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.

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.

                                                       

Surgical Spirit and Medical Mayhem

Even after seven months in The Gambia there are new things to discover.  Recently Natalie commented that we had never been in the fabric section of Emporium (like John Lewis but more expensive), and she’s been here for over a year. Inside was like the upstairs of Abakhan (best haberdashers in Manchester, upstairs is the posh bit), whereas my Serekunda shopping for fabric is more like what the down stairs of Abakhan aspires to be (downstairs is like a fabric scrum of bargains).  However, apparently I had my own ideas about what I could discover and set out to explore the medical system.

This is the hungry season and the end of the wet season. People’s systems are exhausted and susceptible to disease just when disease is at its most prevalent and virulent. Every day you hear about someone with malaria, and at least weekly another friend of a friend has died.  Obviously I wasn’t going to be that extreme, with my rich person immune system, anti-malarials and over budget spending on a rainbow of fruit and vegetables. Compared to the complaints of those around me mine were minor and so what follows seems very trivial indeed.

My first foray into medical care started with a humble corn cob.  Having skipped lunch and gone straight to choir I was really hungry and picked a barbequed ear off my kiliyaan (customer/regular – in this case my shop keeper who sells fruit from a table on a nearby junction) to share with Mathias on the walk home.  At some point I ate a very hard kernel but it wasn’t until the next morning I realised that this was in fact a tooth breaking. The same tooth had broken before when eating a birthday meal of partridge. Obviously the fix I had then had disintegrated, despite assurances before I left that said everything was fine. VSO provide emergency dental cover, so I headed to the allocated dentist, forms in hand.  After an assessment and uncomfortable x-ray, he diagnosed a dying tooth and the need for root canal treatment. Great.

For the next six weeks I had weekly trips to ask a man to dig around in my tooth with sharp sticks (OK, medical tools) until it was dead and clean.  Over the course of the treatment I had a few weeks with anaesthetic, causing me to sleep for about 14 hours and miss vital choir practices, and a few weeks without, causing me to swim in the sea complaining at anyone who was unfortunate enough to come near me. I had a panic about cleanliness, then actually observed that the practices are very similar to those in a UK dentist, and had a panic about unsightly fillings. The dentist himself however was calm and sensible. He showed me the x-ray, explained the reasons for the treatment and how he made the diagnosis. He then pulled out a huge 3D poster to show me the process and assured me that it’d be a white filling, albeit with a warning that “root canal normally eventually needs a crown”.  He listened to my worries and used them as clues to fix problems, meaning that we found an extra root that hadn’t shown up on the x-ray. Now the tooth is sealed, ready to be tested in tonight’s concert and with a check-up booked for two weeks. In the manner of a toothpaste advert I have tested it with both iced water and hot coffee and so far it seems fine.

Obviously I was feeling psychologically secure in the Gambian health care profession as last Monday I threw myself on the floor. It was the middle of the day on the main street and, as I was crossing the road, I tripped and lost my balance due the heavy bag I was carrying. I fell onto the muddy, rocky sand at the edge of the road as taxi drivers and passers by called out “sorry” from their windows. Of course I was also wearing white linen trousers, now streaked with brown mud. Not caring I sat on the floor, leaving a print of by bottom in the soft earth and a print of the soft earth on my bottom. I wanted to cry but luckily someone came, helped me up and made me laugh. I took a taxi home, the driver looking horrified at the state of my trousers which blood was now seeping through.  I cleaned the wounds at home, put a dab of antiseptic over them and hid in my house until choir practice, seemingly fine to all who met me.

However, this is a different climate and a small cut is a party venue for millions of weird things.  I had five grazes and several bruises. My legs had become a club night for bacteria. The following night I winced through the dance rehearsal as my legs got hotter and stickier. By the end of choir practice I was once again close to tears and snapped at everyone as I dashed for the door, limping slowly home.  I spent the night in screaming pain, every movement driving nails into my bones and staying still sending thousands of hot ants scurrying around the wounds. I cleaned them again and took painkillers until I fell asleep. 

The following day everyone wanted to give me advice. Unfortunately “everyone” included civil servants, NGO workers, retired project managers and my cleaner so I ended up more frustrated than advised. I decided to head to the doctors. At least they have something to clean  wounds with.

When I arrived I was sent immediately for a malaria test and urine check. It’s standard procedure but, already feeling antagonistic, I was very argumentative as malaria may be the great mimic but I know it can’t come disguised as a grazed leg. After the next set of routine checks I went back for the malaria test. As I came to the urine test I noticed there was a beetle in the sample bottle. I returned it without the urine saying, “I would use this but you’ll definitely diagnose parasites”. My earlier complaining was forgotten as I suddenly became the funniest woman in the surgery, and started to feel a bit better.

My wounds were cleaned with antiseptic and doused with iodine to prevent infection. I was also given antibiotics to stop the infection spreading.  However, the doctor also asked a set of seemingly irrelevant questions. “are you eating properly?” (answer, no), “are you sleeping well?” (answer, no), “do you have a support network around you?” (answer, doesn’t feel like it) “are you coping?” (answer, bursting into tears, which I think is a no). He advised me to relax, even though the allowance is small, to try and treat myself well and to stop taking it all too seriously.  Again, frustrating advice. But by the evening’s choir practice my leg was already visibly healing and I was little miss cheerful, joking, apologising for being snappy, dancing and laughing again.

I do have support – there’s a gang of VSOs who’ll happily wander to a café with me and jump waves in the sea, I live in a place where I saw a turtle in the sea,  I have a care package coming from an old friend and a party package coming from an ex-VSO, I have some friends in choir and some people who resent that fact that I get solos when I’m new (as in all choirs apart from the endlessly lovely Glor),  I have heath and a health system that will bend over backwards to fix me, people who’ll answer an email in depth or pick up a facebook message, or pause a dinner party to have a skype chat, sew me a dress without charging because I have a bit of spare fabric (obviously I pay him),  a family who would, if I ever needed it, pay for a ticket home and give me a place to stay until I got back on my feet, and I have a VSO support system that will understand any problem and advise on how to deal with it.  My terrible homesickness aside, I also have myself, my health, my mind, my resilience and my ability to over analyse to the nth degree but also my adaptability.

So now, I have explored the health system available to me, the private care that most Gambians will never access, and is leagues above what is available to them no matter how basic it may seem to me.  My leg is better so I can dance, my tooth is better so I can sing, my mind set is better so I can smile. I’m all set for the choir concert and next four months work. Yet last week my cleaner, who begs me every week to marry a Gambian and settle down, came in announcing her daughter’s best friend had died. She said, “When I heard, I thought to myself ‘This is why Helen won’t stay here, children just die’”.  And I remembered at that point that, if I could, I’d take every child somewhere safe, and kill every mosquito, fix every road and make a national health service that rivals our own.  Which in a way is what we are trying to do, I just can’t do it tomorrow when it’s needed. I can work to make conditions so that in twenty years it can be done.  It’s dispiriting at one level, but at another you have to think of the African proverb, “the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is today.”