KT in The Gambia

For reasons I can't explain, I haven't been very good about blogging about my Peace Corps experiences in The Gambia. Sorry! But it feels like time for a quick update because a lot has happened/is happening now and I wanted to let my friends and followers know about my whereabouts. I decided on Feb 22 to resign from Peace Corps and come home to Colorado to be with and support my mother through her last phase of life. I arrived on Feb 28 and am staying with my sister and her husband in Longmont, CO. I also have a brother, sister-in-law and nephew living nearby in Erie. My mom had an apartment in an Independent Living facility nearby for the past three years. She was assigned to hospice care last fall due to cancer, with an estimated 3-6 months to live. I was able to come home to spend a couple great weeks with her last fall, before she started declining. And I was able to spend 2.5 weeks with her since my return in February. After celebrating her 92nd birthday last Friday, en...

Welcome to my Peace Corps crib! At last! A glimpse into my home in The Gambia. I found a rare moment when no (human) family members were in the compound and decided to shoot a video. But first, to clear a couple things up. First, I don't normally wear "african" attire as shown in the photo above, although I always get many nice complements when I do. I prefer capris/yoga pants and lightweight T-shirts and tanks, like this. The groundnut harvest has begun! Here I'm removing groundnuts from the roots of the plants. We shell them all one-by-one and when we have a good amount we'll roast the nuts and take them to the machine to be ground into peanut butter.  Peanut butter is an ingredient in several of the typical local dishes.  Second, I don't have a parquet wood floor in my room. What you'll see in the video is an inexpensive flooring material that is a little heavier than shelf paper. Much easier to keep clean than the cement floor. Hope you enjo...

For the first time in my village, the girls can fetch water without having to pump or haul it from a well The Gambia is blessed with a good supply of groundwater. Or at least good enough to generally meet the demand in this undeveloped country. Groundwater is used for drinking and other household uses (cooking, bathing, washing clothes, watering animals, etc.) and gardening. If there is any use of groundwater for industry or irrigation, it is very limited. The groundwater quality is also quite good. This is predominantly because local land uses aren’t likely to cause groundwater contamination. Much of the land in The Gambia is used for farming but the country does not have the resources for the widespread use of fertilizers and pesticides that can contaminate groundwater aquifers if over applied. It also has very limited heavy industry and no heavily trafficked transportation corridors in the upcountry regions - these can also be sources of groundwater contaminants. This is a...

I was fortunate to be one of five PCVs in The Gambia who recently traveled to the capital area with a teacher and four students from our local high school to visit colleges/universities and hear from Gambians presenting on topics like career development, gender equality and the downsides/dangers of The Back Way (i.e., illegal migration to Europe with the hope of finding a better life). The attached video gives you a glimpse of the experience from the students' perspective. The students are now back home and sharing this information with fellow students and their parents through assemblies, speeches and dramas.

It’s been a long time since my last blog post – how did that happen? I’ve been in Africa for over six months and already it’s starting to seem like two years is a rather short time. These past two months have been filled with a lot of Peace Corps trainings and programs that took me away from my village. It’s great to be eating more normally and hanging out with other Americans, but it also causes my language skills to decay and leaves me feeling a bit disconnected with my purpose here. I’m heading back to village later today, just before the start of Ramadan which begins the evening of June 5 th . I’m sure I’ll have more to say about that later. And I also expect to have more to say about my water projects soon as well. Both grants (one to bring water taps into the village and one to improve the water supply for the women’s garden) are well along in the administrative process. I’m thinking we’ll be in the construction phase in June, inshallah. If you are interested in reading more ab...

Just a few pics of typical activities in my family’s compound.  My Ba (short for Baay or father) slaughtering a goat with helping hands from Hassan, Dembu and Sarjeko. This pregnant goat was slaughtered after Ba determined that its babies had died in the womb. The goat was otherwise healthy as far as could be determined. If the goat had been sick or injured it would have been hauled to the field for the vultures to eat. My understanding is that it is contrary to Muslim teachings to eat a sick or injured animal. It is also their practice that men conduct the slaughter. The women may undertake butchering but the men ( or boys) kill the animal.  Ah, the cycle of life! A few weeks later here is the two day old offspring of another goat in my family’s menagerie.  Mam Hoja doing laundry. This is how I do mine as well, although I sit on a short stool. I can’t fathom how these women can so easily maintain this position for hours at a time - doing laundry, weeding...

Fetching water for the fields We are officially in the "cold" season now. Yesterday it didn't even reach 90 degrees! Eighty-eight was the high I believe, although it's forecasted to return to the 90s tomorrow. It is also the dry season (~ Nov thru May/June) and a time when there is a 2-3 month lull in intensive work on commodity crops. We just wrapped up the groundnut harvest in Dec and it will be a month or two before the cashew fruits ripen. This is the time of year when the weather and seasonal cycles of farm work are most conducive to gardening.  Gardens are most commonly the women's projects but not exclusively. Gardens provide nutritious food for the food bowl and hopefully produce enough surplus to sell locally, either in village or at the closest market. There are two weekly pop-up markets, or "lumos" within a few kilometers of my village - a small one to the east on Tuesday and larger one to the west on Saturday.  But the...

Heading home after a day in the groundnut field I've been in village for 2.5 weeks and am settling into the groove. Our first three months in village are a time for integrating into our community rather than focusing on projects/work. Our success ultimately depends on our relationships in the community, so integration is job #1.  It is also a time for figuring out our own rhythms for food, sleep, exercise and generally taking care of ourselves. I've been cooking my own breakfast over a single burner propane  stove (omelet with onion and shaved sweet potato) and taking lunch and dinner with my family. I've also started a 3x per week routine of doing an out-and-back bike ride along the one and only paved road for about 20-25 miles. It is dark from about 7 PM to 7 AM and that doesn't change much with the seasons since we are close to the equator, so it works well with my preferred early to bed/early to rise schedule. And I've been spending a good bit of...

Two days ago (Dec. 5) I was sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer in The Gambia along with 38 others in my cohort. With me in the photo are our Peace Corps Country Director, the charge d'affaires from the US Embassy and the Minister of Environment.  We are a proud and happy group!  Yestersday and today were full of celebration, shopping for household goods to bring to our sites, and packing. Tomorrow we travel to our permanent sites to begin our two-year service.  The big adventure begins! I feel so very fortunate for the opportunity to take part in it and for the amazing people who are on this journey with me. I look forward to sharing updates with you along the way. 

Looking down on Rabat, Morroco's capital city, from the Kasbah of the Udayas. I never envisioned that I’d get an all-expenses paid trip to Morocco within my first two months of Peace Corps service, but it happened! Here’s what it took: It should come as no surprise that I experienced an acute case of food poisoning or something like that. I’m definitely not the first in my cohort to succumb and I certainly won’t be the last. But it was unusual in a couple respects. First, the culprit was food I brought from the US! I acquired some dried peanut butter before leaving the states, thinking it would be a convenient protein supplement to bring along. I opened the package to try it out before leaving the US and then left it in my suitcase in my training village for six weeks before reconstituting some to have with my breakfast bread one morning. My troubles started later that day. The second unusual thing was that the symptoms, which included fever, headache and diarrhea, w...

Last week I visited the village where I will be living for my two-year PC service. It's a village of about 300-400 people on the north side of the river, about 30k east of Barra (across the river from Banjul). It was a great visit and I'm very excited to return in mid December and get to work.  Following my host father to the groundnut fields. Many of the people in the village belong to the Seerer tribe, a group that historically focused on fishing but these days is more likely to be involved with farming. Indeed, this is a farming village. I was there during the final days of the groundnut harvest; cashews are the next crop in the pipeline, with harvest starting in Dec/Jan. I have yet to learn what other crops they tend. They also have a sizeable women’s garden. The garden used to provide a bounty of fresh vegetables for the village but the fencing surrounding it needs significant repairs, causing it to be useful for little other than growing millet because they...

Sadly, I must confess that I find myself thinking that from time to time. I really haven't been craving anything during my month in The Gambia except for a clean, quiet, climate controlled space to hang out in now and then. I think it has sometime to do with the "feels like" status in the picture below.  That and the language learning. It's tough! I need to study a lot! It's hard not to think how much more pleasant it could be with AC and a grande cold brew. Instead, we hold class under the mango tree in our teacher's compound and shift things around every hour or so to stay in the shade.  After class I go home and sit in front of my little USB-powered fan and hope the sweat evaporates at a roughly equal rate to which it forms.  Alas, we're promised that the "cold" season is soon to arrive, and in fact it looks like we may see about a 10 degree drop in temperature over the next week or so. Looking forward to that!  And I'm trying to stay focu...

With 3+ weeks of living in Gambia under my belt, it seems like time to share a few details about what it's like. I'll stick to the basics for now - food and clothing. I already shared a bit about shelter in a previous post. Food: Rice, rice, rice. For most people, a meal isn't a meal if there isn't rice. Sometimes it may be only rice, but usually there is some kind of sauce or seasoning, and perhaps some chunks of vegetables and pieces of meat/fish. Coos (millet that has been pounded into small sand-like pieces) is a staple in some families, a frequent substitute for rice. They were recently harvesting the coos near my compound.  Coos may also be served with sugar and condensed milk for porridge in the morning. Seasonal fruits and veggies are the norm, when there are any. We'll have it pretty good for the next several months, as we are just wrapping up the rainy season and moving into the prime gardening season (Nov - Mar). Later in the spring it is simply too dry a...

Just a quick post while trying to work out some technical issues with my Oregon-based tech support. Here's a photo taken last night by someone in my cohort who brought a much better camera than I did! His house/room is in the foreground. 

Today we all found out where our permanent site will be. We will visit the site for a couple days in mid Nov and make the permanent move in mid Dec. My village is in the North Bank about 30K east of Barra, which is a seven mile ferry ride across the river from Banjul. [We’re not supposed to provide more specifics on the name/location of the village.] There are about 300 people in the village, living in 25 extended family compounds. Actually, I’m told the entire village is an extended family! I’ll be replacing a PCV who is finishing up their service next month. They have ongoing projects including a community garden and a poultry co-op, and have also expressed interests in tree nurseries and beekeeping. But no telling what I’ll be helping them with until I get there and talk with them. There isn’t electricity in the village and the nearest Internet cafe and bank are 30k away. I’m only a few K away from a weekly market, and have two small shops in my village. There should be decent cell ...

[Please use the SUBSCRIBE button if you want to get notified when I post something. Also, the best way to contact me directly is through What's App - my # is +220 288 8757. My gmail account also works!] I’ve been in country since October 10th and am fully immersed in the two-month Pre-Service Training phase of my 27-month Peace Corps assigment. Our focus is learning the language and culture, as well as a variety of orientation sessions and introduction to health and agriculture topics.  There are 39 volunteers in my training cohort - half are focusing on health and half on ag/environment. But realistically, we may be doing some of both or even some other things depending on the need of the community we will be placed in after the training period. Next week we will learn the name of our permanent village, and will visit it for a couple days in mid November, before making the permanent move in mid December. I'm very interested to learn more about my fate! Most day...