Beach Hotel where the pageant was held. Let me tell you people, this was the real deal. Folks were dressed up. Fancy. Like real fancy. We strolled in (pretty much the only white people!) and tried to convince the doormen that we were in fact the judges. They were not convinced, but we found Williams who confirmed that yes, he did get four scrubby PCV’s to judge. The pageant was a contest between 11 women representing the companies they worked for. Rounds included: Traditional African Dress, Casual wear, company presentation, talent (aka lip synching to a pop song) evening wear, question and answer. In between each round there was a ‘rap’ performance, or a ‘hip-hop’ group, and even a strange, very strange comedy routine.

The event was supposed to start at 8pm. It started at 12am. Then it went until 5:30. We got home at morning prayer call and finally fell into bed at 6 am.

Oh, and I was the Head Judge, since I volunteered. So when it came time, I added up all the scores with Marnie, and went up on stage to announce the winners. I’m just like Ryan Seacrest! The Queen of Africell won. Woot.

Clervi shot some video on his phone- check it out and you will see what I have no hope of explaining. http://apeironian.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=84469

Sunday April 18: Slept for a few hours and worked on the newsletter. Early to bed.

Monday April 19: Finish newsletter. Get surprise news that there will be a VSN meeting with OSS aka Peace Corps Washington. Spend the afternoon trying to make the meeting organized and focused. The meeting went well, and we should have a VSN training sometime this summer. Dinner with Clervi and Chris Chapman at the Thai restaurant in Senegambia. Enjoyed a few beers and met up w/ Ricky and Co for a few minutes. Bed.

Tuesday April 20: Today! My friends left today and I miss them. But I’m heading to site tomorrow. Wrote this fine piece of Literature for your reading pleasure. And as usual have about 12 other things still to do. They will wait for the next trip to Kombo. I’m going back to Hella Kunda.

Traveling is always an adventure. Here is a fun example.

Clervi, Tavi and I caught a set plus to Kombo. We were the last 3 passengers, so we got the very back seat. (We had already stayed up very late the night before, having a lot of fun, and it was very early.)

Immediately, one of the other passengers made friends with Clervi, and gave him a new name. Clervi was now Pateh, the same as his new friend (interesting coincidence?).

We could tell this would be a good trip. After waiting 2 hours for the Janjanbureh ferry (the one we have to pull ourselves across on) we continued down the North Bank Highway and Pateh (the Gambian) wanted to get to know us.

‘Where are you from Pateh (Clervi)?

‘I’m from Texas.’

‘Oh, Texas, that’s a nice place. What about you?’

‘I’m from Colorado.’

‘North Carolina?’

‘No, Co-lo-ra-do.’

‘Oh, Carolina. Very good.’

(sigh) ‘Yes, Carolina.’

‘And you?’

‘New York.’ (Tavi is really from Vermont, but she wisely decided that NY was close enough.)

‘Ah, the capital city!’

‘Uh, yeah, the capital city.’

‘And where are you from in the Gambia?’

‘I live in Kombo.’

Now Pateh was really excited- ‘Oh, a Capital Woman! You are from both capitals!’

Yes, Tavi is from both capitals. The capital of America and the Gambia.

Pateh was a good pal to have, better than someone being rude. And really, I bet a lot of Americans think New York is the capital of the US. And Colorado and Carolina sound really similar. There is a substantial population of Gambians in NC. So it really makes sense.

Sadly our relationship ended when we saw a Peace Corps car on the road in front of us. We called to find out who it was and Peter stopped to pick us up from the set plus. Free ride to the ferry! Woot. (Only 10 more miles…)

And that was my latest journey to Kombo.

The thing about living in a mud hut is...

I actually live in a termite mound that is shaped like a hut.
I finally got the insecticide from the damage done to my house discovered around October (see October blogs) and we are going to plaster the hut with cement. (Something that should have been done in the first place and would have prevented this whole mess.)
Before putting on the cement plaster I had to remove the mud plaster.
That’s when I discovered the termite holes.
The first one I jokingly referred to as a new window. They got subsequently less funny after that. It was very demoralizing to see what poor conditions I live in, and to realize how powerless I am against nature.
As I removed mud plaster, Jamboye started on the cement plaster. He did a good sized section that day, and I think it will make a big difference to the house. I know I’ll feel a lot better when the work is done.
Unfortunately I had to travel into the city while they’re doing most of the work, so inevitably something will go wrong. Maybe the cement will get stolen, maybe they’ll decide not to finish the work, or plaster over the mud plaster instead of remove it first, or my house will get broken into and all my things will disappear. BUT, I hope none of those things will happen and instead I will return to a correctly plastered house and we can continue the work on the inside, kill the termites and fix my roof before the rains so I don’t start living in a swamp instead of a termite mound.

Hippo Watch 2010

Sunny invited Tara and me down to her site to look at hippos on the river.

We hung out by the river side all morning, and finally! One hippo came cruising down the river. We saw it surface and then go back under.

We scrambled for our cameras and waited for it to come up again. I didn’t get any sweet pics of the hippo because I only saw its ears and nose as it came up for air. The second time it came up it was way past us. It was going at a pretty fast clip! So I have now seen a wild hippo. Hippo Watch 2010 was a great success. Thanks Sunny!

We also saw our couterpart, Lamin, on his fishing boat.

And we saw Commerce On The River Gambia.

A tugboat came by towing (count ‘em) 12 barges of groundnuts! 12! From Basse to Banjul!

It was an amazing sight. When the tugboat went by we all made the international ‘toot your horn’ sign and even got some old women passing by to join in.

We were all thrilled when they obliged.

Henna!

Tara and I got traditional henna done on our feet and hands. Tara wanted it for her trip home to America. The henna is applied like cake frosting- squeezed from a bag. Fatou, the woman who did it made up the designs as she went. You wait about 20 min for the henna to dry and then wash off the excess, leaving the cool designs. It can last for a week to 10 days. Women also do solid black henna on their feet, or make negative space designs with tape.

The process leading up to the henna was a bit comical. Tara and I showed up in a compound her host family told us about. We greeted and looked around for the henna lady. She said she would do the henna, but needed to feed the kids’ breakfast and get the materials. While we waited for her we sat in their house. They have a satellite and French news was on. So we sat while women ate breakfast and watched French news. Then Tara drank Nescafe made with tea. The coffee tea mixture was interesting. Finally Fatou was ready and we did the henna and left.

Denano Part 2

The next day Chinese returned (we notified him that he had a new baby) and a parade of well-wishers came in to greet the newest addition to the Keita family. Mom and baby were fine, resting in the house.

It is Islamic custom to wait 7 days to name the baby. Until then it is called ‘baby girl’ (or baby boy if it’s a boy…). The mother should also do no work for those seven days. She should take the time to rest and be with the baby.

Because I am a stranger (guest) in the compound, Chinese ‘gave’ the baby to be, and the honor of giving her a name. (This an area of culturally treading lightly- walking the line between my culture and theirs, trying to honor their traditions fully without making promises I can’t keep or taking on responsibility I’m not capable of taking on.)

With help from Peace Corps Language and Culture Facilitator Adam (my tooma or namesake) I suggested to Chinese the name Asi. It’s like my name (Ashley) but it’s a Gambian name and Gambians can say it correctly (unlike my name…).

 

What does Chinese say? ‘Oh, Asi is good. You know, Asi and Sira are the same, and Sira is the name of my sister and of Fatou’s uncles wife. Sira is a good name.’ So the baby’s name is Sira. And I think all sides of the family are fine with it. But people still say the baby is my tooma (namesake).

The week after she was born, Sira was named in a ceremony called naambo. The elders came early in the morning and prayed over the baby, blessing her. Then the griot proclaimed her name and more prayers were said. It was the first time since the hospital that she left the house. The women put her on Fatou’s back for the first time.

The whole experience was crazy and overwhelming. It was certainly unexpected, but that’s par for the course here. So far, mom and baby are doing well. Fatou is back to work, but her sister came to stay with us for a while and help out around the compound with cooking and the labor.