My Two Day Cultural Immersion Marathon

Last Thursday I agreed to accompany my host mother to a naming ceremony in the nearby village of Yundum. Now, up to this point, the only other naming ceremony I have attended had been my own, which only lasted about 2 hours... ohhh little did I know. So naming ceremonies are a celebration of a newborn baby where it is named and prayed over by the community. There is always lots of dancing and delicious food and people usually give the family gifts and money for the baby. A family will spend as much, if not more, than they can afford on these lavish celebrations. My host mother had told me the day before that we would leave by 10am. So by 2 pm we were on our way. My host mother, younger sister Mama (8), and I caught a gely to Yundum, about 30 minutes away. We arrived and I spent about an hour and a half greeting people. They are always surprised when a toubab speaks their language so I was getting "a mandinka ka moy" (she mandinka does hear aka you speak mandinka) left and right and was feeling quite flattered and brilliant. Then some random evil woman came up and decided that she wants to test my Mandinka. I kept up with her for a good three minutes, throwing back appropriate answers and responses in Mandinka. But then she began talking too fast, using too many word fusions for anyone who has been "studying" the language for not even 4 months to understand. The same thoughts as always were running through my head...did she just say monkey, or spoon?...what the hell does hakilidiyaa mean??...shes making word up now, I know it!! and while I am thinking and processing this jumble of unfamiliar syllables she announces to everyone that I, in-fact, cannot hear Mandinka. It's funny how that works here, usually greeting someone correctly is enough for them to be impressed, but for others, the first time you say something incorrect or are confused they brush you off as just another toubab who cannot speak the language.
So after the greetings I was brought into the families house to eat. They sat my host mother, Mama, and I down on the floor and brought out a food bowl. I had low expectations for the food, guessing it would probably be the same disgusting rice, fish, and palm oil that everyone here seems to love, but NO!!! She took off the lid of the bowl and I swear its contents were glowing with a chorus of angels singing from through the corrugated tin above our heads. It was chakrey, probably my favorite local food, one that I am sure I will miss when I leave here but I do not get it often because for some reason, Gambians do not feel that dairy is important in their diet at all. It is very simple, just homemade plain yogurt with a pile of coos in the middle, but it is absolutely amazing (something that cannot be said for most things here). So I ate more chakrey than any person should ever consume in one sitting, impressing my host mother who likes to tell me that her plan is to make me so fat that my mother wont recognize me when I go back to America. Being fat is a good thing here, but it still horrifies me every-time she says it. Her plan isn't working so far, but if she starts feeding me chakrey everyday, its a definite possibility. We then sat around in a room with about twenty people and watched a bollywood movie dubbed over in German. After that they put in a 2 hour long VHS of Jelibah in concert ( he is a famous Mandinkan Kora player who lives in Brikama next to Samantha) which was pretty entertaining...and then they put in another one, and then yet another. During the videos I would look around the room, everyone was gazing at me, not the TV, to see my reaction to their idol, Jelibah...so I tried my best to look pleasantly entertained for FOUR HOURS.

So around 9pm my host mother decided it is FINALLY time to go home and as we're leaving and feeling relieved, a young guy wearing Western clothes approaches. He greets my host mother and picks up Mama and swings her around, obviously someone very close to the family. He is introduced as my host mothers son, which means he is either her actual son or her nephew on her sisters side, yes its confusing. Their family systems are completely different. Your mother's sister is also your mother, but your fathers sister is your aunt. Your fathers brother is also your father but your mothers brother is your uncle...and this is the easy differences to understand. So anyway, then comes the inevitable being hit on by my creepy brother/uncle/cousin/ etc, where they tell me that that they love me in Mandinka and ask if I will become one of their wives. I usually play dumb and act like I don't know what they are saying, but there is ALWAYS someone there to translate it (but never when there is something that i need and do not know the word for it) and then make me as uncomfortable as possible. That's when I usually pull the George card and tell them that my boyfriend back home in America probably wouldn't like it if I got married, but he could be my second boyfriend, they usually start giggling and I walk away before they have the chance to actually agree to it.

We walked back out to the main road to catch a Gely back to Brikama. I'm not usually scared on the gelys, no matter how much they look like they might break in half if they go over 15 mph, but this ride was terrifying. I was packed into the seat right next to the door that kept opening whenever we went over a bump. I think Mama was just as scared for me as I was, she was sitting on her mothers lap with a firm grip on my arm so I wouldn't fall out of the Gely. We finally made it home, but not before I agreed to go to Pirang the next day after school to meet my host mothers extended family.

So The next day, when I came home from work around 1pm, we caught another gely and began the horrible ride to Pirang. It an incredibly hot day, my feet were right over something under the car that was making my sandals melt, but I couldn't move my legs because gelys are built for the comfort of passengers who are all under 4 ft tall, AND I had Mama on my lap, and a stranger pressed on one side of me who was literally dripping sweat on my arm. When we arrived in Pirang an hour later, I threw Mama out of the gely and basically dove out myself. We walked to my grandmothers compound. She looked like she was 115, but was probably 60. Of course, she was sitting there topless. So we sat on her porch for the next 8 hours greeting family member after family member, neighbor after neighbor, random person after random person, and whoever else decided to come by. My favorite part of the day was whenever some local village kid would come by and toubab me or ask for a minti, my host grandmother would jump down from the porch, topless and all, hunched over, and chase them around the compound with her cane raised in the air. The second best part of the day was that someone decided to let Mama drink attaya, the drink of Gambia, a very potent, strong green tea that has about an equal amount of water as sugar and is full of caffeine. They do this very rarely but when they do it is hilarious. Usually fairly quiet, she turns into a whirlwind of Mandinka chatter. I sat there and watched her literally run around in circles for half an hour, all the while talking a mile a minute in Mandinka, knowing completely that I had no clue what she was saying.

I think that day in Pirang alone, I received 7 confessions of love and marriage proposals...all from relatives. Once we finally get back to the Brikama car park late that night, my host mother decided that she wanted to catch a gely home instead of the 30ish minute walk in the dark. Now she speaks less English than I do Mandinka, but she did know how to say “take care of your bag” in English. I was confused by what she meant but I soon found out why she said that. To get into a gely to Sera Kunda that late at night we had to fight our way into a gely. Every time one would pull into the car park, the crowd of people trying to get to Sera Kunda would all be pushing and shoving to get into that one gely. Once again Mama is in her mothers arms, but holding onto my arm yelling "Sali! Sali" with a look of worry on her face that was too cute for words. The three of us finally battle our way into a gely and get dropped off on our street. Thinking about the fact that I was actually surprised that my cell phone and wallet were still in my purse, I promised myself that I will NEVER go into the Brikama carpark at night ever again.

As we were walking down our street, I remembered that I was out of bleach to put into my drinking water. So we stopped at a bitik. I do not know the Mandinka word for bleach, Mama and my host mother do not speak any English, so it made for an interesting time trying to explain to the bitik owner what I needed. I couldn't tell them that I put bleach in my water or they would probably think I was crazy, so the words that I knew to explain it were: it comes in a bottle, for washing clothes. They of course had no idea what it was that I wanted so the store owner let me come back behind the counter to look for what I wanted, something no bitik owner would have ever let me do, but my host mother can be pretty intimidating. So I go back there, rustle around, with everyone watching and couldn't find bleach anywhere. But then, as I stand up, I see a gorgeous poster of bleach on the bitik wall. I ran over to the poster and shouted "ning! ning! N lafita ning!" this! this! I want this! so I got my bleach and the three of us happily walked home, me the happiest of all after surviving two days of intense cultural immersion...surviving with nothing worse than a common cold from sharing food bowls with collectively around 30 people and a few new fiancees.