I'm not that great at regularly updating my blog.

So. Many have asked why I have not updated my blog for 2 months.
The reason is because I don't really know where to start.
But I am here spending the night in the computer lab at the Peace Corps office and have decided that this would be a probably be a good time. Chris and Peter, two of my friends, and I are sleeping here because the Peace Corps transit house is currently full and we are too cheap to pay the $3 to stay in another hotel for the evening. All of the volunteers in the Gambia are here now in Kombo for a group meeting called "All Vol," but really everyone came for the Fourth of July party held at the the Julbrew brewery (Julbrew is the Gambia's best/only beer). And it was all free. And it was all unlimited. And now I can't look at about 3 volunteers in the face ever again. In fact, I am expecting that one will venture to the Peace Corps office sometime this morning, in which case I will go and hide in the bathroom until said volunteer leaves.

Um. My life is pretty different now. Currently, I'm almost finished with what Peace Corps calls "3-month challenge", and what I call "3-month I'm going to kick Peace Corps in the face." Basically, we are supposed to stay at site for 3 months and NOT leave at all. Most people cheat though. Why? Because if you don't cheat at least a little, you will be slowly and effectively driven to emotional, physical and mental exhaustion, and end up adopting eccentric hobbies like origami and writing haikus (a post to follow soon!). Peace Corps's motto: The toughest job you'll ever love. This slogan is so adorable that I would like to tattoo it somewhere on myself, but I currently have some sort of unidentifiable skin rash all over my body to which the nurse replied, "You know, Allison, I don't know what the hell that is." So, no tattoo.
I guess if I can do this I can do pretty much anything.
But my site is actually really awesome. I've had quite an interesting experience and learned a lot thus far. I just miss my friends and family so very very much, which makes it kind of hard. And then I look like this:

But, I've been placed in Gambia Suburbia (I guess that's what it is? It kind of reminds me of some sort of Gambian Redwood City), and my family has electricity and a car and a refrigerator, and they all have cell phones, and my sisters listen to Celine Dion and 50 Cent, and we spend evenings watching the Action channel that plays really amazing Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal movies, and then they ask me if I'm a spy and if everyone in America has a gun, and then I tell them "yes", and then I go on to explain to the that Arnold Schwarzenneger is not only the Terminator, but the governor of California.
Basically this is my life right now...



So no more romantic hut life for me, and I pretty much went through a second culture shock.

Also, some of friends may have noticed that I have regular internet access and am back to obsessively checking everyone's Facebook/MySpace profiles, and obviously my daily horoscope. This is because I have been placed with an NGO, ActionAid International the Gambia (http://www.actionaid.org/), in the HIV/AIDS department and the office I work in has internet access.
Right now, ActionAid in the Gambia basically works to support a majority of Gambia's CSOs, and I have been assigned to an organization called Mutapola, which is a network of women living with HIV/AIDS in the Gambia. The group works to capacitize women with HIV/AIDS to be self-sufficient and economically independent, to reduce stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS, and to ensure the rights of women with HIV/AIDS to food, livelihood, comprehensive treatment and care, and representation in the legislative environment. This means that I write a assload of reports and proposals with a lot of development language like "empowerment", "capacitize", "collaboration", "stakeholders", "counterparts", "promote", "enable", "activism", "advocacy", "campaign", "consortium", "framework", and "rights-based approach". However, none of the women I actually work with are actually able to read these papers, nor do these terms mean anything to them. This is where I become slightly disillusioned and wonder if I'm just part of the problem, if what I'm doing is at all sustainable, and if "capacitizing" these women by teaching them "income-generating activities" like soap making and tie and dye, both of which have absolutely no market in the Gambia, is really only giving me something to write so that we can continue to receive funding.

I have also been really involved with the Gambian Consortium to End Violence Against Women, which is in collaboration with Women Won't Wait http://www.womenwontwait.org/, an international coalition of women's group working to end violence against women to prevent HIV/AIDS. By involved, I mean I am actually THE representative for Mutapola in the consortium. This of course makes absolutely no sense for a variety of reasons. Yet, I go to all these really long meetings and whenever I speak, everyone's completely silent in order to hear the liberated, independent Westerner tell them what needs to be done to end violence against women in the Gambia. This also makes absolutely no sense for a variety of reasons including:
1) I am not a Gambian.
2) Upon receiving my Peace Corps acceptance letter, I immediately had to google the Gambia because I had no idea where it was and thought that it must have been a typo and that Peace Corps meant to say that I was going to Zambia or Ghana and got confused. Nope, the Gambia is actually a real country. It's about twice the size of Delaware with a population of about 1.3 million people.
3) I have been working with Mutapola for only 3 months now.
4) I am 23 years old.
5) I have been living in Spokane, Washington for the past 4 years.
6) A majority of what I have learned in my women's studies classes has absolutely no relevance in the Gambian culture.
7) A majority of my experience working with women and women's groups in the United States has absolutely no relevance in the Gambian culture.

Hence, I do not know how to end violence against women in the Gambia because I have no idea what I'm doing. But I do know that teaching every women in the Gambia how to make soap and do tie and dye IS NOT THE ANSWER!!!

So, I'll just post some pictures now.
Here are some photos from the Candelight March that ActionAid held during the Global Week of Action for HIV/AIDS in remembrance of those in the Gambia that have died as a result of HIV/AIDS.

Let us first acknowledge the free t-shirt...



Some Mutapola members getting ready for the event.

Marching...

Marching...

Sitting...

Saffie, a Mutapola secretariat member, making a speech at the event.

Not gonna lie. She's kind of my favorite, and probably a large reason why I continue to stay here.

I brought my sister Binta along. Yes, my hair was braided. No, this was not my choice. This was another instance of me unknowingly agreeing to something that resulted in me being attacked by a group of Gambian women.



I'm gonna go buy some cornflakes and eat them,
Allison