Our own personal Cheers! (Dust, Dairy and Donuts)

In the center of town there is a small breakfast stand in which the rest of the outside world seems to stop.

Downtown essentially is a large right triangle, the hypotenuse running from north-west to south-east, the base side travelling east and west, and the height side north and south. It is the height side of the triangle that serves as the main artery into the wonders of the Greater Banjul area. Its importance as the main transportation-way has dictated this 2km or so stretch of road to host the majority of Westernization. A few banks have constructed branches here, a few restaurant shacks serve basic food, Pentium II class internet cafes reign supreme, and there are two gas stations which play host to so much traffic that they each warrant a mini-mart.

This stretch of road is also host to the major car park and transportation hub for the entire south bank of the river Gambia. Anyone who is familiar with travel on the south bank knows their journey begins here; a place that would make even the most hardened veteran of Mos Eisley space port shudder (If you understand that you are cool, but also officially a nerd.) This 500meter by 500meter parking garage is our center stage that day in and day out parades itself with a cast of characters including: Dust, smog, yelling, street vendors, pick pockets, dogs with rotting ears, hundreds of transit vans, up to thousands of people, and endless unforgiving heat. The heat generated by this flurry of activity is debilitating, and made al the worse by the common law of transportation here: If it ain’t full, it ain’t leaving. Pick your seat and be prepared to wait there for anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours. During the 11 months of the year when it is likely to be hot during most of the day time, the wait time in the car park can cripple an otherwise patient and hardy traveller.

All of the traffic and commotion is set against the backdrop of billowing dust that can be so choking that one would be sure to conclude there is some evil trickery at play. Then you look around you and you realize it is no trick, it’s just simple mathematics. You take poor soil quality and add donkeys, horses, chickens, goats, construction trucks, cars, taxis, market goers, and bicycles and you are sure to get the desired smoggy effect. This area is a living nightmare for someone with sinus problems.

In the middle of all this hustle and bustle is a small breakfast stand which is shielded by thin draped cloth curtains. This most simple of decorations is deceiving in its protective powers, for stepping behind the curtains is akin to stepping off your own personal lunar-lander and stepping into an alien world of comfort. The world inside is familiar in sight and south to the outside world, but brings about a relaxing feeling to mind and soul that does not exist a few centimetres in the other direction.

The breakfast stand seats around 9 to 12 in around a wooden horseshoe shaped table top. In the center of the shoe stand he store owner and his son, dutifully working away at their chosen art. In this store you don’t find opulent choices or delicacies, there are no pancakes, sausage, or donuts. Instead you have two choices 1. Do you want your eggs on bread or on a plate with bread on the side? 2. Do you want milk, tea, coffee, or hot chocolate? Curiously the eggs are stamped with the letters NL on the top with some numbers following, these eggs are imported from Holland. Why The Gambia can’t provide its own eggs is absolutely beyond me given that almost every family compound has at least 3 or 4 chickens running around. At any rate my buddy and I always go for eggs on the bread with a warm cup of hot chocolate and they are sublime. Not that the food is particularly healthy. The eggs are fried in a pool of oil, the only vegetable you et are small bits of onion, and the milk comes from a can that says “high fat/high sugar.” The owner, like many of the other shop owners here, seems to be foreign. He speaks Wolof, the common language of Senegal and always has his radio blaring French from the Senegalese national station. Good thing for us we speak English and Mandinka…

What makes this place so special is that it has become no only a source of tasty breakfast buut it is also an open chance to talk freely about the week, the highs and the lows. On weekends one of us will send the other a text message asking something along the lines of “egg? 9am?” That serves as an open invitation to a guaranteed solid discussion. Sometimes silly at other times serious, here are a few condensed thoughts or notes from our time eating egg sandwiches:

> So I am convinced that our method of child rearing in the US is completely different from that of The Gambia. Beatings serve as the end all be all method of doing things here.

> Do you have and close Gambian friends? I mean ones you could trust anything to? No? I did, somewhat by inheritance from the last PCV who was at my site. He was absolutely hilarious to chat with. Last he went into the hospital in Banjul. He died there yesterday.

> Have you ever seen someone play Dungeons and Dragons? Reading that book you gave me made me feel like I was watching a big group of gamers sit around and play D&D. So nerdy.

> The last time I was here they mistook “full bread” for “4 egg” and the whole place made fun of me for being the tubab who was too fat or hungry to be satisfied with 1 or 2 eggs.

> The system just isn’t ready. I gave the term 1 math test to all of my students last week. One class had only been reporting to school for 3 weeks before the test, a full two and a half months late. That whole class failed the test, along with 80% of the other students. We need a new strategy.

> Being sick here I was hit hard with the “freshness of it all” feeling. Everything was so painful and lifeless during the sickness that when I finally emerged from my concrete cell of a home the whole world seemed to bloom before my eyes. It was wonderful in that “I can appreciate the small things again” sort of way. It was almost worth it being sick for that experience… Almost.

> Yeah I know the feeling. I accidentally went off on someone the other day too. Sigh. It’s not easy here in The Gambia.

> You know… These egg sandwiches are just about one step below Godliness.

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Newsflash: Local papers have reported that President Jammeh has achieved divine power and can cure people of HIV/AIDs.