hugs, hands and sweet tea

back again a week later for a night in fajara - sans running shoes this week. didn't end up running the hash as it was taking place in a nearby town, and not, as i thought, in fajara itself. i think the club probably caters to expats who have cars and can get around the neighboring beach towns quite easily. unlike sandra and myself, who rely on taxis and legs. instead, we ended up at the only indian restaurant here, treating ourselves to a delicious, if expensive, meal. expensive, relatively speaking, of course. which is to say, about the same price i'd pay in the UK for an indian meal. i had sag paneer to die for.

i want to describe a bit more about some of the personal and communal habits to give more of a flavor of village life, but i am slightly worried it may read as a diatribe of moral superiority on my part which is exactly what i do not intend to write. i am growing to love these people immensely, especially fatou sarr (my gambian namesake) and the last thing i would ever do is critize my african family. still, i think it may not be a true account of life on a compound without describing some of the daily routines we share. so please reserve judgement when reading this if anything strikes you as less than what you've come to call 'proper.' for as i am reminded each day here, everything (and everyone!) is relative!

* i don't have favorites among the six children here, but i've found myself considering a proposal for adoption of fatou sarr. (haven't yet mentioned this to jason, note to self.) the smile she greets me with each morning lights up my day and has me returning an ear to ear grin. her giggle is infectious and if i could fit her in my suitcase, i'd take her back to replace any alarm clock that might otherwise jolt me out of bed. just this week, she and assan were play wrestling and she took a nosedive into the dirt floor of the compound, scraping a bit of skin off on her forehead on the way down. after the predictable delay of realization at what she'd done, she let out a shriek and came steaming towards me, leaping into my arms and hugging me tightly, sobbing loudly. even after she calmed down and her breath returned to normal, she clung to me with her face nuzzled in my chest. i don't know if she ran to me because i was the nearest adult who would give her sympathy, but it was lovely all the same.

fatou is the little one i've been training to wipe her near-constantly running nose. she's learning because she rarely comes to me without a clean nose now. but i've since realized that she simply lifts her dress to wipe her face, or blows it out like a farmer, or wipes it with her fingers and then on her dress. so when she runs screaming towards me - in pain or in play - i have to make a choice. do i let her jump into my arms or do i gently push her away? she's such a good little hugger, it's an easy choice! you'll see how irresistable she is when i get some pictures up here.

* about 5 or 6 times a day, they brew attaya, the sweet green tea. ebrima says he would drink it all day long if he could. i tell him he would never sleep for the cups of sugar that go into each pot. he just shakes his head and grins (never an outright smile because he is missing his two front teeth, not surprisingly with his attaya habit!) each family has their two attaya glasses: small, clear, octagonal shotglasses. and these two glasses are used all day, every day. they are rinsed at the start of the brew and then passed from person to person (men first, then women, then children) at least 7-8 times in one sitting - or as many pots of the green tea as can be had while there is still flavor escaping the leaves. it's more than a mouthful of sugary tea, it's a mouthful of community and ritual and history. it's what you do, it's custom. and it's delicious! i hardly ever refuse, unless it's after 3 o'clock when i know i won't sleep. i don't think about who had the glass before me, or whether they've had the sniffles that week. i have to let that one go, at least 3 times a day!

* a chicken shat on my birkenstocks yesterday. what can i do - as i said earlier, i live on a farm. it's not uncommon to see dogs squatting in the middle of the compound, donkeys and cows sauntering through relieving themselves as they wander, or goats dropping little pellets that pile high. these either get swept up or mashed into the find sandy silt that is the compound floor. the kids run barefoot, wrestle each other and roll around under the hot sun as they play. kumba loves to play with my hair at the end of the day when i've showered; the only time my hair is down. i'm a sucker for fingers in my hair and find it hard to resist, despite knowing where her hands have been. i close my eyes and imagine myself in a salon, her greasy hands the conditioning agent my hair so desperately needs.

This week has been an interesting one for food. i've just come from a local restaurant in town where i was starved for some real food (yesterday's breakfast was stale bread, lunch was salty rice, and dinner was sweet rice pudding - NOT the best food day). my conversation went like this:

me: can i have the chicken sandwich please
her: no. they are just steaming the chicken now, it's not ready
me: ok. how about a chwarma.
her: let me check.
her: (after about 15 minutes) no, no chwarma either. take the fish and chips.
me: hmmm, what else do you have?
her: nothing. you take the fish and chips.
me: ok. i'll have the fish and chips then.

so i'm full of fish and chips, which were soggy and very salty - but at least i'm full. so i'm not complaining.

on saturday i was in brikama so treated myself to some meat from an afra at a market stall. it's a delicious aluminum foil package of steak, cooked well done (sadly) with mustard and some other seasonings that are very tasty. i was sitting and eating it when a man came up to me, started making the usual conversation (what is your beautiful name, where are you from? etc) and then he reached into my packet and helped himself to some meat. 'but i'm poor, and i'm hungry.' i must admit i was taken aback, but i brushed it off and finished it.

then when i was in the gellah gellah on the way back, waiting in the taxi garage the hot sun for the van to fill, the boy in front of me bought a piece of coconut, split it in two and gave me half. i didn't ask him for this, he just offered. and it reminded me again of the gambia's notion of 'today is for you, tomorrow is for me' and made me reconsider the slight annoyance i had with the man who'd reached into my meat. and have since decided that the white foodstuffs of sunday was my punishment.

it's been a relatively uneventful week ... the sixth grade teachers are out studying for their exams, so i spent the week teaching two classes, running back and forth between the two. they are so far behind and do so poorly at in class exercises, it's really hard to know where to begin or who to focus on. there are clearly 5-6 bright kids in the class who 'get it' - but the others are years behind. i am not joking when i say that i gave a spelling quiz with words like president, orange, speak, airport and got answers back like rkns, pvkj, ogim, irdpu. where do you start?

i spent one day with each class talking about what they wanted to be when they grow up. they had fun doing that and i had all sorts of answers, from doctors, nurses, teachers, to runners, footballers, pilots and even the president. i followed that 'fun' up with questions like 'do you think you need to know how to read if you want to be a doctor?' and 'do you think the president went to upper basic school and passed?' to try to get them to draw a correlation between schooling and their futures. i'm not sure they really understood, but hopefully at least a few of them grasped what i was trying to do.

and today is commonwealth day - so instead of school - the kids get to dress in their traditional african dress and bring food to school for the festivities. isatou spent most of yesterday sewing hard candies (in colorful gold and green wrappers)and shells into the girls' braids, and all the girls in the school did this. in the morning, they split into groups and walked around the different catchment areas, singing songs, and stopping at each compound to ask for money. a bit like trick'o'treating, only asking for money instead of treats, since the treats are in their hair. i took the little kids since they were walking through the closest village and we collected 59 dalasi(that's about 3 dollars) for an hour's walk. hard to imagine that is all the villagers could cough up - but it was. not entirely sure what the funds will go towards, something towards a lunch on friday, i think the headmaster said.

and now i must begin what i set out to do today, which is to begin the fundraising efforts! so thank you, in advance, for anything you might be able to help with! (more under separate cover!)