1. Plant my own rice field.
2. See hippos, baboons, and a 2.5 meter spitting cobra in the wild
3. Make rope from bark
4. Learn to carry 6, three meter trees, on my bike for 7 kilometers
5. Ride 33 hours (with only 1 hour rest) to Guinea, with 9 other people, in a station wagon without brakes.
6. Realize America really is a great place.
7. Find out carrying things on your head is easier [why didn’t anyone mention it sooner?].
8. Leave milk out for three days to sour and call it a delicacy.
9. Eat bird seed on a regular basis and think it is normal.
10. Help plant over 6,000 trees in one year.
11. Attend more baby showers and funerals in two years than my previous 22 years.
12. Be on Gambian TV.
13. Know which is the smallest country in Africa [I should know, I live there].
14. Live on less than two dollars a day, sometimes even one dollar a day.
15. Have 17 blisters on one hand at the same time.
16. Question the benefit of aid for the poor and development work because it may cause more problems than it solves.
17. Run a nationwide competition.
18. Teach someone to read.
19. Realize the only person to use the school library I worked in was myself.
20. Ride my bike 70 kilometers in one day.
21. Realize how positive Americans are.
22. Butcher a bush pig, fail to cook it correctly [the meat had a cottage cheese consistency], but eat the meat anyway because we ate meat only once a month.
23. Enter a mosque.
24. Realize I am in another world when the women did not know how to hold a pen during my community needs assessment meeting.
25. Poop in my pants
26. Eat more than 10 mangoes in a day.
27. Think a bean sandwich is the best breakfast.
28. Receive compliments for wearing pajamas (African clothing) to a formal occasion
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4 comments:
I think it is terrific that you have accelerated your exposure to what the world holds in terms of substance and circumstance. While the Peace Corp tries to improve the circumstances of others, you have drastically improved your personal substance that you will carry throughout your life. Experiences 6, 14, 16, 19, and 21 would have taken many years to achieve if you had not taken the time in your PCV endeavors.
While controlling the circumstances of both ourselves and others can at times be an illusion, you will forever carry the substance of who you are into new and hopefully exciting challenges.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
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THat must be an amazing experience
Hi Alexander,
Nice blog!
I'm a freelance journalist in the US and recently graduated from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.
I'm putting together an audio slideshow for a pitch I'm sending to NPR - long story short I'm using the slide show as an example of what I can do but not planning on publishing it at this point. The slideshow is on a Gambian author from NYC who wrote about arranged marriages.
I'm looking for photos from Gambia. Would it be possible to use some of your photos for my slideshow?
Thanks,
Winnie Andrews
winnie.andrews@gmail.com
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