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!

Games

One of my favorite past-times in Senegal, where I couldn't have very in-depth conversations with very many people due to my lack of French (and of course lack of Wolof and Mandinka and all the other widely-spoken African languages), was to watch people playing a game and try to figure out the rules.

Pictured above are two young men who were playing a game in the sand in the beach at Toubab Dialao, a fishing village where I spent a very pleasant day and a half. The called the game "dam", and as far as I could discern the rules are thus:

• Played on a 5-by-5 board (in this case, demarcated by holes dug in the sand by hand)
• Each side has 11 pieces (in this case, rocks vs sticks)
• You take turns putting your pieces down in any free spot on the board til you're done
• Then you take turns making moves, which consist of either moving a piece one space in any horizontal/vertical direction (but not diagonally), or of jumping over an adjacent enemy piece in any horizontal/vertical direction as long as you land on an empty square, in which case you get to remove the enemy piece from the board
• Whoever has pieces remaining on the board wins (though all the games I watched were conceded with a few of the loser's pieces left, rather than being fully played out)

I am not 100% sure of this but there may also have been some sort of concession for the disadvantaged side (the side that went second? the side that lost the last game?), such as getting to remove one extra of the advantaged side's pieces on their first Phase 2 turn (after all the pieces were laid down).

Later in a different village I saw a few old men playing a game that looked similar on a wooden board that was more like 10 by 10 or maybe even larger, and the guide told me it was also called "dam" and was dismissive of any 5 by 5 game called dam when I asked him whether they were the same, but I didn't have time to observe that one for very long.

A quick google search was unhelpful in identifying this game, but of course I could be spelling it completely wrong. Anyone heard of it or can help identify it in some other way?

Oh, and I also introduced frisbee to the kids at Toubab Dialao, engaging in a couple of sessions of beach-side (and often in-the-ocean) catch. The gender dynamics were very interesting -- the girls all wanted to play but as soon as the boys started playing they would melt away, only to return when almost all the boys were tired of it. I wonder whether my treatment of the boys was part of the problem -- I was interested in creating a mixed-gender group so when a boy approached I would try to include him, but he and his friends would quickly come to dominate the group. The girls, on the other hand, generally wouldn't approach a group of boys to try to cut in, so once the boys took over there was no going back. I'm not sure whether there's something I could have done to change the situation or whether it was inevitable...