What to do next

Over the past few years of my career questioning I have heard “find your passion and do that” or “do what you love and you’ll love what you do” many times. Yesterday it occurred to me that that was all very well but there is a) a question of money so it’s a pretty elitist mantra and b) it conflicts with my knowledge that once you start being paid for something you used to do, it loses its charm unless you are being paid. It also implies that you should only have one love and that it’s a waste of time if you are not making money from it. My instincts are more towards the polymath, the things I love include practising writing in different styles, arguing effectively on behalf of other people, sharing food and knowing how to host people, painting and experimenting with different media, and trying to find the elements I love in activities that are new.  I’d like to enjoy what I do at work, I know I need to see a social value and vocation in my work, but I don’t want to go home and have nothing else in my life that I love.

Before I came to The Gambia, a friend told me she thought I’d never come home, that I have found my vocation. That is partly true. One day I was sat in the back of a pick-up and suddenly I knew what I wanted to do next. But what I also found is that I need a new set of skills and training to add the value I want to add.  And so I will go back to university in September. However, the end of my placement is due in March. This gives me six months to fill.

A few weeks ago this question of what to do next was filling every waking moment.  Do I try to stay? Do I stay but with a different partner where my skills are more in line with their plans? Do I book a backpacking tour around the world? Do I get a job and save hard for the austerity of a student life?

I was asked to stay in my placement. A new manager started meaning there are much greater opportunities to make a change to the practices and performance of the institution. It was a tempting offer; my own space to live in, a hot country that I now know, a small income, nice friends, real work to do. But the life of a volunteer is a little like a stone falling through a lake. The ripples spread out into the partners and future, but for the stone you just quickly pass through and then rest on a muddy floor. All you can see is tiny changes close to you, not the wider change your work will lead to. The model works but, with a new partnership it is a frustrating experience to break the stagnant water. After  a lot of soul searching, it turns out that I am tired and would like the comforts of home for at least a few weeks. I turned down the offer to stay, in the knowledge that the ripples I started will still be moving when I’ve gone.

And so I decided what is could do best is to concentrate on leaving The Gambia well. Say goodbye to those I love here, spend time appreciating the many joys of this country, and take advantage of the time I have left. I can watch the sunset over a tropical ocean, I can drink a beer in a yard under a canopy thick with stars, I can dance to African music and laugh with children. When I get home I don’t know what I will do. I do know that my slippers are under a bed at my Mum’s house. And I do know that, at least for a short while, I have a comfortable bed there. When I am home, when I am truly finished in The Gambia, then I will decide how to fill my precious six-month break. Until then, my thoughts are on the opportunities in this moment, on finding what I love here in these last few weeks.

A dinner party

One day during induction one of the female volunteers called me over and said “This country can get a bit much at times. Sometimes we just meet for tea and female company”. It was like that day in a film about school days where the popular girls agree to let the glasses (and in this case ridiculous sunhat) wearing new girl into the clique.  Soon it became a gathering of European women, a weekly refuge from the male dominated environments we work and live in and a moment to stop looking out for every possible cultural faux pas.

As is the way with volunteers, women have come and gone from our little band but still, generally weekly and at least once a month, we try to meet up for a night of what has come to be known as European Women’s Forum. In our time we have pooled our resources to buy a bottle of wine or two, drunk tea and eaten biscuits while chatting into the small hours, shared files and photos across our hard drives. We had a Christmas party with treats sent by Helen, a returned EWF. We decorated a bar with posters and balloons for Janneke’s  leaving do. And this week two members, Nicola and Ellie, celebrated their birthdays plus I had a Christmas pudding that needed eating. So we had a dinner at my house.

Originally I thought, “I’ll just steam the pudding” then decided that was far too dull. Then I thought a light noodle soup would suffice. But no, my friends have long lamented the lack of a roast dinner so, though I can’t do that, I opted for a lemon chicken pot roast with cubed chips as roast potatoes.  We had no wine but everyone turned up having had tough days and wanted to share stories over tea and water so that was perfect. Ellie also came with cheese and biscuits and a box of frosting that was left over from her weekend birthday party. An excellent alternative to brandy butter, it was added to the menu.

I kept tasting the chicken and it was incredibly bitter. However, with a dash of mustard and sugar at the end it perked up. At that moment all the lights went out. We sat in the dark with candles and peered at our plates. We chatted about how much chicken should be eaten off the bone (most bones were picked clean), we shared stories of the day, and we swapped concerns and observations on our lives here. At least with no power you could see the blue flames licking up the burning pudding as I brought it in. By the end we had over eaten and talked for hours. Stresses were washed away with the dirty plates, and we knew more about each other. Birthdays were marked and friendship was marked too. I think everyone went away feeling happy and full. It was everything that our EWF is there for.

Gratitude in Gambia

Over the past few weeks I have noticed I am tallying what I won’t miss. I won’t miss the litter. I won’t miss the terrible roads. I won’t miss the begging taught to infants.  I am looking forward to a change of beer options, to being with old friends and family, to a reliable power supply, sprung mattress and showers at the temperature I choose.  And yet it has been said by the wise and seldom listened to that the key to happiness is gratitude.  Every moment is a gift, and within every moment is an opportunity to be grasped, with another one usually around the corner if you choose not to grasp it. And most moments are joyful, though there are moments of torment that still contain the opportunities to be brave, to tackle and injustice, to find a new path or to offer comfort. David Steindl –Rast makes this very point in his TED talk and it inspired me to stop counting negatives and to think, what am I grateful for?

When I left the UK, many of my friends were being given the gift of new life and a new family, I know of at least nine people who have children born within the last year. I however was given the gift of coming to The Gambia. And within that, like learning how to parent, are so many opportunities to be grateful for. Firstly is the people, regular readers will know of my friendships within the Gambian community, my choir friends, my friends of choir friends, my fellow VSOs. Some of these people I will never see again but we have shared some wonderful times this year. Through them I have learnt how to find a tasty liver or omelette butty late at night, what rice pudding with peanuts tastes like (nice), how to speak a language I didn’t even know existed two years ago. These people are wonderful. Those who I am friends with are kind hearted and generous, have huge concern and empathy and have shown me so much care. We have had joyful moments, on Friday as the sun set the power came back so we danced in Mardu’s house and laughed with each other.  I have looked at my watch at reggae festivals and realised it’s nearly five am and yet I still seem to be dancing in a field in heels and a summer dress, when at 11 I was falling asleep watching a concert. And just this morning the small children in my compound rushed to shake my hand as I left for work, well greeted for the day ahead.

Now it’s colder overnight every morning I choose whether or not to be brave and have a cool shower or to be nesh and wash in the evening. I can challenge myself to leave the house without cash and manage. The moments where there is no bread for breakfast have meant I learned to make Scotch pancakes and when there is I can be grateful for the cheerful bakery that opened on my own street to sell hot bread baguettes for 10p. I’m grateful for the head torch that means I can read and all the many VSOs who’ve left books in the office library which mean I’m never short of reading material. I have learned how to budget hard and how to stick to my limits without too much stress through living on the allowance. And to appreciate that, however hard I find it, like I was in the UK I’m still in the middle classes of this society and some people are struggling so much more and so much longer than I ever am.

When I started here it was a challenge to leave the house, knowing how many men on the street would bother me and not take “no, go away” for an answer. There’s an opportunity there too, to engage in conversation, some of which are pleasant, to learn to stand up for myself and not passively accept unwanted hassle. And so I am grateful for what I’ve learned even if I could do without so much practice of the new skills. The idea of a day without being bothered is still very appealing. And for every foolish man asking for my “nice name” there’s a woman selling breakfast butties, a child shaking hands, a stranger offering a lift in kindness, or a van that will wait for me as I walk in the hot sun to counteract them.

When I am home will I forget how much of a joy it is to have water not only at your beck and call but also at the temperature you want? Will I forget to be grateful or relieved every time I turn on a light switch? Will I pause outside my new workplace and be grateful that I know that I will not be molested or mauled or treated as a second class citizen because of my gender and age? Will I remember that poverty strips away the opportunities that people have, the opportunities they should be given in every moment, and that though those who are living in poverty might be able to be happy in a moment that their choices are so curtailed that their lives and dreams can never be fulfilled? Will I forget the pressure they feel to show that they are managing, that poverty is not stripping away their dignity and ability to treat their friends and family well? Will I forget the efforts made to hide the shame of poverty? And will I forget that these people who are my friends who I have had a wonderful life with?

Hungry for change

Two weeks ago Oxfam published an index about food. Specifically the data ranks countries in terms of the ability to get enough to eat. It covers having enough, affordability, food quality and diabetes and obesity. The data can be reached via this link: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/good-enough-to-eat

Gambia comes out badly. In the chart it is four sectors away from the bottom, with the affordability of food being the most challenging indicator. This is not surprising.  Gambia, particularly the rural areas rely on subsistence farming. Over sixty per cent of the population is below the overall poverty line, and forty per cent are below the food poverty line. The World Bank says that  “if income security were defined to mean a safety margin of more than 25 per cent above the poverty line, less than a quarter of the population could be classified as being in a non-precarious position.”[1]  There has been a hungry season in Gambia for many years, as food supplies are strictly rationed for the last two months of before the harvest and, in good years, that will see a family though. In bad years such as 2012 when the groundnut harvest failed and other crops had very low yields, this rationing is pushed to extremes with meals skipped and what is left being very small.

Here, women usually take responsibility for horticulture in gardens growing vegetables such as tomatoes, aubergine, cabbage, onions, potatoes and lettuce. They are also often responsible for growing rice and other grains. They are over fifty per cent of The Gambia’s agricultural labour force.  And last week I was able to learn about how they are trying to cope not only with hunger but also increase their economic and influencing power.

Mariama and Hajateneng told me about their women’s cooperatives; groups which work together to run project work, farm and tend communal garden. They told me that these gardens enhance their diets but also give them an income which means that their children can go to school. Without the efforts of the women, education for their children would not happen. Hajateneng showed me her group’s bank book, a vital savings plan in a community which would otherwise lack access to banking services and which makes sure they can sustain their gardens. Mariama told me about some training she’d attended in Dakar at which she bought seeds and transformed the way her village planted so that there is now food throughout the year, not just six months. It is such small actions that form development and show not only why it takes time but also why it is worth it.

These two women have a vision. They want all the women of their region, the most remote and often ignored region of the country, to form a federation of cooperatives. This will mean they can raise more funds, support projects with larger amounts and increase the food supply in their region. They hold themselves accountable and promote transparency, honesty and cooperation. They also said “we have learned about human rights and advocacy. So we know we need a bigger voice. When we are a federation the government and civil society will have to listen to us”.  With support and information these women and those who follow them can and will end hunger in the region. They don’t need leaders, in a very male dominated society they are leading themselves. They are inspirational.

Also Hajateneng said they need a taller fence on the orchard to stop the animals getting in. If anyone can help please let me know and I’ll pass on your details.

[1]http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:20204377~menuPK:435735~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:430367~isCURL:Y,00.html. Accessed 28.1.2014I

Happy New Year

If anything is a festival of ‘hoping the sun comes up tomorrow’ it is New Year. The date is merely the passage of time as we mark it. And it can be wonderful but it is also without a doubt the holiday that people complaint the most about. It’s expensive and ultimately a bit pointless for many people I know, freezing ankles and thighs in a wet or slushy city in the middle of the night with a full bus meaning an expensive taxi is the only option. I have never really been in that school, for starters I long ago realised that the pound payment for the cloakroom was a cheap price for a warm coat at the end of a night out in Manchester. And that there are much better ways to spend New Year.

My family, like many I know in the North of England, join Scotland in the tradition of first footing. At the end of the old year someone (or everyone) will leave the house, preferably by the back door. And the first foot in the front door after midnight will be by a person carrying a tray of symbols of things you wish for the home that year; coal for warmth, a candle for light, bread for food, money for, well, money, and whisky for good cheer. However, over the past years I have introduced this idea to a number of very blank looking friends. And this year was no exception.

For six months I have had the urge to cook Coq au Vin, so took the opportunity to invite fellow VSOs for dinner. As midnight approached we set up first footing and left the tray outside the house. We headed to the roof and watched the fireworks around the bay. We shared fizzy wine and grape juice with each other and my neighbours then headed inside and brought with us warmth (not hugely necessary), food (definitely necessary), light (even for a night or two would be nice), money (well, there is a volunteer allowance), and good cheer (fine, we have that sorted).  We sat up chatting and drinking red wine from cartons until after the call to morning prayer. I fell into bed, and, as I’d used the board from the base as a table extension, I promptly fell straight through and spent the next few hours in denial that I was at a seventy degree angle.

   

The next day is a big day for the Christian community here. Many of my church friends were amazed that I see it as a purely secular holiday and hadn’t spent the night in church. But Mathias wanted to take me to see the masquerades in Banjul the following day. In our new his-n-hers outfits we headed into the capital. The masquerades are run by hunting societies. There are a number of these and some do still go hunting. It’s a largely Christian tradition, so the hunting season closes for Lent. They also have displays in which they build costumes to represent their mastery over wild beasts, usually stuffed heads shipped from Europe and America as taxidermy goes out of fashion. The excitement seems to be in seeing new animals and there is a great honour in being the first person to wear a head. The competition element is who can get the most unusual head.

     

The streets of Banjul are crowded, have open gutters and are grey and dirty, with very few maintained road surfaces. The crowds on New Year’s Day were extreme, pushing the unwary into a sewer or over a kerb without fear, especially if a masquerade, kids setting off fire crackers or man waving a flare was in the way. We found friends who invited us for lunch, oysters which I normally skip on avoiding illness grounds.  We ten re-braved the crowds, watching a few strange apparitions wearing armour made of shells, an armadillo and horns topped with a headdress of a dead animal or horns wandering past dancing in white socks. There are three speeds of dance and the rest of the society beats drums and clappers or weaves around the masquerade, one with a pipe.  It is in a way interesting, like being a t a rush bearing and in a similar way to visiting a zoo in terms of people seeing exotic animals. I was the only person in the crowd near me to identify the polar bear.

But I was tired and seeing another stuffed animal head with a man dancing underneath it starts to wane after a few hours, as well as my legs starting to complain that they had already spent the night trying to climb a mattress so sitting would be good. Plus, trying to leave Banjul at night is, like on any new year, the fight for an overpriced taxi whilst wishing a night bus will pass. I watched the fireworks as we fought the crowd and waited for a taxi who thought D200 (about £4 but also about a day’s income for me) was a reasonable price for a seven mile journey. The fireworks were lovely. And then we went home, and found that I had put my bed back together. This time when I fell into it I didn’t fall through.

The last bin bags

On Sunday 29^th December I went into a local supermarket and bought a few essentials/essential luxuries. I had run out of fruit juice, butter and bin bags. I was also about to say goodbye to Mags until I get back to the UK, who was leaving with a picnic for the plane and about two kilos of churra gertes (peanut rice pudding). Mags is the person who encouraged me to buy toilet paper based on price per sheet rather than overall cost and unfortunately the tendency to stand for a long time trying to do what is pretty simple numeracy (I was always better at algebra) in shopping aisles has spread to other household goods. Bin bags in particular, which have the added quality complication of being strong enough to be carried 500 yards when full to the trash man.  As I picked up a roll of ten I thought, “OK, these are the last ones. I have about twelve weeks left, so the last couple of weeks we can manage with carrier bags.”

As Mags was sorting the last elements of packing I tried to distract myself. Her flight didn’t include a meal so I had made her some packing and, as we’d eaten a mountain of plasas (potato leaves, fish and oil) and rice, I pulled an afternoon tea together. We sat with coffee and the last of the stollen. I squeezed the rice pudding into her case, and then tried to fill a sad time. I thought I’d see when my bin bags would actually finish. And as I did so I realised they would see me out, I had nine weeks left not twelve.

Suddenly I was thrown in to the future, a blank space after March 7^th when my life in Gambia would be over. I would probably never see many of my friends here again, never know which children got through school and who dropped out, catch only brief glimpses of what happens to the place I work from minor news reports on occasions I bother to check certain websites.  And those are the big things, the mundane small things, the everyday, will never be known to me again. All those adaptations I have learnt, getting the bakers on my street to drop bread to my house as it’s not yet ready, automatically finding the firm part of sandy roads to walk on, trusting my instincts on when to accept a lift from a stranger and when to rudely ask them to leave me alone, when to tell someone my real name and when to make one up, walking everywhere, knowing that though I might want something complicated a boiled egg in a piece of bread from a local shop keeper will actually solve my hunger pains just as well.  

I came here to live, not as a tourist, a traveller or multi-national expat but as a volunteer, working in a Gambian organisation and making Gambian friends.  Still a fish out of water but perhaps getting close to becoming a grebe, able to dive into the water every now and then. But that is the point, my life will move on and I will leave this behind. I won’t be mourning the loss for years because I will be doing something else in those years. And so it is right to mourn it now, to know that these things will pass and that there is sadness in that passing, even if there is joy in the future, because now is the time I have to mourn. And apparently the focus of that mourning is not a person or an experience but instead that marker of weeks gone by, the humble bin bag. 

Oh, you have a stranger

My sister Margaret has had a rather adventurous year. Alongside her usual growing achievements at work and glamorous city centre life, she spent a quarter of the year travelling South America, leaping rusted engines, climbing ancient treks and dancing the night away in . And yet, clearly, this was not enough.  My sister was coming for Christmas. And so I entered December with a growing level of excitement, booked leave and, on a day without any power, made a plan so that we didn’t waste the time without sight-seeing.

As I booked the taxi I was surprised that church friends wanted to come to the airport to greet her, I’d planned a quiet reunion and slower entry into Gambian society. But come along they did. Mags came through the gate and I was overjoyed to see a face that I have known almost all my life. A quirk of the Gambian English teaching leads visitors to be referred to as strangers. So here was my “stranger”, a person who I helped to name and who knows things about me that I probably don’t even know myself. We had technically already celebrated Christmas together in July and part of the challenge of this year for me was to be away from home for the festive season.  But Margaret knows how to make an event work, how to create a celebration, and obviously we have so many shared traditions.  She was laden with bags and parcels, including unopened crisps from her in flight picnic which she immediately donated to a grateful sister.

We got home and had a night of chicken salad and white wine. Mags was a bit shocked by the requirement to say grace before meals, and the way of being almost dismissive about the food being served; the lads with us continued to play on their phones and camera while we sat down to eat. And through her eyes I could see that it is an odd contrast. I have already ensured every grace I say thanks those people involved in the growth and preparation of the food, not just God. But this was the first small sign that Margaret would bring much more than crisps, her perspective would add an important element of reflection and consideration to a society that I missed when I started due to the need to integrate. Not only that, but she gave me a good excuse to see everything I would otherwise miss.

We started with Christmas decorations, getting a few twigs to act as a tree, adding lights and baubles. There were paper chains and hanging decorations and of course snowflakes everywhere, tartan in deference to the hot climate. Presents from home appeared under the twigs, and an angel who looks like me apparently. But this was a tropical Christmas and the next day was filled with watching a crocodile lumber back into the sun less than a metre from our feet, with haggling at the fish market and wandering the sandy streets. We spent a day at Serrekunda market, which is far too long, and I got us caught up on a hunt for fabric which took us into the depths of the meat market where Mags had to batter flies away from her face and back onto the piles of brains.  We met Gambian friends and were invited for mbahal (a kind of rice studded with nuts and beans and laced with oil), we held a birthday party for me which included baking a pineapple cake on top of the gas ring. And, from a different meal,  I got food poisoning leading to Mags having to eat the ice cream pudding of our posh meal out in the local clinic.

              

My stranger made Christmas. I almost cried when the liquorice allsorts came out, I had jam from my best friend for my birthday breakfast, we set off screaming rocket balloons to amuse children and ate stollen for breakfast (“was it a gift?” “no, it was stollen”). A hamper of treats to last the rest of my stay was produced, and we watched the Boxing Day sun set over a tropical ocean while drinking a whisky. But most importantly my sister was here. She talked sense and cast her eye over how I am fairing. She said I seemed very frustrated, and helped me think through a few challenges around leaving. The day after she left I woke up in the morning with a pit of emptiness. “Margaret went home” I thought, “she isn’t here”.  But I was grateful she had come. I had become unknown to myself, too busy adapting and coping to think and feel and react to what is happening around me. My sister had left, but it was never her who was the stranger, it was me. It just took a visitor to see that clearly.

                                                       

“Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages”*

Over a quarter of a century ago, the Catholics of The Gambia decided they needed their own pilgrimage site.  There is an annual pilgrimage to Popenguine in Senegal, a site established by a priest in 1887, but it was felt that a site in The Gambia should be dedicated as a shrine to Mary. There was no sighting or vision, simply a good location identified and a shrine built. And now there is an annual pilgrimage to Kulkujan Mariama as part of the Christmas preparations. Though rumours about a vision have started to circulate as the origin of the shrine gets more distant.

As a student I was an assistant on many pilgrimages to Lourdes, the shrine in France, but this time I didn’t feel any calling to travel. I was tired and could do with some time to prepare for Christmas at home. But, after being asked by almost everyone in the church, and establishing that I didn’t have to join the choir this time (as I wanted my evening back after months of heavy concert practices), I decided to attend. After all, when else would I travel there and see what this African shrine looked like. I eventually agreed to go with my choir friend Mathias and his family. Somehow, suddenly, I was also in charge of taking a picnic for the all-day event for anywhere between two and five people so spent a day at the market and an evening cooking and sourcing big plates and a basket for carrying said picnic.

I woke early in the morning, for once using the call to prayer as a reminder to get out of bed. After dressing in the dim dawn light I stumbled up to the taxi rank laden with bags of food and frozen water. Joining the women queuing with their baskets for a morning market trip, we convinced a van to divert his route. I was sleepy and had warnings in my mind of “the bus will definitely leave at 6.30 sharp so you must be there by then.” Of course we eventually left an hour after that. I repacked our picnic into the borrowed basket. No one else seemed to be carrying food or even water. Mathias joined the van with a loaf of bread and we made butties from boiled eggs and salad. No one else was eating. Instead everyone was dutifully praying the rosary with added prayers and songs after each decade. The sun was rising over the countryside and I let the prayers wash over me as I watched the scenery, joining in if bits were in English or allowing myself time for my own reflections.

When we arrived I first saw a church with a very steep spire and thought “yes, this is a shrine” as I was instantly reminded of French basilicas. The congregation were seated outside, with only the seats catching the now intense sun left free.  We took up our positions and I borrowed scarves in attempt to save my legs from the scorching rays. We started with the rosary again, this time with each mystery acted out. It struck me that Jesus meets a prophetess, Anna, when he is taken to the temple as a baby. After a conversation with a Muslim house guest I’ve been on the look-out for female prophets so it was good to see Anna turn up. Still, without a breeze, very poor microphones and the second recitation of the extended prayers that day, I was struggling to stay awake. I dozed under a thick woollen scarf that was supposedly keeping the sun off my head, nudged by Mathias every time the actors reappeared.

                                                             

By the time the next section, following the Stations of the Cross (the story of Jesus’ death) at the shrine, came around I was too hot and too outside the community spirit of a congregation. I went to the church, which was virtually empty and blessedly cool. Above the altar were paintings of the Madonna and child surrounded by Gambian people. That too was a blessed relief from the almost snow white images around my own church which disturb me more than they would in Europe because they are so incongruous to both history and the local people.  The only disturbance were a gaggle of arrogant priests at the back of the church, too wrapped up in their big day out to minister or even notice that a few people were trying to use an otherwise silent space for prayer.

I sat there until I felt recovered and the midday sun had passed. I wandered down the stalls of pious items that always turn up at such sites, bought some fabric, and went back to join in the Mass. The sermon, delivered from a shady, fan-cooled altar was long but radical. The congregation were asked to change from trying to become a self-sustaining diocese to prioritise the new Caritas campaign to end hunger. Asking people in a country with a real hungry season that isn’t hidden behind such think doors of shame and ignorance as hunger is in the UK what to do about the hungry people they know suddenly showed one of the strengths in the kaleidoscope of humanity that is Catholicism. There are rich and poor people in this church, generally seen as equal and with a community link and spiritual ethos that suggests they should be sharing with each other more. And, they are treated as a people with their own ability to make the change, not as recipients of a foreign intervention. But then there was the long fundraising collection for the shrine which is made public and part of the service and which grates heavily on my nerves, given the Biblical exhortation to give without being seen and the fact that money is so tight for so many people here.

After the Mass we ate, and I saw that everyone else’s picnics had been squirrelled away in coach holds and the backs of vans.  I visited the shrine and stepped carefully over the candles placed on the floor, watching more than one person helped up after falling over the molten wax covered tiles. On the bus home, the rosary started up again. Two of the women were arguing about being late back to the van for an hour and a half, until another matriarch with higher social standing pushed the row underground through the forceful way of saying the prayers. For me  tiredness won out and I dozed with my forehead jolting against the metal of the seat in front of me. 

*Chaucer, Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

Lack of connectivity in a connected world

In the past two months our office has had power for four days. A Skype call to London from the VSO office entails dropping out every ten minutes and eventually resorting to borrowing a staff member’s phone. Weekend attempts to get online involve traipsing around under the hot sun for somewhere with a wifi signal and cheap coffee purchase to access it.  I have sat in a local bar with an internet dongle and watched my battery drain two hours’ worth of power in 15 minutes as a virus wormed its way into my system and made the credit I had just bought useless. Doing anything complex takes an age, diagnosing issues then changing blog host took me over six days, or over a month in real time. Downloading software updates is hazardous and fraught with drop outs. Uploading a video for my sister’s birthday was the worst, five solid days of trying different systems, sizes and very cross international messaging to technical support (my other sister who definitely had other issues on her mind, such as how to make a cornucopia cake).

Yet we live in an interconnected world. There are people who’ve carved entire careers as researchers, ploughing the internet for the thread of ideas on which innovation is built. A friend recently took a tropical illness to a UK based doctor. “hmm, let’s ask Dr. Google” he said, seeking knowledge he knew he needed.  The internet contains the giants on whose shoulders the modern world now stands. And it isn’t just knowledge, it’s ideas, comment, conversation, a society working together and against itself in infinite different ways.  When humanity works together we progress, and when we are selfish we fail. The internet, and wider media, is the field on which this global struggle is played out in our lifetimes.

But a lack of connectivity means many will be left behind, again suffering a disparity of access to the world’s resources. It becomes a mind-set. When a friend asks me how to promote his music, I respond “I don’t know but we can learn, let’s get to a computer”.  His face is generally shocked, as if the impression he had is that we Westerners know everything and everyone innately, rather than keeping it on one massive brain we access through our computers.

Some people lament when a person on a low income choses to spend scarce resources on a television, phone or computer, preferring they increase sanitation or food levels. Yet these tools provide entertainment, information to improve those other areas, education, and are a vital link to society in today’s world. This is a very rational choice; connectivity is a basic need for humanity which is at heart a societal system, not one based on meeting only the needs seen as basic by people who usually have the basics and more met. Lack of access to the information the rest of us rely on is one of the many devastating effects of poverty.

In The Gambia, most of my friends and colleagues have at least one mobile, and usually several numbers to save costs between lines.  There are systems and software used elsewhere that means that these mobiles can be used to send instant monitoring reports, but without learning about them through a culture of internet searching and capacity building through such actions as international volunteering, planners rarely know about them let alone how to implement them. Instead monitoring is done by costly, long field visits.  All innovation is based on pulling ideas together from different sources into something that works right now. Nothing is entirely new. In development we are trying to use what we know to create solutions that push country forward in small but sustainable steps. Development is slowed when it is based on systems and information flows that are themselves slow and unreliable, or even simply too expensive to afford.  Cultural industries can’t develop quickly if no one knows how to promote an artist and they have to learn from scratch, academics can’t analyse international arguments to their theories without waiting for a journal posted and yes, doctors with no experience of a strange set of symptoms can’t google the country they might have come from for a clue. Obviously people and countries can and do get things done without the internet. Past volunteers managed without a spontaneous Skype to their friends three thousand miles away and friends here now manage without hearing from loved ones overseas for years at a time. But it is easier and nicer when you can talk to those you love, when you can find an idea that you are toying with has caught the attention of someone else far away and their ideas can complement yours, when you can find a solution to how to fill in a spread sheet within an hour rather than a year.

The elimination of violence against women

Today is the International Day of the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Yesterday I sat listening to a sermon from a new priest.  As he did the week before, he commented on people coming to church “almost naked”, and this particularly applied to women. Obviously he was asking people to dress modestly in church so that other worshippers aren’t distracted. Putting aside my view that other worshippers can manage their own concentration on God, that the Bible clearly shows that all are welcome to come to God’s house based on what is in their heart not on their bodies and that every woman I’ve ever seen in that church is very conservatively dressed, it strikes me that the emphasis on what a woman wears to how she is treated is everywhere in our society. Part of that is normal, every culture uses clothing to convey particular messages to those around them. We wear the cultural colour for funerals, or weddings, we use suits and pyjamas and dresses and ties to tell a particular story. I myself have a reputation for confronting NGO dress norms by wearing suits and jackets in offices full of jeans and old campaign t-shirts, to the point where I started an institution called “dress up Friday”.

Yet what is quite clearly no OK is to treat someone as less or with hatred, anger, as a victim or violently simply because they have chosen to wear something you disagree with. Yet how often, in every community around the world, we hear or want to think that what a woman is wearing is justification for violent or aggressive attacks on her. I could be walking around naked except for a big neon sign saying “get it here” and, if I say to a prospective taker “sorry, mate, not you” that means no. What I’m wearing is irrelevant, in this case it would be an invitation to ask surely, but not consent to do anything.  Rape is not sex, it is, as Caitlin Moran calls it, internal assault.  As Moran stated (apologies, i don’t have the date of The Times article), “Does it make any real difference if it’s a vagina being brutalised, or an eye? If the weapon is a penis, or a cosh? This is punching, but inside. This is the repeated piercing of someone’s body. When you put it like that, suddenly the issue of rape becomes very clear: how many women would ask for that?” Which is why in real life what a woman who is raped is wearing is irrelevant. I might wear something to invite a proposition for sex. I cannot wear anything that invites rape. Most rape and most violence against women happens in the home, caused by someone you know well, nothing to do with a stranger but caused by a horrifically misguided attempt to prove power over someone.  Yet the idea that what women are wearing, where they are walking, who they are with and who they are is a cause of concern, let alone a cause of rape, rather than the rapist being dysfunctional, pervades society to the extent that the justice system often fails.

I know women who have been assaulted by strangers, some of whom have stayed quiet, other who have worked with the legal services in the UK. Often they feel emotionally battered by some of those they encounter as they try to act as key witnesses to keep the rest of society safe from dangerous people. This sense pervades globally, sometimes with very significant cause. Today the UN published a comment on violence against women.  They talk about a case in Busia, Kenya in June this year in which they say “a 16 year old girl was gang-raped and thrown in a pit latrine, breaking her back and leaving her with an obstetric fistula. Police chose not to prosecute the men, instead ordering them to cut the grass around the police station as punishment.” In this case there was a huge petition to the Chief Justice of Kenya which began the process of justice.  The same comment adds a story about a 13 year old girl who was asked “what were you wearing?” when reporting a rape in 2011. It took a further two years, many similar attacks and another public outcry for the police to begin an investigation into the gang.

After a successful case in Kenyan in which an 11 year old girl amongst others sued the police for failing to act after her rape, there is a petition to raise funds for a legal case to challenge police forces across Africa. Please take a look at the site here https://secure.avaaz.org/en/take_kaias_win_global_nd_en_adda_2/?bGnshdb&v=31352&c=GBP&a=2&amountMax_multiply_0d5 and, if you feel you would like to support it, please do. Otherwise I wish you all, male and female, a day free from violence, intimidation and fear.