Friday, 22 January 2010

Busy little bees




We've been working pretty hard on our project. I seem to spend most of time writting reports. We are hopefully now at the point of forming a partnership with a local bee-keeping association which we have found. Understanding the international development business has been a very steep learning. So much of it is corrupt, enept, inefiecient, and more importantly misdirected and damaging.

From what we've seen here in the Gambia, many NGO's like to build buildings - the reasons behind this are multiple: clear-cut budget over a finite time, everyone can see that you did it because you can write all over it, when the big boss comes from Europe they can visit it, have their photo taken, and praise everyone involved for such a successful project. The evaluation stops at the construction and no-one seems to be asking are these builds being used. The so-called beneficiaries don't seem to care, for them its a status symbol, but they can stand in the grounds of a beautiful, disused building and tell you how life would be perfect if they had a building just 2 miles up the road on the highway!!!

The bee-keeping thing has been running n the Gambia since the 1980's, the idea being that it is one of the few things you can offer rural farmers to improve their income that doesn't have major negative consequences. It has long been part of many tribal cultures to collect wild honey and keeping bees in log and basket hives. The aid community have been trying to promote these Kenyan top bar hives to improve yield, honey quality and also reduce the incidence of bush fire as a result of smoking out bees. The big problem is they cost money - something rural Gambians just don't have. They also require a significant amount of training to manage them successfully. In the past, many different NGO's have travelled around the countryside, handing out hives and bee suits and maybe giving a couple of days classroom style training. Whole village are invited to join so as not to exclude anyone and food and transport are also paid for. The result is that many, many rural Gambians are 'trained bee-keepers' but most honey in the Gambia is imported from surrounding west African countries. When you ask the farmers why, they tell you their hives have been lost in a bush fire so they need new ones, their suits are ripped and no-one knows how to repair them so they need new ones and they need more training!!! I think they've been saying the same thing to a succession of white faces for at least 25 years.

The 'modern' approach is not to promote a dependency culture but rather encourage enterprise. The problem is capital - Gambians just don't have any spare cash to invest. We're trying to come up with novel ways of giving people hives whilst ensuring they realise the full costs themselves over a reasonable time. Its hard to be positive when you see so much wasted aid money and failed projects everywhere you turn. Its said that the Gambia receives more aid per head of the population that any other African country - apart from schools and wells, its very hard to see where it all goes except very large 4x4, large NGO offices in the nicest parts of town and hundreds of deserted buildings all over the Gambia.

Having said all that, we have met some inspirational people who are working really hard to help themselves and their fellow Gambians. If we get the go ahead from the boss, we hope to be working with Mr Fatty (yes that really is his name), and his wife Mam who have been running a bee-keeping association for many years. Its the honeymoon period at the moment, but we shall see.

I'm sitting here just before Friday afternoon prayers in our lovely courtyard watching the sunbirds in the huge mango tree and listening to frantic drumming come from every direction. I think its beach time....bye for now

Leaving Macumbaya



Happy New Year everyone. We hear that we've missed some lovely snow - thanks for all the photos. We've been suffering a bit of a heatwave, even for the Gambia, but we're definitely acclimatised now and there is even the odd evening when the sea breeze is chilly enough for a jumper. We haven't got to the extreme of many Gambia who wear thick pad coats, woolly hats and gloves, even in the middle of the day when the temp. 3o degrees plus - well, it's winter you know!!!

We moved house now to the little town of Bakau. We are still in a compound with loads of children, its just that some of the mums are prostitutes!! We've got a much bigger house now with two bedrooms and even a bathroom - its not the same 'real Africa' but we were finding it so hard to achieve anything from where we were because it took so long to get anywhere.

The day we left Macumbaya was awful though, Safi couldn't stop crying. Just as we were about to drive off, she throw a chicken in the back of the car, a lovely gesture of friendship - but it did shit all over the rucksack. We couldn't bare to kill it when we arrived at our new home so we set it free - we see her every now and then - she's called Safi of course.

The children are going to a new school, they took the whole thing in their stride and they are really enjoying it. It's run by a gangland rap star, or he thinks he is, but luckily their teacher Anna is lovely. Its completely different from the last school - they've got their own 'slates' and loads of resources, even a TV, much to Teo's delight.

They finish school at 1pm and then most days we walk to the nearest beach which is behind the botanical gardens and the french embassy. We didn't know it was there for the first week of living here, even though we had explored the area with Aunty Carol previously. Its a hidden bay of beautiful clean white sand backed by a few large colonial houses and always completely deserted. We've found the problem with the other beaches in the Gambia is all the 'bumsters', young blokes, often rastas, who hassle you the whole time you're there, 'happy family -we're all the same underneath, it's nice to be nice' really gets on your nerves after a while.


Tabaski






















I actually wrote this account on 28th November and it has taken until 20th Jan to post it - sorry...

Tabaski morning! Just before sunrise, the call to prayer breaks through the cicadas song. Then as the sun rises, the almost deafening dawn chorus begins, at first with the wild birds quickly followed by the domesticated animals and then the hum of human activity. Today the new sound of the bleating of the two sacrificial rams tied up to the tree by our house reminds us it's Tabaski.

We can hear Safi brushing the compound so feel compelled to get up and help. Teo always gets up first, usually waking Mimi to get up with him and play outside. Before we've got out of bed, Teo comes running back in so excited with his and Daddy's new clothes fresh from the tailor. It cost about 20 euros to have two lovely outfits made to measure in 3 days and they are beautiful.

All the men are dressed in their finery heading to pray at the mosque, only the ugly women are allowed to accompany them - or that's how Safi explains it!

Now they're back and it's time to kill the rams (one goat which we contributed 500 dalahsi towards the total price of 1300 D, and a sheep which appeared yesterday and we know nothing about). Every family who can afford it has a ram to sacrifice and the rest of the day is spent dealing with it. Yacuba, our landlord, dispatches them with one stroke of a knife, all is very quick, calm and quite. Next all the boys set to with knives to skin and butcher them. Within 20 minutes both beasts are butchers. Safi takes the liver to cook for Yacuba as he's had to fast until the sacrifice is made. Yacuba insists that we take a leg, a shoulder and some unchopped chops to cook for our family. Most of the rest gets given to the steady stream of deserving poor Yacuba has selected over the year.

So now what do we do with it all. With no fridge the only way we can preserve it is to chop it up and then soak it for a few minutes in salt water and then boil in a covered pot until the residue has disappeared. It seems a shame to have to chop up two such nice joints so we decide to roast them. We had a look in the book Stuey gave us 'An Explorer's Handbook', which describes a ground oven and that's what we've done. We've had the chops for lunch and the joints will be ready after the village football match. Hopefully, we can share it with the family although the timing of meal times is quite hard to predict and we will probably get it wrong.

I've already had to wash the children's new outfits, though this being the Gambia, they should be dry by the time the football match starts at 3pm. The kids have disappeared as they usually do - they are probably next door in the 'shop' with all the teenagers. Teo will usually come back with another bag of budake, which is bread crumbs, ground peanut and sugar, and a fascinating nugget of Jola culture. He's just run in now to ask if he can go to Ismaila's compound with him - we thought Ismaila lived here but it turns out that Yacuba had Die-vorced Ismaila's mother and so officially he doesn't live here. There are so many people who seem to hang around here it's hard to know who's who.

It's 5 pm now and still no sign of the football match. Safi says 5.30 now and she's the team manager so she should know. Her team is called Barcelona and Ismaila and Denbo, Yacuba's sons are in it...... It actually kicked off at about 6.30 after a very long argument over whether there would be a 250D wager between the teams. It was almost completely dark by half-time but in the second-half Barcelona scored twice apparently - jubilation all round - I couldn't see a thing. There were no fathers present at all, just all the children and some mums. We're still trying to work out what the men do apart from the once a year sacrificial killing.

We're back now and have just dug up dinner which is absolutely fantastic. Safi had been very worried about our cooking method but now she's tried it and she's actually impressed. Thoroughly stuffed, we're 'relaxing' on our 20cm high stools when Ibrama our neighbour turns up to invite us to eat as his compound. Off we go for a huge plate of boiled goat. As it's now pitch dark, you have no idea what you're eating but luckily there's a lot of dogs and cats around to save embarrassment. We're also served baobab juice made from the strange fruit of the baobab tree which looks like a dead rat hung up by its tail from these incredible prehistoric looking trees. There's a white dry pith inside which they soak for an hour, drain and then add kilos of sugar - its surprisingly good.

Then off home for a few more secret warm beers and bed - who would have thought that a concrete platform covered with a 2 inch foam mattress could be the most comfortable place in a house!