the Apeironian

Is this a weekday?

I have not yet fallen off my bike again, if that’s what you’re wondering. Actually, the ‘falling’ part and the ‘off’ part were separate incidents, since I remained connected to the bike throughout and after the falling process.

There will be a loose chronological organization to this one. Any other apparent organization is accidental.

The Quiet American, by Graham Greene: This book pits naive idealism against self-interested superficial practicality in war time Vietnam before US army involvement. One could either say that idealism loses, or that they both lose. Enjoyed the book.

Twin baby goats were born in the family compound. As far as farm animals go, these are the best ones I’ve seen. Endlessly amusing, and they don’t mind being picked up if you can catch ‘em.

The generator stopped working again, was hotwired again, started working, and we continue to lack fuel. We have run it a few times though. More on that later.

I gave the same test to every section of IT in the school, except for one seventh grade class. I think both the students and I learned some things. First of all, open-answer questions are very difficult for non-native english speakers. Many students either couldn’t read or understand the questions at all. Maybe it was my handwriting (admittedly awful). I tried to make it as easy as possible to do well on the test, including giving 30 bonus points (over 100), writing easy questions, and making the test open-notes. I also gave points for any answer remotely resembling and intelligent thought or a fragment of correctness. The grades weren’t spectacular. Next time I will do multiple choice.

I did receive some funny answers. Here are some samples from one 11th grade class:

Q: What is information?
A: If Police man want to arrest someone, you tell the Person That Policeman well arrest you soon.

Q: What is Software?
A: Software cannot mix with soap.

Q: What is a system?
A: Is the way it is

Q: What is hardware?
A: Hardware is something that is very difficult

Q: What is technology? Give examples.
A: Football technology, Basketball technology, computer technology, dancing technology, jumping technology
A: to collect nologi from different parts of the system. computer.

We were supposed to have an All-Volunteer meeting in Kombo (the capitol/coastal area) last month, but it got indefinitely postponed, due to the arrival of a new Country Director. Apparently I was the only one of my group and the only volunteer in the entire upper river region that did not attend the concurrent and un-cancelled Thanksgiving feast. Oops.

Another book by the Dalai Lama: Don’t remember the title. Something about spirituality. Once again, good info on Buddhism, and clear, enjoyable writing. He talks a lot about Compassion, especially as a motivating factor for self-cultivation. He does not discuss the dynamic tension between his stated altruistic goal of universal compassion and the necessary self-focus to develop the skills to implement this compassion. I find this to be a weak point in the overall message. How can you preach selflessness to the extreme, yet spend most of your time in self-cultivation and development? I don’t see this conflict as a moral or ethical one, but a logical one having to do with the nature of the concept of altruism.

Soon after reading this book, I started helping Heather edit a paper she was writing on this topic. I would like to publish it here if she will let me, because I think it turned out really well. I also have some stray thoughts on the subject floating around, but they aren’t sufficiently congealed to spew forth at this exact moment.

On the Road by Jack Keruac: Been meaning to get to this one for a while. I waited too long. This book is not a bad book, but it was a book for its time and place. And we’re talking about 50s Americana here. The things Jack writes aren’t wrong, they’re just not the whole truth. I would have gotten a lot more out of this one ten years ago. Still recommended to anyone that hasn’t been exposed to such ideas.

I finally got a teaching counterpart!! I’ve been working on this since I got here, and the result is highly satisfactory. The school administration staff did an excellent job of selecting a counterpart for me. I had requested a teacher, but there were two major problems: first, they are swamped with teaching core material, which I wouldn’t want to take away from. Second, they are transferred all the time – sometimes every year. They ended up pairing me with the librarian, who is a very nice Fula woman named Jainaba Ba that has excellent English and some background working with computers. She is attached to the school and will not be transferred, which is great.

Two Fridays ago we ran the generator most of the day and had practical classes for grades 11, 12, and 8. The classes weren’t particularly well organized, but the students were happy to finally use the computers, so I call it a success. We just did some typing in Word and had some of the faster students start a typing game. A couple of cocky kids from America kept complaining they wanted something harder to do, so I asked them how fast they could type. They said “fast enough!” I started the typing game for them, typed a few screens at 70-90 words per minute, and told them to get back to me when they could type that fast. They eventually picked their jaws up and started typing.

The time came for me to ride to Basse on the Gele Gele (bush taxi). I walked to the town center at 6:30 in the morning, waited until 8:30 for the car to show up, then fought my way onto the large van/truck/small bus. As I attained my seat, they started loading the baggage, including three huge rams, onto the roof. They were tied down and kicked the roof a lot throughout the trip. I didn’t see any excrement invade the passenger compartment, but another volunteer named Ian was in a septplace (car with seven seats – senegal french etymology) with a goat on the roof all the way from Basse to Kombo, and it pooped on him through the broken-open window the entire time. Anyway, I arrived in Basse without incident, took care of a few errands, and headed to the one shop known to carry decent solar panels. I greeted the dude, who was a Sarahule, asked the price for the 50 watt panel, acted shocked and chagrined, and indicated I would return later. I did return later, sat down with the dude, and bargained for one and a half hours. I succeeded in reducing the price from the idiot tourist price to what was probably the idiot local price, but no further. The 7500 dalasis (just under $300) I paid was probably too much, but I got a sweet panel and there wasn’t anywhere else to get one – so it goes. I returned to the Gele, waited a few hours, and rode home in squished, hot, dirty discomfort. It was worth it – I have sufficient and reliable power now.

I’ve been hiking in the bush quite a bit. There are lots of trails around the area used for inter-village transportation and for fisherman to access the river. I have seen various wildlife on my treks, including lots of really cool birds, some monkeys, a small crocodile (ran across my path at top speed into the river), and a big pack of funny unidentified marsupial-looking animals with subtle horizontal stripes. They have pointy noses, bigger back legs than front, are light/dark brown and run on the ground. Who knows. I have a crappy pair of binoculars that came free with a pocket knife. They work, but I’m going to upgrade. Nature here is worth looking at. One hike took me to the top of some nearby bluffs about 10k out of town. The view is awesome.

I accompanied my host brothers Moree and Ibrhaima on a firewood gathering expedition into the bush. We hitched up the donkey cart and headed to the family fields about 6 or 7k north of town. When we got there Moree told me this is the field he farms, pretty much by himself. It was huge, which I indicated. It’s not just this one, he said. It’s this one, that one, that one, that one, that one, and that one. The area this guy farms, by himself, is absolutely gargantuan. I have definitely seen much smaller private farms in the midwest that use fully mechanized processes. Moree does everything with his hands, a hoe, and a machete. The dude is robust. Anyway, we found the firewood, spent a couple hours cutting it, loaded it on the cart, and took it home.

My family made me peanut butter. I bought the shelled peanuts from a woman for 125 Dalasis (like 5 bucks, for a LOT of peanuts), my family roasted them, separated the inner shell, and took them to the squishing machine. I paid for the machine use and double what my host sister asked to make the stuff. I ended up with about two gallons of fresh peanut butter and it cost me about $7.

An old Mandinka woman came to the school one day to negotiate with the deputy head teacher regarding school fees. Her english was pretty decent actually. At one point she very confidently described New York City as “groovy,” despite never having visited the states. Totally straight face too. She’s the only Gambian I have ever heard use that word.

I accompanied the family to one of their peanut fields (close to town – not part of Moree’s fields) to finish the work there for the season. We spent most of the day separating huge piles of peanut plant material from the peanuts themselves, then bagging and transporting the resulting peanuts. Good lord is that tedious. The kids did lots of funny stuff.

One night my moms and sister and a couple friends and I were sitting around a fire in the compound and the little boy Buba (pronouced booba) squatted in front of one of the houses and produced an enormous and cacophonous bowel event. The entire audience exploded in laughter, followed by lots of poop jokes (of which the only word I understood was ‘huru’ which means poop).

The important Muslim feast called Tobaski happened recently. The family killed a ram for the occasion, which was a lot cooler and less gross than I thought it was going to be. We stuffed our faces with meat and various other food over the next three days. After one particularly impressive devouring session, my host dad said in English: “when you go to America your people will tell you: Lamin you are big now!!” They call me Lamin here. Warning – the pictures and video are gory.

My little host sister Isetu is about one and a half, and can’t say “Lamin.” Instead she calls me “ma ña,” which means bad, or not good. One day she was standing on the step/porch outside my front door hitting it and trying to say my name. As it was looking at her, and without breaking stride in her hitting and calling, she released a niagran torrent of urine all over herself and my porch. I guess it could have been worse – see story about Buba above. I waited for it to dry before I left the house.

You might remember the misunderstanding involving my host mom, my site-mate Kasey, and the ducks. Well, I finally got four ducks from Kasey, and they live in my back yard now. Well, four of them did live there. This weekend we ate the biggest one. Sorry Lilly – it was hideously ugly, does that make it better? It was delicious. They think it’s a dirty animal apparently, so after she took it apart, my host mom scrubbed the pieces of meat with salt to clean them. Hmm… Lunch that day was outstanding, and rivaled the quantity and quality of the Peace Corps Training Village Lunch Food Bowl, which is saying a lot. In the middle of lunch the family momma goat busted through the curtain on the door and almost spilled the whole food bowl before being chased back out of the house. That was a close call. After stuffing myself with duck and starting back to my house, they handed me a bowl of meat just for me. I ate it in my house. I usually throw any leftovers into the back yard for the ducks. Not this time.

Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut: I have read this before actually, but read it again anyway. I found it to be acceptable. It’s kind of anti-society and anti-religion. It’s hard to tell if it’s pro-anything.

Oh yeah, Tobaski. It was sort of similar to Koriteh – festival atmosphere, lots of eating, everyone had new clothes, etc. The students were supposed to get three days off of school. They took two weeks. They stopped coming to school at the beginning of the week before last and just came back today. I’m going to Kombo at the end of this week for my group’s In Service Training, which will last for a week. Will let you know how that goes. I might experiment with shorter, more frequent posting. Not sure yet. I’m also hoping to upgrade my internet service while in Kombo.

Yesterday Mail Run came. I received a LOT of packages from my Mother. This is the email I sent her:

“Bet you didn’t know this, but christmas morning was moved up a few weeks this year. And I’m not talking about a recession christmas either – I’m talking mountains of presents under the (mango) tree boom economy silly grin delirious six year old wakes up the parents at five in the morning cant wait to open all these boxes christmas. Good lord, now I really do have everything. I received all 9 boxes, have been unpacking them all day, and I am completely blown away. When I recover from the shock and regain my facility of speech I will call and thank you. For now, please accept my preliminary email thanks. Thank you!!

I love you and merry christmas!

Yes, I put up the decorations. Motorcycle-Santa is hanging from the ceiling.

Michael”

I’m in Kombo for In Service Training right now. I will tell you all about that soon.

Till next time.

MC

Abiding

This post is long. Sorry.

I got a chalkboard in my computer lab! I asked if I could have one, and they had the plywood and blackboard paint so they hooked me up. I asked around in town trying to find sandpaper to smooth out the board, and thereby discovered a SWEET hardware store type place down a back alley that has all kinds of mechanical, electrical, and tailoring-related stuff.

As soon as I started planning to do a test-run of the generator and fire up all the computers in the lab for the first time, I realized (extremely belatedly!) that there was no way to plug them all in. There were not enough wall outlets, and many of the cords were too short. We needed a bunch of power strips/extension cords. I told the deputy headmaster and he was like yeah I knew that since last year. I was like uhh why didn’t you tell me and crap I probably should have realized this earlier. The principal was unimpressed. He was, however, shockingly willing to assist in the financial and logistical aspects of procuring said power strips. He suggested I meet him in Basse on Saturday (week before halloween) to get the strips we needed. I enthusiastically agreed. I left Diabugu a little after 6 AM Saturday morning. I used the excellent and somewhat excessive headlight my Mom sent me, as well as the clip pedals and shoes I brought. Those were weird at first, but eventually made a huge positive difference in both pedaling efficiency and smoothness. I made it to Basse in record time (just over two hours door to door including the river crossing). I went to the transit house to shower, then met Mr. Kanuteh in town. We scoped out a few shops before eventually settling down in one to embark on the bargaining and purchasing process. It took us about an hour, but we eventually ended up with eight chinese-made power strips of two different types, as well as 30 meters of wire, a switch, and two DC light bulbs for me, and one light bulb for Mr. Kanuteh. I even got a receipt for my portion of the purchase – a first for this country!

Other volunteers filtered into the Basse house during the afternoon, and Rachel, Ashley, Kasey and I cooked a late lunch of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese and baked beans. Don’t be fooled by the apparent normalcy of this meal – make no mistake: it was an epicurean delight! Later we all went to the bar and tried to have a couple beers. When asked to supply a second round of four beers, the proprietress brought only two and indicated that she was out, and there would be more if we waited. Apparently bars in The Gambia only stock one six-pack at a time, which is bizarre because they don’t even have six-packs in this country. The other two (warm) beers came about a half hour later. On the way back we got meat sandwiches.

Sunday morning I packed up all my stuff, including the 8 enormous power strips, into my bike saddle bags and headed out. It had rained heavily during the night and continued to sprinkle. Right away there were problems, primarily involving the lack of clearance between my heels and the heavily-loaded saddle bags perched on my rear bike rack. I kept kicking them, which caused them to fall off, to the detriment of the bags, their contents, and my forward progress. Modification of my technique allowed me to reach the river, which I crossed and promptly had problems again on the other side. Frustrated, I tried to move the bags farther back on the rack, but bending them so they could go farther back caused them to rub against the rear wheel. I stopped again and tried to use a couple of straps I brought to prevent bag-to-wheel contact. This worked for about 5 minutes until the straps slipped (first one then the other) causing the bags to violently interact with the spokes, ripping the plastic shielding on the bags but fortunately not rupturing the bags themselves. In addition to my problems with the bags, the repeated dismounts had caused both the clips on my shoes and my pedals to become clogged with the ubiquitous mud caused by the rain the night before. I performed a last-ditch mechanical surgery to the rack mounting points on the bike to raise the rack and change its angle to keep the bags away from my heels. This failed utterly, but resulted in the eventual destruction of the threaded support posts for the rack by the time I got home, because I had to loosen it too much to achieve the maximum angle. I ended up removing the bags from the rack entirely, and after a couple failed configurations, strapped one bag to the top of the rack and the other one to the back of my tiny camel-bak backpack. Riding this way was uncomfortable and difficult, but it was all I could do. After three and a half hours I arrived in Diabugu, completely exhausted. I rode into the town with my rack clattering, destroyed, behind me, rode into some unavoidable deep sand, and immediately toppled over. I had painstakingly managed to get my shoes clipped into the pedals despite the mud, which at this moment failed to release, and so I laid on the ground, halfway under my bike, covered in sand, unable to get my feet off the pedals, surrounded by people curiously examining this oddly-dressed tubab flopping around in the sand. I escaped with much effort and no dignity, and walked the bike back to the house. I haven’t touched it since.

To make myself feel better psychologically, after physically recovering from my ordeal later on Sunday, I installed the wire, switch, and bulbs I had bought in Basse. The final result, including previous work, is a total of five lights – three inside and two in the back yard. One of them is controlled by a switch on the wall reachable from my hammock, which also controls a ceiling-mounted fan pointing at said hammock, and the rest of them are controlled by a switch on my desk. All the inside lights have yellow cloth hung in front of them as shades. The lighting and cooling in and around my house are now outstanding.

I installed all the power strips in the computer lab at school, but have not tested them yet because the wonderful new generator we got is not working. When you turn on the big switch, nothing happens. I tested the battery and it’s good. Apparently the generator in Bansang, which is the same as ours, is having the same problem. Personnel were supposed to be here ’soon’ to fix it (as of last Tuesday), but they have not come yet.

I was listening to the BBC world service on SW frequency 11.765 Mhz at 7:51 AM on Oct. 22 when the station cut out and I heard a voice with a Gambian english accent say “President Yaya Jammeh has ruled The Gambia with an iron fist for 15 years now but is the opposition really demo- … ” at which point the BBC came back on, indicated they were having technical difficulties, and continued with programming. I am not supposed to comment on the politics of this country, so I will stop at a literal reporting of what I heard on the radio.

Last Wednesday I received a visit from Linda Murgatroyd (director of the Education sector for PCTG), Anne Larson (PCV Leader), Alpha Jallow (PCTG safety and security dude), and John the Driver (AKA big donkey man). Linda, Anne and I met in my hut where I briefed them on the status of my activities here and presented my primary concerns to be discussed at the meeting with the school principal later. We then went to the school and had that meeting, where we discussed the lack of a dedicated Gambian IT teacher at the school (a prerequisite for my presence), and the lack of both fuel for the generator and funds for fuel. The school is trying to collect an “IT fee” from the students to buy fuel, but it is insufficient. Linda will be discussing the issue with the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education when she sees him at an upcoming function. Linda will hopefully also be able to twist the right arm at the regional office to get an IT teacher sent here.

The weather is starting to cool down during the night. It’s fabulous. I’ve even had to sleep in my bed a couple times when the hammock was too chilly. It did rain this morning though, which is pretty weird for this time of year I guess.

Funny things happen here because of language. Two weeks ago Kasey was at my compound and was talking about how many ducks she has (’burro’ in Mandinka). Mandinka isn’t my host mom’s first language, but she speaks it pretty well, so the two of them could talk. Kasey asked her if she wanted any of these ducks, and she said sure, bring three. Last week I was sitting outside and my host mom asked me where Kasey was with those ducks. It took me forever to figure out what she was talking about, but when I did I called Kasey, put her on speakerphone, and let the two of them discuss. Mom now wants four. How many male, how many female? Laughs. Two of each. Ok, will bring them tomorrow. Ok, thanks. Some time later, my host brother is laughing a little and mentions something about bread in english. The mandinka word for bread is ‘mburro.’ At first I thought he was kidding around, but after sustained, hilarious investigation it became clear that my host mom had heard ‘mburro’ the entire time, thought she was getting four loaves of bread tomorrow, and through Kasey was joking when she was talking about males and females! I was laughing so hard at one point I was embarrassing myself and had to go in the house. I brought up a picture of a duck on my phone, showed it to her and said ‘ang ke lahi bang?!’ (do you want this?) to which she replied ‘HANI!’ (NO!). I called Kasey back, explained the misunderstanding, and indicated that she should abort the duck-delivery operation.

On Friday the students cleared the football field at the school. A 9th grade boy decided it would be a good idea to set the field on fire while everyone was working on it, which caused general confusion and lots of burning. The wind was strong.

An unusually enormous rat similar in size to my American family’s miniature dachshund has been visiting me at night. It crawls down the roof, roots around in everything, and generally keeps me awake and annoys the crap out of me. I tried chasing him around my house with a giant kitchen knife one night but I couldn’t get him. I got some rat poison and put it out, but I haven’t seen him lately and I don’t think any of it has been eaten. Watch your back buddy. I think I’m gonna get a cat.

I have read two books recently: “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror” by Mahmood Mamdani, and “The Universe in a Single Atom: How Science and Spirituality can Serve our World” by the Dalai Lama.

“Good Muslim, Bad Muslim” examines the roots of modern terrorism (including 9/11) in American actions (both direct and proxy) during the cold war period, including in Aisa, central America, and Africa, and culminating in Afghanistan. It also seeks to distinguish between discussing Islam (and Christianity) in Cultural terms (Culture Talk), versus Political terms, and point out both the inappropriateness and the widespread practice of using Culture Talk for political discussion and analysis. The narrative Mamdani presents lays a lot of the responsibility for the development of much of the motive and opportunity (idealism, infrastructure, training) for modern terrorism at the feet of the United States through its cold war era covert operations and proxy wars. The book is concise, and primarily served to show me how little I know about American cold war history and the operations of the CIA in particular under the Nixon, Reagan, and first Bush administrations. It also made me feel less good about my government. I am glad I read this book and I recommend it.

I wanted to follow that one with something a little more uplifting, so I picked up “The Universe in a Single Atom” by the Dalai Lama. This one is the Dalai Lama’s shot at reconciling modern science and Tibetan Buddhism. It turns out there aren’t many contradictions or incompatibilities (no surprise for me there). There wasn’t a lot in this book that I hadn’t gotten before from other places, but I did enjoy reading it mostly for the descriptions of various meditative techniques used by the Tibetan Buddhists and other information specific to that particular sect, as well as the discussions about what does and does not constitute a worthwhile philosophical and scientific inquiry into the nature of consciousness. This one is also recommended, especially if you have not looked into the relationship between Buddhist thought and modern science (relativity and quantum mechanics).

Teaching, etc.

I’m spending a lot of my time teaching. I made a deal with the administrators that I would teach the IT classes, at least for the first term, as long as another Gambian teacher was present for every class to absorb the lesson and get used to the material. My priority is teaching the teachers, not the students. This has largely not happened, and I’m teaching almost all the classes solo. I am working on ways to rectify this situation. I teach grades 7-12, and each grade has two classes of students except for 12 which has only one, so I teach every lesson 11 times. I have planned and taught 4 lessons so far. The first two were in the classroom and covered “what is IT?” and “why learn computers.” The second lesson basically consisted of: what exports does The Gambia have? Not much. Will The Gambia be economically successful by continuing current economic activities? No. Does she have the resources required to provide IT services? Yes. Your country’s only chance for economic growth and development is IT because you don’t have any other resources. That’s why you should learn computers. The most recent lessons have been introductions to the lab and parts of the computer.

When I was teaching my “why learn computers” lesson to grade 12, the principal attended the lesson. It went rather well, and I think he was impressed, because after the lesson he indicated that he had “found” a small amount of fuel for the generator and I could use it with a few days notice.

Ah, the generator. The one we had was enormous and new, but we had no fuel for it. The educational bureaucracy, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to replace our generator with a bigger one, but still give us no fuel. The new one arrived and was installed yesterday (pic below).

I started an impromptu computer club at the lower basic school close to my family compound. There’s a very helpful teacher there that helps teach. We only have two working (old) computers at the moment, but they have a solar power setup and are expecting more donated computers soon. Attendance is wide open to anyone at all. This seems promising.

Last weekend I biked to Basse (the big-ish town across the river) to see some people, visit the Peace Corps transit house there, and do some banking and shopping. I left before 6 in the morning on Saturday in pitch black, almost got lost going out of town, and rode for about 40 minutes before it got light. The trip there was just under 2.5 hours, and it was pretty burly. I tossed the bike into a row boat operated by a dude and crossed the river to Basse. The transit house is actually pretty nice and a heck of a lot more chill than the Fajara transit house near the coast. Less people is good. There is a shower, and they even have power some of the time. Sleeping is never as comfortable when I’m not in my awesome hammock, but it was tolerable. I’ll bring the hammock next time. I met Ian, Josh, Ellie (briefly), Katie A, and Brendan there.

Ian, Katie, Brendan and I visited a pal at the MRC campus (medical research council) – they have a little slice of western civilization carved out down there – A/C and everything. Swank. We had Korean food and beers and it was glorious. I hung out there again the next night for nachos. After returning to the house, I became sick, blew up from both ends most of the night, and did not return to Diabugu the next morning as planned. I rested Monday and rode back Tuesday morning, then passed out for most of Tuesday. I was feeling pretty well by Wednesday.

At some point I probably mentioned that the big battery I got from dude for my solar power setup was bunk and I needed a new one. After one and a half months of charging the battery by solar panels I have successfully revived the battery to working condition, as well as identified the source of my problem running my laptop and inverter (separate incidents, man!). I won’t tell Jim and the Brain Trust this, because I asked those engineering dudes for help with this issue, and they’ll think I’m an amateur if they learn I was using insufficient wiring in my female cigarette lighter adapter plug for the amperage I was trying to draw. I re-wired the behotch and it works like a champ now (pic below). I can run my laptop, my inverter, two fans, two lights, and some speakers all at the same time now. I still want to get a sweet solar panel, and plan to do that asap.

I finished the Fountainhead. I would like to retract my previous statement regarding “fine literature and popular fiction,” not because It’s completely inaccurate, but because it is a low quality statement that does not provide useful information.

I thought the book was fantastic. Each of the major heroes, anti-heroes, and monuments to popular mediocrity maintain their representative accuracy and relevance 66 years later, and the ideological game of rock-paper-scisors the book’s primary conflict presents holds water, in my opinion. Egoism and nihilism hold a dynamic, equal tension until the nihilist finds reason in the ego, and flips inside out to form an ego of her own. Communalism or communism or socialism grows powerful by feeding on societal and personal mediocrity and thereby pulls the rug out from under fascism, which subsequently self-destructs. Egoism/capitalism eventually launches a frontal assault on communalism and defeats it on ideological grounds.

If they could meet, I think Henry D. Thoreau and Ayn Rand would get along.

The rainy season is coming to a close, and people tell me the cool weather is coming. I can’t wait.

Heather and I get to talk pretty much every day either by email, google chat or phone, which is awesome. It’s totally incongruous to sit outside talking with my host family while chatting on my phone to america. Heather tells me she reads this thing, so I’ll take this opportunity to conduct some empirical science: let’s see how long it takes her to notice I called her an enormous poo poo head right here on the Intermess for everyone to see. She also read the Fountainhead in like 3 days, while going to school full time(?). We try to read the same books – I know it’s adorable, you don’t have to tell me.

alternating feelings of oh man im sick, i miss home family burritos heather, and this is the best thing I’ve ever done.

School!

I taught a few classes this week. The students in a single class vary in ability from American-born native english speakers familiar with computers and the internet (2 of those) to 12th graders that can barely speak english and have never seen a computer (many of those). Needless to say, developing lessons is difficult. I will be teaching each class of grades 7-9 once each week, and 10-12 twice each week, along with the other teachers I demanded to be assigned to each class period. I’ve also been tasked with the position of Class Master for 8th grade Pink. There’s a green one too, but I’m pink. This means I take attendance, facilitate choosing a class leader and assistant, and facilitate developing a sweeping schedule for the classroom. I managed to get both a boy and a girl for leader and assistant, but the resistance to a mixed gender sweeping schedule was too great and it remained all-female.

The greatest challenge at the moment is securing fuel for the generator so that I can teach computers using… computers. I have written a lengthy letter to the administration extolling the unique opportunities of infrastructure and expertise, as well as made a speech along the same lines at the general staff meeting this morning – both aiming to encourage the budgeters to budge the budget in my favor. Frankly I doubt there’s any money in the budget for fuel in the first place, and some outside party will have to supply funds or we will have to collect them from the students directly, if we are to have power for the computer classes. This is disheartening. There is a sister school to this one in Bansang, equally well-equipped. The President (of the country) provided 10,000 liters of fuel to the school because he was impressed with their attendance and test scores. When he visited my school, which is in a Sarahule community notorious for their opposition to western education as an affront to Islam, he found one of the most expensive, well-equipped schools in the country miserably under-attended and was duly unimpressed. He gave the school nothing, in fact threatening to convert it to a military barracks if attendance did not improve.

Apart from all that uplifting stuff, I have been reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It’s definitely popular fiction not fine literature (what the hell is that?) but I like it a lot. It’s about as subtle as a super hero/villain comic book in depicting the spectrum of social, political, and philosophical structure in this country and the ultra-idealistic champions of the various terminal regions of said spectrum. I’ll reserve certain judgements until I finish it.

I attended a football game – one of the teams was the Civil Servants, on which some of my fellow teachers played. They won gloriously, and have another game tonight.

Friday was grounds maintenance day, so there were no classes, and students brought various field implements to school, such as machetes, hoes, and rakes. Each class was assigned an area of the school grounds to clear. This is what happens when there are no lawn mowers. Think that’d fly in the States?

And finally, on a more serious note – I spied my little brothers Mussa and Bubba wranglin’ this goat through my front door. Mussa is on the ground behind the goat in one of them laughing hysterically because the goat kicked him over. These boys are impervious to pain.

School resumes

Despite the continued absence of a headmaster, school resumed today at
Diabugu Upper Basic and Senior Secondary school. The teachers wanted to
assemble the students in the big hall, but nobody could find the key, so we
did it in one of the classrooms, which was fine because there were only
about 100 students of the 500+ they are expecting this year. I introduced
myself at the assembly, then spent the rest of the day observing three
different teachers teach 7th grade.

I came home during break to find my family harvesting the corn from the
backyard garden.

After school at 2 I came home, made some mac and cheese, got called for
lunch by the fam halfway though the m+c, ate that too, finished the m+c,
and now I’m listening to Girl Talk feed the animals and writing this.
Here’s me sweating and disgusting with my delicious food – deal with it.

Now I’ll probably sit out front and read the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

Mc

Mailing address

I swear people actually asked for this and im not just soliciting donations of food, underwear, or pricey electronics to my underprivelaged cause. But i will take them.

Michael Clervi, PCV
c/o Peace Corps/ The Gambia
P.O. Box 582
Banjul, The Gambia
West Africa

mc

Posted by Wordmobi

Rainy night still no school

Man it rained cats and dogs last night. In my hammock, my head is right by my front window, so when the wind kicks up it slams the shutter right in my ear and I’ve almost lost it a couple times and ended up on the floor. I really need to look into securing that shutter. School still hasn’t started. The new principle (principal?) is here, but understandably doesn’t want to conduct any official business until power is officially handed over. Obama rolled the same way, so I figure it’s legit. There were a couple of questions about my family and food, so here goes: Father: Dabo Jallow, mom 1: Jompuro Dansia, mom 2: Hatou Sisow, bros: Morey 19 Ibrahima 12ish Buba 4 and Mussa 3, sisters: Kumba 15 Numma 7ish (N should have tilde over it but cant find it on the french phone keyboard) and Isetu 1.4ish. They are all very nice. Food: breakfast is either soombi or huumbi they are rice porridge or coos porridge respectively. Sometimes there is dege (peanut butter ish stuff) in both. Lunch and dinner are eaten out of communal family bowls with the right hand (just your hand no utensils). The boys eat with boys and girls with girls, but sometimes it is mixed. It’s usually rice with some kind of sauce pool in the middle, but sometimes it’s coos with sauce. The coos looks and tastes like sand. The sauces range from tomato base to peanut base and sometimes there’s mystery meat in there which is usually filled with chips of bone and sometimes it is unidentified organ meat. Yummy. The sauce usually contains mushed up veggies of various kinds and sometimes there are veggie chunks which is nice. Overall it makes me full for the most part and i’m not sick ALL the time so no worries That’s all for this morning folks catch ya later on down the road….

Koriteh

Koriteh

Ramadan is over, although for the people of Diabugu it lasted a day
longer than it did on the coast. Nobody here saw the moon, so they
fasted for an extra day. Koriteh is the feast at the end of Ramadan,
involving lots of food, new clothes, and boom boxes. Oh yeah,
everybody breaks out the boom boxes straight out of the 80s (where do
they come from??) with tapes, only tapes – very few CDs. Some of them
are rigged to plug into car batteries, and have extra speakers grafted
onto the sides Frankenstein-style. The kids get super excited and run
around a lot. Everyone walks around the town at night in a festival
atmosphere, and the boom boxes abound. Sometimes there are three or
four playing different music in the same place, and nobody seems to
mind. I should note that the electronics and lights and whatnot are
specific to (relatively rich) Diabugu – the surrounding towns don’t
have that stuff for the most part.

So I pretty much hung out with my host fam, ate a lot, drank a lot of
attaya (really strong chinese green tea with too much sugar in it)
with my host brother and his friends, and finished the book Walden. It
turned out pretty well – didn’t blow my door off the hinges or
anything, but definitely solid.

I was assured that school would resume on Wednesday (Koriteh started
on Sunday), so I went there this morning. I found one teacher awake,
and I think he was still in his PJs because he didn’t want to talk. I
found another one later that said well, we have no students and no
headmaster, so maybe we’ll start next week when we get those… I
suppose starting Wednesday meant wednesday, African time. So instead
of doing work I hiked to the river again. Heather requested some pics
of the muddy and watery trail there, so they are included.

Today I started reading a book called “Not by chance” that attempts to
refute the theory of evolution. Dude here lent it to me. I stopped
after a quarter of it because it sucked. The guy is a total amateur
reactionary that doesn’t even know what he’s talking about and should
give up science and go be a principle at one of those southern schools
that insists upon teaching intelligent design.

ANYWAY, while I was reading that, some kind of tumult erupted between
host mom #2 and a neighbor lady. Soon they were yelling at each other
at the top of their lungs and gesticulating wildly. I ran inside for
cover. Various spectators (all women) gathered, and the thing went on
and off for about half an hour. I wouldn’t mess with any of those
women. They are very strong.

My Hut

My Hut

My family compound consists of five round huts and a two-room
rectangular one. I live with my host dad, his mom and two wives, four
little brothers (3,4,12,18) and three sisters (2,7,15).

I live in a round mud brick hut with a thatch roof. It’s quite large
and comfortable and I like it. It has a corrugate awning with a little
wooden platform under it out front, which is highly luxurious. I have
a full size bamboo frame bed inside, which I never use, and a hammock/
bug-net combination which I sleep in every night. It’s easy to pull
out of the way during the day, too. I store my stuff in three large
metal trunks and the Pelican case I brought with me. I get my water
(or most of the time, my family gets it for me) from the tap down the
road (solar powered pump only comes on in the afternoon), and store it
in big yellow “bidongs” which are used vegetable oil containers. They
are 20 liters each. I take baths from a bucket, and poo in a hole in
my backyard “bathroom”. I get my power from two solar panels, and have
one LiIon battery and one large sealed lead acid battery (with a
charge controller) to store it. I power my stuff using 12 volt power
supplies where possible (one phone, laptop, NiMH battery charger,
fans, speaker), and using a small inverter if not (other phone,
camera, beard trimmer, etc.). I need to upgrade to a nice big panel
and a big battery that is in good condition (unlike mine now, which
has trouble holding a charge). Logistics and finances dictate that
will not happen for a few months. I get my internet via GPRS mobile
phone service using a nokia n97, which is great, and I tether it to
the computer sometimes using wifi. It’s slow but occasionally usable.
I have to pay for internet by the byte, so I have use various
bandwidth conservation strategies.

I can’t think of anything else important about my house or compound.

Hilarious african child

Quick story:

I was reading outside my hut under my awning (swank i know) and i had a strip of duct tape sticky side up on the porch to catch flies. I was showing the effectiveness of the system to host mom number 2 when Bubba my little bro who is about 4 took a keen interest in the flies stuck to the tape, concentrated, took aim, and smacked those flies as hard as he could. When the tape (and flies) stuck to his hand he FREAKED OUT and started screaming and thrashing around as his mom and i busted out laughing. I took the tape off of his hand and picked him up off the ground where he had been rolling around, still screaming. Man, we couldn’t stop laughing despite his continued anguish. I think there’s a german word for that… Schadenfreude?