Hong Kong food (seen today in metro)

"Chicken Cookies (With Pork)"

Farewell, Gambia...

Much has happened since I last blogged. The biggest news is that we've relocated to Hong Kong. "Whaaat?" you may ask. The short answer to your exclamation/question is that D.light (the company whose solar lamps we'd been selling) hired Doug as their engineering director, so we closed up our business in The Gambia and moved to their company headquarters in Hong Kong. We've been here almost two weeks, and though we don't know a word of Cantonese yet, we have found an apartment, bought some furniture, and started to learn our way around. (Oh yeah, and Doug started work three days after we arrived!) But before I tell you about life in Hong Kong, I want to share a few photos and stories from our final two months in The Gambia:

As you can probably imagine, wrapping up our business and life in such a short amount of time was stressful and chaotic. But what made that time bearable, and even fun, was the fact that we got to share the final six weeks of Gambian life with my sister. 

Anyone who stayed in our house in The Gambia knows that I love to bake cookies, especially when guests arrive. Having Nuzz visit was no exception! Here, we're making Katie and Zack's favorite treat, snickerdoodles.

During the first three days Nuzz was in town, it rained nearly nonstop! Our dreams of sun-drenched afternoons by the Coco Ocean pool were (temporarily) dashed, but we salvaged her first weekend in town by playing game after game of Scrabble.

Of course, Eve and Squeak were happy to meet their aunt, and responded by being their usual adorable selves. As you can see, though, they are no help when it comes to doing housework! They're too interested in what we're doing, and insist on getting into the middle of things. The same is true when we vacuum: they're the only cats I've met who will follow you around the house at a safe but close distance, their eyes focused intently on the sweep of the vacuum.

Nuzz and I didn't just bake cookies; we also had a lot of fun cooking dinners together. We came up with some delicious creations, including pita pizzas, the meal that's in process in this photo. This time, though, Nuzz's attempt to lightly salt the tomatoes, went slightly awry... 

Not only were Doug and I happy to see Nuzz and share The Gambia with her, but we were also happy to have her help with the Herculean task of closing our business. Our biggest challenge was charging our remaining inventory in preparation for liquidation. We set up a massive "charging factory" in our office, and succeeded in charging more than 3000 lights in less than ten days! We also found a distributor who will continue selling lights in The Gambia, which makes us happy.

 

The effort involved many extremely late nights at the office, during which we watched movies and ate pizza while we waited for a charging cycle to finish.

One day during our chargefest, I went outside our office to find the Red Cross loading a truck with mattresses to distribute to the country's flood victims. Check out that load! (You can see our shop's sign on the left side of the photo.)

The day before we left The Gambia, though, the remaining mattresses that were being stored in our building caught on fire. Luckily, everyone was able to evacuate the building (some on long, rickety ladders!), but the fire was quite large and caused a lot of damage. Since our flight left the next day, I don't know how the clean-up efforts are going, but I really hope that everyone who works in the building is OK.

 

My special thoughts and prayers are with Isatou, the young woman who worked with us for five months, and who plans to continue selling D.lights. This is a picture of her, me, and her younger sister Jeynaba.

When we arrived in The Gambia last year, I never thought I'd be sad to leave. I was homesick for much of our first six months, and I felt like I couldn't find the places where I fit in. Then, slowly, I made new friends, and those friends became dear friends. I discovered the joys of swimming at Coco Ocean, playing ultimate frisbee in tall grass, going to game night on Saturday, fabric shopping in Serrekunda Market, and, of course, drinking tonic water with lime (Katie, I'm looking at you). And when it came time to leave, I realized that this dusty, unfamiliar place had, in some ways, become my home. For me, home is made of the people I know and the experiences I share with them. And I have certainly shared some unforgettable times with my Gambian friends, you know who you are. Thank you for making Gambia feel like home to me. I will always be grateful to each of you for that.

As for what I think of our new home, please stay tuned! I have many other stories and photos to share...

 
P.S. Since several of you have asked about what happened to Eve and Squeak, never fear! They are at home with my family in CA, gaining their US citizenship so we can bring them to HK next year. 

Making La Limonade in Dakar

Tomorrow, we head home to the Gambia after a six-day odyssey in Dakar, Senegal. I decided to capture bits of our crazy trip in haiku. Hope you enjoy it!

Seventeen hours of

travel sans peeing. Potholes
shake our bumper free.


Children scream: "It's gone!"
We gape at our naked rear.
A taxi drives past.


Our bumper! On its
roof! Driver pleas for money,
but gives it for free.


Car squawks dead-bird sounds
in traffic on dark Dakar
highway. What to do?


We squeak to town. "Fine," 
says hotel. "Our mechanic's
here." We sigh relief.


For three days, he works,
Promising each day, "Almost
done, almost finished."


Then he frowns and says
"I can't do it." Our gift of 
lemons from Dakar.


We sulk and mope, then
decide to make lemonade.
We nap, eat ice cream.


I buy fabric, we
stroll by the sea, eat croissants, 
drink mango juice. Yum.


I sneak a swim at 
a fancy hotel. We find
a TOFU BURGER!


A hopeful call to
Peace Corps Senegal yields a 
skilled mechanic. Whew.


Now, hope renewed, car 
repaired, we navigate the  
city's crazy streets.


Dakar roads are like
San Francisco without stop 
lights. A soupy mess.


Roadside, we spot a
child's bike with a slogan we
love: "Yeah Cat Rabbit!"


As we share one more 
tofu burger, we reflect 
on lessons learned. 


When life throws lemons,
make lemonade. Oh yeah, and 
don't drive to Dakar!

Love Texts

Last night, a few of our Peace Corps friends introduced me to a Gambian phenomenon that has captivated me: the love text. Apparently, if you need help wooing your beloved, you can text one of the local cell phone carriers and receive a love quote in return, which you can then forward to the object of your affection. Not only are the quotes themselves good for quite a laugh, but their spelling and punctuation add another layer of humor. A few juicy samples, copied verbatim:

A mournful Hallmark moment:
"one day the moon said 2 me, if ur lover makes u cry why don't you leave yr lover.. i looked at the moon and replied would u every leave ur sky?"

Love text meets health warning:
"One who smokes has a smoky heart; one who drinks has an alcoholic heart. So dear U must STOP eating sweets as u r already a SWEETEHART!"

Is it just me, or is this one vaguely threatening?
"You can close your yes to things you dont want to see, but you can't close your Heart to things you dont want to feel."

And my personal favorite:
"Every teardrop is precious so better make sure that if u drop some its worth crying for cause u can never pick them and put them back to your eyes. Love wisely"

Of Creatures Cute and Creepy

May has been a month of memorable moments, many of them involving cute or creepy critters. From the joy of introducing my mom to the Gambia and our kittens, to the morbid intrigue of dead blowfish, it's a month best captured in photos. Without further ado, here we go...

Even though I wasn't sure what my mom would think about the Gambia in general, there was one part of the country I knew she'd love: our kittens! I don't think I've posted too many pictures of them, but let me share a few to give you a sense of how overwhelmingly adorable they are:

Doug and Squeak

Mom and Eve

How can you resist that cuteness?!

Oh, the belly!

Some of the other creatures we encountered during my mom's stay weren't quite as predictably cute. During our walks on the beach, we discovered that it is the season of dead things washing up on the shore, particularly neon jellyfish and crazily swollen blowfish. I've included a scenic shot of the beach to make up for the ickiness of the dead-blowfish photo. But if you're squeamish, you may want still want to scroll quickly past the third picture, even though I can't help but stare at it in morbid fascination.

We saw some cuter critters when we hiked in the monkey forest. Actually, the monkeys make me a bit nervous, since they aren't scared of humans and will walk right up to you. They didn't bother us, but I couldn't shake the feeling that one of them might jump on me if I hesitated or stayed too close. (This could have something to do with the fact that a monkey jumped on me and gnawed through my pants pocket when I was 12. True story.) My mom, however, was totally calm, and thought the monkeys were awesome.

Mom at the edge of the monkey forest

Check out the hugging monkeys!

Perhaps the most annoying creatures in my life right now are the ones that live in my imagination. They're the invisible bugs that creep and crawl on me every day, making me scratch frantically for a moment until I realize, yet again, that these bugs are actually rivulets of sweat running down my skin. Because of them, I've fallen in love with swimming. Not only does the cool water cleanse me of sweat bugs, but the feeling of buoyancy I get as I glide through the pool is also the best antidote I've found for the stresses of work.

The other day, Doug and I were outside watering and trimming our go-go-Gadget super-growing plants when we discovered the most massive snails I have ever seen. This is a picture of the granddaddy snail, the largest of them all. Hold your hand out in front of you, and imagine a snail whose shell is the length of your index finger! These are no ordinary snails, folks. And one of our plants had SEVEN of them on it at once! Yikes! I'd hate to step on one of these in the dark...

Here we are, happily trimming and watering, oblivious to the creatures we are about to discover...

Whoa! Dude! The granddaddy of all snails!

And even though these aren't pictures of animals, I have to share them anyway because I am oh-so-proud of my first successful use of a power drill in our new home. (Don't worry, this episode was not preceded by any unsuccessful use of the power drill! :P) We decided to mount some new curtains in our living room to close off an open doorway and keep the room cooler when the air conditioning is on. Doug and I are having fun with home improvement projects like this!

Now our living room feels like a deliciously cool movie theater! Who wants to come visit?

From home to home, and back again

In a year full of firsts, I've just experienced yet another one: My First Trip Home. And one of the biggest things I've realized as a result of this trip is that home is a more fluid and dynamic concept than it used to be. On my flight back to the States, I met a German woman who said she was happy to be done with a stressful trip. "Are you heading home?" I asked her. She paused, then said, "From home to home." 

Hers is a phrase I've never had occasion to use before, until now. Having grown up in the same town my entire life, then venturing a whole 10 miles down the road to college, my sense of home is deeply rooted in one geographic spot. Sure, there was the junior year that I spent making a life for myself in Oxford's nooks and crannies, a year that stands out as one of my favorites. Yet as much as I loved it there, I always knew I was coming back to California, and I never made the mistake of referring to Oxford as "home."

But now, things feel a bit more complicated. Of course California will always feel like home: as I approach the green-turning-yellow light near TJ's, I realize I still know exactly how far away I can be and still make it through the intersection (perhaps with a slight tap of the accelerator). Going to the library with my dad, I marveled at the fact that I've been going to the same public library my entire life. (And yes, that guy in the bronze statue out front is still on the SAME page of his book. As a kid, I'd try to calculate how many words he could read a day and still stay on that page for one month, one year, one decade.) And of course, there are friends and family and kitties, so many loved ones in one place that I left wanting so much more time to soak it all in. Coming home on vacation is a challenge I encountered for the first time, and the stress of it caught me off guard: how to see everyone and every place I love in one short trip? (Short answer: you can't.)

Yet the world I return to is the land of many other important firsts: our first home as a married couple, our first time starting a business, our first pair of sibling kittens. It's still a foreign land, one that challenges me and scares me and annoys me and surprises me more than my first home. Nonetheless, it's the land where Doug and I have chosen to create our life together, and because of that, it too has become my home. 

And so, in my journey from home to home and back again, I am reminded of how thankful I am for all you precious, amazing people whom I am so blessed to know. As hard as it was to come home knowing I'd have to leave again so soon, getting a face-to-face dose of your love and support made it possible for me to come back and keep on living and growing here in this crazy new home of ours. If you take away just one thought from this post, I hope it's this: PLEASE GET SKYPE and email me your Skype name so we can video chat. I'm telling you, it is infinitely more satisfying than email. And I can guarantee you glimpses of some seriously cute African kittens! 

Delighting in the rainbow cornucopia of my latest trip to the fruit & veggie stands, while Eve looks on

"Are you going to blog about this?"

Rumor has it that the Roads Authority is paving the road outside our office. This is, ultimately, great news. For now, however, it means that the road leading to our office is dominated by tractors and rollers, and no one is allowed to drive or park on our road, so I've reverted to taxis as my commuting vehicles of choice. Yesterday afternoon, on my way home, I was sitting in the back seat of a yellow taxi, feeling hungry, sweaty, and tired, looking forward to getting home and taking my second of three showers of that day. When the driver pulled over to let out a passenger, I was surprised when the man in the front seat turned around and asked me, "Do you mind if I stop here for a few minutes? I need to go there and pick something up." He pointed across the street at the secondary school.

Keep in mind that these are taxis that run on scheduled routes: they'll pick you up and drop you off anywhere along the route, but that's it. If you want to deviate from the route, or loiter for any length of time, you get a Town Trip, i.e., you pay for your own taxi to take you wherever you choose. Thus my surprise and annoyance at the man's request to stop.

I was quiet for a moment, debating how annoyed to be in my reply. "No, I need to keep going," I said. He apologized and said it would just take a minute, and I sighed, preparing myself for some sort of interminable stop. Yet before I could settle too deeply in my cocoon of self-righteous annoyance, Mr. Quickstop was back. He had merely popped across the street to buy a bag of groundnuts from the old woman sitting on the side of the road. I could feel my little grey cloud lift as our taxi pulled back out into traffic.

As we proceeded along Kairaba Avenue, I half-listened as the man and the driver talked in a local language. From what I could tell, they seemed to be discussing how much money the taxi driver makes in a day, although I could only understand the few English words they sprinkled in their conversation. When the other back-seat passenger hopped out, the man in front turned around again to ask me, "Are you Peace Corps?" which is a question I hear a lot. I said no. He asked me if I spoke Mandinka, the language they'd been speaking. I told him that no, I only speak a little Wollof. "All the Peace Corps people these days, they all seem to speak Mandinka, so I thought maybe you could understand, sorry," he told me, apparently a bit concerned at having excluded me from their conversation.

Then he surprised me further by apologizing for his earlier stop. "I'm sorry about that," he said. "It's just that I promised someone I would bring groundnuts, and I forgot. Are you going to blog about this on the Internet?"

"No. Why?"

"It's just that, I didn't want to trouble you, that's why I asked your permission. You know, these Peace Corps people, any time something happens to them, they write about it in their blogs, and I don't like it when I'm reading there on the internet, and they're saying things about all of the bad things that have happened to them here." I assured him that no, no, I wasn't upset, that he had been very quick during his stop, that it wasn't a problem. Then, as we approached a mosque, he asked me whether I had ever considered becoming a Muslim. Again, I said no, not really, I don't know much about it, and he encouraged me to read the Qur'an.

Of course I need not point out the irony of blogging about a situation where I specifically told someone I wouldn't blog. And in some ways, I feel a bit like I've betrayed him by sharing this story. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt struck by the man's question, and I wanted to reflect on it. Even though I know that the Internet breaks down walls, and that there is nothing (save money and access to computers) to stop Africans from reading blogs written by Peace Corps volunteers and other sojourners, I still didn't really consider the possibility that non-Westerners were reading these cross-cultural chronicles, let alone moderating their behavior because of them.

While the man didn't actually go so far as to stay in the taxi when I told him that I needed to keep going, the fact that he bothered to ask permission of me, and not of the other passenger in the car, makes me realize that my presence here affects other people in ways I have not even imagined. Since our move here, I have been hyper-aware of all of the ways in which living here has changed me, but I never stopped to think about the ways in which my living here may affect Gambians. Sure, there is the obvious effect, I hope, of improving the lives of people who buy our lights. But I can't help but wonder, in what I hope is not too inflated a sense of self-importance, how else my presence affects the cultural climate, for better or worse. I can only hope that I will find out more as we go along.