Gambia, April and Orange!

So the past month has been up and down. I’ve been feeling pretty tired lately. Going to bed early and taking naps in my hammock. I’m not sure if I’ve just gotten warn down from various things on an emotional level and that’s how my body is trying to slow me down or if it’s the heat or if I’m not sleeping well. That’s the thing about being a PC Volunteer, when something isn’t right, there are usually many possible reasons for it which can make rectifying stuff very hard to do! I spent the last weeks in March in Sokone working on various projects. I was actually surprisingly busy going from various meetings and doing other prep work. I then went up to Dakar for a week for various Peace Corps related stuff.
For Easter, back in the end of March, I took 4 days of vacation and went and visited Gary and Denise Williamson in their village of Pirang, Gambia. They are only about 60km as the crow flies from Sokone but more like 85km if you drive it. I had to take vacation because you must if you go out of the country. It was a lovely long weekend. I really like the Serekunda area where most of the tourist related stuff is in the Gambia. Banjul is mainly administrative type stuff. Its on an island in the mouth of the Gambia River so it can’t spread so most development is on the Southern Coast of the Southern Bank. We visited the beach a couple times and I enjoyed following the Williamsons around and seeing their life. The weekend I was there was during the circumcision ceremonies for the Jola people in the area. They have this figure sort of like the bogey man named the Koncharan. The man who plays the role dresses up in a costume and carries two big machetes which he clangs together while making eerie sound screams. He is supposed to be protecting the newly circumcised boys from evil sprits. Women and children (the uncircumcised) are supposed to stay away and in doors. So when he’s out the streets are deserted. He was out starting around dusk and all night. He wanders through the town clanging the machetes and screaming. It was very different, to say the lease.
After that I came down to Kaolack for the annual Kaolack party. The theme was the color Orange so our decorations were orange and we all wore orange too. I wore an orange toga-like thing and have a streak of my hair dyed orange. The orange was the color of the Thai Buddhist monks. It was a lot of fun. We rented a big sound system and got lots of drinks and snacks. Most people were from our region but there were a few from outside. I danced a lot.
Oh sad news, Raja died. He died when I was in Dakar so I wasn’t there. I think he must have eaten something because my host family said he got really weak over two days and then died on the evening of the second night. I was really sad of course when it first happened but I also had kept the possibility that it could happen in the back of my mind. I know of other PCVs who’ve had animals who died. Usually they get attacked or hit by a car. I’m not sure if I’ll get another cat. I’ll not be much in site starting June until the end of August between going on vacation and various other conferences and other stuff going on around the country. I’d feel bad leaving a kitten for that long. So hopefully I don’t get mice! I still have Mador, the very badly behaved dog that my predecessor left behind. He is one of the biggest dogs I’ve seen in Senegal and likes to chase anything non-human… except for cats. He leaves them well alone. I think he got his nose scratched a few times as a puppy.
The second week of April I hosted an American study abroad student from Dakar named Jessie. I had a lot of fun showing her around Sokone. She helped me do a presentation on the American Family to the English Club one evening. She also came in to watch me teach a first level English class at the private middle school. I’ve done that a few times now, teach English. It’s a lot of fun and I think having an American teacher is more interesting for them then the Senegalese headmaster who usually teaches it. I try to make the class fun.
Last Thursday I got to come up to Kaolack to meet the National Director for Peace Corps from Washington. There was a lunch that was arranged for us to meet him and a couple other staff from D.C. The food was very good. He used to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in India in the 60’s with his wife. He was quite surprised when I could answer his “topi ko nam kay ho”. I got a quite a bit of time to talk to him because I got a ride in his car to Sokone. They were on their way to visit PC Gambia and so took the road that Sokone is on because it’s the main road from Kaolack to Banjul, the capital of the Gambia.
I’ll be at site now for the next 2.5 weeks. In two weeks we are having the Kaolack Regional Strategy Meeting in Sokone. We are going to be staying at a new hotel on the mangroves. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m glad I only have a 30 minute walk through the mangroves to get there! Certainly makes it cheaper for me! Hopefully we get some good ideas from all of it. We’ll certainly have fun swimming in the mangroves when the meetings are done!