Blah blah blah PEACE CORP Blah blah blah AFRICA

SOON! soon.......

In August I will be headed back home for twenty two days. This upcoming event has been on my mind since I bought my tickets last week. Merica, such a foreign place these days. The more I think about it the more I realize that there is very little that I miss there right now. Except for you that is, you my faithful reader from America.  I miss your company and when I get back you will hear all my stories in full detail, complete with hand gestures, goofy facial expressions, and hopefully a lot of laughter. With that being said I am looking forward to some good ole junk food.....anyone want to cook a Digiorno burger while I am home?

Life in The Gambia is comfortably normal. Work has been painfully slow the last couple weeks but such is the nature of this line of work. Things are about to pick up nicely with a couple cashew training coming up. In addition there are some big basketball camps and tournaments coming up which I am stoked for. That is when I am at my happiest in this country, when I get to share my love of basketball with others. Outside of work things have been fairly busy. Since Hotel Tila Kandita (my house) opened up back in February I have been experiencing a steady flow of guests. As of today I have not had my house to myself in three weeks. Volunteers need a place to stay when they are in the capital and I got plenty of room. As I constantly tell people who tell me they don't want to burden me; the only time in my life I have had my own room was my mud hut in Dobong Kunda (besides Larry the damned rat who always mooched off my food), I am well trained in sharing space.

In other news I have decided to enter the local dating scene and have been going on dates with some of the locals here in the capital. It has been a very enjoyable and interesting experience thus far. Its like going on a date with an American yet somehow different. For example one women became very upset once she learned that I drank beer, this was something for her, coming from a strong Islam background, that was really hard to come to grips with. Another girl had a man studying in Sweden that her family has promised her to. They are not 'dating' just supposed to get married someday. Fun stuff like that you would rarely come across in the states. At the moment I cant see any of these relationships going anywhere but its been an rewarding experience.

Slow, that has become the opposite of my life. Its nice and time tends to fly but if there is one thing I learned to value in village it was taking the days one at a time. I learned how to slow things down and I can't tell you how valuable that is. That is my goal for the next two months before I head back to the motherland, slow things down once again. I keep thinking about how I am running out of time here. I keep coming up with lists of things I want to do before I leave. However just like during my first three months when I kept thinking I had too much time here left, I need to stop focusing on time and just live. Take it easy peeps, hopefully I will be seeing all of you soon.

Guess I am a city boy again

Well folks I live in the big city now. Life is a whole lot different now that I have internet, power, a shower (still cold), sidewalks to walk on, English speaking neighbors, a overhead fan, a job, and white people within a twenty second walk of me. At times it is almost surreal that the city and the bush village can be this different. They are two different worlds occupied by the same people. The other night I am sitting out with my new neighbors, it was similar to village in that they were chattering away in the local language and there were ten kids running around causing mayhem. Then my new ‘host sister’ came up and sat in my lap and started talking to herself. This to felt very normal as my host sister in village who was about the same age would often do the same thing. I would normally zone out as it was always in inaudible mandinkan. However it quickly became clear that things were not the same, Katty Jatou was talking to herself in English. She was talking about her fingers and what their roles were. I was blown out of the water once I started to listen to her. I started talking to her to get an idea of how good her English was. By the end of the night I concluded she could speak English better then about ninety five percent of my village. She is three years old!!

Work is going well; we recently finished installing four cashew processing facilities in various locations across the country. This is a pretty big step in getting the Gambian cashew industry on the world map. The key now is to get the people in charge of these facilities to be efficient and productive with the equipment so that investors will be willing to invest their cashews in them. For the next three months we will be training and monitoring them in hopes that they can get to a level that is considered competent. It has been interesting going back to a situation where I have to wake up in the morning and go to work. The weeks go by just as fast as they did in village the big difference now is that I appreciate weekends again. I had more or less forgotten that weekends used to mean something to me. Now I once again cherish and look forward to them. In village I would get a text reminding me I needed to head to the city soon and then think to myself “That time again eh? What day is it? Tuesday?” then I would look down at my phone and realize it was in fact Saturday (true story).

Seeing white people on a regular basis is also a new phenomenon. Not going to lie, I do enjoy being able to go and grab lunch with an American every other day. My fellow volunteers are good company and good people so I enjoy being able to see them once a day as opposed to once a month.  This last week I had a volunteer stay at my house for eleven straight days. It would appear my place has become a transit house, which I have to say I don’t mind. After living upcountry I see how convenient it is to have a friend with a house in Kombo. I also get to meet different people from all over the world here doing various forms of work and research and that has been an enjoyable experience as well. In addition I get an opportunity to be a lot more active here. I play Frisbee twice a week, basketball on Wednesday, salsa dance classes (which I start soon), as well as other random activities. There are also local gyms I can go to as well. I figured since I lost thirty five pounds now is the best time to start putting on muscles and get in shape again, which you know, I have not been in shape since high school.

I do miss the home people from Dobong Kunda however. They call to make sure I am fitting in ok and to make sure I have good neighbors. I am excited to head back up country and visit them; they are people I hope to never forget. Making new Gambian friends here in Kombo though as well, my neighbors are great people and I have started hanging out with other people I have come in contact with. It is important to me that I do not get too caught up in a twobob rush and only interact with them. I try to make time to spend with Gambians as often as possible, sharing my culture with them and hearing about theirs is still an important goal, one I would like to continue to pursue. In addition to the exchange of culture, I find it important not to lose my mandinkan skills. People really appreciate it when you can speak the language and more than once it has gotten me out of sticky situations. This last Sunday I went to the beach and found people to relax and speak Dink to. It was a great experience, they loved having a white person to speak a local language with and I was able to spruce up on my language. This also is one of my favorite things about this country, that I can go to the beach approach the first person who smiles and greets me (normally the first person I see) and sit down and have a genuine conversation with them. In America too often our first response is “What do you want from me?” as opposed to here where it tends to be “What can I do for you?” (Unless you are at a shop trying to buy groceries, there is no known word for customer service in Mandinka). This of course is not to say you don’t come across people who see your skin color and immediately treat you like a cash cow, those people are abundant and easy to identify. They are normally the ones who do the approaching. But the point is if you show them kindness and are genuine, they will return the favor.


Anyway thanks for reading, until next time.......... 

Snap shot of my service.

Its been one year now and it has been somewhat of a roller coaster. I was reading through all my journal entries the other day and realized how far I have come. I want to post three short journal entries that kind of give you an idea of whats gone on in my head since the start.

March 27th 2011

Today was a pretty awful day I would say. Starting to have some serious doubts about whether or not two years is feasible. You see every morning that I have woken up here has been more or less miserable. It is hot from start to finish and I sit around the whole day doing nothing. This morning was no different, I woke up and took a walk to try and take off the morning edge. Got back around ten hopefully ready to start my day. When I got back the baby was screaming, it was hot, and the goats would just not shut up. Not to mention my dad blabbing away to me as though I were some sort of pro in Mandinka. I could not stand the thought of staying in village for the whole day so I bolted. I took off to Bansang where I was hoping to use the Internet and send an email to my family. I wanted to just complain about things here to them, you know get some weight off my chest. Half hour later I find the cafe to be closed. I was so upset and on the verge of breaking down. I was able to cool down on the way back but my feelings about my service remain the same. I came here to work not sit around and brew tea all day. I left behind a pretty good life in America and I did it for a reason. Chilling for two years was not that reason. I understand how important the cultural exchange is and I have been doing nothing but that since coming here. However it does not take two years to exchange culture. If things don't improve I am going to seriously look at calling it quits, I cant stay painfully unhappy for two years its just not healthy.

July 23rd 2011

Life is improving. Things have been tough the last couple months trying to find purpose and work and though I am still not positive what I am doing here I am at least becoming content and happy on a daily basis. I have a good family and have made some amazing friends. Plus it looks like there might be something to look into with basketball here. I am getting to the point now where two years does not seem so daunting as it has since I began my service. More and more I am having "hey two years will be easy" moments then the ever depressing "two years is going to take forever" I realized something as I was thinking back to my first couple months here. I was taking the wrong approach to my service, all my thoughts were negative focusing on the Why-I-Cant-Do-This and starting every thought with "when my two years are up" as if it were some sort of prison sentence. Positive thoughts have been helping and at this point in my service I am happy I made this choice and would do so again in a heart beat, despite all its difficulties.

January 6th 2012

Well it has been exactly a year since I touched down in the Gambia. Have to admit it feels good, there was a point in my service where I thought for sure I would not make it this far but here I am. I look back on this year and realize how much I have grown and how far I have come. I am forever changed by this experience and the changes are good ones. I have learned so much here. New skills, new cultures, new people, new lifestyles. I know things were rough at first but I am now having the time of my life here. I am well adjusted, confident, and absolutely loving every second on my time here.The relationships I have made stand out more than anything. I have met some of the most remarkable people in my fellow volunteers. In addition and most importantly the relationships I have made with Gambians have been life altering. I wish I could say that I taught them more then they taught me but I would be lying. I came into my service thinking that I would be doing the teaching but that role was quickly reversed. The best part is I am no where close to finished. There is sooo much more I am ready to learn from them, so many conversations yet to be had and so muchwork still to be done. Throughout my service I have posed myself with this scenario. Peace Corps hands you a plane ticket to America and says "If you would like you can go home, your service would be finished, you can keep all the benefits and even call yourself a RPCV or if you want you can finish out your service." For the first time I can say truthfully that I would elect to finish out my service. I am not ready to go home yet.

Happy Kwanza!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! or as they say here in the Gambia, Merry Christmas. This will be my first Christmas not spent with my family. So today I will be spending it with my new extended family, that is my amazing fellow Peace Corp volunteers. Honestly I cannot say enough about these people, they are some of the most remarkable individuals I have ever met. With that being said I do miss my peeps back home, I have been here for almost a year (Jan 6th marks one year). All is well over on my side of the ocean, the weather is amazing. It is cold season now, so it is now freezing over here. The lows are around 60 in the night and highs of 95 during the day. Seriously I get REALLY cold during the nights and the days are some of the most comfortable and enjoyable days I have experienced in this country thus far. Work is good, been doing some work with the women's gardens as well as work in the cashew field in preparation for dry season. Also been doing a lot of brainstorming about projects for next year, its going to be a very busy year. So I am moving, yep thats right moving...nope not back to America. My friends I am heading to the city. In about two months I will finish my service in the city of Serekundna where I will work for an organization named IRD that does large scale cashew promotion in the Gambia. The main reason for the move however is for my basketball project, which I believe I discussed in a previous post. I am really excited about the move mainly for the reason that I get to do something I am incredibly passionate about. Basketball Baby! However this does mean I will be leaving my village and host family. This was a really difficult decision to make. The people of Dobong Kunda and the Jaiteh family have been the most welcoming, kind, and hospitable people during my stay there. I made friends for life and have come to love these people. I will of course get to visit, monthly if I so choose. However I am excited to get a new experience and some amazing work. Oh ya, this does mean I get to experience amenities again. There is something pretty hardcore and awesome about living in the bush with no amenities, it definitely makes me prideful and its something I will brag about for like a year once I get back. With that being said, I am looking forward to a toilet, electricity, and daily internet access. Anyways ya, um quick recap of life over the last couple months. Tobaski was celebrated, which meant rams were sacrificed in mass. Elections happened, Jamme is still president and if I were not a peace corp volunteer I would gladly write a long post about my opinions on that. HIV Bike trek happened, taught the finer points of HIV/AIDS to over 200 kids out in the bush. Loved that! Lets see what is coming up.....Going to Dakar, Senegal in January for a Peace Corps Conference that will be followed with an International Softball Tourney I will be participating in. New group of volunteers coming in, moving, hot season.................but ill have a fan this year!!!! Anyways peeps Merry Christmas, Happy New Years, keep me updated on life and TILL NEXT TIME!

Its Been A Long Time Since I Left You, Left You, Left You.................

Hello old friends it has been a couple months hasn't it? I am sure you have all been semi kept in touch with my activities here. I mean you know I am still alive and have not come down with any major sicknesses. Which really is all you need to know. The last couple of months have just flown by. Rainy season came and went and now I have 100 healthy cashews waiting to become massive cash generating machines. I have also formed a close relationship with the Bansang Youth Development Association. Its a group of about twenty highly motivated people around my age running around doing various projects for the community. Like malaria sensitization, AIDS/HIV work and tree planting projects. They are a highly intelligent group of people and I have really enjoyed working with them.

So one really cool thing that happened over the last couple of months was the 2nd annual HIV/AIDS Bike Trek. This was a project started by volunteers last year where about 30-40 volunteers bike from school to school in these rural villages teaching young students about HIV/AIDS. Last year they went through North Bank. This year they chose to start in Bansang and then continue on up country. Being the only volunteer within spitting distance of Bansang I was responsible for developing the school in that area and getting everything ready for about 12 volunteers to come and stay for four days. It was a lot of work and a lot of stress, but it paid off in the most rewarding way. I worked with a Gambian teacher Mr. Modou S. Bah. This man was amazing to work with and Him and I as well as two other volunteers Meg and Kim taught a class of about 45 for two days about HIV/AIDS. As sight developer and team leader I was expected to do most of the teaching in the class. I have never taught before, coaching is the closest thing but even then I was not standing up in front of 45 kids who speak poor English trying to convey the finer details of HIV/AIDS. There were some bumps in the road. I spoke too fast at times, I lost patience with the kids in back falling asleep, and during an awkward conversation about sexual fluids and how they can be transferred I started babbling on about sweat pores (yaaa don't ask). But I feel like overall with the help of my counterparts we nailed the lesson and the vast majority of the class left with more knowledge. I must say it was highly rewarding work, planting trees is fun and all but there is something great about watching a kid finally understand what your talking about and know that after today he/she is better informed for the rest of his/her life. Good stuff guys....

So from there we all headed from the bush that is Basse to city that is Kombo. We the peace corp had a date with his excellency President Sheikh Professor Alahajie Dr. Yaya A.J.J Jammeh. It was one of the more bizarre, surreal nights of my life.It started out with us heading to his home village Kanilai where he has a huge farm and hotel and other really nice first world buildings. We were escorted in by a parade of dancing people, there were drums and music and people in funny costumes. We got the whole works. We eventually made are way into the hotel and had lunch there, which was awesome, and then from there headed into this small stadium like enclosure. When I say stadium I mean more like a high school football field. We all sat down and awaited for his excellency to arrive so the program could begin. He took a while, like the program was supposed to be over by eight so we could start the grand dinner but in true Gambian fashion he showed up at 7:30. He did however show up in style, he screamed into the stadium in a nice, black SUV. He came to a violent stop and then proceeded to accidentally kill the car. It was awesome, everyone started singing and dancing in the stadium and then he came over and sat down on a couch that was literally about ten feet away from me. He was joined by the ambassador for the U.S. and our country director. He allowed all of us to come and shake his hand, which was cool.

The program began with a couple speeches and then some speeches by some volunteers in each one of the local languages. You can the prez was digging the local language speeches it was the only time I did not see him looking bored. Then some more people spoke about how awesome the Peace Corp is and how valuable we were to the country. It was kinda cool to hear all the praise we were getting from Gambians. Nice to know your appreciated you know? A bunch of the volunteers put on a skit that they preformed at a girls camp the previous month. It was about environmental awareness and the president also really loved that as there were a lot of jokes in there that only people living in Gambia would understand. Good stuff so far, so after all this happens the president gives his speech. It was a good one I guess, his accent is kind of thick at times but it was funny. He talked about getting Gambians to volunteer there time and going over to do work in Somalia. He also showered us with praise. Then he said he had a surprise for us all. Turns out he bought every single one of us dresses or full Gambian caftans (traditional male dress). Mine that he gave me was in one word: AWESOME. You just have to look at the pictures to know, its the difference between a button up shirt and a full out suit. Most people got the button up and I got the suit. Jammeh loved it so much on me and the two others who got it that we got to go up and take a picture with him. It was exciting, I was kind of like a little giddy school girl during that little episode.

After all this we all boogie over to the dining area for dinner and a documentary one of our volunteers put together. We had an epic dinner that was full of all kinds of delicious meats and other things we never get in village. Dinner got over at 2 a.m. at which point people started dancing. Jammeh got out there and shook a jig and then proceeded to point at people. If he pointed at you it meant he wanted you to dance and if the president wants you to dance you really have no choice but to dance. It was really hilarious watching him point to people and then watching them break out in dance while he calmly enjoys the whole scene. A lot of the volunteers got to dance with him and the whole scene was really crazy when you thought "this guy is the president of the Gambia" at one point he pointed at the cooks and the all came storming over in their full chef garb and chef hats. They then proceeded to all swarm on him and dance. His body guards got upset and told them to dance at a respectable distance. Side not I tried to put my arm around the president during one of our pics together and I got my hand swatted away by his body guards "NO TOUCHING!" it stunk we could have totally looked like BFFs. Anyways the night ended and we all went to bed and then awoke to fresh bacon. Good times folks, good times....

So next up I got my training clinic for refs and in January I will be headed to Dakar, Senegal for a international softball tournament. I will post a new post then...anyways hope all is well in Merica....till next time!

(Insert Generic Blog Title Here)

What to write about? I am at the point now where this whole experience has become quite normal for me. So when I sit down to reflect about what I have done and where I have been it all sounds terribly boring. I think to myself "there is no way they will want to hear about that," when in truth you all might find it very interesting. I already updated my blog on what I am doing with basketball and I have more or less been sticking to that. Had another camp just finish and come September after Ramadan I will hold my reffing clinic. I guess that is one thing coming up, Ramadan shall be starting soon. No I wont be fasting, sorry but I drink too much water to even think about attempting it this year. I am curious to see how it goes though, I will be working and living with people who will be fasting all month long. They can only break fast in the early morning and late evenings. This includes water not just food, so ya its tougher then it looks. I will be heading on my first vacation come end of August though. Me and about seven others are heading to Guinea Conakry, we will be hiking some mountains over there. Should be exciting, they have thick forests, waterfalls, and REAL mountains there. Not the hills people call mountains here.

As far as work goes I just got done working on my cashew orchard for my village. Still a lot of work to be done on it but at least the seeds are in the ground, now all we need is rain. Its been a pretty dry rainy season thus far. Also got a village tree nursery going, that one goes a little slower as I am still experimenting with what works and does not. Lets see went on a couple of moringa treks, which is where we bike around the country planting moringa beds. For those of you that don't know moringa is a tree that grows here that is CRAZY healthy for you. It has many many uses and is great for feeding malnourished children. I helped plant over 5,000 of these trees, the goal for this year is 50,000. Also got an HIV trek coming up where we bike around teach students about HIV and STD's.....yep staying as busy as I can and I love it.

Lets see what else? I am now a quarter of the way through my service, pretty crazy really. Its been a roller coaster so far. I have gone from absolutely loving it here to getting ready to call peace corp and telling them I am going home and then back to loving it and then back again to hating it. However I finally feel though that things are stabling out for me. Things are flying now, heck we got new volunteers in country so I am not even the newbie anymore.

Ill finish with a list of goals I want to accomplish before leaving:
-Become good at live trapping (really want to eat some of the wild bush meat here..monitor lizard, bush fowl, bush pig, hyena, you know the usual)
-Leave 30 trained basketball officials behind.
-Read at least 120 books (currently sitting at 20 so I need to pick it up)
-Travel to four new countries
-Leave behind 100 healthy cashew trees for my village to make bank off of.
-Meet the president
-To leave the country with an advanced understanding of the language (due to my recent basketball involvement my language progress has halted)
-Oh and figure out what I want to do with my life when I get back!!!

"Basketball is kind of a huge deal here"

So I dont know if you heard but I kinda had the best week ever here in Gambia. Oh whats that you did not hear? Well let me fill you in on what went down. So I came into kombo to take part in this basketball clinic that was being put on by the embassy. Over the phone I was told "there will be about 80 students and 20 or so coaches that we will be training." In reality we ended up training about 35 coaches and over 300 students....ya basketball in Gambia is a much bigger deal than I anticipated. It was GREAT these coaches were so passionate and willing to learn more about the game and the students were just happy to be bouncing a ball that did not have lumps in it. In addition there were some suprisingly talented players out there. I enjoyed myself immensely despite the language barrier and the excess amount of people. Seriously guys basketball here could really take off, we had some games on Friday and there were an amazing amount of fans present there to cheer on their favorite players (more than Crescent games). Everyone was dancing, cheering, and having a great time.

Now that alone did not make the best week ever. The man who coached the clinic was good ole Tommy Davis. For those of you that have never heard of him he was an ex NBA player who played in Europe and is now the coach of a proffesional team in France. This dude is straight up awesome, he invited us to hang out at his hotel on a daily basis. I know that may not seem much to you guys but this is a five star quality hotel we are talking about here. So like I hung out at the pool and on the beach and uh ya.....as a man living in a mud hut this was the high life. On top of that the embassy thanked us for helping out by buying us lunch at the most expensive resturant in the Gambia....oh M G that lunch was amazing. The coffee was real, the food was delicious, and the dessert was to die for.....I mean at this very moment I am struggling putting my feelings into words.

Ya awesome week....and I know some of you back home may be struggling to find the  'awesomness' in all of this but trust me it is there you just need to live here for five months to find it. On top of all this the embassy found out I was a basketball offical in America. So now they want me to basically spearhead this project in training basketball officals around the country. Their hope is that with my help and training we can establish a national Gambian Officals Association. Which you know is prett epic when you think about it, me being directly responsible for the training of dozens of officals who will one day be officiating a sport which I am really confident will explode into a national phenomenon. Whatever I am super excited about all this, I arrived here under the assumption that I would play little to no basketball and here I am helping coach the national team and training motivated officals who are eager to learn more about the game.

So there are a lot of great pictures on facebook of the clinic for those who want to see some proof that this is in fact what I am up to here. I am just way to lazy to post them here so deal with it. Anyways that is what is going on in my life and I could not be more excited about it. Hope all is well in Merica.....cheers.