My Sami Koto Family
It has been about 2 months since my last post, but here is a summary of what I have been up to since then:
4th of July Peace Corps The Gambia celebrations
We celebrated the 4th of July in Kombo with several entertaining events. We rented a small two story wooden boat for the day and supplied our own food and drinks – that was a great time. That week we had an ‘open mic’ night where fellow Peace Corps volunteers signed up to perform different acts. I was challenged to a public pushup contest by one of my friends, I won. We also had a team triathlon competition. My team won that as well. I did the 500 meter swim leg, my buddy, Seth, did the bike leg, and my friend, Xander, did the run.
And while I was in Kombo for the 4th of July I made a visit to my training host family. They were very happy to see me, and I had a really nice time hanging out with them. It was also nice to actually be able to converse with them on a simple level. They even named their newest child after me – this is a common practice in the culture (to name children after someone close to the family) so I am not a special case, but still very honored.
After returning to Sami Koto I resumed work on my projects and got back to the village way of life. On the 11th of July I attended a Ferima, or “rain dance” ceremony, where they had three of their ceremonial “Konkurang” characters dancing around a circle of girls singing songs. We have been in a drought this year and drastically needed rain for the crops. I just needed it to cool off. Luckily it worked and it rained that night. Yet it still has not rained as much as I was expecting it to, but the crops seem to all be doing alright for the most part. I don’t think there will be any more of a food shortage than their usually is, which we were beginning to worry about.
I also decided that I wanted to get back into ideal shape, as I had been taking it easy for the most part since I got here – not dieting and only exercising occasionally, and I had gained 15-20 lbs. So I jumped right into an intense 2-a-day lifting routine. Every morning and evening I would run a 1.5 mile warm up followed by 30-45 minutes of weight lifting. I definitely noticed an increase in size and strength, but not much weight loss. So after the first month of the routine I started implementing a high protein diet: eliminated large amounts of sugar, added 6 eggs and a can of tuna or beans every day in addition to limited portion sizes of my normal meals. I am now going into my 9th week of training, and continue to see positive results. However, I have still yet to make much progress in leaning out, so as of last week I decided to redirect my focus towards that goal by replacing the evening lifting session with a cardiovascular workout. This past week I lifted weights in the morning as usual, but then ran 4-6 miles in the evening. It was intense and my body is not yet use to it. I plan to continue on this routine through November with a goal accomplishment date of Thanksgiving.
Fishing in Sami Koto
Other activities I’ve been up to include project meetings, a Moringa planting trek, helping weed my family’s peanut and cous fields, and fairly recently I started going fishing with my brother Mamadou.
End of Ramadan Prayers
August was the Muslim celebration of Ramadan. So nobody in my village was eating or drinking anything between sun up and sun down. Ramadan ended on the night of August 30th and they celebrated by slaughtering 3 cows. That next morning I went to their end of Ramadan prayer ceremony where I observed the service at the mosque and then followed them to several different compounds in the village where they performed different prayers.
The new group of Peace Corps volunteers, who are part of the education sector, just recently swore in and have moved to their new sites. We received three new volunteers in the URR (my region of the country). On the 23rd of August, my friend Remy and I visited one of them, named Casey, at his site in Suduwol, which is about a 40 minute bike ride from both Remy and I. Casey had taught English in Japan for a couple years before coming here and seems well prepared for his service. He will be working at a large Senior Secondary School (equivalent of High School) in his village.
In unfortunate news, the Alkalo, or chief, of my village died from an unknown illness on the 4th of August. I’m not sure exactly how he will be succeeded, or what the procedures are for that, but I think it is his son who will take his place. There have been several other deaths in the community, some children, most likely from Malaria (they do not perform autopsies here, so causes of death are usually unknown).
