Bankε Race etc

So yet again, I'm in the home-ec room where we charge and use the laptops. I just finished a physics class. I figured I might as well write a blog so I don't get backed up and forget things like I did last time.

A few weeks ago I started a small garden in my back. It was a lot of work to get the rocky backyard plowed up. Luckily I had child labor. I don't know why, but the back is so full of rocks that you need to use a pickaxe to work with it. I have this little three room stone ruins in the back, so I am using one of the rooms to grow some things. The soil in this room is much better for planting than the soil in the yard. In either case though, I think the soil is pretty good. But I don't really know what I'm talking about.

I planted a bunch of granat (ground nut, peanuts), because they are nutritious legumes that will make good gifts and maybe last a little bit to feed myself. Legumes fix nitrogen, so they are good to be planting first so as to make the soil nice and nutritious. After those are done (they are getting pretty big now!) I'll probably plant some muna, sweet potato, because they are delicious and I can make french fries with them. Maybe I'll grow some peppers, too. The area is pretty small and I wish I had more room to grow. I have two more of the empty rooms in the ruins left. One I've brushed (taken a cutlass and cut everything down) in anticipation of making a stone oven, and the other is full of ants and I think I will just use as a trash dump. I want to make a compost bin, but I don't have enough wire mesh, and don't have wood working tools, and I haven't organized enough to the point of needing to borrow them. We'll see. I do really want to make that brick oven, though.

My dog had been missing for three days. Did I mention that? But yeah, he came back last night as I was standing outside thinking about how I missed my dog, so that was nice. Right now he's sleeping down by my bag. He likes to hang out around the school and then leave with me at the end of the day. He is too attached. Somebody told me they saw him getting beat up by a gang of other dogs yesterday. Maybe he just feels like I'm the only one that loves him. Dogs are weird here. They seem more intelligent in some ways than the comfortable, relatively independent dogs in the states. Sometimes I'll be in my back and there will be a big gang of dogs in the fields behind looking to be having a meeting of some kind. My dog is friends with this one other dog that comes by sometimes, and then he looks at me and they run off together. It's like they have their own dog community.

My village has had this annual Bankε (bahn-kay) Race for the past 5 years. Bankε are these small carved out boats they make to go to their farms. So, that was earlier this week. There is the boat race, which people come from surrounding villages to compete in and spectate, and there is also a swimming race. I figured I could win the swimming race because people here for whatever reason aren't very good at swimming despite living and working on a river.

So, I registered for it. I went to the place where it was, this run down warehouse on the edge of the river where there used to be a lot of rice exporting before the war. This is just another depressing destroyed place that once had a lot of industry and provided many jobs. There is this really nice house that I guess the president used to live or vacation at. It had all the modern amenities. Electricity, since apparently they even had a grid here, places for an oven, air conditioners, sinks, tiled floors. Super nice place. I guess when the rebels came through, they took everything and basically destroyed the place. Nobody really knows why. But yeah, I sat around for a few hours while nobody showed up and I talked with the people that live in the empty warehouses.

Then, people started to show up. I stood around for a couple more hours, but now there was a lot of people and loud music. It started to get dark, but we eventually started. I got into a boat with a motor, and five of us were taken out to the middle of the river a bit upstream. It was going into high tide, so the current was really strong. Everybody was asking me whether I was using a life jacket or floaty, but I told them no, and they were surprised I was going to go 'manual'. One other guy decided to not use his floaty.

We jumped in the river, and started to be pulled down towards where all the people were standing under this massive cotton tree (biggest kind of tree I've ever seen). One guy was ahead of me, but after awhile I could see both of us were getting very tired. He was way ahead and in a better position to be carried by the current to where we needed to go, so I figured he would win. But he gave up! and swam towards a floaty. He asked me, in Themne, whether I was too tired to finish, and I said sure, because I didn't understand what he was saying, and one of the Bankε racers came over. I told them no, I wanted to finish. The current was going to pull me way past the finish line at this point, though, and I was getting a little worried. Luckily as I got nearer the shore the pull was much less strong and I made it.

So, I came first place. It was bizarre, and I was exhausted. Everyone was around me shaking my hand, congratulating me, taking pictures of me without my shirt on. Somebody gave me a can of fanta. I sat down while being smothered by a lot of people looking at me, and my friends asking whether it was too much. It was fine. At this point, I am getting used to the attention. But this was more than usual, of course, since there were probably 200 people at the event. I'm pretty sure me swimming was one of the main attractions. I had heard people driving around on a motorcycle advertising about it over a megaphone. I can see how this job can certainly go to one's head. It is like I am living in my own little fairly isolated world. Here, I am a celebrity figure. I don't care for it all that much; it is something I deal with. I don't like being analyzed all the time and being the center of attention just because I'm conspicuously foreign.

I thought that I would win a bag of rice, which is a big deal (150,000 Leone), but I didn't get a prize, really. The guy that won the bankεrace received a bag of rice. I got a fanta, some fame, and a jar of mayonnaise, later on. I figure the biggest benefit might be that people will stop calling me Issa Kabba. This is really tiring, considering I feel like they know that I'm not Issa Kabba but continue to call me Issa Kabba. To kids that yell Issa Kabba!, I say nεs abita, mi nε yi Shebura Kabba!, and they pause for a second and most of the time again shout Issa Kabba! Or they call me Shebura Issa Kabba.

Yesterday some woman told me she had a fever and was sick and wanted medicine. I told her sorry ma, I don't have anything to give you. Which is mostly the truth. People here think westerners have medicine to cure everything. I've basically learned that medicine doesn't really cure sicknesses, it just can sometimes help the body to cure itself. Especially with viral infections, medicines can't really do much. I would feel like I was lecturing if I just told them to rest, eat as much as possible, and stay hydrated, and they wouldn't appreciate it I imagine. So I left, but felt bad  for the woman suffering and like I was missing an opportunity to make my neighbors think I'm great.

I figured if they think that my western medicine can cure anything that giving the woman some ibuprofen might actually do something as a placebo. Of course it could help to lower the fever. I struggled with the decision to go give her a couple ibuprofen for awhile, simply because I don't want to be considered to be a pharmacy. I don't know what the wisest thing to do was. I just know that giving her a couple ibuprofen gave them a good opinion of me and may have helped a small amount to reduce the woman's suffering. We'll see about the repercussions. I doubt their will be an unbearable amount. I can generally get out of giving people money, which I never do, but when people say they are sick, it's difficult to know what to tell them. I know I can't really help them, but they think I can, and therefore should.

Last night I bought a bunch of kerosene from these two little girls walking around with bottles of kerosene. I bought most of what they had, and I'm white, so I'm obviously rich. They were reticent to give me the full change back, but eventually did, and then asked me for 1000 leone so they could eat. I told them no, I can't. I don't like to give straight money to people. People ask me to give them some of the change after I buy things all the time. I think the biggest thing I have struggled with is whether or not I should be spending my money on expensive things. The purchases I have made have painted me as being rich. Yet, I say I don't have money to give to people. This doesn't make sense to them, and makes me seem greedy. I cook for my neighbors sometimes, or else buy things to give to people. This seems to be working well. Cooking I've found to be hugely beneficial. It makes me seem much more strong, independent and gives me a good thing to give to people over money.

Mr. Mansaray, one of the teachers, has this idea to help the community. This is a farming community, so they all deal with grain and land. A long time ago all this land was cleared of the mangrove forests by just a few families. The men that did it are like these mythic ancestral fathers. But essentially this has resulted in all the land being owned by those same few families. Everyone else that farms rice here has to rent some plot from one of the families that owns the land. After they get the land, they either purchase grain or loan the grain from someone if they don't have the money. This system is full of corruption, essentially. Sometimes people end up making 0% profit after harvest because they have to pay back their earnings to the people that have rented them the land and the grain to grow. This is part of why people here are starving. They don't have enough funds after harvest to be able to feed their families. Typical issue of greedy rich people exploiting poor people and siphoning all of the money to themselves. Some people do this ridiculously laborious work on empty stomachs, which is pretty crazy. Farming rice is some of the most laborious work I've done. Most of the farmers are locked into the life and can't really do much else because the money is not there.

So, we are thinking about starting a seed bank where instead of wealthy individuals loaning out rice to the poor and exploiting them, there will be a system in place to prevent exploitation. We'll see how this moves along. That friend of mine that has helped me to paint and build things on my house, Muhammed, has been a farmer his whole life and is pretty excited about the project. In fact, a little too excited since he wants to be moving it along right now and I want to first learn how to write grants and what organizations might want to help fund the initial supply of grain. I won't be doing this until in-service training in a couple months. I'm just glad I now have a secondary project I can do to make Peace Corps happy with their investment. I'm so happy I'm not one of those PCVs doing something other than education that are fully expected to just be dropped somewhere and do something of their own invention. At least with education I can just teach and even if I do nothing else outside of the school I'll still be happy with what I've done.