House Tour / Why I'm Here

Oh my, oh my what a July

If you don't feel like reading about my month, this classic sums it up well enough:

Boy did I come out of the gates slow: on July 1st, I tested positive for COVID-19 and squirreled myself away in my apartment (which you will get to see soon!) and isolated for a week. After a brief respite, where I got to meet some awesome Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs), I was ravaged the next week by some bacterial throat infection that resulted in another week of isolating. So the first two weeks of the month were a bit of a nothingburger, I relaxed my ban on content binging and leaned into being sick, watching a Ghibli movie per day and drinking tons of tea. I was better by the middle of the month and really flipped the month's vibe on its head; I 

• managed to get through drafting some of my essays for the Fulbright Fellowship I'm applying for at the London School of Economics next year (wish me luck), 
• met a whole other gaggle of amazing PCVs on the fourth weekend of the month for a weekend of R&R at a beachside resort, 
• finished up a couple big projects at work (designing a monitoring and evaluation framework for the Department of Agriculture, making the data collection and reporting templates, connecting with a new department for some capacity building, blah blah blah), and
• explored a new part of the country, going with another PCV and a Gambian friend to hang along the river that serves as the southern border between The Gambia and Senegal.

So yeah, July ended up being a pretty great month - I feel like I am going into August with a lot better understanding of what this year is gonna be like, a couple dozen new PC friends and handful of new Gambian friends, and enough office work under my belt that I can focus on language training with PC and maybe even get myself out working in the provinces with the Ag staff there. 

PCV Cribs

So the first caveat to this section is that my living situation is ridiculously, obnoxiously nicer than every other PCV in The Gambia. While I don't have air conditioning, you will see almost every other modern luxury present (this is because the Department of Agriculture furnished the place before I arrived), plus I have access to an oven and laundry machine in the main house. I live in a 4 room standalone apartment in the back of my compound, which abuts the courtyard of the compound.

I threw in a schematic to help contextualize the videos, which I filmed a few weeks back. The birds of Abuko provide quite the score, between rooster crows, owl hoots, and other assorted coos, but please excuse the sound of my focusing breathing. Also, the level of cleanliness is around the normal state, I actually run a pretty tight ship of cleaning, sweeping, and moping out here, but without further ado, welcome to my crib...

Kitchen

Might as well start in the kitchen! Unfortunately, I don't use the kitchen very much - my host mom gives me breakfast and lunch/doesn't really understand when I want to cook for myself. During the weekdays, I'll make coffee in the French press I brought along in the mornings, cut up the cucumber I bring to work each day, or occasionally have a late-night (8pm) snack with my malaria meds, which normally consists of some yogurt, peanut paste, and granola. The meals on the weekdays are incredibly convenient and I'm super grateful, but I'm still working on negotiating a little more freedom to cook for myself during the weekends.

We open looking at my table/counter, a collapsible table I classed up with some thick plastic, the water mark that mysteriously appeared on my wall a few weeks back, and the shadow of my ceiling fan... annnd enough of that schtick. The bin on the table is a mix of spices and kitchen utensils that I've barely used, and the extent of my dishware sits atop it alongside my allergy meds, multivitamins, and malaria prophylaxis.

My two-burner stove is on the adjacent wall, hooked up to a propane tank that just sits on the other side of the wall in a little cage. Beneath the stove is my cabinet, which I keep stocked with pasta, peanuts, granola, beans, tomato puree, tea, and coffee, and maybe a few other things that don't jump to mind right now. Next to those two is my sink/drying area, which sits above the trash and cleaning items storage cavity. I've really embraced not throwing out anything, so that box is filled with scavenged bags, twist ties, rubberbands, as well as the requisite dust pan, all-purpose disinfecting spray, pesticides, and laundry equipment.

Next to that is my fridge, which is mostly just filled with a cast of 1.5L plastic water bottles that I refill using that big shiny water filter. Between those two characters is the microwave, which doesn't get much mileage. The other little box has all my silverware in it, and also serves to weigh down the collection of newspaper that I use as paper towels (when you are given bread, it is wrapped in a newspaper, normally something Scandinavian but I was getting the Bronx Times for a little while.)

The corner holds my water reserves - some extra 1.5L bottles that live outside of the fridge/come to work with me and a 20L bucket. On top of the bucket is my electric kettle, and next to it are my broom and mop. 

A recent addition to the kitchen over the past few weeks is the yoga zone, which sits in that empty space that I end up panning to after the Food Forward apron. I put a screw in the doorframe to hang my towel and also have my yoga mat rolled out most of the time. I've been waking up a little earlier, around 5:30 and doing 20/30 minutes of yoga in the mornings, which has been a great way to start the day. All yoga in The Gambia feels like hot yoga, but I do it with the lights off at the ass crack of dawn, so it still has a ~zen~ feel despite its laboriousness.

Living Room

Next we transition into the living room, where I have been working on my Fulbright essays this month! This is probably the room I use least in the house: other than for working for a few hours in the afternoons on graduate school stuff and chilling for a few minutes in the morning as my waiting room, I mostly hang out under my bed net in my ro- oops, getting ahead of myself.

It's mostly covered up in the video, but the first wall has a big screen door on it, which is great for getting fresh air into the house - once it gets to like 5pm, it's hotter in the house than it is outside so it's nice to air it out a bit. The ceiling fan is also a gamechanger in terms of beating the heat, I find myself pulling the chair to the center of the room and sitting directly under it at some point every day. 

Furniture-wise, I have a little cabinet that I store exercise gear in and put my backpacks on, a television, a honkin' desk, and a couch. I've used the television as a display for my laptop, but otherwise it mostly stays unplugged. The desk is where I store pretty much all my crap, so that has been a godsend. The couch is great for having guests over, but otherwise it only serves as my lobby in the mornings as I wait for the Ag department driver to come scoop me (a ridiculous luxury as well).

The decor is understated to say the least, with just a big map of West LA from the 1980s, my Peace Corps initiation certificate, and my chore schedule adorning the walls. If you ever feel like doodling something and sending it four to seven thousand miles away I absolutely would love to hang it up!

Bedroom

The most important room in the house. I try to get a solid 8 hours of sleep because then I have so much more patience and energy during the day, so I'm normally in bed by 9, much to the amusement of my host family. 

The bed is full-size, which has been amazing - I finally went and bought a fitted sheet yesterday, there is just something about seeing the bare mattress on camera that kicked my ass into gear. Hanging over the bed is a mosquito net that has some bug repellant in it - its done a good job with mosquitos, but the occasional cockroach (they get in through my bathroom drains) will climb up it and jump off the top rope onto me as I lie in bed, which absolutely shatters any sense of safety but its whatever. The other furniture in here is a night stand, my clothes trunk, and my hamper, all pretty self-explanatory.

On Sundays/after beach days, this room does transform, as I have a string that I hang between the doors to serve as a clothesline. Peace Corps told me to take care of the washing/drying of my skivvies indoors, so they get a rigorous bucket bath with some detergent before being hung up on said line. Otherwise, my sanctuary remains unchanged.

Bathroom

The bathroom is the crown jewel of the house. In the city, most bathrooms have flush toilets and showers, but the provincial experience looks a lot different with pit latrines and bucket baths. Having a more western bathroom has been a nice thing to not have transition away from, but I will get some time out in the provinces soon hopefully and will return ever more grateful.

The shower is nice, in the mornings the showers are cold and in the afternoon they're warmer, as determined by how much time the sun has to beat down on the water tank in the compound. The green thing that is hanging is the Gambian equivalent to a loofah, a kind of hard plastic netting that is balled up and used to scrub. Then comes the sink, adorned with the water kettle for when I don't have water (when the electricity goes out (every day or so), the water tank can empty pretty quickly), my head shaver, and oral hygiene gear. Finally, it is the flush toilet, the glistening porcelain palace, which a guest broke a little bit when he yeeted the handle so it takes a little massaging to get it to flush.

Veranda and Courtyard

Now let me walk you out...

This is the veranda, which has a nice little seat where the compound pets sleep and I do crosswords on weekend mornings. It's a little too buggy to go out there in the afternoons these days, but when the rainy season ends in a few months I think it'll return to being hospitable. Looking out, you see the back of the main house in the compound, as well as the outdoor kitchen where a charcoal stove is used by my Ne to prep for the restaurant the next day or cook the stews over the weekend. Before the rainy season, we would sit out at night under that large awning, but between the weather and bugs, the family has transitioned to watching Nollywood dramas inside.

Overall

I'm super lucky to have such a comfortable place to stay, it is honestly more space to live in than I've ever had as an adult. Also, the first time living in an apartment alone, but between talking with my host family, connecting with PCVs, communicating with family/friends back home, and exhausting myself from work/exploring, it hasn't been a lonely experience.

"So why are you here?"

This was a really interesting question that the PCV I was staying with asked me last month, and I'll get to my answer in a bit. I want to start with something that another PCV told me, that when he leaves The Gambia, it will be the first time that he is running towards something, and not away from something else. I don't feel that it fully applies to me, I just felt it was a beautiful sentiment and definitely feel that this experience has helped me figure out what I want to run towards next.

Regarding how I ended up here, there are moral reasons that align with how I want to live my life, matters of circumstance made it so I was looking for an opportunity, and a perspective jolt that spurred those moral/circumstantial reasons into action. A warning that it gets a bit heady/heavy in this section so feel free to close out now if you just wanted to read a pleasant little blog post.

Hot Takes on Morals

In terms of morals, I feel like I was raised with the idea that I should do work in service of others, a guiding principle for which I am very thankful. But I also spent a lot of time figuring out what my own morals would be as an adult: six years ago, while I was in the Netherlands working on farms for the summer, I developed a moral code that I've lived along the lines of ever since. 

The mantra is "be kind, be fair, be hopeful, be forgiving, be grateful, be honest." I try to make sure that my actions are as true to these six attributes as possible, because I feel like the attributes represent very accurately the kind of person that I want to be. Also very relevant is the use of "be", I really believe that a person "is" what their actions make them, instead of their thoughts or intentions - like the idea that life is relational, and how you behave towards others (and even not necessarily how it is perceived by others) is the person you are.

The Peace Corps experience more lines up with the idea of living a life of service than it necessarily does with any one part of my mantra, so I would say that that harmony was one of the things that made Peace Corps attractive to me. I've tried to work with mission-driven organizations throughout my career, and while the US government has a muddy history, I felt like this opportunity provided the chance to use my skills in service to The Gambia and it's people, which was exciting. 

Also, I felt like it would give me the time and space to reexamine the list of attributes I chose more than half a decade ago and measure myself up in a new, challenging environment to see how well I could embody them. I chose a handful of those traits because they were things that I was really struggling with at the time and wanted to intentionally improve on as I got older. I think I am doing a pretty good job, I've had to lie a few times for safety reasons or to avoid conflict, but besides that I feel like I'm living up to it. I like the flow of the six, but also thinking about adding more, "be patient" in particular always pops up for me to work on, but I'll make a post about those reflections in their own right.

Circumstances

I guess the latter bit of moral hot takes might fall into this category, but I'll keep it up there. It's honestly not the part of this post that matters, but I wanted to give you a little window into my brain.

Joining the Peace Corps involved exploding my life in Los Angeles and moving across the world, so I don't know if convenient is the right word for it, but Peace Corps presented an opportune chance to hit that eject button from the life I built in LA. Even while it was happening, I knew that I was in a personal slump during my last few years in LA - I had an extremely supportive community that meant (and still means) the world to me, I was able to do challenging work that aligned with my values, and I loved being in a beautiful place, but I also wasn't really in touch with myself that much.

I was extremely comfortable, which was great to lean into for a few years, but I also had a very hard time bringing myself to think about the future, let alone to embrace a path forward and make moves to do those things I wanted to do. I had been telling myself about experiences I wanted to have (work internationally, go to graduate school, etc.) but never went about putting them into action, just kind of floating along instead.

And then 2022 came - 2022 was a horrible year for my mom's side of the family in terms of loss. I had lost my grandfather on my dad's side in 2021; it was a sad loss but not a tragic loss, he had lived a good long life and died surrounded by people he loved, so it didn't prepare me for losing my two younger cousins. For some background, my brother and I spent more time with the cousins on my mom's side growing up, Cole (born 1998) and Ryan (born ~2001), because they just lived downstate on Long Island, so I saw them at every major holiday every year of my life.

In April, Ryan passed away from a drug overdose. He had struggled with his sobriety for a long time, but I thought that he had gotten clean, so his loss came out of nowhere. And I didn't really process it, I was on the other side of the country, and while I went home for his memorial in July, it was just a couple family members sitting around a table, so there wasn't an overwhelming sense of closure. Then in August, Cole had a brain aneurysm while driving. Cole was living out in Denver and had built a life for himself that he really enjoyed, and all of a sudden it was all gone because of an unpreventable arterial bulge in his brain. I am so grateful that I got the chance to see Cole in the hospital before he passed, but it didn't take the hurt away, it only made it so that I couldn't disassociate from it like I had been able to do with Ryan. I'm still grieving their deaths, and really don't have the proper words to talk about it, but they are a big part of the story of why I am here.

Around July of 2022, I got accepted to be a rural aquaculture promotion volunteer in Zambia, a Peace Corps position I applied to back in the summer of 2020. After some thought, I turned the position down - I wanted to get out of LA and work internationally, but it just wasn't convenient. But I didn't reapply, I just kept floating along in my LA comfort bubble. But Cole's death popped that bubble. It really made me think about how life is short, and how you have to chase the experiences that you want your life to be comprised of while you have the time, whether it was Phish concerts in his case or Peace Corps service in mine. So the week after his death, I went online to find a Peace Corps position that suited the skills I had developed through working over the past few years, found this one in The Gambia, and promised myself that I would take it if I got accepted.

And here I am. As much as Peace Corps service was something that I had in my mind since college and was something that aligned with my values, I wouldn't have done it if it weren't for Cole's death and the realization that followed it. The whole point of the morals thing from earlier wasn't to be high and mighty, but to explain that I really believe what I do is who I am; I wouldn't have left the life I built in LA and moved to Africa if it weren't for Cole, so, accordingly, none of the other stuff about why I came here really matters.

One of the things that I've struggled most with after losing Cole and Ryan is the feeling that their lives, everything they built and stood for, just abruptly came to an end. For now, I believe that when we die, the consciousness of our brain clicks off and the movie is over, a hypothesis that gives me none of the comfort that the religious afterlife would. But in talking this out with someone, I found both an overwhelming sense of comfort and closure around the idea that what Cole stood for and what I learned from him, in life and death, will always live on through me with this experience. Of course I would rather have him alive and have found a different reason to be spurred to sign up for Peace Corps, but that is the unfortunate reality. 

So yeah, the answer of "my cousin died" probably isn't the expected answer to this question, but that's why I ended up in The Gambia. Now that I am here, there are other things that I am focusing on, like finding that next thing to run towards, serving the people of The Gambia, and reflecting on the things that I need to work on personally, but it was really helpful to kind of synthesize this idea and find that bit of closure a year on from the loss.

In Summary

A bit of a tale of two blog posts, but both things I really wanted to share. It took me a little more than a week to write this all down and feel comfortable sending it out, so apologies for the delay, I'm trying to do these monthly so another one should be out in a few weeks, hopefully with a more lighthearted tone.

Thanks for reading, and to those who reached out after the first post, your support spurred me to write this one, so thank you doubly.