Rebirth

Hi blog! It’s been a long time since I’ve last written here but I am glad to be back. There are so many reasons for the lag in blogs. The last four months I’ve been adapting to life at my permanent site and attempting to find my footing here. Life is often so chaotic and messy that I struggle to make sense of it all. My perfectionist tendencies want to synthesize this complex existence into a beautiful and concise story, where I’ve already processed and polished my emotions and experiences. I’m learning that I can’t package this time here into a neat little box and tie it with a bow, no matter how badly I want to. I have to be okay with the messy and nonsensical! 

I last wrote a blog at the end of Pre-Service Training right before moving to my permanent site. Since then, it has now been four months of living in my new village with my new host family. Between integrating into my new family and community, establishing my working life, and adapting to being away from my Peace Corps friends, these four months have flown by. I waver between questioning how I still have another eight months here and wondering how time has passed so quickly. 

The bottom line is that my life has drastically improved since the training village. That is not to say there are no challenges, but I am moving up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I am the first Peace Corps Volunteer in my village, even though the Peace Corps has been working in The Gambia since 1967! This means that I am the first Volunteer my family has ever hosted, but also the first foreigner. It’s an honor and a responsibility that I always try to remind myself of. 

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  Loading the car for permanent sites

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  Day 1 arrival

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  Early sunset in the village

I really attribute my host family for welcoming me so warmly and making me feel like part of their home so quickly. In my family, I just have one host mom and host dad, something that is not all that common in this polygamous society. My host mom, Mai, has high cheekbones that make her look like she is always smiling. She is joyous and patient and laughs loudly. In my food bowl, she helps me get meat off the fish since I am squeamish about bones. She speaks Mandinka to me slowly, looking out for me as if I am one of her small children. My host dad, Saikou, speaks English and drives (our family has a car!!) to work in Banjul every morning. When he arrives home each evening, my little siblings shout “Baa naa ta” which means “Dad came” and run up to him in excitement. Children love him, which speaks to his character in a way I never saw from men in my training village. Sometimes he brings me fresh coconuts when he comes back from work, a small gesture that always makes me feel cared for. I call my host parents Naa and Baa, for Mom and Dad in Mandinka.

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  Me and my host mom

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  Our compound

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  My host parents!

I adore my siblings. Besides Isa, who is 25, I am the eldest sister in the house, a role that came naturally to me as the eldest sister back home. Binta is the sister I am closest with, someone who I am comfortable sitting in silence with and feel an unspoken kinship with. She is 20, but I feel that we are closest in age: Binta, older in my eyes with her large responsibilities at home, and myself, seemingly younger due to my stumbling Mandinka and slowness at simple tasks like laundry, cooking, and cleaning here. Mariama is 17, but she has been gone for the past few months while boarding at her school to study for final exams. As I’ve learned, it’s nearly impossible to study in quiet while at home unless it’s the early morning hours or late hours of the evening. 

My brothers are Muhammed and Ousman, who are 14 and 12. Ousman is technically my cousin, as I only recently found out he has a different last name than us, but he feels like my host brother. Muhammed is more quiet and reserved, but Ousman is talkative and funny. He consistently takes first in his class of forty Grade 5 students, and his English is strong. He absorbs information, reading everything on a discarded nutrition label, the measuring charts in the back of school notebooks, or the children’s books I bring home. Recently, my family from home brought him a World Atlas book and I noticed how he is reading in his free time. I love encouraging him to learn and improve, and soon we will begin typing classes together on my laptop. 

And then we have the littles. Jarra, who I call Mama, is 8 and she is fiery. We study early literacy and math together on school nights, and practice English vocabulary. Mama doesn’t walk between places, she scampers and it makes me laugh. She can be discerning and thoughtful, but also unpredictable. She’ll ask to study in my room at night just to take a lollipop when I’m not looking. Fanta is 4 and she is a sassy firecracker. She wears sparkly pink tutus and has a t-shirt that says “Cute but Psycho.” Fanta sings and dances and twirls around the compound, and she somehow always appears by my side if I have a snack. Muhammed Manneh is almost 3 years old and he is Isa’s son. He calls me Auntie Lala, in a high pitched voice that he bellows from the depths of his little tummy. Muhammed is a noodle of a child. He’s small for his age, but he makes up for it by shouting “M baa bute la” (I will beat you) and standing up for himself against the bigger kids. Our compound is happy and silly and embodies the best of Gambian kindness and warmth. I feel really lucky to be with this family. 

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  Muhammed ready for Friday prayer

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  Sibling pile + baby Lamin!

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  Me and Fanta on Eid

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  Matching in our ashobee

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  Fanta and Muhammed going to dara

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  Mama and early morning tea

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  The boys on Eid

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  Cute but psycho!

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  The regular gang

My living conditions are also a dramatic improvement from the training village. Our compound is gated, with a large courtyard of colorful tile and fruit trees. I have a two-room section of the house with a small veranda where I like to sit in my plastic green chair and sip coffee in the morning. The first room is tiled, which is so much nicer than the rough cement floors in my training village house. I have a proper roof instead of corrugate, so there are no holes for creepy-crawlies and mice to sneak in at night. The biggest luxury is that my host family installed a water tap in my bathroom area out back, which means I don’t have to fetch water anymore. Sometimes the tap runs out if there is no electricity to power the borehole, but the overall increase in water access is life changing. 

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  Inside my bedroom

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  My sweet little veranda

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  My bed!!

When I moved to my permanent site, I changed my Gambian name from Fatima to Lala. I decided this mostly because my new host family’s surname is Fatty. I wasn’t about to move around the world and sacrifice so much for 15-months just to be called “Fatima Fatty.” Are you kidding?! The joke would really be on me. 

In Mandinka, there are many sounds like ‘oo’ and ‘aa’. Inspired by my younger sister’s name Tallulah, I asked one of the Peace Corps staff if ‘Lula’ was a Mandinka name. She said no, but ‘Lala’ is, so I went with that. I feel reborn with a new name and the chance to start fresh in my new village. Now the children in my village shout “LALA FATTY” as I walk by or call me “Auntie Lala” if they’re in front of their parents. Lala rolls off the tongue of chubby cheeked toddlers in a way that I adore. Fatima is out, Lala is in. 

And so goes the evolution of Lala Fatty. She is everything that I wasn’t in my training village. She is more confident in so many ways, speaking Mandinka and setting personal boundaries without (much) apology. She is much better at holding her own in this foreign place. 

I recently started reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and he references his own spiritual awakening when he learns to distinguish between the psychological concepts of “I” as his subjective experience and “self” as his objective experience. I originally thought taking a Gambian name here was strange, but it now has a new meaning to me. I can think and experience certain things as Liv, but Lala Fatty is my output of self. When I think about Lala Fatty as a controllable and presentable concept, I am able to reach a sort of self-mastery that helps me adapt to my new existence here in The Gambia. Lala is not everything that I am, but Lala is who I create. And I like Lala! She’s cool. 

This blog is getting long, so I’ll share another one very soon on what my days actually look like. Thank you so much for following along! <3 Talk soon.