The Sunday rounds

Yesterday, Sirah, Rugi, Bobo (Ibraheem Jr) and I did the rounds of family visits around town. First we visited Ibraheem's family compound, then Sirah's family's compound. The first picture is of the children at the latter compound eating in the standard Senegambian fashion -- a big bowl of rice with some form of flavorful stew/curry mixed in, eaten out of collectively with one's hands. The children, women, and men each eat out of separate bowls (you graduate to the adult world when you're about 10).

[That brings me briefly to the topic of hygiene and disease: There seems no concern or really even awareness of non-fatal person-to-person communicable diseases like colds or the flu -- but I also haven't heard of anyone having one. It's considered an absolute given that all food and drinks are shared in a way that would make most American parents shudder for fear of their child having the sniffles for a few days. Hands are also washed pre-meal in shared bowls of water, which doesn't really help the situation much!]

Next came Rugi's father's compound (where his second wife lives -- his first wife lives in Sirah's family's compound), and finally the house of one of Sirah's cousins, her husband, and his second wife. Sirah's cousin gave birth 2 weeks ago to her 4th child, who I think may hold the distinction of the youngest child I can remember ever holding. The second picture is of Rugi's father writing Koran verses (using washable ink) in Arabic for the children in his compound to memorize. Rugi herself goes there after school most days to learn them.

These compounds are all literally crawling with children. I'd say the adult-to-child ratio is about 3:2 if you define child as under 16 -- which fits approximately with the published demographics of the Gambia. But the childcare burden for adults is no more overwhelming than it is in the US, possibly less so, because first of all of the shared load among all the women and second because of the extremely well-established role that the older children (especially but not exclusively the girls) play in caring for the younger children. In fact, it's led me to think a lot about the way that we think about education. I may be able to type and read really fast but any 10-year-old Gambian girl is far more qualified to care for a child than I am -- and you can't say that's not an important life skill!

Afterwards we went to the beach again for a little while -- hence the final photo. Rugi is developing quite an impressive flick, no mean feat in the windy oceanside conditions especially

More frisbee

Just in case you felt like I haven't done enough evangelizing for the frisbee, here is me teaching Rugi forehand grip this morning.

Thanks to Malang for taking the photo -- you haven't met him yet but he is an 18-year-old resident of the Ceesay household who Ibrahim has "adopted." He is speaks excellent English and, while studying waste management for the time being, is trying to scrape together funds to start a cell phone repair/maintenance/unlocking shop. He and Rugi and I spent more than an hour throwing on the beach today!

Meet the family, Gambia edition

In Serekunda, the largest city in the Gambia, I am staying at the house of Ibraheem Ceesay and his lovely wife Sirah. I went to visit Sirah at the department store she works at today and here is a picture of the two of us.

Ibraheem, who is ED of a small Gambian NGO called Children for Children, is in Senegal right now doing some NGO facilitation/trainings. He'll be back on Saturday, but in the meantime I'm getting to know his household and touring around the Gambia with C4C's Logistics Coordinator, who moonlights as a tour guide on a regular basis (and, critically, has a 4WD).

The next picture (sorry I still haven't figured out how to rotate...) is of Rugi, who is Sirah's sister and lives with Sirah and Ibraheem, and Booboo (Ibrahim Jr), Ibrahim and Sirah's second son. (Their first son, Omar, is with Sirah's mother in Guinea-Bissau for a few months.) Booboo is about 6 months old and has had a somewhat exaggerated version of Kalila's initial reaction to me. Yesterday while Sirah was at work and Rugi (who does a good portion of the child care) was at school, the maid/nanny, Haddy, left me alone for about 15 min with Ibraheem to run some errands. I was sitting across the room, and as soon as she walked out the door he took one look at me and started screaming. I tried everything from singing to him to leaving the room so that he couldn't see me, but he wasn't having any of this whole being-left-alone-with-a-terrifying-white-person thing and screamed non-stop til she got back.

Since then I've been making my best efforts to become friends and he has gotten to the point of smiling at my peekaboo and developing a decided interest in chewing on my fingers as long as he's in the arms of someone he trusts. He still does occasionally, and as far as I can tell unpredictably, burst into tears on the sight of my face, but I'm counting it overall as progress.