So, after 27 months, here I am. “Hantini” as the Fulas say. “Abanta” in the words of the Mandinkas. My time here is finished. Peace Corps The Gambia.

What was it all about? Did I accomplish much? Am I proud of what I’ve done? Would I recommend such a trip? Is The Gambia better off for me having been here? Am I?

The answer to all these questions is a resounding “Yes.” It’s been a tough and rewarding service. I’ve had an amazing adventure that I’ll never forget. I’ve made some incredible friends and I’ve fallen in love. I have a much better understanding of who I am, what I want from life, and what it means to be an American. I’ve traveled to Senegal, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. I now know how to hand-wash my own clothes (beat them against a rock), how to cope with amoebic dysentery (Ciprofloxacin), and how to eat sheep intestine from a communal food-bowl (spit it into your hand and throw it away when no one is looking). I’ve learned how to work with African bees, how to blend into a crowd of black people at an immigration checkpoint, and how to say Saalaamaaleekum.

I’d never heard of The Gambia before I was invited here to serve. I thought maybe I’d get to go to Tanzania or Madagascar when I initially spoke to the recruiter about volunteering in Africa. I’d never read Alex Haley’s Roots, never imagined I’d eat monkey meat, never heard of the illustrious President His Excellency Sheik Professor Doctor Yaya A. J. J. Jammeh and his plan to decapitate any homosexual found here.

I’ve struggled with the best way to end this with you, to describe the experience, to sum it up. I want to be able to relate to you-- through some exotic Wolof proverb perhaps—what this has been like. I wish I had some words of wisdom, the moral of the story. Wouldn’t it be great if I could tell you something that you didn’t already know?

We’ve all been here before: The end of one period of our lives and the beginning of the next. The bittersweet, the dichotomy, the complexity. (I’m afraid. I’m sad. I’m excited. I’m hesitant. I’m nervous. I’m unsatisfied. I’m exhausted. I’m proud. I’m larger than life. I’m ready. I’m pensive. I’m lonely. I’m hopeful. I’m hungry.) Part of us wants to stay safely where we are while another pulls us onward to the next adventure. These things are never easy. And we never really know what to say.

I’d like to say “Thank you.” Thanks to everyone who has made this possible. Thanks to The Gambia for hosting me: It has been an experience that I will never, ever forget. Thanks to the Gambians for everything they endure: Unfortunately, someone has to be some of the poorest people on Planet Earth. The Gambians are doing the best they can, they are trying to do it gracefully, and they maintain an incredible spirit in spite of their hardship. I wish them the absolute best and I hope that they can continue to improve themselves. Thank you to my host families. The Jallows in Kundong, the Mannehs in Chewel, and the Barrows in Gunjur. You kept me safe, you fed me delicious food, and you blessed me every night before I went to sleep. Thank you to Peace Corps: This is a huge operation and you have so much to do. President Kennedy had a remarkable vision. You are doing an incredible job at making that dream a reality. Thank you to all the ex-pats and ngo’s that I’ve worked with. You are making this world a better place for all of us. Thank you to that wild cat, that green vervet monkey, those chickens and guinea fowl and sheep and cows and fish. You gave your lives so that I could be sort-of not hungry. I’ve never witnessed the deaths of so many creatures. Thank you to all the Volunteers who I am so honored to consider my friends. We’ve gone through this together. You should be proud of yourselves. I’m very lucky to know you, especially those with whom I swore-in. We made it. Great job. I consider you my family and I hope to see you all again some day soon. Thank you to my family for supporting me through this. Mom and Dad, you came here and lived this life with me for a while. It required strength, it demonstrated courage, and it expressed love. I’ve never been so proud as when you told me how proud I’d made you. Thanks to the bees. Your honey is the sweetest. Thank you Tammy. It’s been great getting to know you here and I can’t wait to continue this adventure together. And thank you finally to all of you. Thanks for following my story. Abarka bakke. Jarama booy. Jere jef.

Official Description of Service (DOS)

After a competitive application process stressing applicant skills, adaptability, and cross-cultural understanding, Mr. Traucht was invited into Peace Corps service in The Gambia, West Africa. On September 27, 2007, he began a comprehensive ten-week training program centered on local language acquisition, culture, and technical skills for life in The Gambia. Through technical training (116 hours) and trainee directed activities (20 hours), Mr. Traucht obtained a greater understanding of the environmental challenges faced in The Gambia, and of proactive agro-forestry practices to combat these issues. His training also addressed improved agriculture and horticulture techniques, natural resource management strategies, and formal as well as informal environmental education skills.

Language training (150 hours) included formal classes in Pulaar and informal daily lessons with the residents of his training village. By the end of training he established a fluency degree of Intermediate in Pulaar; by the completion of service his language proficiency was graded Advanced in Pulaar and Novice in Mandinka.

Cross-cultural training (20 hours) was formally conducted in a classroom setting and supplemented with group discussions with other trainees and Peace Corps staff. Living with a Fula host family in his training village further enhanced the training experience. This training increased his awareness and understanding of Gambian culture, informed him of the history and politics of The Gambia, Islam in the Gambian context, traditional beliefs and taboos, gender roles, and non-verbal communication.

Health sessions (30 hours) included preventative health measures, self-diagnosis, basic medical treatment, and outlined Peace Corps medical policies. Safety and security sessions (8 hours) emphasized how to adopt a lifestyle that reduces risk at home, work, and during travels as well as dealing with unwanted attention and emergency evacuation from village. All training lessons were reinforced and put into practice in daily village life through interaction with the host family.

On December 7, 2007, Matthew Traucht was sworn in as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in the Environment and Natural Resource Management Sector. He was placed in the rural farming village of Chewel, a small Fula village consisting of fewer than 100 people in eight family compounds, located in the Western Region two kilometers from the Senegal-Gambia border. There he helped rural residents plan and develop sustainable projects and liaised with local extension workers on agricultural projects.

Working with life sciences teachers and an extension worker from the Forestry Department, Mr. Traucht led environmental education classes at Kampasa Lower Basic School and at Wassadung Basic Cycle School. These classes met twice monthly to discuss current events and environmental issues (deforestation, gardening, and village sanitation) and to conduct practical work (construct mud stoves, collect tree seeds, participate in community clean-up). Mr. Traucht worked with both schools in their gardens and encouraged them to participate in the national All Schools Tree Nursery Competition. He also helped to organize and facilitate a field trip for some of the students and teachers to a local wildlife preserve.

Mr. Traucht worked in the Chewel women’s garden to introduce composting and intercropping systems. There he maintained several garden beds to study local growing conditions and to demonstrate improved practices. He also maintained a backyard demonstration garden, tree nursery, and half-hectare rice field. Mr. Traucht worked with Peace Corps staff, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a local n.g.o. to introduce and distribute an improved rice variety. Matthew encouraged the farmers to save the harvest (more than seven times what was planted) for seed to be planted the following year. He aided local farmers with the sowing, maintaining, harvesting, and processing of local subsistence crops including rice, millet, maize, sorghum, squash, beans, and groundnuts. Matthew advocated that farmers implement perennial field crops and fruit trees into their agricultural systems. He informed the farmers about soil improvement techniques including composting, alley-cropping with leguminous trees, intercropping, and the use of bio-char.

Mr. Traucht also assisted the citizens of Chewel in home construction using natural materials (thatch roof, mud block), promoted improved mud-stoves to reduce the need for fuelwood, and engaged in soil protection initiatives including erosion control and rain-water diversion. Working with Christian Children’s Fund and the European Commission, Matthew labored on a well-digging project which eventually resulted in a clean drinking water source within the village thus eliminating the need for residents to collect water from a neighboring village. He participated in community clean-up projects and battery disposal drives. Matthew maintained a tree nursery with community members and liaised with Department of Forestry officials to bring woodlot trees including eucalyptus, mahogany, and gmelina trees. These trees will be maintained to protect the watershed near the village and for eventual income generation.

Mr. Traucht worked with the Mankana Development Association comprised of over 1000 members from seven local villages in The Gambia and five in neighboring Senegal. His primary assistance involved helping to establish, construct, and maintain a market pavilion for the weekly local trade of garden products, livestock, and honey. He also liaised between the Mankana Development Association and Concern Universal extension agents to establish a link with credit unions and to bring agricultural training to the area.

Mr. Traucht was very active with beekeeping activities throughout the Mankana area and he also worked with the National Beekeeper’s Association of The Gambia (NBAG) and Sifoe Beekeeping Kaafo in the metropolitan area known as Kombo. He worked with community members to establish the Mankana Agroforestry and Beekeeping Association (MABA). He taught the members of MABA about general biology, bee pollination to increase crop yields, and improved beekeeping practices. Mr. Traucht encouraged MABA to acquire a small parcel of land to establish a community apiary and helped them construct ten Kenyan Top Bar Hives to be placed in the apiary along with the planting of bee-fodder trees. In addition, he worked with several members to weave traditional grass hives providing skills transmission by linking young people with experienced weavers thus resulting in income generation through the on-going sales of those hives.

For the National Beekeeper’s Association of The Gambia, Mr. Traucht provided technical support as their apiary manager. He identified and offered solutions for problems in the apiary including pest control, yield improvement, colony division, and improved harvesting and processing techniques. Mr. Traucht wrote and submitted a grant to Concern Universal for research and development of beekeeping; the grant was approved in 2008. He liaised between NBAG and several aid organizations including Mondo Challenge (U.K.), Concern Universal, US Peace Corps, and the U.K. based charity Feed the Minds. In 2008, he worked on the preparation and implementation of the $10,000 Feed the Mind’s funded Freebee Training to introduce and advance beekeeping in twelve rural Gambian villages. He aided in securing and managing the funding, designed the training materials and syllabus, and implemented the training sessions with more than 300 participants.

In May 2009, Mr. Traucht changed his residence from his small Fula village to the large Mandinka town of Gunjur with a population of more than 20,000 people. He made this move in order to focus on his beekeeping projects at NBAG and Sifoe. He was promoted to NBAG’s National Coordinator of the Freebee Training which involved conducting two more modules in those twelve villages, researching local traditions and beliefs, advising on current and future beekeeping initiatives, and reportage to Feed the Minds. Matthew was responsible for hiring and paying Gambian trainers, organizing lesson-plans, and arranging all travel aspects to the rural training sites. He also produced a training manual with photographic illustrations to be distributed to Gambian beekeepers. Mr. Traucht worked with individuals from the U.K. and The Gambia to establish an n.g.o. called Gambia BeeCause which aims to continue research initiatives and training programs. At the Sifoe Beekeeping Kaafo, Mr. Traucht conducted beekeeping trainings and improved production and management.

Mr. Traucht participated as Peace Corps Volunteer Technical Trainer in one Pre-Service training and two In-Service trainings. He instructed Gambian Host Country Nationals and Peace Corps Volunteers from The Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea on gardening, tree and crop identification, soil improvement, appropriate technology, beekeeping, and food security. He was responsible for developing training materials to meet Peace Corps rigorous knowledge, skills, and assessment guidelines. Mr. Traucht revised Peace Corps The Gambia’s beekeeping manual by adding several new sections of technical instruction, traditional practices, and project ideas.

Throughout his service, Mr. Traucht wrote a number of technical articles for the Environment Sector newsletter and served as the co-editor in 2009. He was instrumental in the pre-production (research, writing, props), production (camera work, acting), and post-production (editing using Final Cut Pro) of six technical training videos. These videos, which are posted on-line for volunteers to view, serve as teaching aids of such agricultural practices as composting, garden bed preparation, plant care and transplanting, income generation, and beekeeping. Mr. Traucht served as the Volunteer Support Network (VSN) liaison for the Western Region in 2008 and 2009. He also participated in the international Against Malaria campaign by raising over $400 to purchase mosquito nets for rural Gambians. He posted regular updates to his internet site to satisfy the Peace Corps Third Goal of describing to Americans what life is like for a Volunteer in West Africa.

Red Monkey, Stinking Blobs, and Giving-Up on Not-Giving-Up

I am a little more than two months from being finished here. Where did the time go? And why has it taken me so long to write this entry? Followers of my blog have probably notice a marked decline in my entries. I wish that this would just flow; I wish that I could easily describe how I've been feeling. But it is remarkably complex. Being here. Leaving here. Telling you about being here and about leaving here. Maybe I should start by telling you about the hardest part of leaving: I'm not all that sad about leaving. Which, truth be told, makes me extremely sad.



I thought I would be sad when I was finally finished here. I wanted to be. When I signed up for Peace Corps, I wanted so much to be here. But now that I'm about to leave, I am equally as ready to go. That's probably not so difficult for you to understand. Twenty seven months is such a long time to live like you're camping everyday and every night. Such a long time to have crotch fungus that spreads from your nipples to your knees. Such a long time to miss your best friends, the birth of your niece, and the aging of your family. Such a long time to feel like you're failing, to feel like you are an outsider, to miss almost all of the jokes. Such a long time to smear the words across the sweat-soaked pages of your nightly journal entries. Such a long time to take weekly antibiotics to prevent malaria, to have no privacy, to be called a name that isn't yours.

A few nights ago, I was walking home in the dark and the rain had soaked me until I was shivering in spite of the humid heat. My leather sandals were disintegrating beneath my feet as I waded through ankle-deep puddles of mud and sewage. I fretted about the diary and electronics stashed in plastic bags inside my pack. Forty minutes after getting out of the rattletrap gelegele that had brought me to the outskirts of Gunjur, I finally made it home. My stomach had been churning for a while and I began to rush with the key to let myself inside. I shoved the door open and dropped my pack on the floor trying to get through my house to the pit latrine out back. My knees shaking, my thighs clenched, my stomach rolling I tripped over my pants trying to get out of them. I lurched out of the house naked from the waist into the rain but before I could get to the hole in the ground I shat all over myself. Stinking blobs ran down my legs and splattered at my feet. I slipped in one and fell to my knees. It kept coming and I kept going.

I came here for so many reasons. Many of those have long been forgotten, modified, and rearranged. Some were always unattainable and others were just plain absurd. But I never expected to be in these types of situations where I feel so physically and emotionally unhealthy. I came here because I wanted to see another part of the world yet, because of the conditions here, my world is smaller and more confining than it has ever been. I wanted to have an adventure, but living in a developing nation is often boring, slow, and mundane. I wanted to learn about a different culture. When in my own culture, I am free to reject the things about it I don't agree with. Here, I am obligated to remain "culturally sensitive" and non-judgmental. They tell you that Peace Corps will change you in ways that you never expected. I didn't used to, but now I get annoyed with people who constantly beg money from me. I didn't used to, but now I am skeptical of people's intentions. I didn't used to, but now I can't seem to write what I feel, can't seem to describe what this experience is like, can't seem to articulate my thoughts.

I didn't used to, but now it seems I've lost my sense of humor about this place. Now I am taking myself too seriously. Why? I was sitting today in meditation after a long session of yoga and I couldn't stop myself from feeling like I need to be more creative and open about my experience here. I keep feeling like I am losing something, someone, somehow. My head kept going back to it even as I tried to clear my mind and eventually I gave up. But how do you-- how can I-- just give up? The voice in my head kept telling me to laugh yet it was all I could do to keep from crying. These changes can't be avoided. I need to let go and relax and allow things to unfold. Why do I seem to be resisting everything that comes up? Friends leaving, projects ending, relationships shifting. Homeless, directionless, focus-less. Maybe this is the problem. Maybe it's not the here and now that is scaring me so much, leaving me so speechless and perplexed. Maybe it is what comes next that I am so worried about. Seems like, when I go back and reread many of the entries that precede this one, I was so excited and amused about this place because I was (mostly) fully here when I wrote them. But now I am so enwrapped in tomorrow that I can't focus on today. Ever since I decided that I wouldn't extend my service here a couple of months ago and started to think about leaving at the end of November, I am increasingly anxious about leaving.

I don't want to write right now that I've failed here. But haven't I? So many people told me that I would love this place... I've let them down. So many people said that I would really make a difference here, I have failed them too. Because I sometimes fail at cultural sensitivity, I feel like a failure when I don't agree with certain norms and behaviors. I wanted to be fluent in the local language, to improve someone's life, and to (somehow) find myself. Most of all then, haven't I failed myself? But I don't want to write about failure because it sounds so melodramatic, so self-deprecating, so un-happy. And that isn't quite at all what I wanted to write. Which is why, I think, that I haven't written for so long. Is wanting to leave-- is giving up-- failure? Or should I finally accept that it is time to go? Can I accept that I've done what I could and nothing less? Can I believe in myself that I gave it all my best? Now that it is finishing, there is nothing wrong with putting more into leaving than staying.



In the government-speak of the US Peace Corps, they call it Close of Service (COS) and it is more difficult than anything else I've done since submitting my application way back in the fall of 2006. COSing involves slowly withdrawing yourself from the relationships you've created. It means preparing to do something totally different somewhere completely away from here. It requires giving your projects over to somebody else and trusting that they will care enough to keep working on it once you've gone. COSing is about medical checks to make sure you aren't carrying some heebee-jeebies away with you, means completing hundreds of forms to quantify the work you did and the impact you had, and forces you to say goodbye to the people who have become your family. The Gambia is far from anywhere I plan to be in the near future and so I have to accept that this sort of life is something that I am also moving far from. The good and the bad.

Sure, I am looking forward to no longer living in a mud hut with no electricity and water pulled by hand from an open well contaminated with amoebas and gecko poop. I can't wait to no longer rely on dangerous and undependable local transport to get me where I want to be. I am so happy at the prospect that I might go somewhere and make some money and stop living hand to mouth with some of the poorest people in the world. But I am also saddened that I might never see most of these people ever again, won't have the Atlantic coast as my backyard, will no longer live among monkeys and monitor lizards. What will happen to the little girl who lives in my compound (I guess I actually live in hers) and still calls me the generic "Toubob" instead of (my Gambian-given name) Laamin or (my preferred) Matthew? How will things continue with the beekeeping projects I've started? Will the mango and cashew and moringa trees I've planted survive to bear fruit? When will I next see the Volunteers I swore-in with and how will we all have changed? Will things work out between Tammy and I once we are in "the real world"? This process is sort-of about giving-up; no wonder I am so apprehensive about it. Most of my friends are facing similar anxieties about leaving here.

A few days ago I wandered into the small Mauritanian-owned shop near my house to buy some eggs and bread for breakfast. There was a young woman standing at the counter and she instantly struck me as different than most of the Gambian women I see. Her head wasn't covered, her wrap-skirt was printed with cannabis leaves and Bob Marley icons, and she carried herself in a way that was, well, different I guess than what I've become accustomed to. The most remarkable thing about her was the unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth. Gambian women simply do not smoke. I guess I sort of was staring. She caught my gaze and scowled and then did something I didn't expect: She called me out on it. "What the fuck are you looking at? Never seen a nigger before, you Red Monkey?" I gulped and swallowed my embarrassment. I felt so strange all of a sudden. Usually I'm the one being stared at, feeling the scrutinizing gaze of some stranger. "Sorry. " I stammered feeling unsure of myself. "I was just standing here." She scoffed and turned her back to me and I walked out of the shop without my breakfast. Later, I told a few friends about the exchange and wondered why she was so angry. I thought about this damned Peace Corps life and felt sorry for myself, singled-out, and abused. I've come all the way to Africa to live like this (the constant itch of heat rash, the lack of intellectual stimulation, the inconvenience of it all) and the people who I've come to help treat me this way. I finally decided to just forget about her, forget about the weird exchange. It wasn't, after all, indicative of the way I am generally treated by Gambians. These people are usually some of the nicest I've ever met. Most Gambians will invite you to share in their meals, to live in their compounds, and to sample their lives. I should know better than to let one bad experience temper the way I actually feel about Gambians on the whole. Maybe she was just having a bad day.

And then last night I wandered alone into a bar near here to buy a beer. As my eyes adjusted to the dim room I noticed three men gathered around a woman-- the same woman-- and laughing drunkenly. She was dressed this time in a pink halter-top, a leather miniskirt, and high-heel shoes. And then it struck me: She is a prostitute. This time I averted my eyes immediately and wondered if she remembered me from that day a week ago. I half-expected her to call me out again in front of the drunk men. I even considered asking "Are you still so angry at this Red Monkey?" But then-- standing in this stinking place with peeling paint and broken furniture, standing in this third-world heat and humidity, standing waiting for my beer avoiding the gaze of angry prostitutes and their sorry clients-- I didn't say anything at all.


What did I want from this damned Peace Corps experience that I haven't gotten? I wanted to leave the USA and see something different. I wanted to challenge myself to learn a language. I wanted to have something to talk about. I wanted to meet new people and make new friends. I wanted to apply myself to the thrills and tests of the life-less-comfortable. I wanted to expose myself to African culture and customs. I wanted to learn about pre-industrial agriculture, permaculture, and beekeeping. I wanted to boost my résumé and improve my chances of getting into a decent graduate school. I wanted to travel. I wanted to simplify my life, to live without the modern trappings and conveniences, and to decrease my carbon footprint. I wanted to broaden my horizons. I wanted to put some things behind me.

I think it is finally time to leave here. Yesterday, a friend of mine who is also leaving soon asked me "What did you think Peace Corps was going to be like when you signed up?" I thought for a moment and then met his gaze. "Exactly like this."

How much protein do you get from eating baby bees?

I can’t believe that so much time has passed since I last wrote. I keep getting stalled, busy on projects. But I’m constantly thinking: I should update my life.

First, let me apologize that there are no photographs for you to look at. I spent several hours last week compiling snapshots from the past month but immediately afterward my laptop crashed. It still isn't fixed but I wanted to write something anyway. No pictures is worth the following one million words.

Today is the fourth day of a cramped belly, aching bones, desperate lunges to the toilet. I’m in the med unit taking doses of antibiotics for the dysentery I’ve been suffering through. My body goes through cycles of shivering cold that makes my stomach cramp and my lungs seize followed by bouts of feverish sweating that causes drops of water to drip from my pale, pasty flesh. Sounds dramatic. Yesterday’s attempt to drink a glass of water resulted in projectile vomiting. I’ve fouled my underwear more times than I care to recollect.

But I should say that I’m finally getting better. The Ciprofoxacin is killing the bacteria that made their home in my gut. I haven’t eaten anything for days so there’s hardly anything in my stomach to give me trouble. But when you’re sick like that, days go by like months and I can hardly remember staggering into the med unit covered in sweat, my face hanging off my head. Tammy says that I’m hilarious in my delirious yammering.

Before this, I was living for a few days at the nicest hotel in The Gambia: The five star Sheraton on the coast across from Ghanatown. We had our semi-annual All-Volunteer meeting where the Peace Corps Administration told us all how valuable we are, what we should improve upon, and how the new budget from Washington still doesn’t begin to cover our expenses. But going from grass mattresses to cloud-like pillows, bucket-baths to hot showers in glass enclosed bathrooms, the prickly heat of humid rainy-season Gambia to air-conditioned rooms with iced sodas will make anyone feel valued. Buffet dinners, pool-side beverages, ocean breezes.

I spent nearly the last two months on trek conducting the Feed the Minds sponsored “Freebee” training. It was truly a rewarding experience and I enjoyed the opportunities to work with beekeepers all over The Gambia. Many of the people we contacted were inexperienced but interested in learning about beekeeping. Others though had a lot to teach me. It gave me the chance to harvest from grass hives, log hives, and hives made from broken pounding bowls. I got to observe the difference in honey production from different regions here. Some places are densely forested with silk cottons and cashews while others are open savanna with a few baobab trees. Some colonies were old and some brand new.

I travelled with three of my Gambian counterparts- Karamu, Kaddy, and Gibril- and my very capable Bambara driver Abdoulie (who I once watched melt a broken car battery terminal over an open fire and then pour it into a mud mold to repair the one that had broken in our truck). We returned to all the villages we went to last autumn to see what people had been up to. On the first trek we had taught people how to weave grass hives and encouraged them to place them in areas where bee-fodder was available. This time we brought protective gear with us and took the participants out into the bush to inspect the colonies and to harvest honey. Sometimes the participants had built Kenyan Top-Bar hives (KTBs) or grass hives that we could spend time around demonstrating proper management techniques. For almost all of the people, this was the first time that they had really had the chance to inspect inside a hive. Even experienced honey hunters in The Gambia work in harried and quick-paced sessions with too much smoke on moonless nights due to their lack of protective gear.

We were able to take the time to show the difference between brood comb and honey comb, between capped and un-ripened honey. We are trying to teach people that the quality of honey will affect the price they can set and that by taking only the best capped honey they can make more money. Honey-hunting in The Gambia is traditionally done by men and older boys because of the associated dangers of wandering in the bush at night and the accompanying stings of harvesting. But we were able to convince several women to come with us and wear the veiled garments and rubber boots. It was especially rewarding to see the women get the opportunity to work with us and several of them seemed quite inspired by the time we were finished.

For my own part, getting to work around so many different colonies was highly educational. At one site, nobody had had any luck attracting colonies but we wanted to have honey and wax for the second day when we would teach about processing. Someone mentioned some wild bees high up in a baobab tree a little ways from the village. That night we went to the bush and spotted the colony about forty feet up in a tree that must have been over two-hundred years old. We decided that I should go up. We found a homemade ladder that was rickety and poorly constructed with too much space between the rungs and about ten feet too short. We threw a rope over a branch just above the hole where the colony resided. The ladder was tied to the rope and lifted until it almost reached the colony. I was placed on a man’s shoulders and lifted up to the ladder that was spinning and dangling from the rope. Of course being enshrouded in my beesuit, gloves, and rubber boots made me even more awkward than I would normally be clinging to a swaying ladder in the dark with angry bees circling me, sweat blinding me, and fear pounding through my veins.

From the man’s shoulders I reached high and grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder and pulled myself up. The baobab was all I could see because of the hooded veil. I hung there for a moment gathering strength and then slowly pulled myself up. Once I stood on the bottom rung I breathed deeply to try to calm down. I was scared of falling. There were at least twenty people gathered around below, the colony was still so far above me, and my heart was pounding out of my chest. I reached up to the next rung and pulled myself up. And again. The wind was blowing and my own movements were causing the ladder to swim around; banging into the tree and then thrusting away into the dark. Flashlights bounced around like klieg lights and a bon fire gave the forest a weird glow. I pulled myself up to the next level and then the next. My arms were weak and shaking, the rubber gloves filled with sweat, the ladder to and fro. Finally I reached the top rung but realized that it was too low. I’d have to stand on it and wrap my arm around the rope that I was dangling from to reach the hive. I pulled on the other rope which brought my bucket and smoker up to me. The bees were aggressive; the hive at eye level was huge and probably had never been harvested. It was quite a trick to keep one hand wrapped around the rope while I used the other to pump smoke into the hive. The bees smeared on my veil and the smoke in my eyes all but blotted out the night. For one brief moment I was able to look around at the night: Stars through the sparse limbs of the baobab, a sleight breeze, people below illuminated by the fire they’d built. My fear of falling subsided. I knew that this is what I had come here to do. I was doing something different; trying something that tested my physical and emotional strength. Though I had been stung a few times through my suit and could feel the burn, I felt strong and clear. I tried to cut comb away with my hive tool until I fumbled it and dropped it onto the head of one of the men below. Without it, I just grabbed at comb with my hand and lumped it into my bucket. Eventually I reached brood comb and stopped harvesting. I lowered the bucket down and then slowly brought myself back down the ladder. By the time my quivering body hit the ground, half the bucket of honey had been eaten.

On that trip I also did a few other things I had not yet done here. I harvested honey from wild bees who had built their hive in an abandoned termite mound. I inspected colonies hived in water jugs and baskets wrapped with rice bags. I learned bee-terminology in Mandinka, Serehule, and Wolof. At a water pump in a Fula village I found a small swarm that had probably lost their home in a nearby bush fire. They were clustered on the wet concrete at risk of being drownded and were remarkably docile- a result of being engorged with honey for their escape and most likely exhausted. The people pumping water thought this Tubob was insane as I reached my naked hand into the cluster of bees and gently moved them around until I found the queen. I lifted her and cupped her in my hand but she took flight. It took several minutes of frantic searching before I found her again floating in a bucket of water. I fished her out and Karamu helped me clip her wings. We returned her to the cluster until later that night when we married that small colony with a larger one that we were re-housing from a pounding bowl in the village to a KTB in the bush. I also finally ate some brood which is considered a delicacy that gives men their "strength." The raw brood straight from the comb is salty and too watery to be appetizing but I rather enjoyed the satisfying pop in the mouth of the cooked ones.

All in all, the “Freebee” training should be considered a success because we contacted so many people in the rural areas and taught many aspects of beekeeping. Men, women, and children attended the trainings and some seemed genuinely interested in getting involved. A few months ago, I wondered if we would even get the chance to work on the project because of budgetary and administration problems. And we finished just before the first rains fell in The Gambia.

Aside from that, I’ve been working on getting to know my new community. It hasn’t been easy since I’ve been away so much. Gunjur is pleasantly large and I am able to maintain a certain anonymity there that was impossible in my old village. For some, Peace Corps is all about integrating into a community and developing a strong relationship with their host family. For me, having come here as someone who hasn’t really set-root in any particular place and who left home almost 20 years ago, the desire to bond has never really been there. I am more comfortable roaming. I enjoy that my new guardians treat me more like a renter than a family member. Sometimes, if I were away from my old village for too long I would have to give small gifts and explanations to many people who wanted to know where I had been and why I was away so long. Now, I don’t feel so guilty if my work keeps me in Kombo or on the move elsewhere in The Gambia.

It’s not that I don’t miss being in Chewel because sometimes I do. The pace there was nice, the environment great for running in the bush or cycling, and I miss my friends there. It’s farming season and I remember fondly last year’s tiring days hunched under the sun weeding fields of rice, millet, and groundnut. I wonder whatever became of my biochar pit. And sadly, because of the All-Vol, I had to miss the wedding of Landing and Fatou, both dear friends who had taken good care of me while I lived in Manneh Kunda. My new home is more like an apartment and the back yard is a concrete slab. I'm away from home too often to even think about planting a garden and I have yet to find a place to put my compost pit.

But there is still plenty of work to keep me busy. The remainder of my service will be spent mostly on beekeeping related projects and helping with the Training for the group of Volunteers that will replace my cohort. They arrive in November. Three of my fellow Volunteers and I are shooting agroforestry training videos to be posted on YouTube and distributed to Peace Corps Volunteers. We've completed four of them thus far using the low-tech gadgetry available here. We've made videos about composting, garden bed preparation, transplanting, and organic pesticides. I'm also the co-editor and tireless contributing writer for our newsletter Natanial Fatty's Miracle Almanac which keeps me busy coming up with joke horoscopes and fake interviews. I am writing a new manual for Gambian beekeeping based on what I’ve been privileged to observe and experience here. I'm also working with some good folks who are trying to establish a non-profit venture here called BeeCause which is a three-tiered initiative directed towards people living in poverty. I'm sure you'll read more about that as time goes on. Finally, Tammy and I are planning a backpacking trip to Cape Verde.

Personal failure: The Hundred Push-Up Challenge. A couple of months ago, a few friends and I found this website that guarantees that you can do 100 push-ups without stopping if you follow the six week plan. Twenty-eight of us signed up in our own informal challenge. Of course, the author of that program failed to consider what affect a protein-poor diet might have on the push-uppers. How much protein do you get from eating baby bees?

Every other day I pushed-up until I collapsed- almost bloodying my nose a few times. Some days I did as many as 175 push ups in half an hour. Not bad considering that in my initial test I maxxed-out at 39 in a row. At the six week mark I did a progress test to see how close to 100 I could do. Ceremoniously I dropped to the prayer mat spread on the floor of my new house. I started strong and wasn't even sweating when I passed number 39. At 45 though my ears started ringing. Number 47 found me leaving either a pool of sweat or tears on the mat below my face. I couldn't tell which because I was "in the zone." I collapsed at 49.

As far as I know, only one of my fellow participants has actually completed the Hundred Push-Up Challenge. If I ever get my appetite back, I plan to try again.

My doctor just came into the room and told me that I am looking better but that she wants me to stay for at least a few more days to give my body a little rest. I told her that I really wanted to get back to work. She replied that the most important aspect of Peace Corps is the cultural exchange and that the work that we do here is a distant second. For me, learning about The Gambia has been an incredibly rewarding experience and having good relationships with my counterparts and friends here has made me feel like my service has been successful. It’s winding down. I’m thinking more and more about leaving and my Close of Service conference (also at the Sheraton thanks to off-season rates) is next month already. While I am fairly confident that I will push my leave date from December to April so I can complete a few things, I know that the end is coming. Having had the rural village experience for most of my time here and now a more urban one, I feel like I am getting to know this place fairly well. And with so much traveling, I now have a fairly broad perspective about The Gambia’s culture and environment. She’s right; the cultural exchange is certainly the most enduring aspect of Peace Corps service.

Am I giving up?

The Gambia is such an amazing place. I admit that I've been struggling lately with some of the frustrations typical for Peace Corps Volunteers. But I have not stopped enjoying my environs, respecting the people I work with, or knowing that it remains a worthwhile venture.



The job I'm doing here and the life I'm living: It is weaving long, twisted strands of spun fiber into a beautiful, durable fabric. The loom is pieced together from found objects and hand-hewn sticks. The work is tedious and the rickety machinery causes blisters and backaches.




One has to keep looking into the distance and seeing the far away goals in order to not get lost in the close-up befuddlement of the cross-eyed, teary-eyed laborious process. I have to remember that these things take time, that we each have a contribution to make, and that while it is never easy it is always worth it.




I've been working a lot lately. I am stretched between the job and the cultural integration. Somedays I don't know where to begin; others I could start just about anywhere. I've been moving around, doing many different things. I fall asleep in one bed and wake in another. So much of what I do is in the Kombo area far away from the village that is my home.

I've decided to make a change. It has been a tough decision, one that will disappoint some of my friends and make others speculate about my motivations. I'm leaving my village.

I'm going to move- tomorrow in fact- to a beachside village near the metropolitan capitol city of Banjul. I've been thinking about this move for six months and have finally decided that it is time to make the change. I have been working with the National Beekeepers Association of The Gambia on several projects and have also been participating in Peace Corps trainings. All of this has kept me away from the village where I have been living for the past sixteen months. Sometimes I enjoy it while at other times I am frustrated because I am unable to focus on my projects there.

Am I moving away because of the ruin that my garden has become in my absence? Am I frustrated with the attitudes of my host village? Do I expect my work to be more effective here than it was there? Do I just want to live near the cool breeze of the sea, my girlfriend, or the dining options that accompany beachside tourism? Am I giving up?



Ultimately, there are many factors that have led me to make this choice. Telling the Fula people of my village that I was transferring to Gunjur was a difficult exchange. Explaining that I have work to do there they replied Kono a hebi ligge gaye. "But you have work to do here." My reason: I have a specialized skill that is sort of being wasted living in the rural village. I came here knowing a little bit about beekeeping and have learned so much since arriving in October 2007. While the people in my village are interested in learning about bees, they also need development in so many other ways. I wish that my diverse interests could be utilized to help them but I have increasingly felt like the greatest contribution I could make here is to focus on what I can do best.

I want to work where beekeeping is the primary focus, where people already have a basic understanding of the art and want to develop more intensive practices. I want to work with NBAG and the Sifoe Beekeeping Kaafo on their missions to teach Gambians about beekeeping while conducting research about bees in West Africa. NBAG and Sifoe are both within bicycling distance of my new home. While both of these places have experienced problems in the past with their practice and management, they remain dedicated to making a difference in The Gambia. By working with them, I can benefit more Gambians (hopefully) than I can by staying focussed on the small-scale work that accompanies life in an isolated rural village.

Of course it is a complex decision. I have spoken extensively about it with some of my counterparts, the Peace Corps staff, my Language and Culture Facilitator, and many of my friends. Finally, it comes down to asking myself "Where will I be most happy?" I have finally decided. While I am sure to miss some things about Chewel and to suffer from the guilt of abandonment, I also will be able to visit those people from time to time and to share with them some of what I will learn through my new, focussed work.

I am excited for this new chapter of my Gambian Peace Corps experience. I will be living with Mandinkas and so I will get to learn about that culture and language. My new home has a population of almost 30,000 people. I will still read at night by flashlight as there is no electricity, I will still take bucketbaths as there is no running water. But now I will be able to continue the work I am doing while sleeping in my own bed every night. My host family is one old woman and her two sons in their twenties, not yet married. I will be able to work with beekeepers at two separate locations and I also hope to spend time with the women in the large garden there and help with a lagoon restoration project near the ocean. This, like almost everything I have experienced in The Gambia, is bound to be complex and difficult and rewarding.

I think I might be getting somewhere.

Time goes and nothing happens. My mind wanders back to easier times, times when it wasn’t so hard. Sometimes I read page after page of my thesaurus searching for words in my native tongue to describe to myself the way that I feel. But these are Fula times, I should be resorting to my dictionary of foreign terms. Sometimes I feel more nourished by the plants that died without ever being harvested, without seeing it through. Am I like this? Are these Kurtzian days and Quixotic nights food grown for the soul? I wanted to taste that papaya because it would’ve been the best one I’ve ever grown.

Time stands still and everything becomes. Sometimes I get so bored. I’ve spent these past weeks trying to feel better about the direction things have gone. Today, I should feel better because now things have gone finally. Relieved or proud or somehow personally rewarded by some small victory. But in this kind of life, is there any step forward that isn’t a step backward? And I run the risk of taking too personally these stumbling lurches.

But nowhere do they say that you have to be successful as you do these things. Just that you ought to try. And I’ve been trying, honest I have. This is not the first garden I’ve planted that I didn’t get to harvest. I’ve planted a garden of seeds that I’ve planted even as I knew when I planted them I’d never see them grow.

Fortunately I’m not alone through this. I’ve been kept company in that garden by people who have listened well, commented smartly, and inspired me to believe in myself. It’s easy; we all keep finding ourselves in these existential processes. Stories and songs hold us up. We agree with one another, this is not easy.

The three Goals of Peace Corps: Provide technical assistance to people who want it. Let Gambians get to know an American. Let Americans know what it’s like to live in a place not America.

Why do I feel like I’m not doing any of these things? Why have I been feeling like I’m failing? Sometimes I don’t give this credit for how hard it really is. Sometimes I feel like I don’t understand a single word that is spoken to me. Sometimes I find myself shouting just to be able to hear myself.

I’m working though, I’m really still at it. And I think I might be getting somewhere. This place is getting hot, dusty. I remember this. I think I might be getting somewhere.

Gutters and Strikes

When I first came to The Gambia, I had a Peace Corps friend in training who called himself The Dark Horse. There were many things here that he, having never left the continental US, struggled with. Harsh climate, cultural schisms, and dietary discomforts were among his problems. The thing he tussled-with most was the fact that he thought he’d come here and “know exactly what to do to help the world’s poor lift themselves up.” He found that in The Gambia, though people are malnourished, they are not starving; while people are living in poverty, they share a generally optimistic outlook. He was disheartened because he didn’t know how he was expected to help. What exactly did Peace Corps think he could do? When I would ask him how his day was going, he would invariably recite a line from the Coen Brother’s film The Big Lebowski. “Gutters and strikes.” His days were a constant toil as he tried to see the big picture but instead he allowed his smaller failures, say with language, get the best of him. Eventually, he decided to leave or Early Terminate (ET) in the jargon of US government anachronism, a month before we swore-in.

I won’t lie, I’m feeling a bit Dark Horsey these days. Since coming back from Sierra Leone, I’ve encountered several trials and tribulations and have begun to question-- more so than the usual Volunteer existential angst-- what exactly is my role in Peace Corps The Gambia. Harsh diet, weather schisms, and cultural discomforts are only a few of my complaints.

Upon finishing my vacation, I returned to my village to find my entire backyard demonstration garden had become an animal feedlot. The green vibrancy I left behind for a month had become a ruined, dusty whirlwind. The cassava plants were gone, the sweet potatoes gone, the beans and tomatoes and eggplants were all gone. The papaya-tomato-pigeon pea guild was nothing but a single gnawed-off stump in the silty oblivion. My demonstration had become nothing but an abstraction. A year’s worth of work and planning is now nothing but the shit of sheep, goats, donkeys, and cows scattered around as if to inform me of each of the ruminants who had ruminated. Tattered plastic bags, leaking batteries, and discarded broken sandals completed the appearance of neglect.

I asked my host family what had happened. First the gate had been left open, later the cows came in the night and trampled the bamboo fence. Ko nye yaaki they told me. The cows disturbed this. After the cows came the donkeys, the sheep, and the goats.

When I left a month earlier, I asked my family to look after my garden and tree nursery until I got back. They told me Basi ala, no problem. They understand (I think) that I’m doing this for them. I want them to take an active role in this project. Sure, a small ebony tree in the dirt is little more than a stick with a few leaves. But in twenty years, the timber from that single tree could bring them a larger income than a whole field of groundnuts. The papayas and bananas are easy money-makers and require little more than water and protection.

One of the objectives of Peace Corps is sustainable capacity-building. If the garden I have established is not valued by my hosts, is it a waste of time to work in it? No matter how beautiful the crops were, if I haven’t taught my counterparts to care for it I haven’t done my job. First I was disappointed in them but gradually I began to point the accusatory finger back at myself. This was my fault too, I was at least partially responsible. Not just because I went on a two week excursion to Sierra Leone when they cannot even afford a three day trip to Banjul; not just because I hadn’t done a good enough job reinforcing my fence. I too am culpable because I was unable to impress upon my people that this garden is worth the effort. What I’m doing is not just for my own pleasure but is valuable because it boosts their nutrition, provides a source of income, and improves the health of their environment.

Backyard gardens aside, at Nyambai I met with an even greater disappointment than I could have prepared myself for. Things at the National Beekeepers Association of The Gambia (NBAG) had deteriorated into, forgive the obvious metaphor, an upset hive of angry bees. The problem though was not with the temperamental Apis melifera but instead with the corruptible Homo sapiens. We had been witnessing an increasingly volatile conflict between the Board of Directors, the general staff, and the NGOs who provide financial support. Thus far, it has been a slow-burn but recently the drama flared-up with intensity. This finally culminated in the firing of the general manager (a good friend of mine), the withdrawal of Peace Corps support, and the call for an entire restructuring of the organization.

Again, my frustration initially was directed outwardly: What about all the work I’d done in that apiary, all the hive-management training I’d given, and all the plans I had for the coming year? What about the second module of the Feed the Minds rural trainings. What about the grant that Concern Universal just approved for me to conduct research in the apiary at NBAG in Nyambai? Many of us have worked long-hours with the staff to help make the honey operation a viable one. Now some have quit amongst accusations and back-stabbing, some have been sacked, and Peace Corps Volunteers are prohibited from going to the office and apiary.

It didn’t take long though for me to begin to feel like the problem was much larger than the obvious, more tangible inconveniences of this particular failure. The real problem seems to be something that I don’t have the capacity to improve upon. (Dissertations are written and critiques abound of development work in Africa. I haven’t the perspective or the education to begin to inform my readers about the inherent problems of aid and development work and so I will stick to a description of my own experience. It is not my goal to depress you, only to inform you of what I’m going through.) The real problem is that development work is impossibly difficult and often unrewarding. The real problem is that ultimately everyone must make for themselves what they will attain. Otherwise, what they are given will be meaningless and easily corrupted. I heard the old adage a very long time ago: You can lead a horse to water but it’s still gonna stink.

Dishonesty, fraud, and bribe-taking are the axis of evil in the war on poverty and malnutrition. Police officers will gladly look the other way if they are handed a wadded bill by the unlicensed driver of an overloaded car of people. The manager of my regional Christian Children’s Fund recently absconded with thousands of dollars leaving thirty people unemployed for three months and five-hundred children with no school to go to. Teachers remove girls from the classrooms to wash clothes for them; headmasters sell bags of beans donated by the World Food Program. And at NBAG, money that had been donated by the European Commission for the construction of three new processing centers went into the pockets of the staff and the Board. One senior member of staff paid another one to not tell on him and then accepted a bribe from this same person to return the favor.

It is impossible to say just how deeply ingrained this type of dishonesty is in the Gambian system. The money is just too easy and the temptation overcomes even the most trustworthy. The cash from Tubob-adu flows swiftly into the pockets of the people who are “committed” to making those funds work for the greater good. I can imagine that some resist the enticement of the cash for a while but eventually they realize that their honesty does not pay. Continued poverty seems the reward for doing the right thing.

Can you blame them? Can I blame people who are struggling to put food on the table if they eventually take a little off the top? Can I blame my friends and the people I trust? Can I blame the public servant who hasn’t received a paycheck in months for taking a little fist-money? One of the people who had accepted a “tip” at NBAG is struggling with the fact that his wife has been suffering health problems. He can hardly afford the most basic of services and has been living in poverty for his entire life. Can I blame him taking a little money upon his realization that he was the only person there who hadn’t already?

What goes on under the table is often obscured from Peace Corps Volunteers who come here with a sense of hope and goodwill. We form strong bonds with our counterparts and believe that they share the same goals and ethics that brought us here. Discovering that corruption can happen to even the best of them can bring feelings of frustration, sadness, and hopelessness to the Volunteer. Personally, the past few weeks have left me feeling disillusioned, exhausted, and distracted. These emotions have had a drastic impact on my work, on my attitude, and on my outlook. When your counterparts disappoint you and your projects collapse, it is hard to not take-it personally.

But then the inevitable happens. After throwing all those gutter balls I pick-up a 7-10 split on the seventh frame and follow it with a strike. (These analogies are indicative of the fact that I miss bowling most of all the American establishments that I miss at all. Development might be more effective if we just exported ten pins and a twelve pound roller to all these people and let them work the rest out on their own. If I ever return to the Western Hemisphere, you should plan on going bowling with me.)

The small group of beekeepers that I hang out with near my village has impressed me so much these past few weeks. They have been gathering twice a week to weave grass hives for sale to the President of this country and have almost completed a third of his order. They plan to take the first one-hundred to His Excellency by the end of the month. They are excited to get a little cash income for all the cramped knuckles and tender fingertips that accompany weaving grass into cones and cylinders. With steady work, one man can usually make a hive in about three days.

They have really done a lot of work while I was away. I stood in front of the pile of hives that they had made and scratched the dust into my eyes. Each hive was unique; some were a little wonkity and misshapen but most were tight baskets big enough to house a healthy colony all summer. I felt a little strange standing in front of all those hives, a little conflicted. My ego, already strained, was hyper-active. I was a little ashamed, I hadn’t made hardly any of these (and the ones I had made were weydani- not nice). Here was another of my personal failures. Sure, they had made beehives, but what did I have to show for myself?

But then it struck me as I sat down with them and began to weave for the first time in over six weeks: This is exactly what I have been working towards. This is sustainable. This didn’t happen because I made it happen. These men had worked for their own development and they took pride (quietly) in their work. I had helped them organize, I had urged them to make grass hives, and I had helped cut some of the grass. Sometimes the successes in life are the intangibles like this. The bigger picture is hopeful and I am optimistic that even without me, this project will continue to help these people alleviate poverty. And it looks like they can do it without me, like they are going to do it regardless of what I expect of them. They welcomed me back, asked a few questions about Sierra Leone, and then encouraged me to try to make something weydi, something worthy of being sold alongside theirs.

And when I’m not at Badjie Kunda splitting my fingers on palm fronds, I’ve been cleaning-up my demonstration area. I’ve repaired the fence for now. I’ve watered the banana plant and brought it back to life, for now. I’ve re-hydrated the cacti and burned the alluvial flotsam, for now.

And we are trying to repair our relationship with NBAG, trying to see what can be done to recover everyone’s efforts. Some of us feel that we’ve put too much into that operation to let it perish. Too much work? Too much money? Sure, those also have been invested. But I think the true investment that we don’t want to squander is our hope and our enthusiasm for the National Beekeepers Association of The Gambia.

We will try to go ahead with the Feed the Minds trainings because that is the sort of grass-roots work that NBAG was founded on. Their motto-- Good Health, Local Wealth-- is still the way that many of us feel about beekeeping in The Gambia. Through NBAG, aid and development resources have made it into the hands (and minds) of rural people. Peace Corps Volunteers, Mondo Challenge Volunteers, Concern Universal extension workers, and employees of NBAG have worked toward that end. There is still plenty of optimism.

Also, the papaya tree in my back yard has sprouted new leaves.

And I would be leaving-out another bit of happiness if I didn’t tell you about Minh-Tam. This blog isn’t just about the harsh culture, dietary schisms, and weather discomforts that accompany living in The Gambia. I met this girl. Tammy was a Volunteer in Bolivia until they were evacuated last Fall due to political tensions. Rather than quit Peace Corps after a year of service, she opted to try another country and so came here in October. She tells it best: http://tammytruong.blogspot.com/


But I mention it because I have enjoyed her company since we met on a dance floor in October. For those of you who’ve seen me dance, she is the only girl I’ve met who can actually hang with me. And she sings karyoke with verve (The last time I was in a bowling alley, some of Duke City’s finest entertained me while I waited for a lane to open.) and without self-consciousness. It has been pretty amazing. She is having a totally different experience here, and she has changed mine too. I’ve had the chance to get to know the people in her village and seen other aspects of agroforestry in The Gambia. She reminds me not to take the small rewards for granted. Her laugh is infectious. Still, it has been strange to court someone in this place: Kissing cousins come together in arranged marriages, husbands and wives sleep in separate rooms, we are apart for weeks on end waiting for transport.

I have experienced many different emotions over the past few months, to say nothing of the past year and a half that I’ve been in The Gambia. I’ve been here long enough now to have made very strong attachments to some of the people I've met. Two of those people are Nick and Amanda, and they are leaving soon. They have completed their work and are moving back to The States to see what sort of an impact they will have there.

Another of my friends, Kat has also left. She came here on the same plane as me and she was one of my closest site-mates. She’s moving to Tanzania to work on a project bringing light to rural people using bicycle-charged batteries.

I will miss Nick, Amanda, and Kat for the rest of the time I am here and I hope that, inshallah, they will be successful and happy. Yo allah ruta he jam.

Botfly

I went to Sierra Leone and got a little souvenir.

A botfly laid her egg in my clothes which then hatched into my arm which then found nourishment of my flesh.

It burned like hellfire everytime it squirmed around inside me. I spent a few days pouring boiling water on the spot and pinching myself.

It popped out and now I'm on the mend. Unless there was more than one that is...

If Go grees we go succeed

Ryan and Jeff and I were intrigued about this tropical place south of The Gambia called Sierra Leone so we left together on a two week trip. We had spoken with a few other Peace Corps Volunteers who had travelled there, checked a few websites, and looked through tattered copies of the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. At the consulate in Banjul before we left, we were told to greet a few people. Then we were told to pay US$100 for the entry visa. The roundtrip tickets were US$300 from The Gambia to Freetown.

Sierra Leone is, as we would soon learn, a place of fascinating contrasts. It was at once pristine while filthy, welcoming while frightening, inspiring while disheartening. The environment has enormous potential to support agriculture yet less than 8% of the land is currently in production. Diamonds, gold, and metals are mined from the countryside but most of the profit is never seen by the people who live and die in these mines. The population is over four million yet there are vast stretches of uninhabited places. The growth rate is 10 points higher than the world average yet the country has the highest infant mortality rate in the world (as I write this, Salma Hayek is feeding babies there with milk from her own breast!).

Freetown, founded in 1787 for repatriated American and British slaves, is a crowded and polluted city full of refugees who came here seeking asylum during and after the civil war that lasted through the 1990s. It is not uncommon to see men and women who suffered amputations and other travesties during that struggle positioned on the streets begging for a few coins. In the sea of faces on the chaotic streets I saw two caucasions wearing white button-downs and dark backpacks. Then I noticed the nametags and realized that they were Mormons on a mission. We were a little lost and tired in the middle of Freetown and so I wanted to ask if they knew where we could get a room for the night. Maybe they had had visitors and knew of a place. They were moving fast down the street and I was chasing them- though slightly more encumbered. "Hey guys! Hey Mormon guys!" But they continued. We laid chase through the crowded street and I kept trying to make them hear my American voice. I had heard a story once on PRI's This American Life about how difficult it is for Moromon Missionaries to get anyone to listen to them and so I thought they'd be glad to hear us. I'd even listen to the Joseph Smith story again if they'd tell me where I could sleep for cheap. Finally I caught up with them and snatched one of their bags. I asked "Don't you speak English?" The boy shot me a glance as he pulled away from my clutch. "Yes." was all he said as the two of them disappeared into a busy retaurant. I gave up.

The tropics of Sierra Leone make it a great place to grow delicious fruits and vegetables. Cassava, pineapples, coconut, rice, sweet potatoes, cocoa, and coffee are among the crops that are grown here. We were also informed that chickens were being used to plant groundnuts in an inventive system employing plastic condoms stretched over the beaks to prevent the starving birds from eating the nuts. No proof of this chicken-tractor was seen and the claim is dubious at best.

We did a little book shopping from the men who sell reading material on the streets. Mostly you can find childrens' books and high school botany text books presumably donated from overseas.


I spent my downtime reading A Bend In The River by V.S. Naipaul. He wrote things like "...as I got deeper I thought: But this is madness. I am going in the wrong direction. There can't be a new life at the end of this."

America can be proud of the brand name Barrack Obama which is showing-up all over West Africa in the form of t-shirts, stickers, and beltbuckles. His face is all over every television set.

We also discovered a small hole-in-the-wall shop in Freetown called Barrack Obama Tea Shop which Ryan took a photograph of with Jeff proudly in front. We were immediately derided by the owner of the shop telling us that we had to pay him to take that photograph. He wanted to smash the camera and acted like he wanted to fight us. When we tried to rebutt that, since we had elcted Mr Obama, this man should pay us to use our President's name to sell over-priced cups of Nescafe he walked off in a huff complaining that we were selfish.

We purchased numerous coconuts on the street (about 35 cents each) which quenched our thirsts and satisfied our cravings. Men sell them out of push-pushes in the streets or you can find someone on the beach who will climb a tree and bring you one or two.

After a night in the too-expensive Aberdeen area at a guesthouse named after Princess Diana, (Where Ryan asked when he looked at the bed "Is that memory foam? to which Jeff replied "If it is, you don't want to know what it remembers.") we decided to head to the well-publicized River Number 2. The trip took about two hours by taxi. We haggled with the driver over the price for an eternity before we agreed on something around US$10. Thus began the process that Ryan quickly became weary of. Jeff and I are Peace Corps Volunteers in The Gambia where we take great pride in getting everything for less than the original asking price. Somethings are not negotiable: A coconut costs everyone the same while the price of a hotel room is rarely what the man behind the counter asks for. But we would be letting our Peace Corps Cultural Trainers down if we didn't engage in this West African tradition. No matter that we are making a stink over 35 cents. No matter that we will make that stink for twenty minutes. Ryan, on the other hand, is not Peace Corps. He came for a vacation from the States and he makes a decent living. After driving for an hour of dirt and rock road, the driver of our taxi stopped in the middle of nowhere with a sad look on his stoned face and said "But this is too far. The price is too small." Ryan shut me up by passing him another 10,000 leones (about US$3) and we eventually made it to River Number 2.

No. 2 River Beach is a community-owned project on a beautiful beach of white sand with mountains rising practically right out of the Atlantic.

The Lonely Planet lists the price for camping at 5000 leones which we were quite excited about. Once we arrived however we were informed that the price had gone-up just a little for the priveledge of setting out our tents. The first price was Le60,000. We eventually talked them down to half that... and we promised not to use their chairs.

The only other people we met on the beach that day were some Americans. I recognized the accent and so went over to say hello. As it turns out, the two elderly men were Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who had both served in Sierra Leone nearly forty years ago. They came for a visit and brought their adult children. Peace Corps is no longer active here but they wanted to see what was left of their work. One of the men had been a teacher and he saw that his school was still in use and he met some of his former students. The other man had been an engineer working on the roads and he thought that they had not seen much maintenance over the years. In fact, both men agreed that things in Sierra Leone were much worse than they had been when they were last here.

Ryan bought a bottle and we drank gin on No 2 Beach. Ryan ordered the baracuda skewers for Le30,000 and Jeff and I ate a plate of rice drenched in palm oil and wilted cassava leaves in a nearby village for Le1,000 each. We also were given roseheart fruits, bananas, and mangos.

We decided to head back to Freetown to arrange transport to the northeast part of the country. We had read about climbing Mt Bintumani (Loma Mansa) which, at 6381 feet, is the highest mountain in West Africa.

Freetown is a weird place.

There are funny signs everywhere. Some of them are informative about current issues.

Some of them read Love is Wicked and Oggo Farm Piggery and Youth Empowerment and Book for the heart, Book for the brain, and If Go grees we go succeed and banana water and Beware of Bad Dogs.

Some help get the word out on the medical care that is available.

Some of them tell You! to Stop asking questions!


The next morning we went to the bus stop at 5am where we wanted to catch the "government bus" to Kabala, the nearest town to Loma Mansa. We were told that "no bus goes today" and so we started hiking across the city for the carpark. Eventually we were picked-up by a taxi who took us the remaining 18 miles that we were about to walk. We were invited to ride in a Peugeot 504 bush taxi with a few other travellers and we negotiated the price and were off. The driver was a Redskins fan as are Jeff and Ryan. He had lived in the Bronx for 18 years and had just returned to Sierra Leone to try to make a living here. He took us as far as Makeni and then helped us negotiate a fair price the rest of the way to Kabala. We finally arrived there at about 4pm and started to look for a place to stay. The RPCVs we met at No 2 River had reccomended Pa Sargeant's guesthouse and so we trudged across town. Once there we were told that Pa wasn't in but that we could wait in the lobby. I'm not sure if this is what they meant when they told us to relax....

But we were a little exhausted.

And maybe all the travelling was making us a little loopy.

Kabala is a nice town and Pa's is a nice guesthouse. Unfortunately, it is not really very close to Loma Mansa. The Lonely Planet reads "The most scenic and wildlife-rich approach to the summit is from the west, either from Kabala..." We were informed that there were no cars that went there whatsoever and that the road was horrible. "Hunert miles." Pa said. We could probably charter three motorcycles and drivers for Le200,000 each. It'd take eight or nine hours to get there but they wouldn't wait for us to make the five day trip up and down. We realized that we wouldn't be able to make the trip afterall.

We were able to make a dayhike up to the crest of Gbawuria Hill which was sort of like climbing the highest mountain in West Africa. Well, not really. But it did afford us nice views of Kabala.

We also got really dirty on that hike which was fun. And funny.

We asked Pa if he knew where we could get local honey so he arranged for Fatamata to come over. She sold us a liter for Le4000.

She wildcrafts her honey from the bush but doesn't have any hives of her own. She told us that this honey was harvested last fall and that she wouldn't be able to get any more until March.

It was thick and dark which is what West Africans seem to prefer. She said that this honey will last at least two years but we drank it straight from the bottle and finished it in a week.

Jeff needed to get his hair cut and so we set out looking for a "Barbing Shop." West African haircuts are usually accomplished with a razorblade but Jeff insisted that the barber use scissors.


We also found a game that someone had set up: They put some jars of mayonaise, bottles of Fanta, and bars of soap on the ground and charge Le100 to throw a ring to try to win a prize.

He didn't win anything.

The next day we left for Tiwai Island in the southeast part of the country. It was an all-day trek involving a lot of negotiating, some hurt feelings, and a very cramped ride. The trip from Kabala to Mekeni went alright and we experienced only two breakdowns in our bushtaxi. The car, not us. From Makeni we rode in a van (gele gele here, podh podh there) for four hours to Bo. Then we hired a taxi for the last three hours to Potoru. We met a man there who let us sleep on his floor (he asked for Le20,000 each and we agreed on Le10,000) and then he told us stories of the war. He pointed out bullet holes on the buildings around his house and said that he lived in the bush for four months eating wild yams.

The next morning we set out on a ten mile hike (to save the Le45,000 we would have spent on motorcycle rides) to the Moa River.

This was my first time ever in a closed canopy jungle and I was awestruck by the beauty of it all.

It is difficult in such a place to really see the territory unless you can climb trees to get a look around.


Tiwai Island is a community conservation program managed by the people of Koya and Barri, the Sierra Leonean government, and Njala University. It is a unique 1200 hectare island biosphere in the Gola Forest Reserve, the last remaining dryland rainforest in Africa. Pygmy hippos, river otters, chimpanzees and ten other primate species live there as well as over 700 different plant species.

We did laundry with one of the locals in the Moa River.

Jungles are difficult places to take photographs. The lens doesn't demonstrate much more than greenery.

You have to look up to see much more than the plants in your face.



We walked with a guide from the community. He told us to keep looking up.


He told us to look down. Though we wouldn't actually see the elusive pygmy hippo, we would be lucky enough to almost step in some hippo poop.

The sounds of a jungle are much more dramatic than the sights: Skitter jitter, droops, barks, whistles, and growls. Dripping water on the tent. Whispers and long-range calls. Rhythmic pulse of a bird's beak on deadwood, melodic singsong pitch warble. Monkeys and apes in stereo as one picks up the voice of another and carries it across the jungle. A silence that is itself a sort of music. River on the rocks far away a whisper. Primates in trees as branches bend and flex and drop sticks and leaves in a whoosh almost of wind, a crack almost of thunder. A quiet again as lively eyes stare back at me. The buzz of a honeybee and the cadence of crickets. Rushing of wind through wide-spread wings. Thump on a hollow log. Operatic birds create a mysterious chorus of cackling laughs and mournful wails.

Tiwai Island provides tents for the overnight adventure. We stayed two nights. Solar panels provide cold beer and lights at night. The staff is comprised of locals from nearby communities who are generous, informed, and friendly.

We hiked out to Potoru and were lucky enough to find a podh podh going to Bo with a woman throwing up in the back seat. When she wasn't, her two children were.

Bo is a strange city full of Lebanese-owned diamond buying shops and high speed internet and corrupt government officials. We got a room at the Madam Woki Hotel across from Cool Zone Rest and Relaxation. We enjoyed some afra (grilled meat on the street) and took in the up-country nightlife. Ryan and Jeff both threw-up later that night but I slept like a baby.

Bo open air market: Reeking of raw sewage and rotting trash and dry fish. Throngs of people packed ridiculously together, gawking children bumping against us, wet and black sewage splashing over our feet, blank women selling cheap wax cloth and sorrel and groundnuts, pickpockets with their fingers groping our buttocks. Shouted "Whatcha lookin fo?" and "Hey friend, how di bodi?" and "From where?" Piles of smoldering trash, stacks of used American clothes, recorded voices hawking from megaphones, distorted rap from blown speakers powered by belching generators. Fast racing drunken motorcyles slamming me obnoxiously from behind. Not at all unique or inspiring.



Lovely children in the streets carrying overflowing buckets of rotted trash on their heads. A boy learning to drive a motorcycle stalling it over and over again and being laughed at by a policeman weilding a machine gun. The golden sun hanging in the smoky sky backlighting tall minarets atop the big downtown mosque. A rooster. Fried plaintains. Chubby Lebanese kids sucking on Cokes behind the counters of diamond-buying shops while their shrouded mothers stare aloof from barred upstairs balconies. A dog chasing another dog down the silt street. A car on flames with a black smoke trail strangling the city while men passively play checkers on a homemade board. Women together bent at the waist sweeping the earth with brooms made from palms. The most melodic call to prayer I've ever hear sung loud, proud into the polluted cloud of my first morning in Bo.

That morning we awoke to the pollution of a West African atmosphere. My eyes were burning and my throat was scratchy. I didn't realize that, like The Gambia, Sierra Leone also imposes "Clean the Nation Day" whereby cars are not allowed to be on the road, shops remain closed, and everyone is expected to burn their piles of plastic bags, donkey shit, and worn-out clothing. I decided to walk to a shop to purchase lye to wash my clothes in the bathroom sink but was quickly stopped by a police officer who beckoned me over to him.

He asked what I was doing out wandering around. "Don't you know that today is Clean the Nation?" he asked. I said I didn't. He told me that it was against the law to leave your compound or hotel until 10:00 and it was only 9:15. "Do you agree with me that you have broken that law?" I noticed that his eyes were a bit glassy and he seemed to smell of palm wine. I guess that I had to agree that I had broken that law and so I said "Yes." He had me right where he wanted me. "So do you also agree that you are under arrest?" We debated that issue for a short time and then he instructed me to follow him to the police station. We started to stroll but he was in no hurry. He told me that he hadn't been paid in a long time and that it was a shame that even the public servants were poor in his country. Maybe if he had a friend from America... I started to catch on. Suddenly I saw Ryan walking towards us. Apparently he didn't know the law either and Officer Barri asked him if he agreed that he was under arrest. The three of us tarted to stroll towards the station when three other cops showed up and demanded identification from us. Ryan showed his passport and I showed my Peace Corps id because mine was in the hotel. They told us to come to the station for interrogation and to verify our status in their country. Officer Barri became defensive. Either he had grown to like us (after I had given him a fake American phone number and promised to let him stay at my house if he was ever in Europe) or was playing good-cop bad-cop. Either way, an argument between them took the heat off us. Eventually they all grew tired of the discussion and agreed that were no longer arrested.

Back near Freetown we had a few nights remaining and a small cache of leones that we didn't want to waste. We'd been eating so many meals made of sardines mixed with a can of hummus and smeared on bread that we were super hungry for good Italian food. We found a beautiful resort called Franco's down the beach in Sussex that had been built over the past thirty years.



Franco let us put our tents up in the grass beneath a few coconut trees and only charged us about five bucks for each tent.


The downside of the site was that you couldn't lock up any valuables so we had to keep a close watch on things. There were a few hellion children running around throwing Coke cans in the ocean and clowning with the wildlife. We couldn't say anything because some of them were Franco's kids and some were the spawn of Bruno, one of Franco's expat friends from Germany. Our first night we turned-in rather early due to the exhaustion of lounging on the beach all day. The kids were full of pent-up energy from drinking soft drinks and eating buttered noodles and so were running around our tents. We tried to ignore them when Leo spat on Jeff's tent as he ran past and kicked Ryan's. Some one of their drunk fathers gave them sparklers and before we knew what was happening Ryan's tent was melting beneath a wash of bright sizzle and sulphur smell. We were livid and chased them into their houses where they cowered like the animals that they were. We tried to reason with Franco and Bruno but Franco was impossible to understand and Bruno was disastrously drunk. He patted little Leo's nappy hair and said "Did you set the American Army tents on fire?" "Not me Papa. Honest." Bruno shrugged and looked at us blank as a fart. "Be reasonable. Do you think he was trying to kill you?" He staggered back to his hotel room. Franco mumbled something about letting us keep our five bucks for the night.




We met a man from Las Vegas Nevada wh has lived here for sixteen years. He was a mercenary during the war and told us stories about his life here. Now he mines uranium and other precious metals. We also met a woman named Sarah from the United Kingdom who was on the final days of her volunteer work in Sierra Leone before heading home.

We headed back to Freetown for our last night. We found a nice brothel where they only charged us $8 per person and looked the other way: Sierra Leone has a law that restricts more than one person of the same sex from staying in the same room. We struggled throughout our entire trip promising hotel managers that we were brothers and that we swore not to engage in ungodly acts together in their houses of disrepute.



We went shopping for last minute silafonda- gifts to be given to host families upon our return home.

I bought myself a big grass hat and a barracuda-bone necklace for my girlfriend in The Gambia.

The next morning we went to the airport where we were informed that there was a US$40 "departure tax" that we would each have to pay before we could board the plane. I guess it was appropriate.

We said "Goodbye" to Sierra Leone and wondered if we would ever return. I am excited to get back home now to do some work.