I recently remembered that I emailed a few of my favorite songs to Paul, so I downloaded them from Gmail. Thank you, internet, for reuniting me with some of my music.

On Monday morning, I went again to the Bakau women’s garden and listened to Jalaman Jatta talk about gardening and agriculture in The Gambia. I had gotten the impression from him on Friday that I would be starting my work in the garden itself this week, but I was evidently mistaken. He told me Monday that we would be completing our classroom lessons this week and would be moving to applied learning next week. Which means I will have, in total, a week and a half of gardening. Not what I want. I wanted to be out there the very first day, hands in the dirt, sweat dripping down my face, drawing water from the concrete-lined wells. I wanted to be barefoot and tan, not sitting inside drinking attaya and listening to some man talk about women’s empowerment. Let me go empower myself, damn it.

Anyway. At the end of our time with him on Monday, he told us that we would not be meeting with him on Tuesday. Over the weekend, I had been offered a chance to go to Tumani Tenda for Monday night and Tuesday, but I turned it down because I expected to be gardening. I managed to wheedle my way back into the trip, but it was a cozy ride. There were four of us crammed into the back seat, including Professor Roy Hopkins.

Tumani Tenda is a lovely little village. They’re relatively well off, as they have an ecotourism business that seems to be doing alright. Things were in good repair and everyone seemed healthy and happy. Bill told the guy in charge that I was interested in women’s activities, so Anita and I got to carry some firewood in from the forest. And yes, we carried it on our heads. We were evidently the first tubabs to carry wood in Tumani Tenda. The women put together smaller bundles of wood for us, and those were heavy enough. The women here are so strong. It’s crazy. We also got to work in the garden, which was great. Finally, I got to work with women and plants! I swear, I’m actually very easy to please. Just give me some dirt and some green things and I’m happy. We also carried buckets of water on our heads, and I managed to stay dry.

In the morning, I worked in the garden again, this time weeding. I would have called it hoeing, but I suppose it accomplished the same thing. The car wasn’t coming for us until 4:30 and we didn’t have any activities planned for the afternoon, so I lazed about in a hammock and read about hate, oppression, and exploitation. This book is intense.

The evening was uneventful. Some of the students went out, but I stayed in to fill out an application. Love it: the last question on the application was “How do you identify? Examples: race, class, gender, ability, anything else”

That brings us to today. I woke up, got dressed, ate some tapalapa with peanut butter and orange jam, and walked to the garden. Mr. Jatta wasn’t there. Although he made it very clear on Monday that I was supposed to come today at 10:00, I am wondering whether he was confused and thought I was coming at 3:00. So I might go back at 3:00, which is inconvenient. I had hoped to run some errands this afternoon, including picking up my package at the post office.

Speaking of the post office, I got two cards yesterday! One from my mother and one from my grandmother. Grandma sent me a birthday card. It got here way early, but it’s hard to guess how long mail will take. I’m coming up on 20 years. That’s a fifth of a century. Pretty exciting.