Sarah in Gambia

Sarah in Gambia	September 2004
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Lunar eclipse over my hut roof...	Me and my friend Hadam and my sister Kumba, on my hammock (Thank you Thalia, it ROCKS!)	Cooking big meals for a naming ceremony	Shaving the baby's head at her naming ceremony. The baby is my sister Seiny's, and they named her Sainabou, after me :)
Village elders oversee the naming ceremony	Fatoto crossing (don't let the nice car fool you...)	Kumba, in my hut, speckled with lime paint from putting a new coat on our houses...	Kumba, Lolly, and Bachica posing in front of their freshly painted house.
Kumba painting	Bachica and Hunta (who I've nicknamed "Golo" (Monkey) and "Dof" Crazy, and who do an excellent job of living up to their names) ham it up for the camera.	My 2 "tomas" (namesakes) Sainabou holds her newly named cousin, Sainabou	Images from a Wolof wedding
Images from a Wolof wedding	Images from a Wolof wedding	Images from a Wolof wedding	Images from a Wolof wedding
Images from a Wolof wedding	Condom demos (for an HIV/AIDS training, an employee from Gambia Family Planning Association came to our village to assist in teaching/ facilitating discussions. Personally, I hate these "sensitizations": people rarely say or do anything about the information they've "learned", and the only thing you'll hear anything about is how much per diem pay participants get to come, and how good the food is that they prepare for you. And if the food isn't THAT good... you bet you'll hear about that too!	When I discovered that they were planning to talk the participants through condom use without actually SHOWING them, I balked. What's the use of that?! So I brought over cucumbers from my lush backyard gardens (I'd been harvesting nearly 2 dozen cukes a week for the past month, I figured I could spare a few...) and took the condoms out of my medical kit and insisted that the FP worker actually do a demonstration. He hammed it up really well, and after the inevitable nervous twittering, people were actively engaged in listening for the first time all day.	Pointing out, of course, that in order for condoms to be effective they didn't need to be on the cucumber per se... Anyways, people seemed glad to have a demo, and the village chief, who had stepped away for a few minutes to take care of some buisness, specifically requested that we repeat it.
Images from a Wolof wedding
The FP worker had a story that was funny in a really sad, sad way, about a man who had gone to GFPA for condoms: the volunteer had explained their use to him by demonstrating the use on his finger. The man came back months later, enraged that his wife had gotten pregnant despite his faithfully remembering to sheath his finger in a condom... oh dear.	Yusupha and I plow the fields to get them ready for planting	Yusupha and I plow the fields	my backyard & my chia-pet looking house
	The field is now overflowing with beans.	Yusupha and I plow the fields	I planted what I thought would be a "pretty little vine, to trail over my doorway."
My hut now has a green carpet almost completely covering it, with constellations of red and white flowers.	My hut	View from the Hunting Lodge	Movie of a main street in Bansang, my nearest city.