From October

10/20/2008

Lately things have been going pretty slow here at site. Romonda ended with the celebration of Korieta. My fasting was cut short with a last minute trip to see Amanda, bit I was able to make it 10 days. I was supposed to wake up every morning around 5am to eat breakfast, but I was never able to do that so I just ended up starving all day. I did however sneak small sips of water throughout the day because I was getting dizzy spells. Every evening by 7pm I was pacing by my front door waiting for the women to set up the small meal to break fast, aka "the appetizers." By 7:20pm, I was outside pacing around with the rest of the family patiently waiting until the Iman called out on the Mosque loudspeaker that it was time to eat. I do not speak Arabic so I have no idea if this part is true, but I would like to believe that he shouted "people it's time to eat!!!" every evening.
I missed the first half of Romonda because of my finger infection, so by the time I started it was just an old habit for everyone else. Every night we had a mashed bean dip with a red pepper sauce. It was actually one of the most amazing things that I've had here. I was told by other PCVs that they didn't get anything like that. We had bread to dip in the dishes as well. Next, we always ate the millet porridge. We all had ladle-type spoons, and we ate out of a large bowl. Everyone also got a cup of tea to enjoy with the meal. We also usually had one large glass of cold water that everyone shared. Sometimes if one of Papa Jammeh's older children were visiting they'd bring juice mix. They sometimes also brought chicken along which was always amazing!!!
I ate with the women every night. Once we had all we wanted, the kids would move in to finish off the dishes. I never felt bad because the kids had been eating all day. Papa Jammeh ate alone in his house, and was occasionally joined by some of his friends. The other men ate around their own food bowl nearby to us women folk. Everyone that lives in the side house did their own thing. They just ate on their porch.
After dinner all of the adults, minus me, had to pray A LOT!!! Some nights they left to pray places, other times they just took their mats to isolated places and prayed. During all of this I just laid out on the mats with all of the kids. My cousin, Binta "LaLa," age 7, liked to cuddle with me. This was okay til I remember that LaLa would be an instant candidate for ADHD medication in the USA. She wiggled and turned all over, and constantly adjusted my arms. She also liked to call me her "daano" "baby," and it became our running joke. I also had to squeeze on the mat with Sirea and Mariama, so we all pretty much slept on top of each other. At around 9:30p or so, it was time to eat dinner. The food was a lot better than it normally is. We had a lot of vegetables, and all of the food tasted much richer.
A big part of Romonda is bread. Everyone breaks fast with bread. It's just what you do. Everything went very well with the bread the first two days that I was fasting, and then I noticed that they bread sections that everyone was getting was getting smaller and smaller each night until there was no bread at all in the whole village!!! I know this because I ran from bitik to bitik in search of bread. When I finally thought to ask someone what was going on, I was told that the Fula bakers went on strike, and that we may not have bread for a while. (The Fulas are one of the ethnic groups here, and they speak Pular.)
With the price of everything going up, the price of flour did as well. I heard that a sack of flour went up to D1,000, roughly $48 US Dollars. The bakers in Brikama started making the bread smaller, but they still charged the same price to buy each individual piece of bread. The Western Region Governor got wind of this, and told the bakers to reduce the price. The bakers said no, and eventually stopped selling the bread altogether. I've got to respect them for sticking it to the gov't and standing up for themselves, but on those days I really wanted my bread!!! We went two whole days without any bread at all, and then some of the small bakeries started baking bread. There wasn't very much bread, but we were all able to get a small piece each night. I loved the bean dip so much that I just ended up eating it with my hands most days. Then finally one afternoon I saw some kids with bread and asked them where they got it. I ran to that bitik which was overflowing with bread! We finally had bread again! I bought one loaf of bread, and ran home super excited. Turns out that the gov't really threatened the bakers about something with licenses. I'm not sure what it was but it worked!!!