Stupid Democracy

I'm working in the education sector of the Peace Corps, specializing in ICT (information and communication technology), which is weird because I have no ICT experience. The closest I've got is a summer job as a web designer, where I almost got fired. I think it was because I never actually built a webpage. People are so picky.

Although I originally had some reservations, I'm glad I'm doing ICT. Compared to my students, I'm a freaking wizard. They actually applauded once after I demonstrated my amazing forty-word-per-minute typing speed. They've also never done anything like using a computer before, which means I have a lot more freedom than other volunteers in my teaching methods.

I should probably explain that. The education system in the Gambia is occasionally a little frustrating for Americans, as it's based more on memorization than analytical thinking. A typical scene in a Gambian classroom is a teacher holding a textbook and writing what it says on the blackboard, while the students earnestly copy it down, without a word spoken. I teach a few math and English classes on the side, to help out the chronically understaffed school, and I keep having the same problem. I'll try to explain an idea for a good half hour, with absolutely nothing getting through, until finally a light bulb goes off for one of them. He'll explain the exact same idea with slightly different words, and suddenly everyone will understand. Turns out they learned it last year. They have no way of relating different concepts, or even the same concept worded differently. They know it the way it was drilled into them or not at all. It drives me insane.

But with computers, they don't have any paradigms burned into their brains. It's totally new, self-motivated, requiring analytical and problem-solving abilities that they've never had the chance to use before. Some find it intimidating, and can't handle the lack of a rigorous structure, but the ones who get it are like genetic alcoholics on their first sip of Jack Daniels. I have to kick them out of my lab, and they're begging me each night to open it up and let them practice more. I even find that things go more slowly when I actually try to teach, guiding them step-by-step through some activity. I get a lot more out of them when I just switch on the computer and let them go to town, exploring, making mistakes, while I'm there when they need a tip or crash a program.

Although the liberal populist in me hates it, I'm realizing that I just can't reach all of them. Not even a large portion. In fact, if I leave here after two years and I've only really taught five or ten kids, I'll be happy. Because those are the kids that really want it. They're willing to fight for it, bleed for it, break through the malaise that's infected their culture. They're the ones that will study, go to school, start a business, really go somewhere, and maybe pull their country up with them.

The main project I'm working on right now is turning my computer lab into an internet cafe. The lab's got eight or ten decent computers, and I've just finished a deal with the country's telephone company to hook up a land line. Now I've got to convince a telecom company that it would be worth their while to give us free dial-up internet. If I can do that I can teach internet classes to the school, which would be nice, but I've got bigger ambitions. I want to turn it into a full internet cafe, servicing the community, run by the students. It would be the only full cyber cafe in the region, and if we can expand our small bank of solar panels it will be the only cyber cafe outside of the capital that is open all day - the power only being on for a few hours in the morning and a few hours at night. It would open up access to the internet to my village and those surrounding, as well as teach my students small business administration skills. I've already got a few students as my protegés, who help tutor the other students and run the lab when I'm not around.

I'm also working with the school's peer health club to put on some short plays about health issues, like malaria and AIDS. It's a little annoying, because while I agree those issues are important, I'm not PBS. I don't care if knowing is half the battle. My goal is to branch out into plays about Gambian history and culture. It's part of an overall initiative that I've been working on with some other volunteers to improve the African self-image. Sometimes it feels like the entire continent has a insecurity complex. I can't count the number of times a Gambian has told me he can't do something because he's African. The country is caught between its tribal roots, the Muslim dogma that was imposed a millennium ago, and the Western values of the last century, and it doesn't fit with any of them. Western culture is its dream, Islam is its law, and tribal beliefs are its embarrassing past. Only a few vestigial remnants of the original culture, the one I came here to see and be a part of, remain visible. There's the leaf monster, I suppose. That's kind of cool.

We're tackling this issue a variety of ways. One of my friends, Tara Steinmetz, works at the local radio, an excellent medium for low-technology areas. Just about everybody listens to it. She's working on a Pan-African music hour, playing native music from across the continent and emphasizing the cool side of African cultures. She's also put up posters of African-American models, specifically ones with darker skin, at the radio and in her home. It's been difficult finding them, as most famous and beautiful African-American women have very light skin. I guess some things cross oceans.

From my end, I'm researching old Gambian history and myths. The local story-tellers, called griots, charge ruinous prices, but they're a trove of ancient family and tribal histories. They travel from village to village, attending ceremonies, and for a small donation they'll reel off your entire family history, noting famous ancestors, recounting amusing stories and bloody conflicts. Since I don't have a Gambian lineage, it's a little difficult for them, but I just ask them for their most dramatic stories, and no good performer, even a traditional tribal storyteller, can resist the chance to ham it up. Now I'm working on turning those stories into short plays. I've talked to some local musicians, too, and with a little luck and perseverance my students should be able to start putting on some shows for their villages about tribal stories, with tribal music, showing that maybe an African heritage is something worth taking some pride in, not an excuse to fail. Plus I get to do fight choreography with spears, which is freaking awesome.

Well, that's enough shop talk. I know the only reason you all are checking back on this is for another cute little story. I don't have another monster dance-off, but I do have an important lesson about the importance of voting. So grab your mini American flags and listen up, kiddies.

Because the Gambia doesn't have a functioning postal system, there is a mail-run once a month that travels from the capital up the country, stopping at every volunteer's site. This last one was very important, because it had our absentee ballots on it. Volunteer traveling came to a standstill for a day as everyone made sure to be at their sites so they could vote.

So the mail truck showed up, the guys delivering were friends from training, so we chewed the fat for a while as they gave me my stuff. They handed me my ballot, and told me that I had to fill it out right there and give it back to them. I showed them around my place, and they admired the wiring job I've done (that's right, I wired my own house. What've you done this week?). They had a long way to go, so they bade a fond farewell and climbed back into the truck. I went back into my house, and the cleverer of you can guess what I found: I was still holding my ballot.

I ran out after them, just in time to see the truck pull away. I was wearing shorts, with no shirt or shoes, so I grabbed my bike, bit the ballot between my teeth, and sped after them. The truck and I had a sweaty, slow chase through the streets of my village, as I wove back and forth through side alleys, trying to catch up. The pedals of my bike have spikes on them, which drove through the soles of my bare feet like tiny torture devices. The faster I went, the more it hurt. I shot through a gap between compounds and splashes through what I thought was a giant pile of mud. It coated me, and I quickly discovered it was not mud. This was seeming less and less like a good idea. But in a strange way, the more I suffered, the more determined I was to press on. After all, it couldn't get much worse.

I almost caught up with the damn truck at the junction with the main road. I was two feet behind it, waving my arms and screaming through my ballot, when every kid that likes to hang out by the junction after school started shouting my name. Why? Because, that's why. So the driver didn't hear me, didn't look in the rear view mirror, of course. and started down the road, quickly leaving me behind. I did some mental math. The next volunteer was about three miles away, so I figured hell with it. I was damned if I was going to give this up. So as the mail truck pulled away from his house they were greeted by the sight of me, shirtless, shoeless, with bleeding feet, covered in animal feces, eating my ballot.

They stopped. "What are you doing?"

"You deaf people!" (people was not the word I used)

They laughed when they heard what happened. A lot.

Of course there was no room in the truck to give me a lift back, so I got to put my bloody feet back on the Marquis de Sade pedals and shuffle my slow, stinky way back home.

The best part is that when I finally got to fill out my ballot I was shaking with exhaustion, so I think the election counters were probably a little surprised to record a single vote for "Ehdug Usdfe."

Let no one doubt my commitment to the democratic process.