Hey Boss Lady!

New country, new language, new village, new name.  I am now Mariama Sarr (essentially the Jane Doe of names), I speak Wollof (sort of), and I live in Changai, The Gambia.  I would never want to generalize and lump all the people of West Africa together, but seeing as the people here think all toubabs (white-people) are the same, I’m going to.  The major difference I have noticed between my village here and my village in Mali is that the men gather firewood, not the women.  And that’s pretty much the only difference.  The jokes are the same, the clothes are the same, the food is the same, blah, blah, blah.  It might sound crazy considering there are so many different tribes, but somehow they’ve all managed to morph into one culture.  I would feel a lot worse for making these blanket statements about West Africans if every time I left my site everyone didn’t get me confused with my site-mate FatSo ( I kid you not this is her Gambian name) who is a fairly tall, fairly fair, red-head who speaks a completely different language than I do.  If we’re all the same (and I mean ALL of us, every white-person in the entire world), then they too must all be the same.

Let me revisit the name thing.  Just like in Mali there are very few names for a large number of people.  Fatoumata, Mamadou, Mariama… I’ve pretty much exhausted the list right there.  However, The Gambia does have a few special differences.  The real Jane Doe of names here is Fatoumata Sowe, a.k.a FatSo when abbreviated, a.k.a Stephanie, my nearest volunteer.  Another very common last name is Fatty, as in Mamadou Fatty.  You get pretty accustomed to hearing the same first names and surnames and then you meet someone named Ibraima Garcia and you’re like wtf?!?  There are a handful of Gambians with Hispanic surnames, evidence of Spanish missionaries and all the amazing work they did here.  Well that’s globalization for you all wrapped up into an Arabic first name and Hispanic surname. 

Another amazing thing about The Gambia is the diversity of languages and the ability of local people to speak them.  There are a ton of languages in Mali as well, but they seemed to be a bit more geographically separated.  I think that due to Gambia’s size, all these languages coexist within one small area.  For example, I have two volunteers relatively close to me: FatSo is about 12 km away and Aminata is about 15.  Neither of them speaks Wollof, nor does either of them speak the same language as each other.  In my first few days at site, I went to a pseudo parent/teacher meeting at the school that was being given in Mandinka and translated into Pulaar, neither of which are languages that I’ve learned.  There are also only about 600 people in my village.  The average Gambian must speak at least 3 languages.  I feel like this would be a linguist’s Disneyland…or Target.

Here are a few Gambian-life highlights from my first few weeks:

• Dancing to club music in a Muslim community is every bit as awkward as it sounds.  The only freak dancing that goes on is between people of the same sex, usually young men.  If you’re still having trouble visualizing this situation, just imagine me getting down to Akon’s “Smack that Ass” with a group of 7-9 year old girls, all of whom are significantly better dancers than me.
• Went to a cashew training and had to sit through almost a week of trying to keep my composure while various Gambians were saying things like this:

            -“Farmers shouldn’t wash their nuts to get the sticky stuff off.”

            -“I hate it when kids play with my nuts.           

            -“Farmers should inspect their nuts, maybe by hand.”

• Sex-tourism is a huge here, can’t wait for my mom to come visit, she’s exactly the right demographic is she we’re 15 years older and 100 pounds heavier.  The bumsters (young, attractive Gambian “tour guides”) will likely try to woo her with phrases like “Hey boss lady, what is your sweet, sweet name?”

• Aside from sex-tourism, the only other tourist-y action The Gambia gets are bird-watchers. It is quite likely that there is no other country in the entire world that gets less attractive tourists: Bumster chasers (fat, elderly British women) and bird-watchers (fat-elderly British men).  Awesome.

• Found a snake in my laundry basket this week and discovered that there are in fact hyenas in my hood, so if this is my last blog post, it’s probably no real great loss, but I hope the 5 of you that read this enjoyed it anyway.