Blogs now at helenupdates.wordpress.com

Blogs now at helenupdates.wordpress.com

The rainy roads one

For those of you who read more than one Gambian VSO blog (mainly the Gambian VSOs), there’s a particular gap in my blog posts. Until now, I haven’t managed a decent write up of the experience of living and more precisely walking around during rainy season. This is a serious omission, especially as the rains have had a huge influence on all things Gambian over the past few months.  The rains are now drawing to a close and so there’s only short time to squeeze this one in.

As a Mancunian/Swansea alumni, rain is my home. Without it I start to go a little bit gung ho about the weather saying such things as “This isn’t a storm. Once I went to Manchester for a holiday and it only stopped raining for half an hour in a fortnight” and trying to wear rubber boots in the shower just to prove that both clothes and people dry. Yes, I have heard of tropical storms but I wouldn’t be from Northern England if I didn’t think that my type of rain is a) generally the most rain like of rain and b) the best (i.e. easiest to complain about backhandedly by being stoical about the whole thing).  However, I of course also concede that it rains all the time in Lancashire and therefore over time and as a developed country we have had to prioritise the development of infrastructure that facilitates movement during inclement weather. Or, put properly, we built solid roads with pavements and drains.  

However, Gambia is essentially a country built on the edges of a desert. It is sandy and it is not rich. It hasn’t needed to spend money putting rocks in the road to make sure its workforce didn’t drown before getting to a mill, or to make sure the newly milled cotton didn’t become an enormous muddy sterile pad on a highway miles from the market.  It rains for a few hours a day for a few months a year and the rest of the time it has bigger problems to deal with.  And so when the rains come so does the mud. And the water. And people who are quite happy to shelter for serveral hours far from home rather than getting wet. I faced disbelief when answering “We just go, people dry. Sometimes from water up to our knees” to the question “but if it rains all the time how does anyone get to work?” My cheap sandals have been glued back together twice. My rain coat is disintegrating.

But it is fun. One night after choir I was walking home with my friend Mathias as usual. Suddenly the wind rose sharply and waves of dust started trying to exfoliate our faces.  We took shelter behind a wall, then the drops of water started to fall. Sheltered in the crook of a wall we were getting wet. Dusty drops were bouncing in every direction, blown in parabolas by the whipping wind. Eventually I said “let’s walk, we’ll be as wet as if we stay here”. Instinct tells us to run but of course this makes no difference to the actual rate of getting soaked due to maths (speed of person + frequency of hitting drops balances each other out). The lights went out and, in flip flops, my feet were clinging to unseen mud and stones, as we dodged cars flying towards us, unseen in the thrashing storm. There comes a point when you are simply saturated and it’s dark and you are in the rain far from either house.  The water around us felt like being pelted by a gritter, flaying any exposed skin.

As many years of rain living will teach you, at that point the appropriate action is to dance and compare songs about the rain. We sang in the rain, we called the old man out on his snoring, we asked the rain to come again another day. And eventually, bedraggled, we arrived at Mathias’s family’s house.  His sister Antonia provided me with a towel and an entire new wardrobe. I unpacked my bag. As I tipped out the cup of water from the bottom, my iPhone slipped out. Buzzing with an electronical meltdown it died of exposure. But we had a cup of tea and a new story.

Of course, there was a lovely photo of my street as a river. Unfortunately it was on the iPhone. 

Ringing the changes

One of the elements of volunteering that I was worried about before arriving was nothing to do with the challenges of living overseas or making an impact in a different culture. It was sharing a house again. For the past few years I have lived alone and the freedoms and privacy that gives are very much appreciated. However, now I would have a housemate, in this case a Ugandan woman called Agnes. And now, six months later, she has left, finishing her placement early for personal reasons.

As housemates go Agnes was not a bad one. Of course we had different ideas about the washing up, the value of spending money running a fridge permanently or just overnight, and like all housemates she had to put up with me covering the dining table with enormous paintings most of the time.  Yet, for the first six months of my placement it was helpful to have an ear to bend about issues and strategies for pushing changes in our shared workplace, good to have someone to share food bills and shopping with, interesting to swap tips and ideas on cooking, family life, cultures and careers.

And, as Agnes left, I was drafted in to help induct the new batch of volunteers. The group was small, five people and only one of them female. On their first day I met them in the pouring rain with Amar (another serving volunteer). Vaguely remembering how disorientating my first few days in The Gambia were we had a simple walk up the high street and visited a few supermarkets to get a sense of what is available and where key landmarks are (OK, so we noted the traffic light but it is fairly central to getting around).  As the storm intensified we took shelter in a doorway and swapped advice on getting started. This was mainly “remember to eat and drink” and “try to relax at points, it’s not that bad”.

Later in the week, now working with upcountry volunteer Godfrey, I ran a discussion on topics from meeting strategic objectives to culture shock and sexual harassment. It was a short session, due to start conversations that would continue into the afternoon of exploring the local town. However, the day was incredibly hot and the afternoon became a coke by the hotel pool then moving everyone to the shared house. We took a walk round the local area, which is also my own, pointing out such essential information as “this is a corner shop”, “this is the way to the main highway”, “this is a masquerade but, don’t worry, the child dressed as a whirling monster with the machete won’t really hurt you”. I left them to settle into the shared house with a promise to meet in the morning.

Only one task was left on the essential information a serving VSO must pass on, taking transport. So I met the gang of excited VSOs in the morning ready for a trip to the capital Banjul.  Unfortunately for them, I rarely go to Banjul and prefer to walk than take transport. Still we soldiered on and it’s a testament to how settled I am that, while they remarked on how muddy the streets were after the previous night’s rain, I was commenting on an unusual arrangement of seats in the van.  We passed and negotiated with hawkers, picked up some cutlery and advice on internet connections and had a small tour of the sights of the city. I even, in a fit of longing for home comforts and long Saturday breakfasts in my new solo living environment, acquired a teapot.  I also acquired cockroach poison whilst my new colleagues were searching out irons and plates. Priorities do change.

We headed back from Banjul, me smoothly turning getting the wrong van into another exploring opportunity. We found dinner at a local volunteer haunt, Omar’s at traffic light, then indulged in that ever present VSO activity, ignoring each other when you sit in a wifi enabled area talking to home instead. They bought me cake and coffee as a thank you for the tour and one commented “yes, she did say she cried on the first night but that it gets better”. Pretty much sums up the three days I’d say.

The first draft of this entry, intended for w/c 16^th September, died with my phone in a tropical storm while I was singing in the rain. There are worse ways to go. The rest of the

month will be updated soon. 

Demotivation

I was expecting it. On returning to The Gambia I knew that, however happy I was to be home, coming back from a holiday would leave me with confused emotions and a drop in my mood. It's a long time to be away from home and I know from experience how hard getting the work done is going to be. And yet, two weeks after coming home a wave a demotivation hit hard.

Naturally tenacious, sometimes to the point of not knowing when to stop, demotivation is not something I'm well equipped to deal with. Partly it was the ongoing tiredness from a residential. In the UK taking time off in lieu of the weekends and evenings worked away from home would be policy. Here it's not and it took time to remember that I know that works. So on Tuesday I spent a day in pyjamas watching films and the rain, treating myself to a mini bottle of wine carried from UK with pasta and Parmesan.

And then this is where the VSO network comes in. I went for a drink with Natalie and Nicola (they invited me for exercise which would have been a great mood lifter but I was still wearing pyjamas when they were warming up). We chatted and I heard tales of love and romance, weddings and washed out walkways. Hungry, we asked someone to find peanuts for us and a smoking bag of hot toasted groundnuts appeared on our table a few moments later. There were about twice the number of nuts as we would've had if we'd bought them ourself in packets but we managed to finish them all off. It was a moment of "ah, there are nice things here" which was badly needed.

The following day I was back at work, still struggling with motivation. A quick trip to the VSO involved greeting everyone and looking cheerful. No post (sigh), forgotten library books, then I decided under "drink as soon as you think of drinking" rules to get water. The kitchen revealed a gaggle of volunteers. When questioned I replied I was demotivated and was sagely advised by Rob "when you're demotivated, motivate someone else".

And so it was that the following day I made sure I asked about issues and listened and advised, I praised others and reminded them of forgotten achievements, I thanked colleagues publicly for compliments. I went to VSO Agnes' leaving do and heard what people were grateful for then I made sure we spent the evening at her favourite beach with her favourite people in the country. It took a lot of concentration to get out of my own despondency and back into what I'm here to do, to be a catalyst for change. But by the end I even thought "maybe extending the placement isn't a 'never never'" idea after all.

With thanks for stuff

On the off chance that a packing prospective VSO is following this blog my mind has turned to the stuff I have found particularly useful. One of my many internal contradictions is that I hoard everything as I will find a use for it one day. Those of you who've had homemade cards or wrapping paper will appreciate this, and most of this craft kit was passed on to an imaginative home who see the value of a piece of plastic shaped like a leaf, However, I also have a make do and mend attitude, once making a jewellery holder out of a painted stick with nails in it, and from my mother I've inherited a "with just a bank card to my own money, passport and my own sense I can survive anywhere" attitude. Therefore my thinking when coming to The Gambia was largely "people survive there. I'll be fine". Yet some items of baggage have proved their metal.

1. Scarves
Dad and Eileen bought me a beautiful scarf for Christmas. Blue to match my eyes, with tiny yellow dots, it's perfect for my capsule wardrobe. It's served as an impromptu blanket in the back of a windy pick up (as I write), a beach dress when tied halter neck, covered me from the sun or in favour of modesty and wrapped tightly as insulation to slow the melting of frozen water on a day's hot travel. Another scarf has done time as a laptop bag to general acclaim ("it's very African!") leaving one linen scarf from mum for smart occasions.

2. Swiss Army Knives
The massive advantage of having gadgety folks dating various members of your family is that they value a tool kit. Christmas therefore brought two Swiss Army knives both now in heavy use, one carried around the other at home. Additionally Uncle John found a version with pliers which has mended bag zips, bike frames and desk drawer locks.

3. Rechargeable lamp
Given the mosquito net, having a lamp that works without constant mains power by the edge of my bed is very handy. Margaret bought me a lamp and I found myself a wind up head torch, both of which have turned my netted bed into a small sanctuary each evening, regardless of the availability of power. I seem to now be used to walking by moonlight but my handbag torch does still have its moments.

4. Bed sheets
The pillows I bought here are lovely but finding sheets to fit the bed leads down either very expensive or very inadequate routes. I had some which served but a too small sheet means a nightly fight with a wandering cover becoming tied up around one's legs. And so, on my last trip to England, my grandparents gave me some old double sheets. The difference this makes to sleep quality is significant, plus who doesn't sleep well at their Gran's house? Additionally the double duvet cover I carried originally serves as a sheet sleeping bag when travelling in unknown levels of comfort and cleanliness.

5. The sanity bag
When I was packing both mum and Lizzy suggested I take one bag to make sure I'm comfortable, containing clothes, toiletries, first aid etc, and one bag to keep me sane. In my case this includes my paints (even if I had to restock on paper), books, and luxuries which I now know includes a small block of Parmesan cheese, a few small bottles of red wine, a rechargeable tiny speaker for my iPod, and some Pukka Three Ginger tea. This sanity bag has served its purpose well, giving me access to my favourite things no matter what is happening around me. I can capture The Gambia in my own way, exploring the colours and texture of newly met flowers by adding huge frangipani blossoms to a bare wall. I can send personalised cards home, make new memories as I drink tea, sate longings for European music or radio podcasts. Long term VSO John has a similar bag with fishing tackle which has given a crowd of us days at the beach and a new skill to try. Most importantly this kit keeps us in a frame of mind where we can improvise and make do for other requirements.

Of course there are other handy items: photos for the wall and a photo album to show new friends, a journal and daily diary, a cup with my name on, a potato peeler, a kindle, and summer pyjamas (light enough to wear, modest enough to allow sleep as the compound boys to walk past my window) Most of this stuff came as gifts from people with a good idea. Other people's thoughtfulness is helping my day to day life. And what makes that especially exciting is that every time I use the gift or the idea I think of the kindness of the person who gave it to me.