Fatou Jabbi

January 2006 was a time for good-byes. I quite a wonderful job with amazing people, kissed my friends and family good-bye and left for the Peace Corps. I touched down in The Gambia, West Africa on 2 February with 16 other wide-eyed, eagar idealists and began training. Enduring the 10 weeks of horribly boring lectures and overwhelming language classes paid off with a beautiful swearing-in ceremony at the Ambassador's residence overlooking the ocean and catered with amazing food on 13 April. Since then, I have been living in a small rural village up-country and off the main road. The whole village chased the big, white, Peace Corps vehicle I pulled up in and greeted me with a huge dancing program and special porriage. After unloading my belongings, the vehicle left me all alone, a million miles from anywhere. I knew I was home.

My local name is Fatou Jabbi and I live in a mud hut with a straw roof in a compound with my host family in Sanunding. By Gambian standards my family is tiny. My father only has one wife with 4 kids (5 including my newborn baby sister). My mother's mother also lives in our compound. I eat at the food bowl with my mother (whom is somewhere in her late 30's or 40's), my 18 year old pregnant sister, and really old grandma. My father and his 3 sons (20, 11, and 9) eat at a seperate food bowl. I fetch water from the pump and can charge my cell phone at one of 2 compounds with a generator. A few people have motorbikes, many have bicycles, and nobody has a car.

I am a Health and Community Development volunteer. Everyday I ask myself what exactly that means. The work I am usually engaged in is farming, gardening, and cracking peanuts with my family. There are enough domestic chores to keep anyone busy from sunup to sundown: fetching water, pounding millet, cooking, watching the children, washing clothes, sweeping. I participate as much as possible in all of it. This is the basis for the stories you will read about my experiences here.