Operation Crossroads Africa Blog

I wrote earlier about how everyone in our group comes from varying backgrounds and those differences were highlighted by a conversation I participated in with one of my group members the other afternoon. It's the guy from Westpoint. He's incredibly smart, studying economics and hoping to pursue a JD/MBA like I am when he completes his military service. He spent last semester studying in Egypt, is the son of Lebanese immigrants, and, to be truthful, is quite attractive in that military sort of way. He's obsessed with his appearance, waking up early to go running in the morning, taking a break from the worksite to go do pull-ups on the soccer goal post, slathering suntan lotion and talking about the strength of his tan. He's also had a difficult time in the village. He's not very happy, feels as though his work is being taken advantage of, and hasn't really made many friendships. He found out during our stay at the fancy hotel that he lost 10 pounds throughout the course of the summer, and, on the afternoon of our recent conversation, said that he felt as though he was "emaciated".

For those of you who know my personality, I think the only way to describe my reaction to his words would be to said that I totally flipped out on the guy. He had the audacity to say that he felt emaciated when he was living in West Africa, surrounded by people that have to worry about where they're going to get the money for their next meal when he has at least had something to eat three times per day and has always had more money to buy more food. He's stressed about losing muscle when so many around him are stressed about losing so much more.

Going back to the Mbye family that I have had the priviledge of knowing these past two months. They've lost so much. Rass told me the other afternoon about how his mother had sent him word in Brikama where he was attending the 9th grade that she would not be able to pay his school fees for grade 10. He said that he walked the six miles to Jambanjelly to convince her to find a way to pay for his school and found that the rest of his family had not been able to eat more than plain rice for a week because they had no money to even pay for food. He dropped out of school that year and has been trying to work as a tailor ever since. That's a true loss.

Furthermore, his mother has buried four of her own children. Four children. I cannot imagine that kind of loss. Although it is a common thing, it does not detract from the pain she must have felt each and every time. I mother loves their child despite the fact that she may lose him and I cannot fathom the difficulty of losing so much in one lifetime.

I hear these things and it makes me sad. I look around me to find a way to make things better and I see a person that took the time to spend his entire summer in West Africa still thinking the same way he did when he got here. It makes me lose a little bit of hope, thinking that if even those who witness these things with their own eyes cannot change themselves, what hope is there to make a change so large?

It's the same thought I've thought every day since I got here and which I have written about in virtually every blog post thus far. Please pardon the repitition, but it totally boggles my mind. Call me OCLD, but I think about the systems class I took sophomore year. When you look a system in its entirety it seems impossible to change, but when you break it into its small parts, a large-scale systematic change can occur. That's what I'm hoping for. I'll do my part to alter this system, and I will prod all those I know to do the same, and hopefully, things can be a bit better for a family like Rass'. I can't promise much, but I can at least promise that I'll do that.

The days left in the village are approaching the single digits and I can honestly say that they might have to drag me away kicking and screaming from this place.

I had one of the best days yesterday. I've been spending practically every free second I have with Boss' family lately and yesterday was no exception. As soon as I rolled out of bed and ate my daily breakfast (white bread with peanut butter and honey and a cup of hot tea. delicious.) I made my way to their compound which I will call its Mandinka name of Mbye Kunda from here on out. The girls helped me do my laundry, which involved fetching a few gallons of water from the local pump and doing what I call the "double rinse" option of two-bucket handwashing. While that was drying we made our way to the kitchen and cooked a traditional meal. We pounded salted fish, peppers, onions and cooked it with ground peanuts and rice. It may not sound too great, but it was delicious and I enjoyed helping with its preparation although it entailed dealing with the incredibly strong gas of the onion and smoke from the fire in my eyes. It was really just a blurry mess to me, but the girls enjoyed laughing at my attempts and I enjoyed making them laugh. We spent the rest of the afternoon in the compound, playing cards and laughing at Boss' little brother, Mass. I've become really close with Boss' older brother, Rass (I know, Mass, Boss, Rass and then there's an older brother named Kamass. hah!) so I enjoyed hanging out with him as well. Their family is just amazing in every sense of the word, and I would honestly do anything I could to pack them all in my suitcase and take them home with me.

I also went to the discotec last night. There is a traveling dj that comes to the village occasionally and it is always a big to-do. I honestly could not believe that the people there were the same people I pass on the street and work with everyday. The girls' Muslim garb was gone and they were shaking it just like any woman would in an American club. The sexual tension was out of control and the party lasted until about 4 am without a single alcoholic beverage in sight. It was all dance hall music and really fun to watch everyone doing their rasta dancing.

Of course, the late bedtime ensured a pretty miserable workday this afternoon, but it was totally worth it. The work went so incredibly fast this afternoon. It was like the entire group finally got the hang of it. We were anticipating everything and basically finished the walls, which is absolutely amazing. It looks like we are definitely not going to finish work on the library this summer, but we are going to do our level best to make sure that it gets a roof on it before we leave, although that will probably entail some pretty brutal two-a-days for the next couple of weeks.

That said, my few minutes of internet time is ticking away quickly. I don't really have time to do the proofing that I would like, so please excuse any typing errors and I never really got to explain the title of the post. In short, it refers to the rasta way of life which seems to be adopted by pretty much everyone here. When you ask someone how they're doing, they'll often said "just managing, man" and from that you know that life is going pretty well. I can't think of a better way to say how I feel right now that to say that I'm a bit more than managing right now. I feel so happy and honored and honestly don't want to go home at all. Not one little bit.

I do not have anything earth-shattering to write about today. It seems as though my life has fallen into a pleasing pattern: working everyday, getting water, cooking. For the moment, I don't feel as though every day is difficult and my heart feels a bit less broken than it was last weekend. There have been some definite group tensions that I have actually been the center of which are way too complicated to explain and way too subject to my own interpretation of them to take the energy to write about. I personally do not like conflict at all, but I will stand up for myself if I feel uncomfortable or taken advantage of. I used to be afraid to do even that, but my living situation in Washington DC was less-than-perfect and forced me to buck up or be subjugated to the utmost. At any rate, things should be alright from here on out, at least I hope so.

I've been thinking a lot about the future lately, wondering if I can simply return to the United States and go forward with my former life plan. I just feel like I've changed so much in such a short time and feel capable of living a different life than I was working toward. It's a scary thing to be graduating in less than a year and feel as though I'm back to square one. But, like I said earlier, I just feel so fortunate to be able to make my own choices for how my life will go. I've seen so many that cannot even do that throughout the last few weeks that I cannot feel frustrated about it. I was telling my friend Rosa this morning that I just feel excited to see how the rest of my life works out. I've been lucky so far and honestly cannot wait to see how the rest of it goes.

Like I said earlier, I don't have a whole lot to say this afternoon. I'm happy that it's finally the weekend for me and cannot believe that next weekend will be my last in the village. I better run though. My life honestly revolves around water and the solar-powered tap in my compound will be turning on soon. I need to get back home to help fill the water buckets because I don't think I can trust my group members to take care of it today. They're all just a little bit tired. We had a lot of stuff to take care of this afternoon including going on a camel ride and everyone decided after about one hour in Brikama that they didn't have the energy. I wouldn't be surprised to come home to everyone at the beach and empty water buckets. So I better high-tail it to the Bush taxi and get back to where I'm supposed to be at the moment, which is relaxing under the mango tree that's right outside of my front door.

I went to visit the compound of one of my favorite families in the village on Friday night, thinking that 9 pm would be the best time to come because they would finally be done with the work of the day. The family lives directly across from the library we're working on. They're very "typical" to the village in that the husband has two wives, but cannot (or will not) work enough to support them both. His first wife has 5 children, ranging from 3 years to 24 years. She lost one child child at six years to what I gather as a female circumcision gone awry. The remaining five are honestly some of the most special people I've ever met. Boss is part of this family, as is the cutest three-year-old you'll ever meet. They are all intensely beautiful, especially the girls. Their smiles seriously light me up. When I see them in the morning at work in the library it honestly makes my day. And when I see them sad, it breaks my heart. One of the daughters came to me after receiving a beating from her stepmom, and it took all that was in me to hold back from going over and beating her myself, although the stepmom too seems to have a good heart.

I know their life is hard, but I never really comprehended the depth of it until my visit Friday night. The mom is an absolute sweetheart, but I never get to spend much time with her. She wakes up and prepares to go to the village market to sell vegetables everyday while we are working at the library. Every afternoon she's not around because she tends to the garden that somehow produces enough profit to feed the entire family. Although I've eaten with them numerous times, I've never seen her eat because she's always working. I made this special visit to her on Friday night because the evening is the only time she seems to have to herself and in that time she is teaching herself how to read with Boss' help because she hopes that increasing her knowledge through an education she was never given will somehow help her improve the life of her family.

But when I came to visit Friday night, she wasn't sitting on a mat on the porch studying with Boss like I expected. She was still working. She was cleaning and preparing chives to sell in the market and was then finishing the process of roasting peanuts to grind them into paste to sell at the market the next morning. The work was hard. At first she would just let me hold the flashlight but at my insistence she finally let me grind the peanuts for her. All the while she was still smiling, appreciating my help, laughing with her daughter, but I knew she was exhausted. After just a few minutes, my arms were burning but I would not let myself stop. I wanted to do just one thing to help her, but I knew that anything I did would not truly help her in any way because she would have to wake up again in just a few short hours and do all the same hard work all over.

I keep thinking of that saying "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for life". All I feel like I'm doing this summer is giving away a lot of fish. Anything I've done seems so insignificant to the huge problems that need to be solved. No matter how hard I work on this library, it probably will not be finished by the end of the summer and it looks like Crossroads may term it as "inefficient" to send another group to work on it next summer. And, if it does get completed this summer, there are no real books to put in it anyway.

I've spent a huge chunk of time cultivating friendships with the wealthiest family in the village, only to have them completely turn their backs on me as soon as I've started to spend more time with Boss' family because of the huge class divides currently existing in the village. I've spent every afternoon playing with the children of the village, but I feel like all that has done is reinforce this idea that to be friends with white people is desirable and that it will raise their popularity because of it. All in all, I feel like I haven't done a single thing yet that has an impact. I know it may seem that I have from an American perspective, but as I come to know the culture more, I realize that I may be doing more harm than good.

Right now I'm sitting in the lobby of a posh hotel that my entire group came to visit to mark to halfway point of our time this summer. It's absolutely gorgeous with a beautiful pool, running water, air conditioned rooms, but all I can think of is the village. I feel so much guilt for being here right now. I feel confused as to why I am able to "get away" from the village when it all becomes too difficult while so many of the people there have been denied the opportunity to even improve their lives with hard work. I feel guilty that I am not a big enough person to give up this weekend and spend the money on some modern amenity that will make Boss' mom's life a bit easier. I feel ashamed that people in our group spent 25 dollars on an all-you-can-eat buffet and that I myself spent four on a mixed drink. I know that anyone in America would tell me that I have to find some sort of balance, come to terms with what I'm seeing and my role in improving it. But, I just can't do that yet. I'm a very sensitive person normally, and seeing the things I've seen thus far is just killing me.

It's not a healthy way to live, but I feel that it is the least I can do for right now. I'm hoping that someday soon I will have an "Ahah" moment and it will all become crystal clear to me. That soon I will know what I need to do with the things I am seeing and that I will be able to return to America with at least a piece of my heart intact. Until then I guess I'll continue observing, cultivating friendships, and giving away whatever fish my heart can possibly spare.

I toyed with the idea of not even posting today but after going through the hassle of finding a bush taxi to Brikama and dealing with people staring at me during my hour-long wait for internet, I am stubbornly typing this entry though I am feeling a bit out of sorts.

I made the mistake of looking at old pictures on my camera this afternoon. I changed memory cards and found an entire gigabyte of photos from my trip to Ecuador. It seriously chronicled the majority of my semester in Quito, from my first trip to the beach to my final sight-seeing days in the center of the city and it made me seriously sad. I've been so fortunate these past three years to do so many things. I was thinking this afternoon that in the last year I've been to Honduras for one month, Ecuador for about four, Washington DC for four as well. I've learned so much about myself everywhere I've been and I've met so many incredible people, but those positive experiences are exactly why I feel so sad this afternoon.

Everywhere I've been has taken a piece of my heart, leaving me loving and missing so many people at the same time that just looking through pictures makes me feel empty. I couldn't help but think about the fact that today marks the half-way point of my time in Africa, and out of all of the places I've been I think I love this place the most. Part of me wants to hold back, thinking that if I do not let myself love then it will not hurt so bad when I leave. I know that is not right, though. I know that I am here for a reason and that I have to continue to search for that reason by allowing more people into my life to love and to care about although it may ultimately cause a bit of pain.

I think this entry has just given me the clarity that I needed. You know, it's alright to miss people. It's that emotion that makes us human and having people in your world to love and to care about is one of the most important things in life. After all, caring about someone enough to miss them means that you must have had a really good time getting to know that person. So, I guess the juice is worth the squeeze after-all.

I don't want to say this too loudly, but it seems that I am once again they lucky one. In my group of 10, I am the singular person that has not gotten sick. Most people are regularly experiencing the "Big D" as I like to call it, and almost every person has woken in the middle of the night and vomitted out the window of the bedroom because we are all scarily locked into our house every night without access to the key. I know, this raises all sorts of fire rescue issues, but, trust me, fire evacuation routes are the farthest thing from anyone's mind right now.

I was lucky in this way when I was in Ecuador. I got a little sick, but nothing in comparison to what my friends were experiencing. I think part of it is in the way I approach life here. Most people in our group are seriously counting the days until we go home, constantly thinking about their families or significant others. While I obviously love my family to death, I know that I cannot be with them right now and that I am supposed to be here so I don't worry too much about it. They are also constantly complaining about the shower (perhaps "bucket" would be the proper description) situation and how much they want to get pedicures and sleep on clean sheets under air conditioning. It may surprise some, but I don't care too much about the shower situation or the fact that I sweat like a madman at night and I think that may be the reason that my body is not reacting poorly to its new environment. At any rate, I am enjoying my healthiness now and am mentally prepared for whatever mother nature is thinking of bringing.

But that is not what I promised to write about at all. I want to talk about the group dynamics that have developed over the past few weeks. Well, we are a group of 10 people, coming from all over the country. We have 5 girls and 5 boys with a broad range of backgrounds. We have our military man from Westpoint, Los Angeles girl, engineering surfer, philosophy major as a group leader, 3 rugby players, a environmentalist Canadian... the list goes on. I think just that short clip with suffice to say that we all come from DIFFERENT backgrounds, which has made it difficult for us to get along at times. Some of us want to work double shifts everyday to finish construction on the library while others want to be more culturally sensitive and spend more time getting to know people in the village. Some people want our living quarters to be constantly clean while others are okay with a bi-monthly cleaning. What we have learned is that we live together better if we are not tired. When we were working all of those double shifts, we were constantly at eachother's throats and generally feeding off of one another's negativity. But this week, after a long weekend and two very easy days of work, we are getting along warmly.

If I would have written this entry in the middle of last week, I am sure that it would have emerged with an entirely different tone. But being with people and trying to learn so much in such a short period of time has led me to this conclusion: every single person in my group came on this trip because they want to do something good. So, although they may irritate the hell out of me at times, I know their actions are coming from a good place and that is how I can overlook a lot of things that would normally drive me crazy.

At least that's how I feel today. Work on the library has been coming along slowly the past few days and I really haven't done anything physically demanding so I am feeling pretty rested and emotionally balanced. Ask me tomorrow and I may have an entirely different take on the situation, but for today I am going to go run some errands for my group members, buy some postcards, and make it home in time to chat over the flickering light of a candle about the frustrations of the day with 9 group members that have become a part of my life for some reason I can't quite figure out yet.

Next week will be the halfway mark of my time here in The Gambia. I was talking with one of the girls in my program that participated in the Operation Crossroads program in my village last summer and she said that it was at right about this point in the summer that the village started accepting them as part of their life. I thought this would be a good thing because it would be nice to see how they really live without being totally conscious of our presence, but now I am realizing that I am going to start seeing the less glamorous facets of life that I had been able to avoid up until now.

The violence is something that I don't know if I'll be able to stomache. Yesterday Boss (whom I spoke of in my previous post) was talking with one of the boys in the village about something soccer related and ended up arguing with the other boy. Before I even knew what was happening they were in an all-out fistfight and the boy clubbed Boss with the end of a bicycle pump. In turn, Boss turned the same club on him and cut his eye. They were so angry at each other that we couldn't stop them and almost got hit ourselves. Of course, Boss ended up with a huge welt on the side of his face and we had been without electricity for hours so the shop that sometimes sells ice didn't have any to give him. The violence isn't just occurring between the kids either. This morning I awoke to the sounds of one of the little girls in our compound getting beaten with a broom. I don't really know what happened there because the woman beating the little girl was screaming in the local language, Mandinka, so I couldn't understand what was going on. Apparently the same things happen in the classroom, between husbands and wives (including the mom I was speaking of in an earlier entry) and with the young children. Today I feel very unsettled by the things I have been witnessing and do not really know how to reconcile what I've seen with my former picture of the village. I haven't yet had a chance to speak with Chelsea and Rosa (the girls who came last year) about it, but hopefully I will be able to gain some clarity throughout the weekend.

Speaking of the weekend, I am SO GLAD it's here. This week was probably one of the most physically demanding of my entire life. We worked on Saturday and then from Monday until Thursday. We worked three double shifts throughout the week and then had so much work to take care of around our compound. The work is hard: manually mixing concrete, pumping and hauling water, making bricks. At one point I was pumping water and just crying my eyes out because I didn't know how I would be able to carry it all the way across the field because I had absolutely no energy left. The worst is probably the sun. It is so strong that I can feel my skin burning for hours after the sun has gone down. It has completely dried me out, causing my skin to itch uncontrollably while I am trying to sleep. Maybe it doesn't sound so rough, but it just sucks sometimes.

Although I am complaining a lot, I honestly am having the best time of my entire life. I am so happy to be here and to be able to meet the people I have already met. I know that I am making some excellent friends in the village and feel so honored that people this amazing have let me into their life. And although the work is difficult, it will be amazing to work so hard on the library and know that people will be able to enjoy it for long after I am gone.

There are some other things I want to speak about including my group and how those dynamics are developing, but those will have to wait until another afternoon. I am cooking dinner tonight for everyone so I need to get myself over to the market and fight for a fair price and then go home and get to cooking. I will do another update either tomorrow or Sunday because it is easier to get over to Brikama on the weekends. Once again, thanks for all the encouragement. Hopefully next time I get online I will have a chance to reply to all of the amazing emails I have received and maybe upload some photos.

Until then...

I've spent a considerable amount of time the past few months thinking of my post-graduation plans and have come to the conclusion that I want to get a combined law degree and MBA when I graduate. What that decision means is that I have to take the dreaded Law School Admissions Test and decided to squeeze it in right before I left for Africa this summer. I took the Kaplan classes every week starting in February and spent the few weeks of summer I had in the states cooped up in the Cottonwood public library studying away.

I seriously ate, slept, breathed the LSAT before I left. I cracked jokes about it with my close friend, bored my entire family with my speculations about my possible score, and called them crying when practice tests didn't go as planned. I took the test in Phoenix on June 11th and then flew to New York City for orientation on June 14th.

Thankfully the test left my mind the minute I got here because of the constant travel and complete immersion into another culture and climate. But this afternoon I came into Brikama a bit early to check my email before attending the Jambanjelly soccer game and had an email waiting for me with my score in it.

Let's just say that the score is far less than I had expected. If I had received this score while sitting in my parent's living room, I would probably be hysterically bawling, thinking about how it has shot my chances at getting into my top choice law school and how I am going to have to take the test again in October and go through the agony all over.

But I honestly cannot muster more than a bit of disappointment over the score. I can't really care too much because I have a little boy that I don't even know at all sitting right next to me at my computer pulling my hair and asking me over and over for 5 delasi (about 20 cents). I can't really care too much because just this afternoon my friend Boss was telling me that he has been the first in his class ever since he was in kindergarten and wants to become a doctor so that the hospitals in The Gambia will have to shut down because he will treat all of the sick people, but doesn't know how he will be able to pay the 40 dollars for school next year in September.

I feel ashamed at the fact that just a few short weeks ago I will so self-involved that a bad score on a practice test would reduce me to blubbering tears. Since my arrival here in The Gambia I have realized over and over how lucky I am. It's simply luck that I can go home, study even harder, do well on the test in October and get a loan to go to whatever law school I desire. That gift that I have been given should never be taken for granted, and I hope that I will never be the girl that I was just a few short weeks ago ever again.

So, forget about the LSAT. I have bigger fish to fry right now, including buying Boss-man a 5 delasi ticket to watch the village soccer game with me and finding a way to get him into school next September so he can be one step closer to shutting down some hospitals.