Day 9

Sunday, January 14, 2018

Today we left the beautiful Coco Ocean Resort and headed towards a village near Tandaba. We participated in a festival with the village as well as with other students from Juniata College. The festival started as soon as we got off the bus. There were two drummers and a guy dressed up in a red costume on stilts. We walked up and down the streets of the village. All the little kids ran after us and we held hands with them as we walked. We then made our way to a large circle where we were able to sit down. We got assigned our host family for that night and then went back to the circle for more drumming and dancing. Boy do these people like to dance. Everyone in the village gets up and dances the whole entire day. We had a tailor make us matching shirts, so we blended in well with the villagers. When watching the dancing, I always had at least one kid sitting on my lap. Ocassionally, a classmate or a mother would pull me from the perimeter of the circle to come and dance. I would bring some of the kids and they had a fun time.

            We went back to the where our busses were parked to go eat lunch. The village mothers brought out these huge dishes that had rice, chicken and vegetable in them. What I did not realize was that this lunch must be eaten with your hands. I understand eating maybe some vegetables with your hands but rice? I even eat popcorn with a spoon so you can imagine how different this must have been for me. So two students from Juniata, myself, and two other W&J students all sat on the ground around one of these huge plates and ate lunch. I ate the rice with my hands and they were so sticky. They did not have utensils so I had no choice.

            After lunch, we went back to the festival. There was more dancing, drumming, and music. I think people from other villages came over to the festival too because there were more people than there were before. My friends and I played with the local kids and got pictures with them. We tried to go see the local mosque, but some lady yelled at us and tattled on us to some other guy. We went back to the festival and the kids followed us. A wrestling match was going on and it was quite intense. The festival got quite loud, so I went back to sit around the busses. The kids followed us again. We taught the kids head, shoulders, knees, and toes and some other short things in English. I have never seen so many happy kids in my life.

            After a long day of festivities, it was time to go back to our host family for dinner and sleep. I met up with my host, who was a 16-year-old guy. He spoke very broken English, but enough that I understood him. It was pitch black at this point when we were walking back to his home. Each student was paired with a different host family so we all parted different ways. I used the flashlight on my phone to make sure I wouldn’t trip on anything. It was around 7:00 when we arrived. His house is very small: 3 rooms, one for his father, one for his mother, and one for him. There was not electricity and no running water. The walls seemed to be made of mud or hard clay. I was surprised that there were no little kids in his family. I had seen so many back at the festival and now there were none. We waited around for dinner and I tried to ask him questions. He seemed a bit shy and the language barrier often got in the way.

The only "toilet"

            My host is 16 years old and is in 10^th grade at a secondary education school. He mentioned that he goes to school Mondy-Friday and the school is over an hour away by foot. And he walks everyday… Today he had afternoon school from 12:00-6:10. He hopes to go to college after 12^th grade. He said that the University of Gambia is too far away so he will go to another university first and then transfer to the University of Gambia later. There were long moments of awkward silence so I pulled out my course booklet for this class and began showing him the maps. He seemed very intrigued by the maps and would study them for minutes each. I asked him to show me where Gambia was on the map and he pointed to a place but it was incorrect. I was very taken aback by this. He kept telling me, “This is very nice book.” I am curious to see if students have access to maps. There were also maps of the United States in our book so I was able to show him where I live. He also enjoyed looking at the pictures in the book even though he did not know what they were.

            It was now dinner time and we had a big plate of rice. I ate only a little bit because I was not very hungry. We went to bed around 9:30 and I slept in his bed. The mother gave me a very small pillow but he slept without one.

Goodnight from the village,

Andy