Naming ceremony - Pate Jawo

After three days in the training village, the five PC volunteers (including myself) living in that village had our naming ceremony. We received our Gambian names; I am now called Pate Jawo. Naming ceremonies are big in Gambian culture. Within a week after a baby is born, they do the ceremony. Family and friends get together to celebrate the event. The family chooses the name and shaves the baby's head. The family says prayers and everyone begins to party.

Family is extremely important to Gambians and one's extended family will live in the same compound (group of huts/houses). Gambian families are hard to understand due to polygamous marriages, early death of parents and care of dead relative's children. In my family, the Jawo family, we have both of my grandfathers's wives, my father's brother's wife and their kids and the grandchildren of one of my grandmother's families, before she became my grandfather's wife. If it sounds confusing, it is. There is also the fact that Gambians consider their father's brothers' kids and mother's sisters' kids their own siblings (brothers and sisters). Divorce occurs here too, which I didn't expect; when it happens, the first wife usually cannot tolerate the second wife. So I have this big family and I am not too sure who is who.