Hanging out at the Garden, Ousman Njie

I'm happy to say that I've gotten a bit of a second wind....it couldn't have come at a better time too. I believe this to be true for a couple of reasons- Jambanjelly smaller and a lot quieter than Brikama, therefore, I'm able to concentrate a lot better on practicing Kora. The heat hasn't been as intense. I'll bet it hit 90 today, but that's a lot better than 98! I'm feeling a bit more comfortable with things in general. I may even head back to Moriba's in a few days to get some last recordings of more Kora players before departing on the 6th. Nothing is really set in stone though.

I walked to the little corner shop just down the way from Lamin's compound by myself this morning to get some bread, potato, and mayonnaise for breakfast. Generally, I haven't felt so comfortable doing this, but today I let myself do it, and felt good about it. A few children ran up to be shouting the typical phrase, "Toubab!" which is the Mandinka term for white man. Generally, they'll also ask for a mintie, which is a type of candy, or a dalasi coin or two. There are a few ways you can respond to this. You can keep walking and ignore them, you can say "Ta fama nyininka" which means go ask your father, or "Ta bama nyininka", go ask your mother. There's "atcha" which is go, also "Ta koma" go back (easy to remember for me, Tacoma being the next northernmost city of Olympia), or "finti banta" which I believe means get lost. Once in the shop, there are a variety of things sitting behind the table where the shopkeeper is standing. All dry goods, some immediately ready to eat such as the things I had for breakfast this morning, some teas, cigarettes, batteries, etc. Generally, one will walk into this shop, and take their time ordering each individual item, sometimes even giving cash for each item separately as the shopkeeper passes the item across the counter. You don't have to do this, it just seems to be common, that's all. I've seen Moriba order a pack of cigarettes, give the man 50 dalasi, or whatever, and then order some tea for attaya, maybe another 25, in a separate payment.

I spent a good part of the morning and with Ousman Njie, Lamin's younger brother. He is a very sweet young man, close to my age, and he doesn't smoke anything- tobacco or cannabis- Its very rare of men to be this way it seems. After eating breakfast in my room at Njie kunda (House of the Njies), Ousman collected me and we went a few compounds down where the head of the village of Jambanjelly was building a new structure for his family. He had a team of 8 or so yound men stacking cement blocks up, placing wet concrete (maybe mixed with mortar?) in between as they stacked. I got a few pictures of this, which I hope will turn out well. Ousman brewed attaya while the workers worked, and they came over a couple of times during the hour or two we were there to take a break, drink the attaya, and kachaa (chat). One of the workers came over and threw a rock at a branch of an orange tree, knocking down about 5 or 6, which he gave to me and Ousman for a snack. The oranges and grapefruits in America don't even compare to the rich, sweet, delicious ones here. The bananas too...so wonderful! Mangoes are out of season..Generally are ripe starting in June or July during the rainy season.

After hanging out with Ousman and the workers for a while, Ousman and I went back to Njie kunda, collected my Kora and some water to drink, and walked a quarter mile or so to the garden which Lamin has put so much time and effort into. We hung out it under the veranda of the small building recently constructed last summer. I played a bit of Kora while Ousman did some odd jobs around the garden. Lamin soon arrived from his day trip up to Serrekunda, where he has been doing business for his garden, arranging to have materials for a cement wall fence delivered to the garden. He arrived in a lorry with about 6-7 boys and a load of cement bags. The cement bags will be mixed with water, and sand from the previous days' delivery to make the cement blocks, which will be constructed similarly to the exterior of the structure in the compound that I witnessed this morning.

After the bags were delivered, Lamin, Ousman and I hung out under the veranda for a while, b.s.ing, staying out of the sun, and talking about life in Gambia. We did all this while listening to some cassettes of Lalo Keba Drammeh, a Kora player from Casamance (who has passed on) that I picked up in Brikama. There's a lot of talk around today of the soccer (football, as the rest of the world terms it) match between Gambia and Algeria, being played just to the north in Banjul. Its a match of high importance, the winner qualifying for the next round of something. We even came back to the compound here at 4:30, which is when the match was scheduled to start, but it wasn't on. Lamin believes they'll show delayed broadcast sometime this evening.

That's all for now. Certainly glad to have a second wind. Also nice to know that I will be home in a week.

Take care,

Sean