A Day in the Life: Integration Period
- Jonathan Hamilton
- Apr 28, 2023
- 5 min read
In my last post, I gave you a glimpse of some of the reflections I had during my integration period. “But what,” you may ask, “were you actually doing during that time?” Ask no more! Here is a general template of my schedule for the past 3 months (Dec-Feb).
Morning
In the mornings, I usually woke up between 7:30 and 8:30 AM. In the beginning, I would soon thereafter join my family for a breakfast of monoo (small balls of millet suspended in hot water with loads of sugar dumped in). Due to the high sugar content, it resulted in heavy energy crashes well before lunch, so I began buying and cooking oatmeal for myself for breakfast. It’s important to note here how something so simple as a reasonably healthy and balanced breakfast represents immense privilege. I won’t soon take my yogurt and berries back home for granted.
After breakfast, I would often meet up with my community partner to continue work on whatever project we were tackling. For the most part, that involved going to wuloo kono (“the bush”), which is pretty much any land outside the boundaries of the village proper. We completed over 10 sections of fencing in order to set up a garden in my family compound, to help the English school with its garden fence, and to prepare for a chicken enclosure.
The only way to build an affordable fence is to build it yourself, which is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Unfortunately, that also means that it needs to be replaced every few years. Indeed, the PCVs before me built and maintained a garden in the same spot as mine as late as March 2020, but due to a failing fence, the family was unable to maintain it, and I had to redo most of their work to restart vegetable production at home.
Part of this seems to be due to traditional gender roles as my host family is mostly women (the men are working in other towns of Gambia or surrounding countries). Women are generally responsible for domestic chores, while men generally go to the bush, do bush tasks like collect firewood, and build around the compound. That means that once the fence broke down, my family’s women would not be the ones going to wuloo kono to find material for fencing, nor would they build a fence if they had the materials. This is an interesting example of how stratified gender roles can achieve harmony and stability in some situations, but break down when elements are unbalanced (e.g. the lack of men at home). Indeed, one of my fellow PCVs has the opposite situation where there is only one woman in his compound, resulting in incredibly late meal times for his family, among other issues, since the burden of domestic chores falls on her alone. I haven’t asked, but presumably she has an excess of firewood.
Afternoon
Upon returning from the bush, and putting aside my reflections on privilege and gender from the morning, I tended to spend time alternating between my room and one of the sitting areas duuto koto (under the mango tree) doing small chores with the women (e.g. splitting peanuts for the seeds), reading, brewing “American attaya” (or green tea) for my family, and generally hanging around. I also picked up meditation, so stay tuned for reflections on that in the future. The middle of the day, even in the cold season, regularly peaks around 100⁰F, so movement during the afternoons tends to be limited.
Around 2 pm, my family would serve lunch, which is always over white rice. Dietary diversity at lunch tends to be limited to jamboo (a leaf sauce which rotates between a few varieties of leaves—cassava, potato, moringa, and something called bora bora), duurang (a mix of dekee, or a peanut butter-like product, and red palm oil), and general fish and vegetables, also doused in red palm oil.
From left to right: jamboo over rice; a chunky mix of meat, cassava, sauce, and rice; and benichen, or fried rice with vegetables.
Evening
Once 5 pm rolls around and the sun begins to weaken, people become active once more. Usually, this was when I would fetch water for myself. The closest tap to my compound is 0.25 miles away, although I often had to go to the school, around 0.33 miles away, to fill my bidongs (20L plastic jerrycan-like containers) with clean, fresh water. This meant that I then had to cart a roughly 175-pound water load 0.25-0.33 miles back to my site. Such a task would have been impossible for me without a wheelbarrow—again, another immense privilege that most Gambians do not have access to. Granted, they use well water much closer to home, but these are open wells that are far less clean for drinking and bathing. Still, how shocking is it that being able to use a wheelbarrow to carry heavy water jugs over half a mile is privilege?
After my personal need was taken care of, I would then fetch well water to water the garden that I started in my family compound (more on this garden and gardening basics in a blog post to come). Afterwards, I would generally either do garden maintenance or go play football with the local male youths. Football has been an extraordinarily helpful skill for integrating. One exhilarating moment I had recently was looking around the field and realizing I could name every one of the 21 other players. It might sound lame, but trust me, it was a big deal.
Upon returning from football or finishing garden work, I would take a bucket bath, using a plastic kettle to pour water on myself and scrub down. A small yoga routine would follow that to loosen up the incredibly tight muscles formed throughout the day, particularly in the lower back. Almost certainly, a chiropractor is in my future. Dinner was then served, usually the same as lunch for me, and I would spend time with my family, hanging outside under the stars. Although my language is not great, we might chat a little bit. I would occasionally bring out the guitar and play for a bit or show a movie on my laptop. Folks here love action movies it turns out, perhaps because no movies are in Mandinka nor do Mandinkan subtitles exist, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know!
Once the evening rituals were completed, I would return to my room, go through my nightly routine, and read a little bit before drifting off to sleep. Whether or not the sleep was interrupted by the cacophony of animal noises in the night, I would then wake up the following morning, ready to repeat much the same day!