Sitevisit

Training here is set up so that we are not actually living and training in the village that we will be working in for the following two years. I have been living in a small, rural, poor village called Madianna, about an hour gely-gely ride to Brikama which will be my future permanent site where I will work and live for two years.
For every group, as they get close to the end of training, they are sent to their permanent site for 4 days on what they like to call site visit. We are supposedly visiting our site to meet important people, negotiate meals with our new host families, visit the schools we will be working in and meet with our Gambian supervisors and counterparts.
Again, this was the idea...not what actually happens. I was dropped of at my compound and unloaded my trunk and some of my bags. Excited, I walked into my new hut where I will be living for the next two long years, took a look around and almost start crying. There were termite hills on the floor up to my knees, no screens in the windows or doors (and mosquitoes have a serious thing for me), no pit latrine, peeling paint, and mold on the walls. The peace corps staff member, Mohammadu, who was with me walked in right after me. I heard him suck in his breath, pause, and then say..."lets go, you cant stay here." So from there they took me to one of my site mates huts. Luckily, Brikama is huge...ok "huge" , you can still walk from one side to the other in probably less than an hour. But it is the second largest city in the country, so there are actually a number of other volunteers here, whereas other volunteers further upcountry may have to travel as far as 2 hours to see another volunteer. So I was dropped off at this volunteer's hut, she left work to come and let me in, and then had to go back to work. I literally sat on her floor alone and hungry for 5-6 hours with absolutely nothing to do because all of my stuff was still at MY compound. They had given us a small bag of food to bring with us to site because its Ramadan right now and finding food anywhere around the middle of the day is close to impossible. I peeked into the bag to find canned carrots, powdered milk, dry oats, peanut butter, and just when I was loosing hope and about to eat plain peanut butter right out of the jar, I found a can of beans. So then I sat there on the floor and ate a can of cold beans, alone, in the dark missing training village and wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into. And just when I thought it couldn't get much worse I look over on the wall I was sitting against and guess what was staring back at me...a goddamn scorpion horse monster spider. As I got to know the volunteer with whom I was staying, I learned that she is incredibly awesome, and I probably would have starved, died of boredom, or gotten permanently lost in Brikama during site visit without her, but she has a freakish lack of fear of insects. I think she actually likes them. Bugs here are impossible to avoid but there are SOME things you can do to reduce the amount of them in your living area....like sayyyy knock down webs inside of your house?? She did none of these things. So at night, Samantha (another trainee who had no where to stay during site visit) and I would take turns bucket bathing or using the pit latrine out back behind her hut and then spend an hour afterward recovering from being attacked by cockroaches the size of my fist or worse, the monster spiders. I think the entire visit I only slept maybe 2 or 3 hours because I had to sleep on her floor laying awake thinking about all of the night creatures around me.
Another surprise, which shouldn't have been a surprise because I knew it was coming, was the complete change from a rural village to a more urban city. In Madianna, everyone knew who I was, they knew I wasn't a tourist, that I was living as a member of their community, and I think they might have actually liked me too. Brikama, on the other hand was a completely different story. From the moment I stepped outside of the compound I was yelled at, whistled at by men, approached by strangers begging, or even physically grabbed by children...continuously. The children are the worst. I was walking to the school I will be working at and about 15 kids ran up and started grabbing at my arms, not letting go, mocking me when I spoke Mandinka to them, and generally just being little assholes. It was a huge wake up call. I'm definitely going to have to develop new strategies to deal with these kinds of things. The other volunteers say that you get used to it, you learn ways to deflect and avoid harassment, but now at this point its hard to imagine having to deal with this for the next two years.
So I have about 6 or 7 other volunteers either in Brikama or close enough to visit often. They all got together one of the nights to welcome Samantha and I to Brikama. I had the best meal in country yet, by far. They cooked curry chicken and rice, gave us beer, and COFFEE. It was absolutely amazing. They are all incredibly friendly and hilarious. I am so excited to get to know and learn more about them.
Meeting "important people" in Brikama was a big joke as well. We went to meet the governor, he wasnt there. We went to the police station and met some man who gave us his phone number, I think he was a criminal investigator?? Who the hell knows, but he was so creepy that knowing him makes me feel less safe than before.
I did visit the school I will be working in. Its gigantic and fairly nice, in comparison to other schools i have seen here. My supervisors name is Mr. Daboe. He is the principal at the school and has a pension for purple button up shirts and gold wrist watches, but I know that he is incredibly excited for me to be at his school and I have high hopes for him. My counterpart is a Gambian science teacher in his early 30s named Mr. Gomez (I know, Gomez?? where did that come from??) But he also seems intelligent and eager to work with me.
So as you can see, sitevisit was a series of highs and lows, much like life here in The Gambia. All I am hoping for is that when I return to my hut on September 5th, I dont have to wade through termite hills to get to my non-existent pit latrine.