Farming

On Friday evening last week I took a phone call from my friend Ebrima. “What are your plans for the weekend?” he asked. “We are going to be farming. Come and help.”

I could imagine what that meant, and it sounded like heavy physical work to me. Fortunately I had a dentist appointment in the morning, so I had an excuse for arriving late. When I found them, Ebrima and Ousman were preparing the ground for rice, clearing away grass and weeds that had grown up in just a few weeks since the start of this year’s rain. Actually they were not clearing the grass, so much as turning the soil over and therefore burying all the unwanted plant growth. I suppose this has a similar effect to ploughing. (Some people here do use ploughs, generally pulled by a donkey or a pair of oxen, but never behind a tractor).

But our ploughing was all to be done by hand. In the middle of the rainy season the water table is not far below ground level and so the soil we were digging was very wet. You can judge the level of the water table by looking into a well, and it is very high at the moment. This is good for rice, but makes for an interesting digging experience. Using long-handled spades we tore the mat of grass into chunks and turned over each turf, a course to the left and another to the right, creating raised mounds with water-filled channels between. Then, stood satisfyingly to our ankles in brown water, we dug more mud from each channel to build up the height of the mounds and to completely cover the green of grass and weeds. The final result was a lattice of soil mounds trapping square pools of water, which apparently is good for preserving water when the rainy season finishes.

Needless to say I was rubbish at this whole activity. I suppose that between us we cleared the area of two tennis courts that morning but my personal contribution was less than the size of one service box, and as I did so I provoked considerable mirth among a group of women passing by on their way to market. I wanted to appeal to them that I come from a strong horticultural background. I grew up in the country (well, kind of). My father took his gardening so seriously that he used to pee in his own compost heap. And so keen was he to have decent mulch that he made my brother and I collect multiple barrows of oak leaves from the passageway adjacent to our house, and then fish out the tiny little sticks. And also, my piano teacher lived on a smallholding in the middle of nowhere, with vegetables, summer fruits, sheep and a viscous goose called Jake. (And we had to cycle there for our lessons come sun, rain or ice storm, uphill along a poorly lit a main road – what were my parents thinking of?). And for all this, it turns out I cannot dig. After two rows I was worn out and had to drink cool water from the well. “Ah it’s OK,” said Ebrima, “You should rest. After all, your teeth hurt.” Very understanding of him, I thought.

It was strangely pleasant to stand in the water and feel warm sludge between my toes. As my exhaustion gave way to delirium I began to imagine what it would be like to lie down for a rest in one of the muddy pools we had created. I am sure there are places where people pay for this as a kind of therapeutic experience. Perhaps not alongside the tidal bolongs of The Gambia, but in the right places there is good money to be made from operating such an enterprise. However, I suspect that the genre of tourists who are attracted to The Gambia rarely partake of such exalted activities. At last Ebrima decided that he too was tired, so we squelched over to the well to wash our feet, and then sat under a mango tree to drink hot sweet attaya. Ah, bliss.

Later, when we were walking home we passed a man who had driven his yellow taxi into mud, where he was firmly stuck. By all accounts it was a surprising choice of places to drive, appearing to me to be the corner of a rice field. “This is normally a road,” the driver told me. And though that may be true in the dry season, it felt like a futile line of argument to pursue when your car is sinking into the bubbling swamp. He engaged forward and reverse gears alternately but all he accomplished was to splatter a group of innocent bystanders with mud. Then he offered me a turn at the wheel, which I enjoyed but with no greater success. The same group of women passed by again on their way back from market and stopped to point at me. “Look!” they appeared to be saying, “The toubab cannot dig, and now he has driven his taxi into a paddy field!” Gradually a crowd gathered and we were able to extricate the car, having first lifted each corner in turn to put rocks under the wheels. That was my idea I might add; you see, the white man is not completely clueless.

Road pictures

Some pictures of my road this weekend.

During late July and August we have heavy rain nearly every day. The ground is a bit wet. The sand surface of my road has become deep mud, crossed by channels people have dug in an attempt to drain away some of the standing water.

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

And I need to thank a number of people who have sent various gifts for my local friends and neighbours here. Follow this link to see some pictures and read a short account called Thank You.

Saint Louis, Senegal

We had some pretty special rain on Monday afternoon. The skies got darker and darker from about half-past three. At the same time I discovered that neither of the vehicles that usually offer me a ride home was on site. Normally this would send me scurrying to the taxi park to find a minibus heading my way…but getting out of Banjul this way involves pushing and fighting for a place and climbing onto moving vehicles, and I did not fancy doing this in a downpour. So I asked around and found a ride; this car was not going exactly the way I needed, but it got me out of Banjul at least. The rain lashed against the windscreen as we queued out of the capital and across Denton Bridge. We turned across the rice fields outside Bakau, and found that the road was awash. There is no real drainage system, and surface water has to find its own way to lower ground; in this case it was coursing towards us, a brown muddy river over the width of the road. And then, perhaps inevitably, one of the cars in the queue ahead of us broke down. A large lorry managed to get past the obstacle, but for cars this was not really an option, as it meant driving into deeper water on the sand at the side of the road. So we waited amidst the rising water, and watched as the occupants of the imperilled car opened their doors, removed their shoes, gingerly stepped outside and began to push the car upstream to a dryer position.

Meanwhile our windows misted up, and the occupants of my car had an argument about which settings to use on the air blower to clear the windscreen. Many hands pressed all kinds of knobs; the hazard warning lights, the interior light, the rear window heater, the radio, even the handbrake. Now, being from a cold wet country, I am familiar with demisting car windows, and I could have given these colleagues a little assistance to solve their problem. But they did not ask, so I let them get on with it. It is like this at work sometimes, too. I am realizing that people need to acknowledge their need for help first, otherwise the help that is offered may be unwelcome, or misunderstood, or even perceived as a threat.

A little while ago I took a week off and travelled to Saint Louis, a city in the desert environment of northern Senegal. Follow this link to see pictures and read more about my trip to Saint Louis.

Green Shoots

Rain has come again. Last year our rain arrived late, and the local harvest of rice and maize suffered. As a result the hungry season began early, and many families have had very little to put in their stomachs for quite a while. So despite the sweaty humidity and the churned up muddy roads, the rain is welcomed as a returning member of the family and people rejoice as the green shoots of crops begin to show. Most of my colleagues, even though they are office-based civil servants, also farm a piece of land back in their home village. This will please the President with his ‘Back to the Land’ rallying cry.

The electricity in my house is off again (I think it is the seventh time). This time I have not been disconnected; I am told there is a problem with the cable between the pole and the house. The workman tells me he has to ‘tighten’ the cable. Apparently electricity doesn’t flow well through saggy cables. He has not told me when he plans to sort out this problem; I have been fridgeless and in darkness for three weeks so far, and if it goes on much longer I may resort to climbing the pole to have a go at tightening that cable myself. Actually I am not really complaining; many people here are not connected to electricity at all, even in the urban areas. And I am pleased to still have piped water; I have learned that I would much rather do without electricity than without water. In the darkness you can always light a candle, but when the water is off you cannot drink paraffin, and it is not so easy to wash in lemonade.

Some of my fellow volunteers are going home, either permanently or for a holiday. Soon there will be not many of us remaining here. I recently had a short trip to northern Senegal (which I plan to write about next) but other than that I have no plans to travel away just now – I have plenty of work to keep me going at the moment! I have written a third chapter about my work, which you can access by clicking on Justin’s Work 3.

Read Justin’s Work 1

Read Justin’s Work 2

Read Justin’s Work 3

Long Walk

 

 

June has arrived. I have been here 16 months, and next weekend I will celebrate my five hundredth day! Yesterday some one-year volunteers who arrived in September finished their placements and boarded homeward planes. It is odd to see ‘new’ people who arrived more recently than me already moving on. It makes me feel a long way from home. Thank you to all who keep in touch with me, by email and letter. It is good to hear from you; thank you very sincerely.

This morning I woke up and found nine mosquitoes inside my net. I must have done something wrong; I will be more diligent about tucking the net in! Luckily the marmite and garlic puree I spread all over my body repelled them, so I do not have too many bites; one thing I do not need is a bout of malaria. I had a fun few minutes chasing the mozzies around the net and splatting them all.

I have met visitors here who speak about cycling the length of The Gambia, along the July 22^nd Highway. I have never met anyone who has actually done this, but have spoken to a few who talk about it. And I have heard of two individuals who set out to canoe along the river, from the Senegal border in the East all the way to Banjul. Neither of them finished, but one got some good close up photographs of crocodile smiles. And then I have another friend who intends to trek the length of the country by horse.

I have done none of these. But between February and May I walked the breadth of The Gambia at its widest portion along the coast, in stages over seven days with a friend, Louise, who works out here for Concern Universal. It is not the most impressive long walk of all time, but it was an enjoyable expedition all the same. Follow this link to read more about my coast walk.

 

Earning Money

So my lizard is fine, but she is not doing her job properly; there are still cockroach in my kitchen. But at least I don’t have weevils in my pasta.

My SQAD team are busy at work this week. We are preparing to present our work to the Co-ordinating Committee Meeting of the Department of State. We will describe our plans for a Quality Assurance Framework for education in The Gambia, and will run a series of activities designed to elicit feedback, both positive and not-so-positive no doubt. This is a week-long meeting with a large number of delegates, so we are preparing carefully. It should take place next week in Farafenni, but I have learned not to count on published dates or venues, so we will see.

As I move around the Gambia, I see hundreds of different ways in which people make their living. It is not easy to find work, so people have to be creative and flexible about how they earn their daily bread, or daily rice. If you wish to read more on this, follow this link to an article called Livelihoods.

Lizard

My lizard is alive!! Until yester day I had not seen her for several weeks. But I was packing things away in the kitchen last night and there she was, sat on the wall behind a chopping board. She stared at me accusingly for a couple of moments and then scampered away. She clung briefly to the underside of a shelf, and then squeezed into a gap at the top of the window. I am pleased to see her. I have missed her company but more than that I am glad to have a lizard in the kitchen to eat insects. There are too many mosquitoes and a few cockroach in my house, and the lizard is helpful to control these uninvited populations.

On a stretch of the highway near my house, a number of people sell what I believe to be second-hand goods from Europe. I presume that those who have kindly donated these things innocently believe that their cast-offs are going to a good cause (and indeed they are, but not as direct gifts). The reality is that there are not many free handouts here; if something has value then someone will find a way of making money from it. The same is true of donated rice from Japan and Taiwan; much of the rice to be found in the market come from sacks printed with “Food Aid – Not to be Sold”.

So there is a ‘jumble sale’ of second hand goods along the highway; clothes, toys, saucepans, glassware and crockery, and bits of computers. It is amazing how out-of-place some of this stuff appears to be. Not many people use saucepans; most people cook on a fire so anything with a plastic handle is useless. Crockery and cutlery are rarely used too; most of my neighbours eat with their hands from the communal bowl. Few people here have much use for wine glasses, hair straighteners, toasters or video tapes. Some of the clothing is in good condition. But fabric and clothes are a good price here anyway, and tailoring is one industry that thrives.

Then there are bits of computers – there are charities (eg. ComputerAid) dedicated to taking discarded computers to places like this. It is kind of people to bother. I know that people in schools and offices want to pass on their out-of-date machines to someone, and not simply throw them out. And some are put to good use. There are a scattering of internet cafes around that use PCs donated in this way. But many end up in landfill. They are old and not quite working. Some could be coaxed into life by an experienced technician but very few people here have that kind of expertise. It might be more appropriate to lend support to the $100 laptop scheme (see: Wikipedia and BBC News article).

We have received a whole bunch of new computers at work recently. My colleagues are very pleased, and are learning how to play FreeCell. However, in the absence of coherent strategy and training the provision of advanced ICT sadly causes as many problems as it solves in a place like this. I suspect that the main beneficiaries of such aid packages are the computer manufacturers and traders, and that the gain for Africa is limited. This country would be better served by poverty-reduction measures, not fancy toys that will soon break.