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.
