Most Gambians don't eat lunch until mid afternoon, in my families case, 3:30. So normally around noon I begin to get hungry and have to get a snack. The other day I walked to the bitik to get bread and bitik-chocolate (kind of like nutella but not nearly as good). Here they pronounce chocolate with a ridiculous french-ish accent "shho-co-lot" which I feel like an idiot saying (of all things,right?) so I usually don't say it that way and they eventually guess what it is I want when I repeat it over and over and point. This day, no such luck. I asked for bread and chocolate, he looked at me strangely and repeated back "bread and chocolate" in his best American accent. He squinted at me, head tilted sideways, a look that I get a million times a day here that doesn't even strike me as abnormal anymore, and reaches under the counter and pulls out a loaf of bread an a bag of charcoal. "Here you go, bread and chocolate" he said.
I have a friend in Brikama named Rachel, a VSO from Australia. She's incredibly funny, quirky, and so much fun. Last weekend she invited me to go into Kombo with her for a VSO Hanukkah party and of course I went. We walked up to the party and I met the awesome mix of 2 Canadian Jews who were hosting the party, a girl from Norway and her three guy friends who were visiting who had names that sounded like they belonged to cavemen, many many Brits, and one who was sweating profusely who had just flown in that day from Moscow. After I met all of the people whose names I couldn't pronounce, I turned around and there was a GIANT table of food just sitting there. Let me give you some background information before I continue. I don't want to generalize because I haven't met all of the VSOs, just a handful, but from what I have seen VSOs generally live in nice houses, comparatively speaking, with electricity, motorbikes, and many more accommodations than most Peace Corps have, and they get paid by normal standards, unlike us. So of course I see a table of pizza, chips, liquor, cake, fruit, and tons of other things I haven't seen and much less eaten in months. I started stalking the table, circling it, wondering why it was being ignored by everyone else around me. The rest of the evening I had to struggle to contain my excitement that I was eating something other than rice and fish. We did some Hanukkah stuff, lit the menorah, ate potato latkes, drank Jewish wine, and ate jelly doughnuts and then left for Senegambia. The bar we went to didn't have karaoke which disappointed the VSOs deeply. Their solution? Make the house band play songs that they know while they sing into the microphone. I have never heard so many renditions of that horrible song "Who the Fuck is Alice" in my life.
Tourist season has arrived. The sex trade is in full swing on the coast and I think the raging hormones of the bumsters and the aging European women must be in the air. Men who have known me for 3 of the almost 6 months I have been here, who have previously been nothing but polite, have gone absolutely insane. My counterpart has taken to using metaphors that involve us kissing, my 18 year old host brother has started taking every opportunity to tell me how beautiful I am that day, and I get "hey boss lady, what is your nice name???!" more times a day than I get normal greetings. Even small ten year old boys will shout out "I looooveee youuuu" as I zoom past on my bike. I never could have guessed how much more difficult my life would be here due to an annual influx of old European women.
Entertainment for me here comes in many forms. Whether it is laying on my floor listening to NPR podcasts for 5 hours straight, or sitting with my neighbors at night in the dark listening to them talk only understanding maybe one out of every ten words, or spending hours writing my blogs out by hand so I can go to the Internet cafe and speedily type it out so i don't end up spending a fortune on internet. So my sister Mama has this friend who is maybe 5 or 6, and is absolutely terrified of me. He will peak his head into the compound, see me, and then refuse to come in until I go into my house, and if I come out while he is in the compound he will freeze, eyes wide, start screaming, and run away. I normally humor him and stay in my house when he comes around but on one particularly boring day I saw him come out and I decide not to go into my house. He ran away and I looked over at Mama and put a finger to my lips and say "shhhh" as we creep up to the compound door. She understood what I was trying to do and started giggling. She went outside the door and yelled at her friend that Sali-toubab has gone inside, she wont come out. Come back! I peeked through the door and could see him inching back , still obviously terrified. I started second guessing myself "Maybe this is too much, maybe I shouldn't scare him, this might make him scared of white people for the rest of his life....screw it, I'm gonna do it." When he got to the doorway I jumped out, yelled "BOO!!!" and watched as he spun on his heel and starting running down the street faster than I ever thought a 5 year old could run, looking over his shoulder to make sure the scary toubab wasn't chasing him. Mama and I collapsed on the ground giggling for the rest of the afternoon.
Thanksgiving was at the Peace Corps medical officer's house and it was maybe the best Thanksgiving I could have hoped for here. Most of the 100 volunteers in the country came out of the bush to celebrate and had an amazing time. The PCMO Mike has nice house with a huge backyard where we ate ourselves sick and hung out all day. The next day was the annual tradition of PC vs the American Embassy beach volleyball game. The American embassy bought out the beach bar so I'm blaming our loss on that. Yes, we lost, but yes, some of us were also drunk. I won't name any names. That night was the peace corps open mike night at Sinatra's where we listened to songs and poems about sex, the disappointment of finding your texting inbox full and not receiving that last text, love, the apparante in Farrafini, and a Gambian themed remix of the Mountain Goat's song "This Year" with the incredibly appropriate lyric "I'm going to make it through this year if it kills me", and one magic trick. Overall a really great holiday.
So I've told my host family all about my boyfriend at home,George. Mama has even "talked" to him on the phone a few times. I'll leave you with a conversation I had with my host mother about George that we had about a month ago just as an example of one of my many failed attempts at the Mandinkan language. Keep in mind, this was all spoken in Mandinka:
Her: Sali, you have a boyfriend in America right?
Me: Yes, his name is George. I told you about him.
Her: But you want to meet a Gambian husband while you are here?
Me: Oh...no.
Her: What, you do not like black men?
Me: No! I mean yes, I mean I like black man, [pausing trying to think of how to explain to her that I don;t dislike black men, but I'm in a relationship, something they don't really seem to get]
Her: Oh, so you do want a Gambian husband!
Me: NO! George would not like.
Her: George does not like black men?
Me:NO! George does not want ME to like black man, George does not want me to like white man. George does not want me to like ANY man.
Her: Oh, ok. George does not like black man.
At that point I give up. Thinking I would clear this up later after I took a look in my language book to be able to say what I needed to say. Of course I forgot, and the next day George called me and I sat on my porch and talked to him with Mama sitting on the ground watching me, as usual. I hung up and she says in Mandinka "That was George?" I say yes,and then she says "Oh yes, George does not like black man."
So now my host family thinks my boyfriend hates black people but for some reason they aren't offended and think its funny, and I'm too tired to correct them. Should be interesting if he ever comes to visit...
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