Trip Diary 2009

Part Two: Work in the Rural Villages
by Jeff Chen

It came time for us to go up-river to the rural villages and monitor the GambiaHELP-supported projects.  We managed to fill Shelby’s hired van with ten passengers plus all of our luggage, food, bottled water, utensils, and about a thousand other things crammed into my back, under my knees, and piled in my lap.  With the hotter climate of up-country (regularly 100-110 degrees) and the red dirt roads so uneven that I struggled to stay in my unbuckled seat, I was glad to take a lunch stop in one of the larger villages.  People in our caravan graciously offered me some sort of meat cooked at roadside, but the thought of the Serrekunda market made me follow Shelby’s lead of politely sticking with bread and butter.  After eight hours of driving through deserted expanses, we suddenly arrived at Dankunku, Shelby’s home village when she was in the Peace Corps years ago.  I watching with slack-jawed awe at the welcome party, as several hundred people had amassed out of nowhere to greet us.

I had been expecting perhaps a band of elders to greet us, but the crowd was enormous, including children, dancers, and drummers with blaring whistles.  They had apparently been waiting for GambiaHELP to arrive for hours, roasting in the blistering heat.  It was moving to see all these people come out and cheer for our arrival.  Two lines of boys and girls dressed in scout uniforms escorted us into the village center, preventing children from swamping and climbing onto the van, as well as making sure that we didn’t run over anyone.  We eked our way into town at five miles per hour.  The drummers banged out loud rhythms for people to sing and dance to, welcoming us into the village for GambiaHELP’s annual visit.  I felt uncomfortably like a rock star.

For the next several hours, we were treated like royalty, seated in the center of a thick ring of people encircling the entire commons, while drummers and dancers swirled around us.  People were dressed in their best outfits to celebrate GambiaHELP’s annual visit.  I shook dozens of people’s hands, getting a lot of practice with my Mandinka greeting.  I enjoyed indulging the large groups of kids who kept on yelling “toubab!” at me, wanting to shake my hand or feel my hair.  Some had never seen a foreigner before, and might not see one again for the rest of the year.  One fourth-grader, Lamin, served as my guide while I was in Dankunku.  He tagged along while I walked through the village, quietly observing and answering my questions politely.  Appearing to be the local “boss” of the kids, he also helped manage inquiries to the toubab so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed.  Later that night, our group retired into Shelby’s small compound.  After a few quizzical attempts in the dark (no electricity), I finally figured out how to use the “toilet”, more or less a hole tapped directly into the sewer.  At least, I think I figured out how to use it. 

The next couple of days we monitored ongoing GambiaHELP projects in Dankunku, including fixing up parts of the school, the two wells, and a community garden.  I learned that GambiaHELP requires the community to kick in at least 25% of the funds for any project, in order to promote self-achievement and ownership.  All of the projects are designed not as charity, but as empowerment for the villagers to get themselves out of poverty.  Not only does GambiaHELP require at least partial funding, which can be labor or other non-cash means, but each project’s goal is sustainability and ownership by the villagers themselves, without continued aid.  I really liked seeing the pride that people took in these projects.

I was heartened to hear people on the whole stay so positive in the face of abject poverty (about 80- 90% of the people in Dankunku are under the “extreme poverty” line of about a dollar a day) and want to find a way to make a better life for themselves.  One set of conversations stood out for me, with a villager named Alagie.  A native to Dankunku, he had been working in community development for almost ten years.  He was extremely knowledgeable about the Millennium Development Goals, the potential pitfalls within African development and aid, Gambian patterns of rural to urban drift, and much more.  I found his love of baseball hats to be oddly amusing, and he later told me that he LOVED the San Diego Chargers baseball caps I brought for kids (I sent him one after returning to America).  One conversation lasted well past dark, where we talked by candlelight under the bright stars about how to possibly integrate a microfinance program into the village in the coming year.  Shelby and I are hoping to make our first loans by the end of the year.

Another day, Wandifa, one of our translator / logisticians, walked me around Dankunku.  I immediately sweat through my shirt after bucket bathing in cool water, but he looked comfortable in full Gambian attire, replete with long sleeves, long pants, and a slightly out-of-place red Yankees skullcap.  By this time I was getting better with the Mandinka greeting process, rattling it off rapid-fire with random villagers.  Wandifa and I walked around for two hours, stopping to greet almost everyone for a few minutes, as he happened to be friends with someone’s cousin, uncle, grandmother, or akalo (village chief).  One woman decided that she was going to name me after her dead husband (Wandifa gave me a bit of a wink, which I didn’t quite know how to interpret), and another offered me her 11-year old daughter as a bride after she found out I wasn’t married.  I think she was joking, but I made an excuse and quickly made my way out.  Even though it’s normal for Gambian men to have up to four wives, I doubt my girlfriend would be interested in being someone’s second wife (girlfriend’s added note: “Not true! Much less pressure than being wife number one”).

Through the next days, we went to other villages to monitor projects and to talk to the people involved.  Most gave us a welcoming ceremony, plus a meal that they probably couldn’t afford.  At one, I saw two poor goats being yanked into the food preparation hut, clearly bleating loudly that they knew what was coming.  The sound of goats being… prepared… is something I’d prefer to forget.  It was amazing to see the hope in people’s faces and the thankfulness for the work that GambiaHELP performs.  We had several people come up to us and ask directly for money, but overall, I think most people appreciate the focus assistance on self-sustaining projects that they would own.

Many of the ceremonies were fantastic.  One night in Dankunku, the school put on a traditional bonfire for us.  The scouts led the festivities, dancing around the fire (pulling the principal and one certain uncoordinated  toubab dancer into the circle), and telling stories in play format.  These were designed to pass down morals, such as the importance of sharing, why it’s good to balance tradition with modern development, and how to reduce one’s chances of getting malaria.  The plays ranged from somewhat amusing to hilarious.  Three boys put on a play that was an African version of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, each trying to top the each other in hamming up B movie dying scenes.

Some of the ceremonies were harder to sit through.  At one village where we wanted to assess needs with the local chiefs, our procession sat through a painfully slow three hour meeting while we listened to their list of project requests.  We were jammed into a dusty, stuffy room, and everything that was said was translated twice, once from Wollof to Mandinka, once to from Mandinka to English.  I secretly pulled a couple of New York Times crosswords into my lap, in order to keep insanity at bay.  Later I was told that the Wollof tradition is to repeat everything multiple times to make sure that everyone feels like they’ve been included in the process.  Everyone’s traditions are probably equally valid, but I was itching to jump out a window.

By the end of the trip, I was tired of sitting through long ceremonies, but happy to learn much more about what was needed in the villages and how our projects were going.  It was a good reminder that I need to work on my patience, perhaps a reminder that all Westerners could too.  There’s a saying in West Africa: “domanding, domanding”, which translates roughly into “slowly, slowly”.  Everything gets done in its own time, and meanwhile, people are able to enjoy the simple joys in life.  I learned to appreciate all the time I was able to spend simply greeting and getting to know so many friends.  After compiling lists of project requests from multiple villages, we finally decided to make our way back to San Cheba.  Just before we left, my unofficial kid guide Lamin promised that he would help the other kids in school to behave, stay in school, and learn.