The Scrabble Match

It has been a long time since I have done some decent blogging so I have a lot to catch up on. Since my last blog I have been doing more ‘Taubab’ activities.

I will start back with the scrabble match. Scrabble is a game with status in the Gambia. Many Gambians such as the teachers I lecture and the other lecturers like to play it and are quite proud of their abilities. The way English is taught in Gambia is much more structured than in countries with English as a first language, so they are often better at scrabbles because they know all of the finer details such as what types of words can be pluralized in which way. For example I would say ‘unspeaks’ is not a word, but if you check the dictionary something to do with the structure of the English language makes it possible – although it just sounds wrong to a native speaker.

So Mr Jarju a friend and colleague, is extremely proud of his abilities in scrabble. A similar type of pride to what I saw in Pete, one of the new batch of volunteers, who equally feels he is unbeatable in scrabble. The temptation for June and I was too much so we decided to pit these scrabble greats against each other in a scrabble play off in Brikama.

One Sunday we organized for some of the ‘Kombo’ volunteers to come to Brikama. A Brikama outing for the ‘Kombo’ volunteers is similar I guess to getting the Melbourne people to come to Ballarat. The distance is around the same and the status of the towns against each other is also similar. Obviously it is usually the Brikama people travelling to the Kombo for social occasions so it is nice to get the Kombo people out to Brikama.

So having the ‘Kombo’ people visit was a special occasion and June made a fruit salad, Jane a vegetable stir fry and I tried my hand at a huge pot of Domoda. Domoda is a Gambian dish which is a spicy peanut sauce with meat (although I do it with vegetables) served on rice. It is fairly easy to make and simple to make in large quantities.

Pete and Bernie travelled from Kombo, Mr Jarju and Katie came from Brikama and Jagan and Touray also joined in from our compound. When I went to the market to meet Bernie and Pete we ran into Caroline and Lucia, two peace corp volunteers based in Brikama. We invited them as well and Lucia decided to make a local drink out of some fruit that is available at this time of year.

The fruit Lucia used is a strange one, it looks like a passionfruit with a similar skin that you peel in a similar way to shelling an egg. On the inside is a soft green flesh similar to an avocado with a more citrus flavor to it. The soft green flesh you eat by sucking it out from around a type of thick fibre inside that it kind of like a spaced out lofa in appearance. It is a very interesting fruit and to make the drink you peel it and soak it in water then add sugar and lemon juice and squeeze out the fruit with your hands. It is a really nice drink.

When we arrived back in our compound the heavens opened and we were rained in all afternoon. Mr Jarju was at June’s house and a saturated Katie arrived soon after. We had a huge meal and finished off with biscuits and Chai tea which Katie had been sent from America. Then we started the scrabble match.

Not everyone played. I think Mr Touray was more keen to watch and see how it was done. Pete took an early lead, as usual I didn’t make good headway, but Jarju was focused too much on showing his awareness of the rules of scrabble and lost out by making words that wouldn’t be accepted. In the end I came last, Pete won, Katie came second and Jarju just pipped me at the post. Pete and Jarju have requested a rematch because I think they both know it wasn’t Jarju’s best game.