Hello followers,
Welcome into my life in The Gambia once again, currently we are trucking through a fist full of rain day in and day out. Things here are going well. Coming from Seattle, every time it rains here I get all happy and fuzzy inside. The rain is nice… it cools down the humidity and it also fills up my buckets so I don’t need to run to the pump and fetch my water all the time. Call me lazy but fetching my water is a chore… waiting in a long line and then pumping it…. It takes work—and I am always happy to skip that process.
So my life here is busy. With every day that passes I am either running out to work with the business group or I am offered to work out in the fields with the women. Right now the women in The Gambia are busy with their rice fields. Every day they are walking kilometers to their fields that are close to the river. I have been propositioned to participate in this rice activity but always happily decline knowing full and well how difficult their work is. I went a couple times last year to weed their fields but even the walk alone out to the field is enough work for me, let alone bending over for hours tending to rice. Am I getting lazy? Or is it just that I am getting smarter? Haha, I don’t want to go out there and strain my body to do that excruciating work. But let it be known EVERY TIME I see a woman going to the field I always shout—“ Ning badta” which in mandinka means, “keep up the great work”. I think later on when the rice is coming to be harvested I will go out there and help, but right now the water in the fields are ankle deep and I always think about the weird bugs that will try to suck into my body from the bottom of my feet. Gross! So I just settle to say good job and try to avoid the paths they walk on while walking out to the fields. That way they don’t try to convince me to go with them.
So I usually just ride around on my bike and wave to people that I pass. The thing with riding my bike and it being rainy season is….. BIKE+RAIN+UNPAVED ROADS+HUGE POTHOLES+CARS DRIVING BY= Jessi getting splattered with mud many times. Haha… let me tell you—I was cruising down the road on my bike the other day and I came back to face with a gelli driving by at a top speed. I pulled my bike over so the car could pass me, thinking that the mud from the car’s tires wouldn’t be able to get me muddy…little did I realize that I pulled over right next to a puddle and right when the gelli passed it splatter muddy water all over me. I just stood there, at first I was soooo angry—I thought I had out smarted the car and really it got me! But then as I sat there I realized how funny life here is and everything is going to be just fine. Another funny thing about that is once the little splatters of mud dried on my clothes they turn this orange color…kind of red… looking like period spots on my clothes. Haha… when I gave my host mom my laundry to do she just looked at my skirt and said, “o, you had an accident” at first I didn’t get it… then I understood and spent about 5 minutes trying to explain to her that it was mud from a car passing me on the road and not me bleeding on my clothes.
The rainy season is beautiful though, with the rain comes the grass and everything that was once brown turns green again. When it’s green you hear more and different kinds of birds that you didn’t hear before. You see fields that were once field with nothing become crops and allies for peoples staple foods here in The Gambia, like peanuts, coos (millet) and rice. Besides the mosquitoes and humidity, this is a wonderful time to be in The Gambia right now.
Anyway, life is trekking along and I am feeling happy, healthy and terrific.
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