my internship

So i started my internship last wednesday at the Childrens Protection Alliance. The CPA works to spread information throughout the country regarding childrens rights. A subject that is not known or cared about a great deal in this country. Any real legislation involving childrens rights wasn't even created until 2005 with the Childrens Act. Considering 65% of the 1.2 million in the country is under 24, you'd think it would be more of an important issue. Unfortunately, in a country dominated by Islam, children should be seen, not hear. I work directly with the national coordinator, doing what, I am not really sure yet. I am still learning how the organization works. The CPA itself does not work directly with kids, they work more with other organizations spreading information and working to raise awareness about childrens rights in the country. One of their projects, Voice of the Youth is run directly by children 10-17 who raise awareness among their peer groups across the country. I hope to work with them more then anything else. I have been really busy with the CPA's current project. Its something that is totally unheard of in the US. Its called the Worlds Childrens Prize for the Rights of the Children (WCPRC)
Every year, a jury of children are selected from countries all over the world. These children are victims of violation of their rights, whether that is trafficking, slavery, etc. They elect 3 from anywhere in the world that they feel have done the most for childrens rights. Then Books are published about the 3 nominees and sent throughout the world. Schools organizations in 83 countries receive books and the children act as representatives for the nominees. they make speeches and even hold rallies in favor of their candidates. Last year 11million children voted. This is the 4th year for the gambia being part of the program. Last year, 7 schools and organizations voted, a total of 6,000 children. This year it has grown to 18. We are hoping for about 10,000 votes this year. The CPA has been directly responisble for coordinating the voting process in the country. So far I have helped distribute books to a dozen schools. Yesterday(thursday) and today we went to a few different schools to see the voting process in action. Apparently they try to hold the voting in the same way as national elections so the kids will be more likely to partake in national elections. So now I have become the official photographer for the CPA. They asked me to take a bunch of pics of the voting process. Mr. Drammeh, my intern guy/national coordinator wants to send the pics to sweden, where the organization HQ is, they want pics of gambia partaking in the program in next years books. SWEEET
The pics are all online. check em out.

dear diary,

choco is a tool

love mike

i dont mean to rub it in your faces or anything, but this was pretty much the best "spring break" I've ever had. Technically it wasn't really spring break because I haven't had any classes, but while St. Mary's was on break, we went on a group trip "upcountry". Mudhuts, thatched roofs, and goats galore. About 65% of the country lives out past the city and suburbs in the rural villages. The first two days were spent on the south bank of the river. First off was a nature reserve/zoo, Abuko Nature Reserve, we saw lots of monkeys! There were hundreds of them all over the forest and they weren't scared of us at all. Thats how I got these sweet monkeys pics. A baboon grabbed a piece of paper out of my pocket and tore it to pieces. We talked with the director of the reserve and he echoed the feelings of most of the country in saying that they were broke and relied almost entirely on donations. They could barely pay their staff. Anyway, from there we headed to Tumani Tenda, a village on the south bank that runs an eco-tourism camp. Tourists come to this village to see all sorts of classic village life work. It is a great way for the village to make money enough to survive in their more traditional ways. Like most villages upcountry, they still do without running water or electricity. We met with their Alkalo (chief of the village), he didn't speak english so had to be translated for us. He didn't look anything like what I would expect a chief to look like. He was wearing jellys (a very popular shoestyle upcountry). We visited their school, played some football (soccer) with the kids. We spent the next full day their, speaking with the local herbal healer about natural remedies, we took a canoe trip up river, and basically relaxed in the sun. The roads on the south bank of The Gambian River are notoriously bad, which we learned getting to and from Tumani Tenda. Especially getting back to Banjul, we took a different route which, to us, seemed like we were just driving deeper and deeper into the countryside and not back towards Banjul like we were supposed to. The driver, Lamin, said he knew where we were going the whole time, so we just sat back an enjoyed the ride. Every single group of children we passed reacted the same way to a group of Toubabs driving by. They ran screaming after our van screaming "TOUBABS!! GIVE ME MINTY, GIVE ME PEN". Apparently it is popular among tourists to just drive by the locals and throw pens and candies out the window. It sets a horrible example for whites in the country as a whole. It is something we saw all over the country for the entire week.

The ferry was an adventure in itself. The line of cars for the ferry was probabl half a kilometer long and apparently people wait all day and into the night to catch a ride. We pulled some strings and only waited 45minutes. On one hand, it is sweet to not have to wait that long but on the other it is hard to get a feel for a culture when we are getting VIP treatment to cross a ferry. Loading the ferry was different then a ferry ride in the US. First, they packed as many cars as tight as they could onto the deck. It was hard to believe that they weren't exceeding deck weight capacity. From there they opened the floodgates and people came running in to find a spot on the ferry. I seriously saw someone get trampled in the mad rush for the boat (he was OK though). It was so packed with people, almost no room to walk around, and people sitting on stairs. The concept of personal space was foriegn on the ferry, which also means we had to be wary of pickpockets.

Disembarking from there, we headed to Juffereh, whose claim to fame was the ancetral home of Kunteh Kinte, the main character of Roots. We met the Alkalo there, who claims to be a member of the Kinte family. We learned, while there, that there is much debate on the historical accuracy of the story. It was written by Alex Haley, an african-american, who originally went to the town to find out about his own roots and eventually heard a story of the Kinte family. The reason for the skepticism on the accuracy behind the story lies in the method of passing down history. Griots are traditional story tellers who pass down family histories and true stories of family lineages by word of mouth alone. Apparently the Griots who first told Haley the story was not born a Griot, so many claim that he can not be trusted as a reliable source, however different aspects were verified by other Griots, which is good enough for the everyday Gambian.

On a slight side note, there is a man who works with the St. Mary's program, Mr. Sidebeh, his title is our cultural coordinator. He is well known throughout the country because of his efforts for the past fifty years doing everything he can to preserve the culture and history of the country. When we got to Juffereh we learner that Mr. Sidebeh friends with good friends with Alex Haley. It turns out that he was not only Haley's translator on his excursion up to Juffereh in the early 70's but also did most of the verification of stories and well as hunting down other sources for Haley. As it was explained to us, without Sidebeh, Roots would never have been written. The most we travelled up country did we learn the Mr. Sidebeh is relatively famous throughout the country. Every Alkalo we met was already friends with him and every village we passed through, we was an honorary member of. I was very happy to have him with us as a primary source of Gambian history.

Anyway, an island on the Gambian river, James Island, right by Juffereh was a major hub of the West African slave trade. It was where the English brought hundred of thousands of the slaves that were shipped off to the west. It was a miniscule island, filled with interesting ruins for us to climb around.

After the island, we went on a walk through the ruins of an English settlement outside of the town where the English apparently traded goods with the locals. Being toubabs, we always attract attention, especially from the local children. We had a crowd of maybe a dozen kids as young as 3 up to around 12 walking with us. They walked all over the town with us as Mr. Sidebeh told us about the history of the town. They are a lot of fun to talk to and a great way to work on language skills at the same time.

The next day we drove a lot longer on lot worse roads. mad bumpy dirt roads...hardcore.

we went up to Janjanbureh. A pretty big island on the gambian river. On the ferry to the island we started talking to some peace corp volunteers and it turned out that a bunch were coming to the island for a st.patty's day party the following night. We were excited about that. Anyway, friday afternoon was spent on a boat going 3 hours down the river. lookin at crocodiles and hippos while drinkin beer and eating some slammin food. it was lots of fun. then saturday we met up with peace corps people. i met a guy from somewhere in north jersey. we drank and bonded. lots of fun. the next morning was rough though.

sunday was spent driving allllll the way back to banjul aka civilization.

hangover+really bumpy roads+lots of sun=no fun

all in all it was an awesome week upcountry

new pics

new pics
http://www2.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7271815745157302307

my adventures upcountry

and our naming ceremony
my gambian name: babucarr bojang

no worries, i am still alive

hello all from the gambia, once again. sorry i haven't updated in a while. Last week was spent upcountry in the rural parts of the country. Mudhuts, thatched roofs, barefoot kids and more goats then a pagan cult could sacrifice. This past week the internet has been problematic all over the country. i'm at fancy internet cafe, 1$ an hour stuff. when the net gets back up at our casa (hopefully by tomorrow or monday) i will throw up my pics and a better blog. sorry and no worries i am still alive.

banjul, the capital

new pics.
They are from our trip into the capital. We went on top of this really weird and random arch that leads into the capital. but its a sweet view. I wasnt too impressed with banjul to be honest, but i dont think we saw much of it and we kind of had an agenda. First was the big arch and then the national museum (very subpar) and then the market. Market was good but we only had half an hour so it was pretty much a tour then go. Afterwards we came back to the house and had a discussion on "gambian culture, ethnic groups and ethnic relations". the main ethnic groups are Mandinkin, fuller and jolla(think thats how its spelled). They all get along very well actually.
Afterwards we had two peace corps people come over, the female has been "upcountry" for almost 2 years. they got electricity about 2 months ago for the first time and she said that after turning on a light, there is nothing really else to do with it. Apparently electricity reliability has increased a massive amount in the past 6months. we only have blackouts for about 30min a few times today. i dont think we actually had one today. The guy, it pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum was all into the developing IT. The country is really trying to connect itself to the internet and technologies in general and thus the world i suppose. cyber cafes are everywhere but there are still people at the university apparently who have never even seen a mouse until they get to a computer lab. Well they hung out and ate dinner, but then just wouldnt leave basically. I think they liked our house and kind of wanted to stay. fine with me, we played some drinking games for a while and it was a good time.

well for starters, some new pictures are up...again

yesterday was an unexpectedly awesome day. It started slow and stayed slow for most of it. I took a walk around where i live to try and get my bearings. it is a confusing place, there are a lot of alleyways that take you in much more direct routes but only if you know where you are going


The following picture, which you can see more of on my webshots is of a typical field here in the gambia. The closest thing this country has in regards to trash disposal is burning.



the picture on the right is whats left over from burnings. This is all less then half a mile from where im living. After that we had a meeting with the registrar about proper etiquette while attending classes. Mostly common sense stuff except for the gender seperation. This country, and i guess a lot of the rest of the world has a gender segregation that none of us are used to. Contact between the sexes is limited but apparently in the unversity it is more open. who knows what that really means. I guess we will find out.
Afterwards, we had a musical group come to us and play, the music was awesome (even though it all sounded the same to me). The whole group were all members of the same family as well which made it awesome-er. everyone in the group was real enthusiastic and i made friends with the xylophone guy, he was twenty and told me i should come to another one of his
The last few songs, we all got up and danced around it, was fun cause they didnt care that we had no rhythm.


After our little concert, we had heard the Juniata college of pennsylvania had some students nearby so we managed to get in touch with them and invited them over. They have been here for six weeks, so it was real nice to talk to them and we could tell that they definetly missed american companionship outside of their own group. It was 5 girls and 1 guy, needless to say, we all feel bad for him. Well they took us to this little restaurant that was ridiculously cheap but so amazingly slammin. There are lots of these restaurants that people build on their properties. This one is apparently owned by a nice guy from holland. I got half a chicken with salad and chips for 75dalasi...a little more then two dollars. Beers were 20 dalasi each, around 75cents. It was so much fun to talk with these other americans. We made friends with a gambian who had worked in bethesda, MD for 6 years at a bagel shop and used to live in silverspring as well. He hung out with us all night as well. The tab ended up being 1000 dalasi...little less then 20bucks. All in all a good night.

This is one of our gambian friends
That video is hatabe, he is employed by the program to basically hang out with us. He's awesome

This is our drumming teacher, we are learning how to do this

a clip of the music group that came to our place

what a weekend

this week has been so hectic with trying to adjust to life here i think that we were all looking forward to our weekend to use for relaxation. On friday we went to an area called Senegambia. it is where all the tourists go to hang out. We decided that it would be interesting to see the africa that the tourists see for the night. First there was the club, WOW, and it had a dance floor that was pretty empty with ridiculously loud american pop music playing. Drinks were expensive so we only had a few, and just chatted and played some pool. Locals that hang out all day trying to get money from tourists any way they can are called bumsters, and we were surrounded by them. Bumsters are nice people, fun to chat with and good to practice wolof on, but they are always trying to get your money. I have had to learn to be a little bit of an ass to them. That is just how its done unfortunately. The thing about bumsters is that they will do anything for western money. ANYTHING. apparently male prostitution is estimated at being 50% of the tourist income into the country. Where ever you go that has tourists, you see large black muscular men with older white women or petite black women with older whit guys. Its kind of ridiculous because it isn't hidden or anything. Anyway, after the club we went across the street to an "irish" bar and just talked until the wee hours before coming back and crashing. It was about as touristy as it get there, i wont go back, but i am glad i went.

last night we went to a local bar that we were told was a place to go, free of the bumsters. We decided to meet up with one of the peace corp volunteers who goes there a lot apparently.
It also had real loud music and a dance floor, but no white folks aka tourists. the booze was much cheaper and the people were seemed a bit more genuine in their conversations. i got phone numbers from all these guys who all claimed to be my friend, but apparently one of the peace corp peeps told me that he was a homosexual male prostitute. I dont know if it was true, because there was no hittin on or implied sexual stuff. just talking...

anyway, today, one of the guys who lives in the area took us to an amazing beach for the afternoon. the beach itself was a huge area, wide from the entrance down to the water. There was lots of room to run around, and run aroud we did. we did races and played frisbee and wrestled in the water and all those things guys do at the beach. The water was perfect, flat but perfect and really shallow as far as we went out, maybe a few hundred yards and still only waist deep. Near the end of the day a car drove out onto the beach with some locals who were going to play footbal(soccer) so we played beach football for an hour or so and got schooled hardcore. Afterwards we went to a restaurant in town called Sultan Sweets and got ol'fashined american pizzas. they were delicious.

ps. new pics have been posted

new pictures!

rrekekim's photos and albums on webshots

we tapped palm wine today with rastafarians. it was really sketchy because they lived out in the forest/jungle and just sold palm wine all day.

the beginning

I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning, the flight to Atlanta was fine, I slept a little because I didn’t sleep more then three hours the night before. Atlanta airport is the largest airport I can remember ever being in. Met up with one of the girls from our program, kaycee, at ATL where we caught our flight to Dakar, Senegal. We hadn’t really talked at any point before this, so we talked a bit about the trip and ourselves. Dakar airport was intense in so many different ways. As soon as I got off the plane my heart started to race and I suppose it hit me that there was no turning back from that point. I was in Africa (It looks silly to me now, to say that, but Africa is a magical place when you are sitting in your room in New Jersey but to the Gambia, America is the magical place).

Stephanie was waiting for me in the airport, and I didn’t realize how much I missed her until I saw her. Steph has been in Dakar since September and will be there until May. Props to her, I still don’t know if I could pull off what she is doing. Anyway, it was 530am and we had a few hours to wait until the ticket office opened for us to collect our SLOK airline tickets. Me, steph, kaycee and renee (she met us at the airport) sat around for a few hours, she taught us some phrases and we talked about her trip so far. When the airline counter opened is became clear that there was a problem or miscommunication. Having Stephanie there was actually a huge help, she ended up being our translator as many of the people we encountered spoke only broken English but fluent French. Starting around 11am we had quite the adventure as we were sent to various offices around the airport to discover what happened to our tickets. Eventually we talk to someone from the airline who tells us that we have no tickets. The ticket number we were given doesn’t exist. Now it is 1pm and our flight leaves at 230pm, we have no tickets. A few frantic calls to the house where we are staying and we are told that we just need to buy our tickets now. Tickets bought with 30min to spare I say bye to Stephanie, whom without, I feel we would have spent the night in Dakar. The flight to Gambia is fine and I slept through most of it. After landing we are met by some babucarr, our Wolof instructor/orientation leader. At this point I was in information overload as I struggled to comprehend his questions in the thick accent. If you have seen some of my pictures, you’ve seen some of what I have, flat as the eye can see, trash and sand everywhere. Traffic laws are nonexistent which was something we had been warned about before arriving but was still shocking to see on the way from the airport. Our house is ridiculous in everyway. We have one of the nicest houses in the area, and it is definitely the largest. All the houses here have walls and are referred to as compounds. We met Nut, Choco and Tyler who had been in the country for a few days already. It was nice to see some friendly faces. At this point I was past comprehending what was going on and just let my mind sit back while my body was on autopilot. We walked to the main drag called, The Pipeline, which is like Bloomfield ave with no traffic lights, no sidewalks and twice the volume of cars. The guys gave us a tour after which we came back to the house and I pretty much went to sleep…

new pictures...i live in the castle