Our first autonomous day at the hospital! No tours! No obligations! I’m free to wander as I please!
This morning despite c
losing my window, I was still woken up by the darn roosters. I really have come to hate them, but have decided to name a couple anyway. So far I’ve named two roosters (Captain Charleston and Roger) and one hen (Elizabeth Taylor). I’ve got just under one week to name 19 more.
Kathryn wanted to collect patient’s data and statistics about the hospital today. Since there was no power, however, we had to disconnect the computer, put it and ourselves in a car, and drive to Mr. Badgie’s secretary’s hou
se. While it was very riveting watching Kathryn and Mr. Badgie's secretary look at pages on a computer screen, I quickly became bored and so I walked outside with my camera. There I encountered some goats in a bathroom and some donkeys. But as I was snapping those photos, a black goat took a keen interest in me. Now I had a mildly traumatic experience with goats when I was seven years old. My parents took me to a zoo and we went into the interactive area where one could feed goats and other farm animals. I was feeding a goat with a bottle (adorable, I know) but then the goat decided that my hot pink shorts were tasty-looking and so he began to eat my shorts! When that black goat began to follo
w me around outside, I decided quickly that I didn’t want him eating my shorts, so I ran away. The goat, however, continued to follow me all the way to the doorway. The sheet that was hung as a door managed to befuddle and deter the goat, and I was saved, albeit humiliated as I ran into the room screaming “The goat is after me!!!!”
After that excursion, we walked to a local preschool called CCF but they were still on winter vacation. Apparently, they have school through the summer so they have a long winter break. There I met a man named Badara who invited me to help him coach soccer this afternoon, which I was very excited about.
We then went to lunch at Aminata’s. We arrived promptly at 
wife and he has 12 children overall. We are all in shock about the complete naturalness and omnipresence of polygamy here. There is absolutely no jealousy between wives and interestingly enough, it’s the role of the father to pay for all of his kids to go to school. Ami has 4 kids- Bintou, Fanta, Mo
lamin and baby Sarita. Sarita is 18 months old and quite possibly the most photographed human being in The Gambia, thanks to us. They’re all adorable kids and most importantly, they seem happy. But after hearing Ami tell us that they don’t always eat breakfast because they don’t have enough money, it makes me want to adopt all of them.
Ami made bena chin, which is a rice dish with tomato paste, onions and fish. I am certain that the fish were incredibl
y fresh because a.) they told me they caught them in the river nearby and b.) there were several fish heads sticking out of my rice, staring at me. They served us an enormous amount of food, which I could not finish. I really had to take one for the team and eat more than I should have because Kathryn and her mom punked out. So about a half a pound of sand and grit, and about 45 dodged fish bones later, we left Ami’s to watch the installation of the solar water pump.
At
We set back for the hospital and later that night, we went to the maternity ward because there was a woman there in labor. I witnessed my first childbirth and I am happy to say that it was successful. I’m not so sure I’ll look to spend a lot more time in the maternity ward watching childbirths, though. One was probably enough.
The day ended without water unfortunately. Once again, I had to crawl into my tent-bed a grimy little ball. I’ll be very glad to be back in civilization and it's hard to believe less than a week lies between me and Starbucks, showers and food that’s not rice.
Until next time…
with african love,
jz
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