Bii mu Korite le ti! (Today is Korite!)

Happy Korite (aka Eid Al Fitr aka Festival of Sacrifice)!!!

.. and I have decided to start writing post about current events as opposed to constantly trying to catch up on the past.

So for those of you who are not aware today is Korite! Yay! Sooooo what the hell does that mean? Well, here goes. Please feel free to elaborate where I am lacking –

The past 29/30 days (depending on when the individual started) have been Ramadan. Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar AND is the month of fasting. It is also one of the five pillars of Islam (generally speaking the other four would be prayer five times per day, pilgrimage to Mecca, giving of alms and there is no god but Allah). The intention of fasting is to teach Muslims about patience, humility, and spirituality and to practice self-discipline, self-control, sacrifice, and empathy for those who are less fortunate; thus encouraging actions of generosity and charity. This means that all Muslims have not been eating or drinking ANYTHING from sun up to sun down. You can imagine how difficult this can be in such a hot country. You are not even allowed to brush your teeth! Oh, and one must also refrain from “sexual relations” during this same part of the day. Double ouch… To help elaborate, this is a potential schedule for a Gambian Woman in the village during Ramadan (I am not totally sure that these prayer times are correct, but you get the idea):

4:30 – 5:45AM Wake up and cook and eat breakfast
5:45 – 6:00AM Pray
6:00 – 12:00PM Clean and feed children, clean house and laundry, watch children, go to market, garden, get water from pump, general work
12:00 – 2:00PM Rest with no food or water since before dawn
2:00 – 2:15PM Pray
2:15 – 4:00PM Continue to rest… and still no eating or drinking
4:00 – 7:00PM Begin preparing dinner, iron clothing, general work
7:00 – 7:15PM Pray
7:15 – 7:30PM Wait until Imam announces break fast and potentially walk in circles to not think about eating or drinking
7:30 – 8:00PM Yay! Break fast (usually with tea and bread or dates and juice)
8:00 – 8:15PM Pray
8:15 – 9:00PM Finish preparing and eat dinner and clean children
9:00 – 9:15PM Pray
9:15 – 11:00PM Continue to eat more and hang out with friends and family outside and put children to bed
11:00PM – 4:30AM Sleep

Side note: Their day is NOT easy. Think about doing all of these things without electricity OR running water. Cooking alone is a chore

There are however, a few exceptions to the fasting rule. The elderly and the sick can abstain for obvious reasons. Children are not required to fast until their teenage years, and may only fast for half a day before being required to follow the fasting rules completely. Also, menstruating women are not required to fast, but the best explanation I have for this is that they just are not required to do so. I believe it is stated in the Qur’an, but why this is, I am not sure.

You can imagine that as a result of this fasting everything moves a bit slower. It is also MUCH harder to get work done because everyone is so damn tired during the day.

Back to where I started. Korite. Korite is the celebration that occurs the day after Ramadan. So yesterday was the last day of fasting and thus today is Korite. All Muslims go to pray at the Mosque from 9:30 – 10:30 (or around there) in the morning and they are dressed in their Gambian finest. They will also sacrifice a goat, or something similar, and cook an extremely large celebration lunch to eat with family, friends, neighbors and villagers. Oh, and this is definitely like the second biggest day on the Muslim calendar and it TOTALLY messes up the start of the academic year (to be complained about at a later date).

Since I am still stuck at the stodge with a few others I was sadly unable to celebrate Korite with my future host family. However, the head guy here (don’t know his official title, but his name is Lamin) invited us to go to the Mosque with him this morning! Excellent! So about seven of us dressed nice and conservative and headed over to the Fajara Mosque to pray with several hundred other Muslims for a little less than an hour. I got a few funny looks, BUT I also received a compliment on my head wrap (a scarf that I loosely wrapped to cover my hair). I was being very respectful and fashionable I must say.

Lamin also invited us back to his house for the lunch celebration; however, I had a work meeting at 11:30 so I could not join. Instead I headed back with Caroline after prayers… and we obviously got lost/caught in the pouring rain... once again. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that this has now happened multiple times. We are not a good pair when it comes to directions. This will make our time together in Brikama extra extra interesting.

A few pictures for your enjoyment ---

Washing hands and feet and face before entering the Mosque and praying

The empty Mosque as a few people begin to arrive

Praying from my place outside on the mat. Women sit outside and upstairs. Most of the men are inside or around the other side of the Mosque.

Part of the crown finishing prayers as I am leaving

Domanding Domanding … Training Part Fula

Looking back on it now Yuna Village Resort was pretty damn awesome. It is this hostel meets eco lodge place a little off the path of Yuna village. Upon arrival we were given wonjo juice (also called sour juice - it is a dark purple juice, made from boiling the dark red flower from the sorrel plant and adding pounds and pounds and pounds of sugar – typical of Gambian ways), partnered with a roommate (mine was Sonja) and sent to our rooms to unpack a little. The rooms were already fixed with mosquito nets. Amazing! This is also the first time I was introduced to the tuck and sleep method. Even better! Apparently you cannot just hang your mosquito net over the sides of your bed. Oh no. That method only keeps out mosquitoes. To keep out ants and spiders and termites and roaches and bed bugs etc. etc. you must also securely tuck all sides of the net under your mattress at all times of the day. I would hands down marry the person who invented mosquito nets and here is only a small part of the reason why --

When we arrived the bugs were a little frightening. Okay. Seriously frightening. And it wasn’t the size or the look of the bugs. I am okay with that. It is the shear quantity of bugs. Swarms of anything have always freaked me out and there were literally hundreds and hundreds of what look like dragon flies crossed with may flies buzzing around every light source. These things burrow out of the ground and fly around for one night. Then they lose their wings (so there are these nasty wings covering everything the next day) and they burrow back into the ground…. I think. Id rather they died but sadly I do not think that is what happens. The worst part is that the bastards cannot even fly well so they constantly get stuck in my hair and my food and run into me in unfortunate places such as my sticky back and neck. Eck! There are also termite hills that could engulf several small children. I have never gone close enough to one to touch it for fear of being attacked, but suffice it to say they frighten me….. in later posts I will describe how these creatures have become the bane of my existence.

Also, Sonja may or may not have gone through the trouble of taping up all the holes in the bathroom and main room screen windows to keep the bugs out. I of course thought this was an awesome idea … only to discover several days later that the hall window had zero screen. The entire screen was missing. Lol, our efforts were totally effective right? The part that makes me the saddest about that story now is actually not the complete lack of effectiveness of our efforts, but the tape that was wasted in the “repair” process. It was good tape.

Anyway… we did not have too much time to start adjusting to the new time zone and climate because we began classes the next day. Classes were the same old same old in general (culture, security, paper work, PC rules and so many more classes), but one interesting event was the welcoming ceremony that they took us to attend at the house of the Country Director of the Peace Corps (Jeffry Cornish).

They took all 16 of us to the Cornish’s backyard where they had a circle of chairs arranged and an African drumming group with dancers situated on one side. The drummers did an awesome! job (though I could have done without the addition of the whistles as I highly doubt they used those damn plastic things twenty years ago) and the dancers (some of which were costumed) were even better... The only slightly awkward part was that we were all completely jet lagged and had no idea what was going on. We definitely looked like zombies… and we felt a little bad because we did not know when to clap or how to dance etc. It the end we all managed to stay awake and embarrass ourselves with attempted dancing and clapping (at least that is what mine should be considered).

One of the costumed dancers


Our fearless PCVL Leader - Ian -- Pretty much our savior during training




To wrap this post up because it is getting a bit long, during out time at Yuna we were also interviewed to discuss where we wanted to live and what we saw ourselves doing during the next two years. This was called out placement interview. Although they were going to wait another month to tell us our final placement PC needed to make the decision now to determine which language we were to learn and to divide us into training villages. For my interview I drew a picture of myself teaching math/computers at a university or large school building (and yes my drawing was in crayon) and let the rest of the pieces fall where they may.

A few days later I was told that I would be learning Mandinka in Mariama Kunda and that Nathan and Jay would be my classmates -- of course out of 16 people, only four of which are guys, I end up in village with these two fools :D We also learned that Erin, Lilly and Josh would be on the other side of Mariama Kunda learning Wolof. These are the 5 Americans that I would be spending a very significant about of time with over the next month and a half….