Christmas and New Years 2008

So I haven't written in a little while, so I decided to update everyone about what has been going on. The first two weeks of December I took a trip to Morocco. I'm planning on writing a rather lengthy post about that trip, so look for it in a couple of weeks. I have to come back down to Farjara around the 11th I believe to help with some of the new group training. I'll have a lot of free time since all other pcvs are banned from staying at the stodge, so I'm hoping to get the details all typed up.


The title didn't mention anything about Thanksgiving, and I do not think that I wrote anything about that so here I go. For dinner that evening we all met at one of our bosses houses for a huge meal. I helped cook all day, and all of the food was amazing! We had chicken, turkey, mashed potatoes, salad, coleslaw, potato salad, pie, cupcakes, cake, cookies, and many, many more yummy things!!! I ate a lot that night! The next day we all had to attend an all-volunteer meeting. I'm pretty sure that pc reads our blogs, so I'll try not to say anything negative. I'll just say that it was quite a boring day! Anyway, I spent the rest of the weekend getting ready to leave for my trip.


When we returned to The Gambia from Morocco, I believe the date was Dec. 15. Not one-hundred percent sure since I clearly didn't know what day it was the entire trip. (More on that in the official trip blog) Jenni and I hung around the stodge for a few days before returning to my site on Saturday. One of our friends here had his family visiting, so we helped him out a little by taking his sisters around to go shopping. We also ended up dying their hands with henna the next night. That same night Jenni and I also dyed our hair with henna. This required covering our heads with a substance that both smelled and looked like cow poop, and then sleeping with plastic bags on our heads. When I woke up the next morning I had to get it all out of my hair which was difficult because it had caked on pretty hard. At first I thought that the henna did not dye my hair, but later I realized that it made my hair shine purple. Jenni wanted highlights, but that did not turn out the way she planned. We read in Cosmo that if you french braided your hair, and then applied the color to the braid, then you'd have highlights. That really did not work. Her roots near the front of her head turned bright orange, and then she had random spots in her hair. So much for what Cosmo said! Later in the week she washed her hair a few times with the local "donkey soap," aka what we all wash our clothes with, and the spots lightened considerably.


On Saturday we returned to site, and just sort of hung out until we returned to Farjara on Christmas Eve. We road our bikes around, and one day we even road approximately 25k for exercise. This is a rough estimate, and I really have no idea how far we actually road. We also went shopping at the market in Brikama one day because I needed a kettle (to make washing dishes easier), and a new bathing cup because my old one had a HUGE hole in the bottom. It was now more like taking a shower. We bought some other stuff, including piercing earrings, strapped it all to my bike, and headed home.
Later in the day we, okay more Jenni saying that I couldn't back out of it anymore, we decided it was time to pierce our upper ears. I went first. We cleaned my ear with rubbing alcohol, and also soaked the earring in the rubbing alcohol as well. The earrings have sharp edges so all you have to do is push the thing through. Jenni pretty much just shoved it right through my ear. Then it was Jenni's turn. I knew that I couldn't pierce it myself because Jenni is afraid of needles and always screams. I didn't want to deal with that sort of pressure. We decided to have my aunt Suntu do it instead. The three of us went into my house, and Jenni sat on the ground in case she passed out. Suntu tried to shove the earring in, but Jenni was just screaming too much. I think that poor Suntu was a little freaked out! She couldn't shove it all the way through, so she went looking for one of my other aunts, Amee. Amee came in and got right to business. Jenni wanted hers a little higher, and I guess that part of the ear is really hard to pierce. I don't know, but it took forever. Suntu and I stood there watching in horror while poor Amee tried to shove the earring through Jenni's ear. It was really a bad sight! Suntu and I stood there trying to calm Jenni down while Amee struggled with the piercing. The earring would just not go through! To make it worse, Jenni was screaming, and Amee just kept shouting "sorry, sorry!" When it was all done and Jenni was still upset, Amee just kept repeating "sorry!" I then gave Jenni the mirror, and she seemed happy. We had quite a gathering of children outside the door at this point, and they were all also really excited when the whole thing was over as well.


On Tues we road our bikes down to Steven's house for the day. This was a much better trip than it used to be. The road is being worked on to be widened and paved, and it has been going on over one month right now. It was flat, packed sand all the way! This was much more enjoyable than some of my bike rides during the rainy season where I literally had to swim across deep potholes of water with my bike to make it to Steven's house. Steven's house is a short walk off the main road, so on our way in we came across a small kitten. The people pretty much handed it to Jenni, and it was love at first site. We brought the small, white kitten to Steven's house hopping that we could pawn the thing off on him. Steven almost took the kitten, but his cat hated the kitten, so Steven won't take it. We also tried to get Steven's cat's mother to take the kitten since she was nursing a litter of kittens herself, but she also just growled at the poor kitten. Originally Jenni named the cat Eve since we found it on Christmas Eve Eve, but later we figured out that the cat was a boy. He's all white so Jenni named him P. Diddy. She had also just finished reading an Augusten Burroughs book in which he has a story about seeing P. Diddy at the Kentucky Derby. Jenni couldn't bare to just leave the kitten behind, and we even tried to find the kitten's mother. Everyone in the area where we found the kitten kept pointing to a particular compound where they claimed the kitten's mother lived. That mother had much larger kittens and clearly did not want this cute little kitten. Jenni decided that she would take the kitten to Farjara to try to find him a home with a PCV.

Now came the hard part... getting the kitten back to my site to take him to Farjara the next day. Steven had a box, so we decided to put the kitten in the box and strap him on the back of Jenni's bike. I really did not think that this was the best idea, but Steven assured us that it was. Jenni looked really uneasy. When we passed the spot where the geles pick people up in Steven's village, there just happened to be a gele. Jenni ran up to the gele and found someone to take the kitten and drop him off at the Police checkpoint in my village. We road our bikes back to my site and when we arrived P. Diddy was waiting for us in his box at the Checkpoint. Previously I had mentioned that if all else fails my host family would probably take the kitten. They had a cat when I first moved in, but she died a short time later giving birth. Ever since then they've really wanted another kitten. Well there was one kitten, but I'm not supposed to talk about that one. My host sister Sirea accidentally rolled over the kitten in her sleep killing it. oops!

So we pick up little P. Diddy, and headed to my house. As we are about to enter the compound, Jenni turns to me and says "watch this." She then runs into the compound shouting "Merry Christmas." "This is your Christmas present." Everyone starts cheering and seem to be excited that they now have a cat. Jenni hands P. Diddy off to Mama Jarju, and tells her that the kitten's name is P. Diddy. Mama Jarju then says, "yes his name is P. Diddy Jammeh." She didn't say P. Diddy completely clearly, but she got the point. She then handed P. Diddy off to Sirea, and I thought "watch out P. Diddy!" All the other kids were really excited as well. Later I went to see Mama Jarju to let her know that P. Diddy could eat rice and fish. I tried to tell her, and she told me that he couldn't. I told her "well he ate it earlier." Then she said something about him being a baby and that he needed to drink milk. I wasn't going to argue with her about her cat, so I said okay. The next day when Jenni and I were leaving for Farjara we went into the main house to greet everyone and say good-bye. Mama Jarju was sitting there trying to get P. Diddy to drink his milk. She just kept saying, "P. Diddly attacha." (P. Diddy go) The night before she had also asked me if P. Diddy was going to sleep in my house. I sort of laughed and said "no he's your cat now."

We went to Farjara on Christmas Eve, and had a pretty low-key day. We had chicken and salad at a local place right around the corner from the stodge. We also spent time on the computer and read a lot. I think that I went to bed pretty early that night. I also listened to my NSync Christmas album. The next morning we all woke up and Santa had not come. I did have a care package from my mom, so I had some candy to eat. Someone had also decorated the mirrors and windows with fake snow spray. I feel like not much else happened that day. Amanda came down on that day, and we all sort of bummed around. That evening however was completely different! Some of us went to the British High Commission Christmas party, and let me tell you Brits party hard! Without going into too much detail, a lot of alcohol was consumed, and most of us PCVs watched in awe as the Brits broke probably ever single wine glass used at the party. The highlight of the entire evening was when one of the girls tried to dance on a planter and shattered it. She was able to do some sort of dance move that allowed her to land on her feet with falling. I was impressed!

Jenni and I returned to my village the next day, I think, or maybe Saturday. On Sunday Steven came to visit, and the three of us road to Brikama to buy some juice and other goodies. Jenni and I were actually throwing Steven a surprise Hanukkah party. I even attempted to make a menorah. The first two attempts looked great. I just melted the bottom of each candle to a box I had laying around. But with all the moving, the candles would not stick. In the end I ended up just poking holes in the box and shoving each candle into one of them. We cooked potato pancakes, bagels and locks (aka tuna with ranch on bread), and some pancaketos (kinda like donuts) that Steven had brought. Steven was pretty surprised, and he even did a traditional prayer. We blew the candles out after that because it was hot, and I really wanted to be able to use the candles at night.

On Monday, Jenni and I went to visit Olga, another PCV that lives down the road. We all went to dinner at this really great chicken place, and then Jenni and I slept over. We road back home on Tuesday, and then just sort of bummed around all day. I did some laundry and that was about it. Then on Wednesday, we returned to Farjara to celebrate New Years. It ended up being a small thing which was really nice. In attendance was me, Jenni, Steven, and Olga. Olga's boyfriend and some of his friends also joined us later. We decided to have a bon fire on the beach, and wanted to be down close to the touristy area so we could see the fireworks. We left the stodge around 9 or so, picked up pieces of wood along the way. It's about one mile to the beach, and by the time we reached the beach we already had an assortment of branches, including an entire top section of a tree. Olga dragged that thing all the way down the side of the road. When we got to the beach I traded my log for Olga's tree, so I ended up dragging the tree down the beach well over one mile. We walked down the beach until we came across an inlet that could not be crossed due to high tide. We decided to have the bon fire there.

Steven went to work making the fire while the rest of us watched him. He wanted to do it, so the rest of us just watched him. When he finally got the fire going, we made s'mores. We found marshmallows at one of the grocery stores here, and we also bought these weird graham cracker style cookies that also had chocolate on them. The s'mores turned out really well. After we had been sitting for a little while, someone finally noticed that the water line was getting a lot closer to the fire. We all failed to notice that there was a water line on the wall behind us. Oops! As it got closer to the New Year the water kept getting closer. At midnight all the hotels around us starting setting off fireworks. One of the hotels that was setting off fireworks did a really bad job, and they almost blew themselves up a couple of times, and shot some fireworks off into the building and trees. We watched their fireworks a little closer than the others. The water never made it to the fire, and Steven declared that it was symbolic of our fires not dying out in the next year. Whatever gets him through the next year I guess. Jenni had also made about five pounds of confetti out of magazines, so we had quite a bit to throw around. The whole night was really great! We walked out to the road and got a ride home a little bit after 1am.

Not too much else has happened here in Farjara since then. I've just been hanging out at the Stodge watching Alias and spending time in the office on the internet. Jenni and I went down to Serekunda on Thursday to do a little shopping, and last night we made a pizza. Nothing crazy. I'm planning on going home today after I run a couple of errands. I hope that everyone else had a really great New Years!!! Happy 2009!

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