Now that the final countdown has
begun (finally), I suppose it’s about time I update my blog. It’s only been one year, since my last
entry. There’s an expression in Wollof,
“Ndanka, ndanka mooy jaapa doomi golo”, “slowly, slowly, you catch the baby
monkey.” Also known as, patience is a
virtue. Many Gambians would call this a
proverb and I suppose with this particular one I can get on board. However, they also have many expressions that
are not proverbs by any stretch of the imagination. A proverb by definition is “a saying that
effectively expresses some commonplace truth or useful thought” (Merriam Webster). The key phrase in that definition is
“effectively expresses”. I was effectively
expressing how ineffective many Gambian “proverbs” were at expressing their
meaning to my friend Bala, when he expressed this little proverb to me as an
example of how effectively expressive Gambian proverbs are; “ If a squirrel
knows the secrets of the crocodile, who told him?” Now because effective proverbs require no
further information beyond what is given in the proverb to express a
commonplace truth or useful thought, you probably don’t need any more information
about what this one means. However, if
you could not quickly arrive at the meaning of this little gem, I’ll fill you
in. Obviously, it was the monitor lizard
who told the squirrel the secrets of the crocodile because he can live in the
water and on land AND what’s more, the moral of this proverb is “don’t gossip (or back bite, as the Brits would say) because gossiping is bad”. Wow, I
know. Feel free to share that wise and
ancient Gambian proverb at dinner parties and any other appropriate occasions. I personally think it is more
of a riddle than a proverb, but all Gambians would strongly disagree.
After
being away for 585 days and then traveling for 4 days, I finally made it back
to the land of the free and the home of the brave. Despite leaving The Gambia on a Wednesday and
arriving in Tucson on a Saturday, the travel was still one million times better
than traveling around in West Africa, better than mangoes even. Since I’ve now finally reached my half way
point, I decided I wanted to post my book list, but I feel like I should talk
about some of the work I’ve done first.
I don’t just read all day, I swear (well at least not all day EVERY
day). Shortly before I left, BeeCause
(an adorably named organization to help promote beekeeping) came out to my
village for the second of three beekeeping trainings. We now have six beekeepers in my village, one
of whom is a woman! (YAY, GAD
moment!) Five of our six catcher boxes
had bees and we have now built full size boxes in order to transfer the
bees. Upon my return, we will harvest
whatever honey we have and then wait until the rains are finished to harvest
again. We might not have any bread or
vegetables in my village, but we’re about to have liquid gold. My counterpart and I have also begun working
on a medium scale poultry project.
Because raising laying hens is simply not profitable in my area, we will
be sentencing all of our little chicks to death. I am still a vegetarian, but I think I’m
going to have to give chicken slaughtering a go. YOLO! (You Only Live Once, for
those of you who, like me, do not ride
the acronym train.) Here are some other
side projects I have going on:
- Care Group: I teach basic health concepts to 7 women, those women then re-teach that information to the rest of the village.
- Solar-Water Tap: After about a year, Changai finally has a solar-water tap. Well, we at least have the money and almost all the materials. At the time of my trip to the US we were just waiting for the contractor to come hook everything up. Hopefully there will be running water upon!
- Reading club: I read with the kids at the school every Friday, just to help them practice. I’m not very good at it, but I have the books.
- Tree-guard training: I had one of my favorite people in my village, Mahmoud Khan, help me host a training to teach villagers how to make tree-guards for when they out plant seedlings to protect them from the multitudes of livestock that ruin everything they can. As it turns out no one wants to learn how to do that, but I now know how to make them, so I consider it a success!
So you see, I do do some work. And now for my full time job, I read and here
are all the books I’ve read in chronological order for the last year and a
half:
-
Lincoln
Lawyer by Michael Connelly
-
Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides
-
Shantaram
by Gregory David Roberts
-
Game of
Thrones by George R.R. Martin
-
The Lacuna
by Barbara Kingsolver
-
Breakfast
of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
-
Are you
there Vodka? It’s me Chelsea by Chelsea Handler
-
What is
the What by Dave Eggers
-
The Glass
Castle by Jeanette Walls
-
The Race
for Timbuktu by Frank T. Kryza
-
Film
School by Steve Bowman
-
The Time
Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
-
Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
-
The God of
Small Things by Arundhati Roy
-
The Perks
of Being a Wall Flower by Stephen Chbosky
-
Clash of
Kings by George R.R. Martin
-
The
Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
-
My
Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler
-
Room
by Emma Donoghue
-
Zeitoun by
Dave Eggers
-
Little Bee
by Chris Cleave
-
Outliers by
Malcolm Gladwell (Reread)
-
Watership
Down by Richard Adams (Reread)
-
Imperial
Ambitions by Noam Chomsky
-
Turn Right
at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams
-
Prodigal
Summer by Barbara Kingsolver (Reread)
-
Small
Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver
-
The Wild
Girl by Jim Fergus
-
A Storm of
Swords by George R.R. Martin
-
The
Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
-
God’s
Middle Finger by Richard Grant
-
Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
-
The Book
of Tea by Kakuzo Okamura
-
Half the
Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
That’s all folks! I’d
like to thank my brother for coming to visit me. My hut might be made for one, but the two of
us made it work just fine for three straight weeks. I was impressed. The school now has a beautiful world
map. Thanks Omar Khan. I was also very lucky to have my mom and my
two aunts come out for a visit. I know
that it is no short distance and that it isn’t exactly a destination vacation,
so I really appreciate it. I hope the
people of Changai showed them a wonderful time.
They certainly will never forget meeting you guys. I have just 330 days left and I’m hoping it
will be my most productive year yet.
I’ll leave you with a short list of the illnesses I’ve suffered to date;
hopefully the list will not get much longer:
-
Giardia: Anywhere from 3 to 6 times, or rather
basically constantly for a year and a half.
-
Blister Beetle: It’s gross, google it if you
want.
-
Ring Worm: Don’t play with kids.
-
Kidney Infection: Throwing up in a pit latrine
is not fun.
-
Cutaneous Larvae Migrans: Look it up on
Wikipedia, that’s what the doctor did.
-
Entamoeba Histolytica: It’s gross, I don’t
suggest getting it.
Wish me luck. See you
all in year. If any of the five of you
who read this have google glasses by the time I come back, you can just go
ahead and remove yourself from my life.
Bye, bye!
