So, I finally finished Rhythm’s crate yesterday. Woo hoo! It came out better than I thought, the thing is really strong (I can sit on it), if you shove it around it feels as sturdy as a rock, and all the pieces fit together well enough that I’ve actually impressed myself, given the basic tools I’ve found with which to build it.
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Woo! My Education group arrived here in The Gambia exactly half a year ago last night, in the late evening of July 6, 2006. This means that as of now, I’m over one quarter of the way through my service.

Holy crap, where does the time go?

(Note: most Peace Corps Volunteers in the world serve for 27 months, but the Education group in The Gambia serves for 24 months. This has to do with training taking a little less time than it takes in other countries – I think because English is The Gambia’s official language – and because it doesn’t make sense for Education volunteers to stick around past the end of their second school term, which they would if their service was prolonged. So, 24 months, not 27. FYI.)

I wake up in the morning to the sounds of chickens and people busying themselves with various preparations outside. It’s rather dark in here, given that the only light comes from the back screen door and window of Sara’s domicile, and as it’s near the winter solstice, even at 7:30 the rays come in at such an angle that tall trees of the village scatter and dim the light to a near-twilight luminescence.
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We’ve been riding along in the gele now for about 30 minutes, heading southeast along smooth roads. We have long since left the busy crowded streets of Brikama, which have been replaced by islands of palm, baobab, and silk cotton trees in fields of tall grasses. We frequently pass through small villages, where old men in colorful kaftans relax on bantabas under the shade of mango trees while women sit at small tables at the roadside market, selling baobab seeds, bananas, coconut, spices, treats, and much else. Occasionally we will stop in one of these villages to drop someone off, or if the driver wants to buy some food, but otherwise we are one of the vehicles that roars on through the middle of town, kicking up lingering clouds of brownish-red dust behind us.
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Tabaski is, to put it bluntly, huge. It’s effectively the Muslim equivalent of Christmas, although beyond the scope of importance of the holiday, you really can’t draw any similarities. In any case, in all likelihood I’ll only get a chance to experience two Tabaskis in my life, so I decided to spend it in the best way possible: by going to visit a friend in the provinces (i.e., outside Kombo) for the small-village rendition that’s all the more authentic than what I might have found back home in Bakau.
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Hey all -

I was going to try to make this a quick post, but it turned out that I had more to say than I thought I would. So it’s not quick, and rather lengthy. Hope you don’t mind.

So yeah, lots of folks are down in the Kombo area now, as it’s Christmas time as, frankly, in a country that’s 95% Muslim, there’s not a very strong Christmas feeling about the place… that, and the lack of snow, reindeer, ugly lawn ornaments – or lawns, for that matter, upon which to affix said ornaments – and men dressed in Santa outfits standing outside the local bitik ringing a bell while soliciting money for the Salvation Army (see, people ask you for money often enough without the pretense of being Santa Claus on a regular basis, so wearing the jolly-old-saint-Nick outfit is a little unnecessary … although, come to think of it, if someone here approached me dressed as Santa, I would probably give them a few dalasis for their ingenuity).
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Last week, I went out and bought a bunch of supplies to build Rhythm a little crate, or cage if you prefer, because she’s getting big and able enough to wreak quite a bit of havoc if left to her own devices. So I bought a bunch of tools – a drill, hammer, saw, a bunch of nails, tape measure, metal caging material, screws, bolts, and all kinds of other stuff with which to build something like a dog crate. Everything except the wood for the frame – the store I went to didn’t sell wood (I’m thinking 2×2 inch dimensions), and the place that did apparently was trying to toubab me with an unusually high price. I’ll probably go this week sometime with Mustafa, the Peace Corps guy who repairs PCV houses, to see where he buys his materials.
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Dear Susan (and all the students of your eighth-grade homeroom!) -

I’m sorry it’s taken so long to write back, but things have been kind of crazy here. Lots of volunteers were recently in town over Thanksgiving, and as a result the limited computer facilities at the PC office were inundated by my upcountry counterparts who, unlike the technologically privileged few of us in Kombo, normally have no internet access.

In any case, I’m replying now, and I hope this correspondence finds you all in good health.

So, without further ado, let’s get to your questions, shall we?
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There are some things that have recently been sources of frustration in my new life out here in The Gambia. For the first few months at site, things were going well – but in retrospect, I think the causes of stress were there, but they just hadn’t built up to the point where things snapped. Well, things didn’t so much snap, but rather that things that at one point were left to simmer below the surface have now come above the surface so that I’m really very aware of the problems, and it’s driving me a little bit nuts.
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So, I went up to Janjangbureh for Thanksgiving this last week. Fun place, Janjangbureh is. Formerly named Georgetown, it sits on McCarthy Island in the middle of The Gambia River in the Central River Division of the country. Quiet streets with a funky mix of West Africa meets Colonial England. The air is fresh with an interesting smell I couldn’t place – but decidedly sweet – and there were more stars than you could ever imagine (thanks, in part, to the electricity being out on the island the whole time I was up there, removing any source of possible light pollution). Oh yeah, and I ate so much on Turkey Day that I nearly got sick.

Nearly.
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