Hello Hello!

Yes, I am alive and well; I get that question a lot!! In the last two months in my permanent village I have been spending a lot of time getting to know all the people and how life works in Sare Demba. Mostly this is accomplished with very elementary conversations in pulaar and lots of attaya! My host family is really small with just my host mom and two sisters who are 23 and 9 years old. Our compound has a row style house with 3 rooms and a separate small square hut that is my house. The other two rooms of my family’s house are rented out to the teachers at the school. My host family is great and I enjoy spending time with them especially when learning to cook Gambian style and laying out in the compound looking at the stars and trying to keep cool at night. It is definitely my favorite part of the day to talk and banter with my sisters while watching the gorgeous night sky.

February was definitely wedding season; we had three marriage programs in a matter of weeks. Programs usually start on Tuesday evening and go through Saturday. Tuesday to late Thursday night the party is at the girl’s compound, in the middle of the night Thursday the girl and the party move to the guys compound. This can be within the village or sometimes to a completely different village. My village enjoys a good party, all the visitors and dancing, and the celebration usually lasts into the early morning hours every day! (I did not make it much past midnight) My sister made sure I was looking my best for the festivities, so I had my complet on, henna on my feet and of course never leave home without earrings. People might not know you are a girl if you don’t wear them, or at least that’s what they tell me. It was definitely interesting to learn more about Muslim marriage traditions, but I must admit I am glad they are over for a while. I think the one will be my sisters program around August.

I started working with the women’s group in village. Through a local NGO, WASDA, they are maintaining to projects. The first is a woodlot that they planted almost two years ago. There were over 1,000 seedlings planted in 2008 and now we are trying to clear the grass that grew during last rainy season and water the trees every so often. The watering if a really difficult task because the closest well is about 100 yards away. The trees are expected to live until rainy season, but a little water once in a while definitely isn’t going to hurt them! The other project is an animal husbandry project with goats and sheep. Their goal is breed goats and sheep so that eventually every member of the group can have their own pair and start their own income generating animal breeding projects for their compound. The women are teaching me a lot about what goes into this project and quite enjoy coming to find me to make sure I help wash the animals! (pictures coming in April)

Last week I completed a community needs assessment in my village. With the help of my counterpart, I organized village meetings to discuss what resources Sare Demba has and what they need/want to have in village. Because the culture here is so male dominated I split the village into three groups: men, women and youth. This way everyone would feel more comfortable sharing their opinion and I hoped to gain the most complete picture possible. I also asked each group to pick 5 people to represent them and together these 15 people will be the committee I hope to work with to create long term goals and an action plan. I’m not sure exactly how this is going to play out, but we have a good start.

In a couple weeks I will be back in Kombo for In Service Training. We will be having training on specific technical skills including beekeeping and animal husbandry and many more. I’m excited to learn more about animal care and husbandry projects in the Gambia so that I can be of more use in my village. It will also be the first time in 3 months that my training group is getting back together, so it makes it even better!

Thank you very much for the letters and emails; I love hearing what is going on with you in America! In April I will have internet access again and will post another update then.