Day to Day Life

I have realized that I have been blogging away most of the ‘big events’ without actually stopping to let you know what day to day life is like where I live. To be honest it’s not all rosy but it is really cool to live in another country. For me I think it is harder because I have left a place with not many people and have come to a place which is so crammed full of people it is hard to move. Add to that the celebrity status of being a rich taubab and at times I find it really hard to breath (especially the other day when after talking to me for five minutes some dirty bumster decided he had the right to lean in for a kiss!!!). The hassle annoys others but I am a little bit on my own in how much I personally struggle with it. Just imagine people calling out at you every fifty meters – Taubab, Taubab or Ssssssttt just a minute, Can I be your friend? etc etc. Generally I actually like the Taubab from the kids, they are just excited, I am special to them, and they don’t know what it really means. The adults really need to move on. Having said that the majority of Gambians are absolutely lovely, and I mean really lovely. They also have to put up with the embarrassment of these rude people. It just sucks that because there are so many people, the few rude ones are still pretty prevalent.
Ok so moving on from the bad stuff. The good – the kids around my area are learning to call me Awa. Even though I am pretty rude (i.e. always rushing to work or coming home late from work and not spending enough time greeting everyone), my neighbours are pretty forgiving. It is pretty hard for me to make any local acquaintances with the work I am doing. Because I am home late people don’t want to bother me. But the greetings are something I really need to work on, it is not the works fault, it is a balance I need to make.
Having said that however, when I am actually home at reasonable times my door is really busy! The other day another volunteer came to visit me and couldn’t believe how many visitors I had. It was really cute that Ebi and Ejay came over especially to show me a drama that they had concocted between them. They are working on a special one for when Nic arrives. At times I think that the visitors might be because they are curious to meet my guest – it just happens that the only times I get home early is when I have people staying.
Next door is a group of girls who are pretty industrious. One dyes fabric and sells it to pay her school fees. The others are embroidering me a table cloth and four seat covers (ironically they are using fluro multi-coloured yarn to embroider hearts with arrows through them on a pastel pink background – not sure what I will do with the finished product), we negotiated a price but I had to raise it when I saw the work because they were selling themselves short.
I have made one ‘friend’ her name is Awa – my namesake. She is staying with the family in the compound across from me. Life is pretty hard for her as she has to get up early and do the work in the compound before school and also do work such as cooking after school. Tonight she is sitting out the front of my compound selling cooked fish to people (take away here takes on a new meaning!). She is doing her final exams in year twelve and although she is lucky to stay with a family to do her study, she has no time to actually study.
Ebi is also someone who regularly drops in. He and Ejay would come around more but I am rarely home at a good time. The other night Ebi was here late, having got lost in the array of songs he found on my computer (we have an emo in the making!) and there was suddenly a huge crash and bang. He jumped out of his skin!!! I wasn’t so worried having heard the noise a hundred times before. He was ready to race out of my door, imagining a robber in my back yard (no he was racing out the front – he wasn’t trying to protect me!). So I went outside (against his better judgement I can assure you) and brought in the first of the mangos off my tree. In my backyard I have a mango tree and for weeks before they were ripe my nights would be full of these huge crashes as the mangos fell from the tree – there is nothing quite like that noise!
Anyway after Ebi’s fright I have now had the noise of hundreds of fruit bats fighting in the tree over my ripe mangos. The bonus is that every time I hear the great crash I can go out and pick up a ripe mango – delivered right to my door. If I am not quick in retrieving them they are gone in the morning as rats visit my back yard in the night and eat everything. Luckily I never see them and they don’t come inside so they don’t bother me in the least (I was hoping one of the kittens would come back for them but no such luck).
Most nights however I either do work or watch a movie or a tv series (you can buy dvds here for $2 with about six movies on them or a whole season of a television series such as house or grey’s anatomy). Tonight I was watching one and feeling a little ashamed that I didn’t fit in better and have made more friends when a little group showed up at my door. It was two boys from two compounds away with their school books ready for some reading lessons. These boys are so keen on learning that they hang around when my neighbor Mr Touray is tutoring some other kids. They really try when I give them sums to do but they struggle with seven plus four – even when I put up my fingers for them – and one is in Grade three. I mentioned that if I was home early enough I would give them lessons so that is what we did. We made a little book for them to illustrate and practiced blending ‘at’ words. It was interesting to watch the way they reacted to the positive praise. I was a little alarmed that they felt the need to go and get me a stick! By the end of the lesson a big group of kids had gathered for the reading lesson and they were all getting closer to me and stroking my hair. I will have to make an effort now to get home earlier and teach them lessons because I think the experience is probably even more rewarding for me than them.