Things

It's been awhile since the last Blog and I’ve been getting some flack for it quite frankly! Not always the up front, in your face “Man, why you so lazy! Get off your ass and write a blog.” comments but often the indirect “I really like reading your blog, but haven’t seen anything new lately, that’s too bad”. I must apologize but life seems to be getting crazier, not less so, as we get closer to departure. I’m just glad some of you enjoy reading it enough to complain. This is a long and hopefully entertaining entry and it may be some time before I have time to write another so only read a paragraph every few days if you want to make it last.


Wildlife Surveys

A few months back I was looking for a new project to work on and was asking other PCVs to see if they knew of any or needed any help on projects they were working on. I was pretty lucky because one of our good friends that lives near by said she was working on a project with The Department of Wildlife Management to do biodiversity surveys in the national parks around the country and they could use some help. The idea of the surveys is to get a better idea of what type of wildlife is in the parks and in what numbers. Seeing as how I would like to go home and work for the park service and all this seemed like a great opportunity.

So the first one of our trips, or “treks” as we call them here, was a few weeks back. Each trek is about eight days long and we will do four in total before I leave in June. Our first trek was to Kiang National Park in the Kiang West region of the country which is pretty close to the village of Bambako, where Lydia and I first lived when we arrived in the country almost two years ago. There were eight of us all together doing the survey, three guys from the Department of Wildlife, two rangers from the park, and three PCVs.

The trek started out like all other trips I’ve talked about on this blog. A long, dusty, bumpy, overcrowded car ride and a few checkpoints later we arrived Dumbuto, the village that would be our home base during the surveys. It’s a nice small village on the perimeter of the park and another one of the volunteers that we were working with lives there so we had place to call home for a few days. The first day was all travel pretty much so when we got there we were all beat and just crashed. The next day was our first day of work, one of the PCVs who was training all of us on how to do the surveys lead a few classes in the morning on how the surveys would be run and what information we should record. I did some short lessons on how to use the GPS we would be using to mark sightings and observation areas and after lunch we all packed up the truck and headed to the first of our camps.

Each night we camped in a different place so that we could work right up until sunset and start working before sunrise. It was necessary to be close to where we were doing the surveys so we didn’t have to waist time traveling at these early and late hours. All the camps were pretty sweet. Some nights we camped in low lying areas near the mangroves, some nights on the edge of escarpments overlooking watering holes, and some nights just in the woodlands. I enjoyed all the spots but for the Gambians we were with some were more frightening than others. Many Gambians belief that the bush is very dangerous at night and most won’t venture out after the sun goes down let alone camp. The animals are one thing although there are very few animals in The Gambia that pose any real threat to people if you leave them alone. The more worrying things for them are of the super natural nature. I think the biggest worry of all the guys we were with was the “Dragons”. There are different places that they believe the Dragons live and when we camped close to one of these areas they were even more nervous. They say that if you see a dragon you will die instantly. There are other evil things in the forest such as elves and owls. The belief is that the owls are actually people with special powers, something like witches, that can turn themselves into owls when they choose to and may do horrible things. One night there was an owl next to my tent and I thought it was pretty nice but then I though that it must be a bit scary for the other guys. With all these perceived dangers of the forest every time we go camping, our friends and family think we are crazy. They tell us we are a bit safer though, because we’re white. They believe that we can see a Dragon without dieing and we are friends with the elves. Sadly, I must confess that I have yet to see a Dragon and have no elf friends.

We did see, hear and find tracks of quite a bit of wildlife during our trip. We saw warthogs, a big troop of baboons, various monkeys, mongoose and tons of birds. At night we could occasionally hear hyenas laughing in the distance although we never saw any. We found tracks, scat, and other signs of bush bucks, porcupine, hyenas, small wild cats, otters, and various others. One day when were camped on a hill overlooking a watering hole there was a big troop of baboons hanging out the whole day and I spend a few hours watching them through my binoculars (Thanks Ryan and Anthony). It was better than TV for entertainment value. They would get in fights and run off after each other and wrestle in the dirt. There was this big dead tree and it had one large branch that would bounce when one of them went out on the end of it like a diving board. They would all take turns running out to the end, bounce on it a few times and then leap off just for fun apparently.

We had some small animal traps which we would set every evening and check every morning. They basically look and function like the live squirrel traps you can buy in The States. We didn’t have the best of luck with them in the first few spots but in some of the later spots we started to catch a lot of mice. This in it self was not that interesting but one day we found a trap that was tripped with just a severed, bloody mouse head inside. This was a bit perplexing since I’m pretty sure mouse heads can’t walk into traps all by themselves. The best explanation we could come up with was that the mouse was probably eating the bait without tripping the trap and then some predator, probably a mongoose, jumped in and attacked it which tripped the trap but since the mongoose is pretty big relative to the size of the trap it managed to extract itself after dining on the body.

Almost every day was a battle with the bees. Since its dry season there is very limited water available aside from a few widely spaced watering holes. Bees seem to be able to find water as soon as it’s spilled and on the second afternoon we learned our lesson because when we were cooking lunch at our new camp we had some water we brought with us and some was spilled here and there while cooking or washing up. Shortly the bees showed up in large numbers and were swarming around our camp. Their not generally aggressive when their out foraging but when there are that many people and bees mixed together bad things are bound to happen. I decided I should take a long walk around this time but some of the other guys that suck around got stings and had to hunker down in their hot tents. After that day we had to work with the bee’s schedule. Since bees don’t fly at night we had to make sure our camp was packed up before sunrise and had to be very careful with water during the day and sometimes had to wait to use much water until after the sun went down in the evening.

One night we went out for a crocodile survey. We had a small boat and six of us set out from one of our camps on the edge of the creek at around 10pm to count and record the location of crocs along the bank. When we first set out the tide was too high to see the crocs well since they hide in the mangroves when the water is high. We spend the first two hours just cruising the river and it was so beautiful. Without any light pollution like you have in most places in the states the stars are crazy and the river at night is awesome. After a little while we just anchored and waited for the tide to go out. The boat captain not wanting to waist valuable fishing time passed around hand lines to some of us in the boat and we sat there and fished for awhile. I was slightly conflicted since we were supposed to be working and somehow we ended up fishing but I got over it. Of course because I’m a bad ass I caught the only fish of the night. All the other guys tried to tell me I was lucky but I refute this argument and say it was all skill. After a little bit of fishing we spotted our first croc right near our boat. It was hard to see them and we were using “eye shine” to locate them. Just shine a bright light into the mangroves until you see a pair of eyes. Most of the crocs we counted that night were small and a few medium sized. In total we counted seven throughout the night. We continued searching until about 2am when we had a small incident which was mostly the fault of the bad pilot. We were going up a small side creek and then a couple of guys were arguing that this was the wrong way and they decided they didn’t want to go up this creek so the guy started backing up but was out of control because the motor was too big for the boat and he wasn’t really focused on what he was doing. Right when we got some good speed up in the reverse direction some low hanging branches came into play and started to try to take various people off the boat. First the pilot almost got knocked out which caused him to swing the engine over and throw all the people on the boat out of balance. One guy fell over backwards and got his head and whole upper body dunked in the water until we pulled him back up. Then the pilot in an attempt to regain control of the situation decided we should go forward but didn’t take into account that at this point we were perpendicular to the bank in a very small creek. So, we proceeded to smashed head long into the bank. At this point we’re all yelling at the pilot who finally manages to get it together and get us back into the main channel. While this is certainly not something I would advise doing I personally felt this incident was not a night ender but it was the last straw for the guys who were already on edge about being in the bush at night and whom I later found out couldn’t swim. They talked for the rest of the trip about how they had almost died on the river that night.

So that was only the first of the treks. Three more are coming up in the next two months which should hold all sorts of new stories.

America

Talking to people in America makes me feel kind of strange, especially when it is someone whom I haven’t talked to for a long time. I realize this from time to time and I get off the phone and think I may have just talked gibberish for the last hour or if I did make any sense at all it was at most a ramble. Most of the Americans that I normally talk to are other PCVs and therefore fully understand the environment here and how it shapes your language and thought processes. When I start talking in Gambian English or throw in a few words of Mandinka here and there they don’t think anything of it but I fear that when I do this when talking to friends or family back home they probably think I’m going a bit crazy. I also feel like I can’t possibly convey a large part of what it is like to live here and what it’s like to view your own culture and country from the outside. I never expected that leaving my own country would cause me to analyze it so much. All the wonderful things about America seem so much more wonderful after seeing more clearly what is taken for granted there. The same amplification goes for some of the not so wonderful things which stick out more when viewed from this perspective. That being said there are many more good things then bad I can assure you. To further complicate things, to a small extent, you start to see America through the eyes of a Gambian who’s only source of information is international media, gansta rap, and 50th hand stories from somebody’s brother’s, cousin’s, uncle’s, etc. who lives in NYC. These stories distort reality to no end and depending on who you’re talking to America consists of streets lined with gold, people with guns everywhere, or black people who have spontaneously turned white upon arrival in the U.S. And even if I could get all that across it doesn’t even address the other half of the story; all the good and bad things about The Gambia and Africa that American’s aren’t generally aware of. Anyway I seem to have gotten off track somewhere (rambling?); my point is that if you think I’m losing my mind it might be a little bit true but it’s only temporary. When I get back in a few months you will have to cut me a little slack for a month or two while I get my bearings and figure out what all this means. But, in the end I’m essentially the same Ansumana… errrr… I mean Andy…. I always was.



Ebbe

Ebbe is D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S. What is Ebbe you might ask? Well that’s kind of a good question, the first thing I can say for sure is that its food, although some who find its taste more than disagreeable might disagree. It’s a concoction of many ingredients such as dried fish, cassava, palm oil, tamarind, hot pepper, cassava flower, some MSG seasoning, etc. I don’t know exactly the process to make it but I should find out before I go because I’m pretty sure you can’t find anything like it in The States. I eat this stuff as much as possible. Usually that means about 3 or 4 times a week. I consider myself a lucky man because my host family makes it most days and sells it out on the street. It’s a common food item seen on the streets in the evening. It’s scooped out of a big bowl and usually into a small plastic bag where the last few spices are added just at the time of sale and then the bag is tied up and you can take your tasty bag of liquid goodness along as fast food Gambian style. To top it off it only cost about 12 cents for the amount that I usually eat. Now with all these wonderful traits you might expect every PCV within ten miles of a bowl to be running to get theirs but this is sadly not the case. Those of you that know me might know that my taste buds are umm…not exactly sensitive and this is often cited as the reason that I can eat and even enjoy Ebbe. I strongly disagree. Even though Lydia and many others wouldn’t touch this stuff with a ten foot pole I think it’s awesome and I have a whole lot of Gambians on my side.

Ebbe is great as I’ve said a few times now but there are also a lot of fond memories that I will take back with me surrounding the eating of Ebbe. Kind of like sitting around drinking beers with good friends might remind you of college and all the good times, the evenings sitting out on the street with our host family and friends enjoying the fading light and the cooling of the day as the children play soccer or wrestle in the dirt are some of my most enjoyable memories thus far of living here in Brikama. During these evening we all just take our chairs out to the street and its one of the times I feel most a part of the community. I know pretty much everybody that walks by and say hello, I can talk with my host brothers and sisters is Mandinka and yell at them to get out of the way when an old man on a bicycle rides by. No matter what stresses the day brought on or how much I got hassled, watching the neighborhood slowly settle down for the day, with the burning red sunset and the evening prayer call echoing from the mosque in the distance always puts me in a good mood and makes me happy to be here. I think when you set out do something like move to Africa you have ideas about what it’s going to be like and what type of experience you might have, at least that was the case for me. But, as I have proved to my self time and again these pre-conceived ideas are seldom anywhere close to accurate. I never would have expected some of my best memories to come from sitting on the side of a dusty road eating puréed fish in a bag. Crazy!