Njawara: A Horse-cart Adventure

So I am a bit late in writing this blog, but better late than never right? I'm sort of on Gambian time now... Oops! 

For Tobaski weekend we were invited to a village on the North Bank where our Canadian friend, Brett, is a volunteer. There was to be a wrestling match on Sunday night so we traveled up on Saturday morning. We had to cross the ferry from Banjul to Bara on Saturday, which is always an adventure.. But luckily the wait was only an hour or so and the ferry was slow, but working. 

It was pretty hot waiting for the ferry and I think I was a little delirious because I thought this was an okay thing to do in public.

 We were lucky enough to get seats on the ferry, but not everyone else was. A little girl who couldn't have been more than 5 sat next to me. When the other passengers starting coming on who had to sit on the floor one woman (who I am sure did not know the girl) began to yell at her for taking a seat when an elderly woman nearby did not have one. I could tell the little girl did not want to move from her comfortable seat so I told her to sit on my lap (in Wolof). She looked shy but did not hesitate to take my suggestion and sat on my lap. The ferry ride was about an hour long even though it was not that far a distance, we could clearly see the other bank. The girl eventually began falling asleep and by the end of the trip she was leaning against me fast asleep. I had to wake her up and ask her where her parents were when we docked. Her parents thanked me and then we all went our separate ways, but that girl made my morning.

We ended up being able to get a seven seater car to take us to Njawara. It took a while to figure out a price, but Brett figured it all out for us. The ride wasn't bad (besides some bags falling out of the trunk, nothing was broken though!) and we got to Njawara in good time. We spent all afternoon relaxing. We went to a football match in the early evening, before the sun went down and then ate an absolutely delicious meal before relaxing some more. We brewed some lait which is like warm milk with sugar. It probably sounds a little weird and I definitely wasn't all for it at first, but it is delicious. Like liquid ice cream!

The next morning we got up to a breakfast of tea and bread with no rush to do anything. We pretty much relaxed all day and ate. We ate some GREAT food and then slept. Ate some GREAT food then relaxed. So many naps, so much reading, a game of cards, a whole lot of nothing and it was great. 

We hung out all day under a mango tree on mats. It was wonderful.

 We stayed in the compound where Brett lived and the woman who's compound it was was so sweet to us. She was cool to talk to and she was so compassionate. She runs a pharmacy and ends up giving many of her supplies away to people in need because it can mean life or death for some people. We put together a little bit of money to give to her to contribute to her pharmacy and as a thanks for letting us stay with her. We also met some other people throughout the village and we ate our meals in the compound of a friend of ours, Babou, who we've met during his trips to Kombo. Babou was actually played the drums in a band before the wrestling match we went to! 

Now about the wrestling match...

This is our horse cart with Denmba and Toochie! Toochie is the horses name. How cute is that?

We traveled there on a horse-cart. How cool is that? We all piled on along with our driver, Denmba and an apprentice, a pretty chill dude. We left after dinner for the wrestling match (around 8). It was such an awesome experience. The horse went surprisingly fast with all of us on there.. It was a really nice night and the breeze felt good. The road was a bit bumpy, but what can you expect? I'd ride a horse-cart again in a heart beat (at least at this point in the journey). 

Here is Babou playing the drums! He is always smiling!

 We arrived at the sight of the wrestling match around 10. Right on time, but we should have known that we were there too early. Another Canadian volunteer from Njawara, Rohey, was there already so we joined her. She was hanging on with Babou's band on some mats chilling and brewing attaya. We all joined them, relaxing even more than we already had all day and chatted with everyone, playing games to entertain ourselves.

Finally got our seats!

Finally around midnight we took our seats around the wrestling arena (? I'm not really sure of wrestling lingo but that sounds right). We sat around for a while talking, nothing much was going on. We listened to Babou and his band play some great music. After over an hour we got restless (after all this thing was supposed to start at 10 and it was 1 am by this point..). We found out that the wrestlers were getting their Jujus made and practicing other traditional beliefs before engaging in wrestling. Soon the wrestlers were coming out and dancing around the arena to the music. I wish I had gotten a video but it was so late and dusty, none of the pictures were turning out.. But they strutted around the arena with their (for lack of a better word) "possy" following them. This lasted for hours. By 4 am we had to leave because we had to get a gele gele from Njawara. We left a little after 4 am and the wrestling hadn't started yet. The guys were huge though and it would have been so cool to be able to see them wrestle. Oh well, maybe next time.

This is where the wrestling was to take place. There wasn't much separating the wrestlers from the  audience.. This is the view from my seat.

This is actually when things started to get interesting, believe it or not. When leaving the wrestling match our horse cart broke and we all fell off. Luckily it was going slow so no one got hurt. In fact no one really screamed because it was, well, 4 in the morning and we were all pretty out of it. It took a while to get the horse cart back up and running, but then we were on our way. 

Here we all reenacting falling off the horse cart because it was something we could not catch on film...

 People were falling asleep on the horse-cart, we were pretty tired. We agreed it was a good experience, but of course we had all wanted to see some wrestling. It's a very popular sport in Gambia and Senegal and it can get intense, or so we hear. From this point on I'm just going to list what went wrong because it would take a lot of explaining to tell you in detail what happened. It's a great story to tell in person though, which I can't wait to do. So here we go:

We weren't too happy about the car breaking down.. But we
quickly recovered!

1. We had to go through a river in our horse-cart. Our horse-cart couldn't handle all of us so the boys had to get on a random passer-bys horse-cart (luckily there was a random passer-by at 5 in the morning...) and they got soaking wet because they were all heavier than the girls. We hit a few bumps in the road and I was nervous I'd fall off into the river a few times, but at least we were dry.
2. Our horse-cart got a flat tire. So the boys had to walk 1 kilometer back to Njawara. They weren't too happy about that but of course us girls got to ride on one side of the cart back.
3. We missed the gele gele. The one time the gele gele leaves on time is the time we are not even half an hour late.. Usually in The Gambia half an hour is nothing. It was the only gele gele from Njawara that day or at least early that day and we had to get back to Kombo so we thought we were doomed.
4. The car broke down. Brett found someone to drive us to the main road where we could get a gele gele from there to the ferry! But then the car broke down... Luckily it got fixed after a little while though and we were on the road!
5. We had to take the small boats and it ended in an minor injury. (Note: nothing drastic happened on the gele gele, yay! we only got stopped at a police check point for more than a few minutes, but that's no big deal) So there wasn't a ferry available when we got there so we decided to save some time and take the small boats. These boats aren't really that small, they'll fit fifty or so people on those things. They are canoe-like, like most of the boats we've been on on our trip but big versions. How they get you on the boat is pretty crazy too. You stand at the shore and you give someone (preferably a strong man) a tip to lift you up and carry you to the boat. There isn't a proper dock and the boat can't make it all the way to shore so there are men there to carry you on. It's a trip let me tell you. While this was going on though one of our crew got injured going into the boat. Not seriously, but it wasn't fun either... 
6. The boat ran out of gas. Us girls sat at the bottom of the boat so we couldn't see anything plus we were getting light kicks in the face (nothing serious) and had to stare at peoples feet. So when we stopped in the middle of the river we assumed we must have gotten to the other side. Nope, the boys assured us the boat was just stopped in the middle of nowhere. They eventually got it going again somehow and then it stopped again. This happened a couple more times, but we finally made me back to shore with no injuries this time and a very energetic man who carried all of us to shore

We made it back to Happy Camp and slept for a very long time after eating some bread with chocolate form the local shop. It was an adventure let me tell you and I can look back on this and laugh and laugh. Traveling in The Gambia is quite a hoot. But in reality their public transportation is very convenient. You can get anywhere in the country if you want without your own vehicle... 

It is said in The Gambia that everyone in the party should be clean when traveling, otherwise something will go wrong. Well I guess our bucket showers in Njawara didn't quite do the trick that weekend. Plus no one in our group had showered that morning. We all learned our lesson :)

Njau, Stone Circles and Janjanbureh Journey

The weekend of November 16th we we took our final trip up country! This is the group that went, minus Kyle because she is taking the picture then we traded her for some delicious watermelons (kidding, kinda).

We were told it could take anywhere from four hours to eight hours to get to our final destination of the island Janjanbureh. Part of our trip was on this kind of dirt road with a lot of holes, it was a bumpy ride! We stopped at Tendaba for some lunch which (as always) was amazing. 

We had to cross a ferry unfortunately... This is the ferry in Ferefini which is the ferry we took coming to The Gambia on that lovely 16 hour ride from the Dakar airport. They fit as many cars as they can and people on to that little ferry! We ended up waiting at the ferry for a couple hours because, of course, one of them broke down and everyone went crazy trying to get on the second ferry.. It's always an experience at the ferry. I did talk to some cool people and practiced my Wolof!

Eventually the road was nice and paved! We thought we'd arrive at Janjanbureh around 6 pm, but before we knew it was sunset on the road...

It was dark outside by the time we stopped at Njau which is a village where women use recycled material to make products such as purses, jewelry, keychains etc. The village was so welcoming, they had obviously been waiting for us all day and there was dancing and music and everyone was outside greeting us (so many kids!). The woman to the left in this picture is Fatou and she was a tiny energetic woman who almost all of us bought something from.

We finally got to Janjanbureh around 8:30. We had to take  another small ferry to the island which was closed when we got there.. Luckily Baboucarr is a miracle worker and we got across! A long journey, but also nice and worth it. We stayed at Baobalong camp which was really nice and they had dinner ready for us. Of course it was delicious. We always eat so well on our trips!

Saturday morning we got up early to go on a boat trip down the River Gambia. It was a gorgeous day on the calm River Gambia. The boat was awesome. We were on it for a good six hours or so.

There were two decks and on the bottom deck there were cushions all along the edge and in the center was an open space where they served us lunch.

The top deck had a bunch of mattresses! It was the most relaxing day. I spent a lot of time up on the top deck.

We ended up getting off the boat to take a walk around some rice fields. They irrigated the fields by the tides which was really interesting, but I was so hot I was mostly focused on getting back on the boat. The agriculture fans were happy though! There's a project headed by Taiwan that our guides were discussing with them.

That afternoon we stopped at Wassu where the famous Stone Circles are. There are many stone circles around The Gambia, but the one at Wassu is one of the most popular because there is a cluster of them. They are believed to be burial mounds of kings and chiefs from the first and second centuries AD. The Stone Circles are mostly a mystery still, though. Read some more information here if you'd like!

Posing with the stones make it a fun and childish experience as well as an educational one. Fun fact: people place smaller stones on top of the larger stones and make wishes.

We headed home the next day. On these trips we usually always stop at least twice along the side of the road to get something or other because everything is cheaper up country. Friday on the way to Janjanbureh we gave a few girls a short lift down the road in exchange for some groundnuts they were picking and on Sunday we stopped to get some watermelon. It was absolutely delicious. One of the men selling it wanted to marry Kyle so we said we would give him Kyle in exchange for a bunch of his watermelons. People thought it was a great idea, it was good watermelon. But it didn't end up happening... Oh well at least we got a few slices of heaven!

Thanks Kyle for letting me use some of your pictures!!

Great Weekend in Kombo

This weekend was a great weekend in Kombo (the area around Banjul where we live). 

We spent at the Art Village again tie dying! Yay! This is my lovely tie dye, I must say it is pretty sweet.

We spent Friday night playing games in Happy camp and drinking Julbrew, unwinding from the week. Saturday I went to the CPA in the morning then spent the rest of the day on the beach. We ate dinner at a wonderful Chinese restaurant. Spring rolls to die for..

This is the beginning of the Bakau market.

Then Sunday morning us three girls went shopping in Bakau, which isn't very far away from where we live and it has a beautiful craft market!

I got so many Christmas gifts!

This man is so talented. He weaves in front of you outside his shop and his weavings are amazing. I may or may not have gotten a huge one as a gift for someone!

This is Kyle and Madeleine with Neneh, a shop owner that we became friends with. She had the same surname as Madeleine and I so we quickly bonded, calling each other sister. She gave us great prices on some jewelry which I, again, got for many people as gifts.

This is Neneh's brother. They own a shop together, but he does carving while she takes care of bracelets. I bought something from him for a cousin of mine and he was so friendly and made sure I got the best quality product. We had a lot of fun going back and forth over prices. 

Then later that day we went to the monkey park! It cost 30 dalasi to get in, around one US dollar. And it was frowned upon to get groundnuts to feed to the monkeys but we got one of the men who sells tickets said he would break the law just for us though... But when we walked through the park we ended up seeing so many groundnut bags. I didn't feel so special anymore...

Look at this little baby monkey with his mommy!

Meditating monkey.

They ate the groundnuts right out of our hands! It was so cool! Their hands were like little people hands! They were just so cute!

This is the lovely map we had to guide us through the park... Needless to say, it was not helpful whatsoever and we may or may not have gotten lost a few times. We could have gotten a "tour guide" but I had hear that would be a waste of money. It was just a bunch of paths so we eventually found our way out again. But it was getting dark by that time and the monkeys were starting to get crazy! 

Begging for more groundnuts!

BABY MONKEY!

He jumped to get the groundnut in my hand. So cool! I look a bit crazy though..

Thats it for now. More to come soon! 

Tobaski - spending a holiday in The Gambia

Friday October 26 was Tobaski (or Eid al-Adha in Arabic). It is a Muslim holiday celebrated throughout Gambia by praying, slaughtering a ram, eating a lot of food, wearing new clothing, visiting friends and family and receiving/giving gifts. The day before Tobaski

According to accessgambia.com :

The occasion of Tabaski is in commemoration of Abrahams willingness to sacrifice his own son, Ismail, in the name of Allah. It coincides with the end of the annual Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca.

 The day before Tobaski I spent with my Gambian family. There were no classes Thursday through the following Monday so a few of us decided to spend it with our families. Luckily my family lives in Bakau which is usually a half an hour walk from Happy Camp. Madeline, Austin and I share the same family compound, but we are in different nuclear families. Kyle came with us Thursday to hang out! On Thursday Madeleine and I helped my sister Adama cook benachin (tomatoe and spices based sauce), while Austin and Kyle helped Austin's mom cook domado (which is a peanut-based sauce, yummy!) because we're all curious about how to make Gambian dishes.

Here is Adama in our cooking station. A pot over a fire in a little area with a roof so it gets super smokey!

I helped pound together some spices! It's one of my favorite things to do to help out. Obviously I enjoy it a lot..

I helped clean the dishes too! It was a hot day and Adama put me to work, but it was such a great bonding experience.

This is the finished product. It's called fish benachin. Its rice cooked with a lot of spices and tomato paste topped with fried fish and vegetables. They eat out of community bowls so that's what is shown here. It was very tasty!

When I wasn't helping Adama cook I was taking pictures and hanging out with other family members:

Here is my Gambian mother with my little sister, Bintou! Yaay didn't want me to take her picture because she said she looked ugly (she had been working hard all day cleaning her house for Tobaski) but I disagree!

Here is my papa hard at work. Everyone in the compound was doing something to prepare for Tobaski.

This is Mariyama, she is so sassy. She looks very angry in this picture but she's actually a very friendly girl who always gives Madeleine and I hugs when we come to visit.

Some of my many cousins! I don't know all of their names cause there are so many kids, but I know the boys name is Ablie.

Kumba and a week day old baby. Children of any age can hold and take care of babies. Even if the baby is only a week old...

The kids love getting their picture taken!

Needless to say I love my family! The kids can get a little tiring, but then I just go hang out with Adama and other people who are closer to my age. Everyone is so friendly and they really make me feel like I'm a part of the family.

Now we're onto actual Tobaski day! I spent Friday with my family as well (along with Austin and Madeleine of course plus our friend from Canada, Brett, who knows my Gambian father) it was a lot of fun.

Here is the ram that my family slaughtered. I came too late to see it killed (which I'm kind of happy about) but that means I also missed going to the praying ground. In the morning on Tobaski (around 8:30/9) everyone in the area goes to a praying ground and prays. Most of the women in my compound stayed behind to cook and prepare for the days festivities so Madeleine and I chose to come to the compound around 10.

My cousin did my hair in braids! My scalp is so white haha I just wanted a few, I didn't get my whole head done. I want to get my hair braided again, but I'm not sure if I'd ever get my whole head done! We'll see..

The kids were mischievous all day. Fun fact: a "sigh sigh" (that's how you pronounce it, not sure how you spell it in wolof) is someone who is a rascal. It's very popular here to call someone a sigh sigh if they're being silly. Almost all the kids in my compound are sigh sighs...

Yup that is a bowl full of bloody ram meat that I helped clean... So much fun!

So salibo is something you get on/around Tobaski. It's a gift of candy or money from relatives. Usually kids  14 and younger go around asking different compounds of friends and/or families for salibo the night of Tobaski. This is the group of girls that I walked around with for salibo. This is when everyone gets dressed up in their fancy Tobaski outfits and walks around. It was an interesting experience. The first compound we went to I gave out candy and small change to everyone there (kids and adults) then the second compound we went to the kids received 25 dalasi from the head of the house to buy candy. So at this time the shops are all full of children trying to use their salibo money for candy.

My mom, toma and I in our lovely Tobaski outfits!

With the exception of my toma and my sister, this group of kids consists of some of my cousins (definitely not all of them) in the American definition of the world. However in The Gambia some of them are my cousins and some are my sisters or brother. Your mothers sisters kids and your fathers brothers kids are all considered your brothers and sisters in The Gambia. This is because your father could marry your mothers sister(s) and because it is a patriarchal family system. I may have told you this before, but in case I didn't it's a nice re-cap!

That's all for now! For the rest of Tobaski weekend we went up country. It was an adventure.. Stay tuned!