This month I sank my kayak, almost drowned a couple of kids, built a slaughter house, re-did the record books at a hospital, stitched my dog’s leg, and got caught in a domestic dispute.

Let’s go in order. On arriving back in Kerewan I found, predictably enough, that none of the projects I’d set up to continue developing my in absence had progressed at all, and every meeting I’d organized for my return was cancelled. Good times. Most of my projects had actually taken some big steps backward, as people who were firmly on board when I left had gotten cold feet or just stopped caring. The schools were in full grip of exams, a period when pretty much all activity shuts down as students try to take these tests, which they have in no way been prepared for but are crucial to their future.

The resource center, where I taught community computer classes, lost its power line; publicly I complained but inside I cheered. I hated those damn computer classes. The only reason I was teaching them was to spare the governor and the donor groups that built the center the embarrassment of yet another useless development project, a big shiny building appropriated from the community and used by no one. Hell with it. I have enough of my own mistakes without having to cover for other people’s.

My counterpart at the council got transferred, making all the work I’d done with him on the rest area I talked about last time essentially useless. His replacement, a young guy named Keita, is a good guy, though, and I’ve begun working with him on a few other development projects.

He asked me if I wanted to help build an abattoir, so I said yes, not wanting to admit I didn’t know what an abattoir was. So I spent a while putting together item cost spreadsheets, writing letters, and drawing sketches, all without having any idea what the hell I was working on.

At one point Keita pointed to the middle of my sketch and said, “That’s probably where we should put the groove for the blood.”

I said, “What?”

It turns out an abattoir is a slaughter slab. It’s a concrete floor, with the necessary groove, with a roof and a small trench leading to a pit. We went to visit the one they have now, and it was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen. Blood soaked the ground. When I walked I crunched pieces of splintered bone and skull. Standing pools of gore drew clouds of flies. The stench was overwhelming. And it was right in the middle of a residential area.

“The people,” Keita said, “say they don’t want this here any more.”

“Really,” I said. So we went to the new site, on the very edge of town. We measured and marked and squinted at the ground a lot. My job was finding round rocks and rolling them to see which slope was steepest, for the afore-mentioned blood groove. Construction started fairly quickly, which surprised me, and the next week I went out to check on the progress. To mark the boundaries of the structure we had used the exact and professional method of jamming sticks into the ground where we wanted the corners, and I guess this must have confused them, because they were building the whole thing backwards. When I pointed this out, they didn’t see the problem, and I spent a good half hour explaining to them why blood can’t flow uphill. I was tempted to use some of theirs as an example.

The other project I’m working on with the council has been a lot more frustrating. They gave me a project proposal to build a new ward for a health center in a nearby village and wanted me to fix the wording. I found it a useless document, with absolutely no hard data about admission, infection rates, infant mortality rates, or anything that might convince someone to donate money. When I asked for some of this information, they said they didn’t have it. They said they didn’t need it. They said that the French NGO sponsor would donate the money no matter what, and all they needed was a piece of paper asking for it. I said that’s insane. I spoke to the head of the clinic and asked him about the expansion, and he said he’d never heard about it. That’s even more insane.

Basically, this whole thing is another donor project that’s just an excuse to spend money, without taking into account what the community needs and what the impact of the project will be. If I had my way, the whole thing would be scrapped and the money would be spent on something more worthwhile. But I don’t have the power or influence to simply kill a project yet, so I did my best to rehabilitate it. I visited the health center, looked at the facility, actually talked to the people involved, went through all their books and came up with all the information I’d originally wanted. Maybe they didn’t want a real project proposal, but I was going to give them one anyway. I cut out about fifty thousand Dalasi in useless expenses and put it back in with renovations to the maternity ward, silly things like mosquito nets, running water, and beds that don’t fall apart. So maybe something will be salvaged out of all this.

Outside of work, I’ve been spending more time with some of the village kids, which has been great. They love my kayak, and we spend a few afternoons a week just messing around in the river. Usually I swim, one of them uses the kayak, and one of them uses the life vest as a big floating diaper, flipping it upside down and putting his legs through it so he can float around. It’s possibly the most Peace Corps thing I’ve done in this country, and I’d feel like a cliché if it wasn’t so much fun.

This has not been without mishaps. At one point I and some of the bigger boys were trying to get into the kayak in the middle of the river. Every time we tried it would tip a little, and a little water would get in, until there was too much water and the damn thing sank before our eyes. We watched, disbelieving, as it disappeared into the murk of the river. I couldn’t believe it. After everything I’d done to get the wretched vessel to Kerewan, I’d lost it with an unbelievably stupid mistake. So the boys and I took turns diving to the bottom of the river, dragging it a few feet through the muck, and resurfacing. It took about an hour to get it on the bank.

A week later, I was swimming while two of the boys were paddling around in the
kayak. The current was strong, and they were uncomfortably far from the dock. I yelled at them to come back, but fear swept the rough instructions on using the kayak I’d given them from their minds, and they started paddling frantically in the wrong direction. So I chased them. They were screaming hysterically, fleeing down the river like Bonny and Clide. I’m not the best swimmer, but the current worked for me and I finally captured the fugitives, whereupon I swam back with one arm, towing them after me.

That’s the great thing about Gambia. In America, someone would have sued the hell out of me.

I think, in general, recent events have shown that I’m not qualified to take care of other living creatures. Chulo, my dog, had a very bad month. Mango flies have been all over him, since the rains are starting, laying their eggs in his flesh, giving birth to maggots that squirm out of his skin. It’s exactly as disgusting and painful as it sounds. Then last week he got into some kind of fight, I don’t know how or with what, that left him with massive gashes all over his back leg. He had a few puncture wounds and a flap of skin torn away about the size of my palm. I carried him to the Kerewan health center, on the other side of town, where they refused to treat him. They told me about the veterinary technician in Kerewan, whom I’d never heard of, so I spent most of the day tracking him down.

This was a great guy. Really stellar. He didn’t have any anesthetic for dogs, but he brought his kit over and got to work. He was halfway through the first stitch when he looked up at me and said, “I am feeling the smoke.”

“What?” I said, then "oh." He was high. So I had to stitch up my dog. My experience with medicine is limited to a first-aid class in high school, and while I usually enjoy doing things I’m not qualified to do, this was a little much. There was blood everywhere. The needle and thread kept slipping away, Chulo’s thrashing knocked them out of my hands, and the flaps of skin refused to come together. I can’t imagine the pain my dog was in. Fifteen stitches, none with anesthetic, many having to be re-done by a scared and bumbling amateur. I’ve never heard any living creature howl like that.

In less than two days he’d ripped the stitches out. I did everything I could. I made him a neck cone out of pink construction paper and duct tape. I used medical tape, Ace bandages, and finally pinned a pair of my boxers on him, trying to find something, anything, to keep the wound clean. It was a bad couple of days. Finally I took him into the capital and paid an absurd amount to get it done by a real vet. The best part was when he peed all over the back seat of the cab.

As if all this wasn’t enough, I got involved in another domestic dispute, something I’d sworn never to do again. My neighbors, the chief of police and his wife, had an hour-long screaming match the night before I took Chulo to the capital. I was already a little stressed out, as you can imagine, but I did my best to tune it out. It was only when the shouting stopped that I got worried and went outside. Most of the neighborhood was gathered in the compound, watching the man drag his wife on the ground by her hair and punch her in the head. Sometimes I feel like a one-trick pony. A few people were trying to pull her away, which just seemed to be doing more damage. I had to use a full nelson to get him off her. Of course, as soon as she got up, she attacked him, and I became an unwitting accomplice, keeping him from defending himself. This is why I try not to get involved in these things.

The next morning she was gone. Apparently the police had to escort her out of the house. The man, with whom I’d always had a cordial if not friendly relationship, was riding a wave of vindicated masculinity and told me he was no longer going to pay his share of the electricity bill. So all in all it’s good times.

Sometimes this country makes me tired.

A request: if you read this post, would you do me a favor and post a quick comment? I'm tying the blog in to a smaller project I might be working on, and I'd like to get an idea of how many people are reading. Thanks.