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?

Do they know it’s Christmas?

In mid-November I updated my iPod to start playing Christmas tunes, at first occasionally popping up on shuffle but then with a dedicated playlist. I have often heard “oh, it doesn’t feel like Christmas when it’s warm” from those who’ve spent it abroad and wondered if that was true. Does it really take a robin bob-bob-bobbin through the snow to feel like Christmas? Certain charity pop songs have it that, what with poverty, “the burning sun” and the “bitter sting of tears” it is particularly difficult to appreciate the season of goodwill in a very poor African country. As my birthday falls on Christmas Eve experimenting with the presence of the Christmas spirit was a bit of a high risk gamble but we can but try.

When people say “it doesn’t feel like Christmas” they mean the atmosphere. So what makes Christmas?

Religion

Though for not all, Christmas is first and foremost a religious feast. Even some of those who wouldn’t dream of making church a feature of a normal Sunday morning think getting to a church at Christmas is part of the season. Of course, my church prepared in the way prescribed under canon law, and the practice of Advent with purple and pink candles lit around a wreath each week, sermons about preparation and meetings about the liturgical accuracy of various elements.  For years I have celebrated my birthday on 23rd (Birthday Eve) so that friends and family can attend the vigil Mass. This year I had to shut down my birthday party early so that Mags and I could get to church in time for carols.  We were at church from 9 until 1am. Decorations had been added, the crib was out and weirdly contained a stuffed donkey, a camel with a missing leg and models of various shapes so that “baby” Jesus was over twice as big as his mother. Religious Christmas was fully ticked.

Music

For me, like many of my friends, as a life-long chorister music is essential. My sister Katharine will generally sleep an extra five hours on Christmas day after a month in which her five choirs are all performing to the best of their abilities, often with three concerts in a day. New music is learnt and descants are polished until they sparkle. And so, was there music? Well yes. In September as ever I was learning a few new Christmas tunes, singing “waaw, tey la Noel” (“yes, today is Christmas”) into the humid rainy season air. I myself was teaching “Gaudete” and “The Angel Gabriel” and allocating solos and pointing out the music in the book for “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” which had, until then, been passed on by ear.  I had a visitor to the choir and had to wear the dreaded asobi again, managing to give Mags a shorter version which made her feel like Sister Mary Roberts, the novice in Sister Act.  There was the predictable last minute switching of a solo and the under-prepared soprano ‘star’ messing it up to be out sung by me with the correct pitches in the choral sections.  The addition of a competing soloist row definitely made it Christmassy music wise.

Family

Christmas is a time of friends and family and it is this that is obviously the hardest to make up for when away from home. I luckily had a sister to stay, bringing traditions and presents from afar, like the original gifts symbols of something intangible about who I am to them and they are to me.  We opened gifts on Christmas morning, sang along to the Muppet Christmas Carol and ate bacon butties. It was ever thus. Yet even without Mags, I had the family spirit around me. I had been invited for Christmas lunch in October, I had small stocking like gifts for those who have cared for me this year, sweets and balloons, reading books and colouring pencils for the children and cake, photos and wine for the adults. We visited the Assine family, ate there, then rushed to the original invitation with Auntie Cor, ate again (oh yes, we ate too much in seasonal style) then on to the Mendys for a quick greeting. We missed the VSO party because it was in the afternoon and we had too many families to visit, and instead we went to a traditional Christmas day masquerade. Eventually we got home and, with our first glass of wine of the day, skyped Dad and Katharine and had a stilted chat. There was so much family that too many were missed (Gran and Grandad, Mum, Irene, this especially means you). So far, so Christmassy.

Parties

I love parties at Christmas. Everyone is looking forward to them and in the mood for some good cheer. Christmas parties almost organise themselves. And my birthday is amongst the best.  For years I have had a dinner with select friends but my 30^th topped that off in spectacular style. I wanted a change so had a house party. Mum sent a Birthday present of cash to pay for food and drink, and a new dress. Mags toiled in the kitchen, Natalie circulated and pitched in, I meandered around feeling glamorous.  So many people came and I was thrilled. By Boxing Day another party was in full flow, this time a beach BBQ. We played touch rugby and swam in the sea before breaking off some cake, pouring a good whisky and watching the sunset as green phosphorescence lit up the ocean waves.

Decorations

Do they know it’s Christmas? I think the power bill of my local supermarket must have doubled. It’s covered in lights, there’s tinsel on every surface and every window I covered with plastic friezes of Father Christmas and snowmen and stars and trees. Every Christian house you visit has balloons on the ceiling, foil garlands hanging overhead and shining baubles around the place. Decorations are not a problem. Mine seem very tame in comparison, despite one VSO who was amazed at seeing tinsel on my dining table. Even the VSO Christmas party had a tree and various shiny things, collected by VSOs gone by to add festive cheer.

Weather

Ok, so it is hot and sandy and you can go out without a coat. But if the cold, rainy or snowy weather that makes you want to be inside in the warm was the only thing that made Christmas it’d be Christmas in Manchester on at least 178 days every year. And this year we got to swim in the sea, is there a better Christmas present?

Christmas is what you make it. If you see it as a festival of hope and light in a dark world, why would your poverty stop you celebrating? Poverty doesn’t stop people being human, though it severely and cripplingly limits how you can express that humanity. For one day, your faith says “there is something different” and, for Catholics at least, people should be working to make that difference every day.  But to wish well for others, to save what you have and do something to mark a time that is special to you through your faith or family, everyone knows what that is. And it’s not the weather that stops it feeling like Christmas, it’s forgetting how to hope and work for the best, not being happy that you are alive, and failing to celebrate being human together.  None of that was missing in my Christmas. But knowing that another Christmas is here, with the promise of change for a more equal society but that it’s a promise still unfulfilled from last year, well, that is what makes us try to make a difference every day.

* Thanks to Natalie Smith for a few of the photos

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.