December 15

Today is a public holiday for the President’s Inauguration. The army is out and about everywhere monitoring the streets. Sirens go every now and then as convoys bring in various dignitaries from the airport. An army guy in fatigues and carrying a large gun reprimanded me yesterday for apparently having my hand in my pocket as I watched a stream of cars go by. I’m spending the day indoors.

I’m celebrating my birthday tomorrow by going for a Gambian lunch to the house of one of my coworkers. I might go out for supper as well. Beyond that, I’m just getting ready to leave on Tuesday. As it was with coming to Africa, there is a mixture of nerves and excitement as I leave a zone of comfort and familiarity to explore something new. But I’m looking forward to it.

Back in January. Merry Christmas to you all.

December 14

Went over to a small gathering last night hosted by a couple from the Hash. We, along with a few others, sat under a tent in their apartment complex courtyard by the pool and enjoyed wine, amaretto, and a nice dinner of rice, lamb, coleslaw, Christmas pudding (complete with brandy) and ice cream. Good food, good drink, good company. Wine is usually not ideal in this country as the selection is poor and the climate too hot. However, at my corner store, amidst bottles of cheap local liquor and groceries, I found a bottle of my favourite grape (Malbec) for under $10. It was a Cisca Mendoza 2003 from Argentina. Probably not the greatest wine in the world, but I rather enjoyed it. We then proceeded to Churchill’s, right next door, for karaoke. A fun evening all around, and I’m a little the worse for wear this morning.

December 13

It rained briefly this morning. The mornings and evenings have gotten rather cold, like late autumn nights in Edmonton. Thankfully my electricity is back, so I once again have hot water. I wonder what it’s going to be like coming back in January. A ballpark guess is that it will suck.

It’s odd what you get accustomed to over time. I have both enjoyed and lamented the quiet and uneventful pace of life here and have looked forward to returning to a more vibrant country. A few days ago, however, I went down to Kairaba Avenue for some banking, really the hub of modern commerce and activity in this neck of the woods. The heavy traffic, noise, and busy shops made me appreciate getting back to my quiet little suburb of Brusubi, which I wouldn’t have expected. Going to Dakar next week, an urban African centre of 2 million people, will be interesting. For that matter, so will spending two weeks traveling in French-speaking countries.

I’ve started to give thought to packing for my trip home. The small museum of collectibles that I’ve amassed should counter what I’m leaving behind. Doing laundry by hand does not serve clothing well (at least the way I do it, which is poorly). At least half of my shirts will be thrown out. My exercise clothes and towel will be burned. My sandals are hanging on by a thread. And the backs of my running shoes wore out a while ago, so I have had to pad my right heel with toilet paper when jogging for about two months.

December 12

A few weeks ago at Hash dinner, one of our members decided to count how many originating countries were represented in the evening’s group. It was eighteen. Quite remarkable.

December 11

I leave the house in the early morning, squinting at the African sun holding court over a pristine blue sky. A cold wind sweeps through my yard. Smiling at the lethargic guard dozing on a thin blanket covering the ground, I quietly close the metal gate behind me. Only a few years ago these houses did not exist, and this road was not paved. As I walk, a small boy riding on a rickety metal cart pulled by an obedient donkey passes on my left. To my right, a stray dog trots past a pair of goats and a nearby chicken. Up ahead, Gambians are preparing for the day. A tall, elderly man in a bright boubou slowly pedals his way on the shoulder of the highway. A group of young men yell and try valiantly to chase down a pickup truck already taking a sizeable crowd to parts unknown. A white van, filled to the rafters with humanity, motors down the road as an unseen voice shouts the destination through an obscured window. Local taxis, with their eclectic mix of beat up seats, missing handles, eroded side panels, and doors that open with a rope, depart from a dusty patch serving as a garage. Behind makeshift wooden tables, various ladies sit behind their wares of the day: fresh bananas, little bags of local peanuts, and mountains of luscious watermelons. A nearby shop that rents outdates videos, sells canned goods, liquor and building appliances, opens its doors. West African and reggae music emanate from a taxi parked nearby. A group of school children say hello as I walk by. Other Gambians standing by the side of the road, or sitting aimlessly outside of shops, merely stare at me. I stop at the junction and take in the same scene that has greeted me every morning for the past four months. Four months since a delayed flight whisked my reluctant body and mind away from vibrant European living. Four months since I disembarked under a watchful moon and was greeted by a muggy wall of hot, sticky air, a giant runway surrounded by empty fields, and the watchful eyes of the military. This is The Gambia.

***

A few weeks ago, I stopped by Churchill’s in Palma Rima to find out where that Monday’s Hash run was being held. Churchill’s is a fitting place for this information to be posted, what with the Hash being run a group of old, laid back, beer and coast-loving British expats, and the pub being a popular hangout for those same folk. As I perused the notice board, I noticed an advertisement for a place called the King Kombo distillery. Apparently this place makes liquers of local fruits, is close to my house, and provides tours and samples. Excited by the idea of finding something like a baobab liquer, I headed down there on Friday. After walking down the highway in the direction of the airport, a sign took me down a dirt road into the fields, and finally toward a forested area. Arriving at my destination, I made my way into the distillery. It was a lot like the Green Mamba bar: a bar set outdoors amidst the shade of an expanse of trees. In the last few days, I had seen a fair number of beat up and dirty cars driving around the Gambia advertising the Amsterdam-Dakar Challenge. A fair number of these Dutch folk were at the distillery when I arrived, and I joined them for the tour. The distillery itself is small, about 9 years old, and family-owned. They sell at the location and do promotions at the hotels of whatever liquor happens to be in season. Sadly, my dreams of exotic liquers were dashed as they didn’t have what I hoped for, and I missed out on the mango and cashew liquers that had come and gone several months previously. Nevertheless, they had three for sampling and selling. The first was a sweet banana, lime and coconut. The second was more sour and had more heat, being a combination of orange, grapefruit and lime. The last was banana, coffee and imported Belgian chocolate. Having traveled long distances (about 15 minutes of walking) to see the distillery, hopeful to bring something back home with me, and feeling generous after the two rounds of free samples, I ended up awkwardly carrying several bottles back down the highway. I’m not sure if the flavours are the most novel or exotic in the world. But I decided that I could enjoy them back in Canada even if they weren’t groundbreaking. They were certainly tasty, not too expensive, and made of fresh ingredients here in the Gambia, which I appreciated.

Saturday was another Cleaning Day. The streets were quiet, and more plumes of smoke were evident than usual from people burning garbage. Later that evening, as I headed to Francisco’s for our Hash Christmas party, I saw a few hundred army members on the side of the highway, clear-cutting the growth with machetes and scorching the remains. There was also a big traffic jam as apparently the President was in the area. This was being done to make things pretty for Friday’s inauguration. The Christmas party was a lot of fun. Christmas carols played, I drank gin and tonics (the drink that built the Empire) with some Brits, wine was had, I had something called a tiamaria, and dancing ensued. One of the shops along Kairaba Avenue that I popped into on my way to the restaurant was also decorated with Christmas ornaments. There is some Christmas spirit here, and I’m told that December 25th itself is a good party. They don’t spend months building up to it. But it doesn’t feel the same given the climate.

I’ve had the opportunity to try a variety of local foods from here in the Gambia. On Sunday, I went to Senegambia to have “domoda”, which is a sauce made of peanuts and vegetables, served over beef, that was delicious. At the workshop last week, I had “palazas”, something also sold by ladies sitting roadside. Served over rice, it is a sauce made of palm oil, meat, fish, vegetables, and whatever else they decide to throw in. Also at the workshop, I had “foufou”, which is basically like eating a ball of raw dough made of cassava flour. It is served with a sauce made of okra, palm oil, etc. I’ve previously had “yassa”, which is a lemon-onion-mustard sauce, and “afra”, which seems very similar. The one thing I haven’t had a chance to try is palm wine. I went down to the beach again on Saturday to see if the nearest beach bar had any. Once again getting lost, I ended up further down the beach than I wanted to be, and made my way back. Somehow I ended up walking for an hour and a half until I reached Senegambia. Either I missed the bar, somehow, or it has been razed in the last two weeks. Weird. In any case, West African food has certain perks. The common elements seem to be sauces made of all sorts of meats and fish and vegetables. The biggest downside is how very greasy it all ends up being.

On an unrelated note, I’ve been hearing a lot of Celine Dion playing recently, both in taxis and in the restaurant I went to on Sunday. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

December 7

Today is day two of our Workshop on Child Protection, which was organized for a children's rights NGO. This is the fourth time on this trip that I am acting as a scribe for a workshop. It’s nice to get out of the office occasionally, and you learn things from these sorts of workshops. However, they tend to be tiring, and I look forward to the day when I can be a worker and participant in whatever I happen to be doing on my own status, rather than merely being an intern or a summer student or something of the like. That said, I was able to give a presentation on the international human rights framework. It was fulfilling to be able to constructively participate and impart knowledge as part of the workshop.

International law serves an important role of setting out a broad moral framework to which nations pledge themselves to strive. While these documents are legal instruments in and of themselves, they are also very much a launching pad to a long, slow and complicated process of social change. Like with all elements of the law, the study and the practice can be very different things. International law is interesting in and of itself in its legal element. But so much depends on the challenges of implementation. And, at that level, so much depends on the work being done on the ground by civil society working hard to push governments and educate and sensitize citizens at the grassroots. This is why it is important for groups like ours to do training on underlying legal frameworks for those going out and doing this work. You hear about dialogue and education over and over. You hear about the challenge of cultural change. So much is done, and so much depends, on all those people working hard to move rights from the realm of mere idea and principle to tangible reality.

December 5

This past Saturday our office was invited for supper at the home of a prominent Gambia lawyer, who is also the chair of the Board of the Institute. A wonderfully large spread in an equally wonderful, large and elaborately African-decorated house. This demonstrated once again that it’s not always easy to tell what lurks beyond the sandy roadways and beat-up concrete fences. There were lasagnas, meatballs, salads (which is appreciated, as vegetables are apparently surprisingly difficult to grow in this country), chicken, cashews from Guineau-Bissau, and a traditional dish of cous with a baobab-peanut sauce. I ate too much and am happy to have done so.

Last night I attended my first Hash run in four weeks. Three weeks ago, I only managed to make it in time late for the dinner, walking blindly in the dark down a sandy path in Brufut to the Blue Bar, a hotel/restaurant complex inexplicably located in the middle of an old, established residential village far from the beach, the tourist area, and any main road. I figure it must be hoping for a growth in clientele with the expanding housing developments in my area. Last week, I was late again coming from the Session but made it for supper at a nice new outdoor restaurant in the upscale and shady neighbourhood of Fajara. Last night we walked through the area of Bakau New Town north of the traffic light, seeing everything in the residential area from undeveloped fields, the bustle of shops along Garba Jahumpa Road, wandering live-stock, run-down housing, a church constructed in a small concrete building with a corrugated metal roof, and the enormous and modern Independence Stadium right in the middle of it all (where the inauguration is being held next Friday, another public holiday). Not a picturesque stroll, but a nice mixture of residential and commercial areas that I have both seen and not seen before. We ate great rice and non-descript barracuda at a restaurant that appeared to be a part of a company that produces Gambian movies. I’m not certain how it all works.

December 4

Having been in Gambia for almost four months, my life has largely settled into the routine of daily living. With the exception of a few small things I’d still like to do or try, and a two-day trip to eastern Gambia that’s been up in the air since September, there’s nothing significant to catch my attention. This is neither unexpected, nor necessarily problematic, since it’s nice to not be rushing around trying to see everything. Unfortunately, there are really only three things to do here as part of “daily living”: drinking beer with the tourists, eating greasy food with the tourists, and walking by the ocean. These are great for a short vacation, but lose their luster after a while. My life has thus been a quiet mixture of reading, running, and enjoying the increasingly-mild December weather. With only about three weeks left to spend in this country, and the prospect of backpacking in two weeks time, my mind has started to turn elsewhere.

I finished Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” on Friday night. I wanted to read it because it is a fairly notable novel, and also because I have two English major friends who have polar opposite opinions on the latest film version. So I wanted to decide for myself. The book was enjoyable with some wonderful wit and dialogue. The writing style, however, gets some getting used to. Like the characters themselves, it is more reserved and expository than descriptive and engaging, which places the reader at something of a distance from the characters and events. But, it quickly grew on me and I enjoyed the read. One thing I wonder about is what is intended as satire or critical commentary and what is merely a neutral reflection of the times. Clearly some characters and situations are put forward as being silly or foolish or pretentious or what have you. But, on other issues, like land ownership, necessity of marriage, uneventful lifestyles, I’m not sure if Austen intends to be critical of the underlying norms and realities or merely to critique certain behaviour within that framework. As for the movie, I don’t remember it well enough to comment on how it compares with the book. I remember leaving the theatre deeming the father to be the only redeeming character and commenting that, while a work of Shakespeare might stand the test of time for speaking to true human nature, a work that merely mocks social norms is less interesting and doesn’t age as well. But I’d like to watch it again, having gained a different perspective from the book. And seeing Keira Knightley again doesn’t require much prodding.

I exchanged my Gambia tour book (which I have no use for anymore) and picked up two books that should last me the rest of the trip. The first, to try to get into the spirit of the non-existent holidays, is a book containing Charles Dickens’ three Christmas stories. The second, to take a break from fiction and get a glimpse into the mind of someone who might be president, is “Living History”, the autobiography of Hillary Rodham Clinton. I’ve started reading the latter. Thus far, it is a fairly quick read as there is a lot of overlap with what Bill wrote. After reading his, shall we say, extensive account, however, Hillary’s seems a little less in-depth and not as personal. What is interesting, however, is the work that she did in her youth and before becoming first lady. I find these political stories to be inspirational. At the same time, it’s hard to put out of my mind how much more accomplished some people have been, or are, by my age than I am. I’ve had some success, but I’m sure I could have achieved even more if I had chosen some things differently in the past, or had a better idea of what I wanted to do earlier.

I’m giving a lecture on the international human rights framework on Wednesday. Should be fun.