Things usually don't seem as bad in retrospect as they did were when you originally experienced them. Especially when you have so many positive memories associated with a place, you don't want the less auspicious ones taking over. Hardship, because of it's relative nature, is everywhere and manifests itself in different forms for different people. Yet there's power to be found in overcoming challenges or at least moving beyond them. There are plenty of things I experienced in the Gambia that I never want to encounter or repeat again, yet I tend to produce a little smile as I think back about them.
For anyone who has been to The Gambia feel free to comment and add to the list.
Things I wont miss:
Bumsters-These are young guys who hang out at the beach and “work out” with the hopes of finding a foreign patron to seduce or really any foreigner to hassle. While they come in a few different varieties, their unofficial uniform usually includes dreadlocks with a mesh shirt with the colors of the Jamaican flag or no shirt at all. They can be seen doing one-armed push-ups, flexing and sprinting back and forth at the beach. They try to act friendly in their broken English with phrases like “It's nice to be nice” and “Boss Lady”. They often pretend to be Rastafarians without having anyidea what that means. I understand the urge to sell things to tourists and even the fantasy of being taken to Europe or America, but what I don't understand is how a human being can make himself so unresponsive to the messages being conveyed by other people. No matter what you say to these guys they never shut up and they never go away! It doesn't matter if you've lived in their country fro two years and speak a local language flawlessly. They're like robots without real personalities programmed to annoy any Westerner they see. I grabbed a bumster by the shoulders once and explained to him my robot theory. He gave me a blank stare for awhile and then said, “Yeah man,” indicating he had no idea what a robot is.
Foolish tourists-As an American who enjoys integrating into and working in different African countries, ill-informed, insensitive, tourists are the bane of my existence. Nothing wrong with relaxing and soaking up the sun while you're on holiday, but there's no need to wear daisy dukes into town in a culturally conservative majority-Muslim country. And sure it might help to donate schools supplies to a school, but don't do it without locals giving guidance and don't toss bundles of pens/bottles/biscuits/etc. to every random kid on the street. Sadly, some tourists even buy-in to Bumsterism descirbed above. I could go on and on about the poor choices tourists make, but the general consequence is that local people start to make generalizations and/or begin to beg, harass, and at the very least, make negative assumptions about any foreigner that they see. Tourists please leave your naive, dark continent, wild animal, starving, click-language misconceptions at home, you're cramping my style.
Bad cell network-The village I was posted in seriously had some of the worst cell phone reception in the country. Of course the mobile industry has made leaps and bounds in the last few years in providing innovative services and designing cheap, accessible technology...but they didn't make it to my village yet. No that string hanging from my phone is not a fashion trend, in fact, the only ways I could get even a shred a service were by hanging my phone from select (high) locations or by climbing 20 feet up a water talk. And even then I only get service sometimes. Not being the fastest person to respond to texts or calls anyway, this actually gave me a great excuse for why I didn't get ahold of people earlier, but still, there were plenty of times when I wanted urgently to make a text/call and it just couldn't go through. Damn you Africell/Comium/Gamcel/QCell! Four GSM operators and not one with good coverage?
The heat-As much as I love sweating 24 hours a day, I'm a bit relieved to be home in America just as the hot season is getting serious with 120 degree days. Even the locals will tell you that the heat is crazy. The village I lived in was one of the furthest up-country where the heat was the most extreme. Gambians from the cooler, coastal area would routinely ask me how I could deal with the heat when even they couldn't handle it. I really have no idea, just drink a lot of water I guess and suck it up. Think of any adjective synonymous with burning and thats what it's like. Take your pick: searing, blazing, boiling, etc. It's a bit scary because no matter where you go, whether inside, outside, shade or sun you're being blasted with oven-like waves of heat. It saps your energy and soaks all your clothes with salty sweat. Riding a bike in the afternoon can be positively suicidal, but for some reason, I would end up torturing myself like that. When it's at it's peak, there's absolutely no escape from the heat.
Police checkpoints-Here's a fun little quirk in the Gambia that makes traveling fun! For whatever reason, despite the Gambia being particularly safe, with relatively few firearms, it has been deemed necessary to have checkpoints all along the main highways in the Gambia on both sides of the river...every 15 or 20 kilometers. Now when you consider the fact that I lived about 300 km from the capital, going down to the main office to take care of business was not very pleasant. Nearly every single checkpoint forces passengers to show an official ID and nearly every single car has someone who forgot to bring their ID so there's plenty of opportunity for police, customs and immigration to hassle people and waste enormous amounts of time (not all of them are ill-tempered and corrupt, but they ain't all angels either). A journey that should take maybe 5 hours ends up taking 13. And then there's the bag checks. Sometimes they look in everyone's bags, often threatening to take down the metric tons of baggage on top of the vehicles. Other times they check only certain individuals. I can't even count the number of times I've been “randomly” selected for a bag check. The whole checkpoints thing seems like it would be bad for business. And you build roads to ease transport only to slow it down with checkpoints that are for national security? I'll tell you what, I didn't feel a whole lot safer.
Lack of press freedom and freedom of speech-I'm gonna limit myself on this one, but I'm not the biggest fan of arresting of journalists for seemingly no reason and having to look over your shoulder before you open your mouth.
Village meat-People have asked me, “What did you eat over there in The Gambia?” I say, “Well, I lived with a host family and ate three meals a day with them so I ate whatever they had. The staples were rice or coos (another cereal) with peanut or leaf sauce pretty much every day. We didn't have much meat, only on special occasions.” Then they say, “Oh, that's too bad.” And I reply, “Actually, it was better that way.” Village meat is absurdly far from being appetizing. Even after the you move beyond the health condition of the animal when it died, the process isn't especially appealing. They just boil it all up and serve everything, intestines, liver, bones, fat and plenty of other unrecognizable parts, that are sure to active the gag reflex. It's a good thing peanuts also have protein, that meat was funky.
Being asked for to be taken to America or for a visa/invitation-As you can imagine, this gets old right after the first time, even when the person humorously asks to be put in your bag when you fly home. It's not as funny when the person wont let it go and was actually serious about being put in your bag. Okay, “I'll put you in my bag with the other 300 people and see if I can make it through customs.” Unfortunately, it gets sad after awhile when people who really have no skills that would be marketable in America let alone English speaking ability (or even any knowledge at all of American culture) keep asking over and over again. I've lost friends over it, but there's not much that can be done by an individual in the short term. To be fair, immigration law is rather unfair and desperately needs reform.
Toubabing-American, even-black Americans and Europeans, Asians, okay most foreigners who have been to West Africa can sympathize with the obnoxious usage of the word “Toubab” which is often translated as “stranger” or “white person” in all of the local languages. My gripe is again in the generalization of the term. The us and them mentality. The lack of distinction between the diverse peoples of the world. So the British and the French came to Africa and practiced economic and physical domination in form of colonialism, lame, I agree, but considering how globalization has propagated information and how diverse even single societies are now, the term is outdated to say the least. It's the worst when you greet someone in a local language and their only reply is “Toubab!” Even on the radio, the main form of media for rural Gambians you hear in local languages, “The Toubabs did this and the Toubabs did that.” It makes no sense for encouraging people to be aware of others cultures and for empowering people to realize that innovation can come from anywhere.
Skin infections-The Gambian heat can do strange things to one's skin in places one never thought possible. I'll leave it at that.
Beatings-I just never got used to this one and I'm proud of the fact that I was almost always quick on my feet to break up particularly savage beatings. Many parties are guilty and it's always hard to see and deal with, though especially so at schools where the teachers will tell that beatings “are how the black child learns”. Bullshit. It doesn't improve performance one bit. What it does is make kids afraid to go to school. If someone can tell me a legitimately good reason to beat their wife/child/student I'd be happy to hear it, but I haven't heard one yet.
Irregular power supply-Yeah, the Gambia is still working on implementing regular and safe power delivery. I lost two laptop chargers in a week once. And the power always seems to be off when you have a really important email to send.
Inshallah attitude-The view that “god willing” your desired outcome will occur is pretty universal and though it occurs in different intensities, it doesn't make it any less frustrating when you're trying to work with people to take responsibility for improving their livelihoods (something most people clearly want). Rural Gambian communities especially can have a little too much faith and not enough motivation to take good care of their families.
Obsession with “Babylon”-Babylon of course being the gold-paved roads of America/Europe (same thing). The economic desire to earn more for the same amount of work is actually pretty rational, however the problem comes in when the people with the dream to strike it rich in EuroAmerica don't do much of anything to invest in themselves or their children to make that goal realistic. Instead the young men travel through the deserts of the Sahara into Morocco, Algeria, Libya, or Tunisia before attempting to take small boats across the Mediterranean illegally. There are numerous pitfalls to overcome along the way including the Sahara itself, land mines, North African police, sinking ships, European immigration and more. Many actually perish in the sand and sea, but to so many young men the payoff is worth it even if you end up dong grueling work as day laborer in the construction or agriculture industries. Some even reportedly end up selling drugs. The pressure on the young men to go is rather intense as well. Even people with regular jobs in the Gambia can be considered failures when compared with successful migrants who build mammoth houses for their families. It's a sad cycle of abandoning human capital development and discrediting honorable local workers for perceived riches. This will hopefully be the subject of another post.
Lack of privacy-When you integrate fully into a community as was my goal, you really become part of the community. What that practically means is that your free time is reduced to practically zero as people come to your door at all hours of the day or night to say hello. I didn't mind as much when it was cute girls, but everyone else can be pretty annoying. The worst is when somebody come into your house, greets you and then just sits down without saying else. Nice gesture I suppose, but if you're busy and would prefer to be alone it can drive you mad. And they'll sit there for hours if you let them without picking up on any subtle hints that you want them out. In my village and it didn't matter, if my door was closed, what I was wearing, if I just got back from the bucket bath, if I had a private guest, whatever, people would continue to barge in. It had a nice community feel, truly I was honor that my community felt so comfortable with me, but can't a guy get a little privacy every once in awhile?
Content-less phone calls-Along the same lines as the scenario described above, people would regularly call me who I barely knew, greet me and say “Ansumana” (my Gambian name) and then go silent. They had obviously not planned anything beyond saying my name and I would have to awkwardly have to figure out who it was and then think of something to say. It was a mess. The worst is when they do it at night. Curse the phone companies for giving people free calling after 1am!
Ah, the memories. I hope this post isn't too much of a downer. My service in the Gambia was an immensely enlightening process and I'm grateful I got to have so many worthwhile experiences to learn from and look back on. The ups and the downs, everything.
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