I was undaunted. At twenty-five, I’d been dreaming of joining the Peace Corps for over half my life, and as an activity therapist at a psychiatric hospital—i.e., someone who knew a thing or two about mental illness—I was 99.9 percent confident that I was 99.9 percent stable.
I landed in The Gambia, West Africa, in March of 1979, along with eighteen other recruits. We embarked on a twelve-week training program that included local languages, cultural norms, community organizing methods, and tropical diseases. Six weeks in, we were dispatched to our posts for what was officially called a site visit—basically, an introduction to our villages that would give us an in-person idea of what we’d signed up for. After spending the night, we would go back upriver to finish training, get sworn in, and return to our posts to teach health and nutrition for two years. That was when our mettle would really be tested.
My village was called Medina. Small, isolated, and devout, it was ruled by a marabout, a learned Muslim cleric of mystical bent. Alhaji Baba was a soft-spoken old man who, with his prayer beads, embroidered white robe, and averted gaze, seemed to be in his own world; but as soon as I saw how people greeted him, the women with downcast eyes, the men bowing to kiss his hand, I knew that his word was law in the village.
As Alhaji Baba’s oldest son showed me around, my anxiety mounted. How would I ever adjust to this place, where study and prayer ruled the day? Life seemed so tamped down; all the traditional African expressions of joy and vigor, like drumming, dancing, and wrestling, were forbidden by the marabout.
Late that afternoon I was taken to the house of Ya Sajo, Alhaji Baba’s second wife. (Islam allows men to have four.) Light-skinned and voluptuous, her pouty lower lip tattooed blue, she looked a good thirty years younger than her husband. She was standing in her backyard, as calm as the eye of a hurricane, while directing a lively group of women making dinner for forty or fifty. The marabout’s household was huge, consisting not only of his sons and their families, but also of his sons’ Koranic students, boys who came from as far away as Mauritania to study under the famous clan.
Ya Sajo insisted that I take the only chair, so I sat down, smiling at nothing in particular while I fidgeted with my sundress. The women were all wearing a variation of the same outfit: an ankle-length sarong, a long flouncy top with short ruffled sleeves, and a head wrap signifying their married status. Their names circled in my head like goldfish in a bowl—Fatou, Satou, Amie, Oumie, Hadie, Kadie, Binta, Bintou. I’d always had close female friends, and because the ones I’d made in training would soon be scattered to the far ends of the country, these women felt enormously important to me. Would any of them want to be my friend? Their lives were so consumed by the endless chores of childrearing and subsistence farming; would they have the time? And if they did, what we would talk about, assuming that my Wolof got good enough—and that they would actually speak Wolof?
A lack of fluency was only the beginning of my communication difficulties. There are eight local languages in The Gambia, and most people speak at least two. The people of Medina were Fula, so they generally spoke Fula. My problem, (due to poor planning by the Peace Corps), was that I was learning Wolof. The women knew this, but they kept speaking Fula, switching to Wolof only when addressing me. I later realized that they were just getting on with their work as they always did, but at the time, it was hard not to feel like they were leaving me out on purpose. I was blindsided by a deep and terrifying loneliness. Tears pressed behind my eyes, threatening to spill over.
Gambians were stoic. They had to be. Death came often and early in their part of the world, half their children dying from malaria or measles before age five. Families grieved, but they did it inwardly because they had to keep working the land if they wanted to eat. If I started crying now, I would lose the women’s respect before I had the chance to earn it. I pushed down my tears and studied the scene, trying to take my mind off myself.
The women were so used to working together, there was no hurry, no stress, just graceful gestures and the handing off of tasks. It occurred to me that I should help with dinner instead of sitting in the only chair like a queen waiting to be served.
“Ya Sajo,” I said, “naka laa mouna dimbaleh?”
She brought me a large enamel bowl, filled it with water, handed me a knife, and gave me a pile of onions to peel. The action in the yard stopped. Silence fell. All eyes turned to me: can the white girl peel an onion?
Watering the garden, photograph by the author
I was the first volunteer to be posted in Medina, so except for a possible encounter with a foreign doctor in the capital, the women had never interacted with a white person. The onions were a test of sorts, giving them an idea of how—or whether—I might fit in. I knew how to prep vegetables, but there was no cutting board, so I had to do the job in mid-air. The knife was blunt, but I managed to cut away enough of the skin to tear away the rest. I put the peeled onion in the bowl of water as Ya Sajo had shown me, and started in on the next.
“Sainabou, where’s your husband?” someone called out. Sainabou was my Gambian name, bestowed by Alhaji Baba only a few hours earlier.
“I don’t have a husband.” I didn’t have to search for those Wolof words—Gambians were always asking about my marital status, the men wanting to know if I was available, the women if I was their equal. A woman without a husband and children was a jangha, a mere maiden.
“You don’t! Why not?”
“I haven’t found a man I want to marry.” I didn’t mention that I didn’t want to get married; I didn’t think they would understand.
“Laa-ee-la,” they chorused, half incredulous, half sympathetic.
“So where are your children?” This came from the only fat woman in the group. Having paused from pounding millet, she rested her chin on her long wooden pestle.
“Children?” I pretended to be shocked. “How can I possibly have children if I don’t have a husband?”
Everybody laughed, some of the women slapping their knees. The fat one, still holding onto her pestle, bent over and grabbed her stomach, the flesh on her arms quivering as she kept saying, “Eh, Sainabou!”
I’d made them laugh! In Wolof! But my victory was short-lived. Having gathered the essential information about me, everybody went back to work, chatting away in Fula while pounding the grain, plucking the chickens, and fanning the fire. I tried to take it in stride, but an ache rose up in my chest, surprising me with its sharpness. I missed my friends back home.
I asked Ya Sajo what I could do next. She showed me how to slice the onions I’d peeled: also in midair, letting the slices fall into the bowl of water. Again, silence fell and all eyes turned to me: the white girl can peel, but can she slice? Once they saw that I could, they started yakking away in Fula again as if I weren’t even there. To my horror, a tear slid down my cheek, then another, and I bent over my work to hide my face. What was happening? Was I starting to crack, as the Peace Corps had warned I might?
I forced back the tears and concentrated on the objects in the yard to take my mind off myself. The corrugated metal fence was streaked with rust, the ground dotted with vegetable peelings, tomato-paste cans, calabashes, a stray flip-flop, a pile of goat droppings, and the plastic cap of a Bic pen. A chicken pecked for grains of rice. A teenage girl sauntered in with a bucket of water on her head, which she emptied into an enormous earthenware vessel. Woodsmoke filled the air, mingling with the scent of mango leaves and sweat.
Night falls fast close to the equator. Stars popped out by the trillions, layers and layers reaching far back into space. It got surprisingly chilly. Someone draped a shawl over my shoulders. Pulling it closer, I turned around to thank her, but whoever it was had gone back to work. Two of the women lifted a heavy black cauldron onto the fire, their faces glowing in the twilight. Oil sizzled as they dropped pieces of chicken in it.
When dinner was ready, we went into Ya Sajo’s house. Her receiving room was furnished with two iron bedsteads on opposite walls. One bed was covered in pink chenille, the other in seafoam green. An enormous bowl of millet, chicken, and sauce had been placed on a cloth on the linoleum floor. Next to it, a kerosene lamp cast a dim light. I joined the women and children on the floor. In most Gambian families, especially big ones like this, the men ate separately.
Ya Sajo offered me a spoon but I demurred, wanting to practice eating the Gambian way: by forming a little ball of food in my hand and popping it into my mouth without making a mess.
The chicken was succulent and spicy. The red pepper and onion sauce brightened up the millet. I thanked the women and they smiled, prodding me to eat more.
I went outside for a bucket bath after dinner, and when I came back in shivering, Ya Sajo showed me to a bed. I climbed under the covers and slid into a pleasant drowse. The sheets were smooth, and the soft weight of the chenille felt delicious. The women bustled around the room, their shadows waxing and waning on the pockmarked walls. My limbs grew heavy as the lilting sounds of Fula coursed around me like an uncharted river. I was bobbing on top of the water, but the current suddenly swept me under, where I could understand every word the women were saying. Then as suddenly as it had pulled me under, the river flung me back to the surface, and I gasped for air.
After living in Medina for three months, I still struggled with unpredictable urges to cry. The Peace Corps had told my training group it would take six months to know if we could adjust to village life well enough to serve for the full two years. Though it hadn’t been nearly that long, I was afraid I lacked some vital ingredient that successful volunteers possessed, some mysterious leavening agent that allowed them to rise to the most difficult challenge while I sank into the morass.
My only official duties were to weigh babies at the local dispensary—not my idea of making sustainable change—and to give health lessons, which the women mostly ignored, preferring to chat among themselves while I waxed eloquent about the nutritional benefits of vegetables. Frustrated and bored, I decided to start a community project. I went from compound to compound, asking people what they thought would most improve their health. “More medicine,” they invariably said, which was the one thing I couldn’t give them. When I explained that I was a teacher and couldn’t dispense medicine, they didn’t buy it. I was white. I worked at the dispensary. Therefore, I had to be a doctor or a nurse.
One sweltering day in late July, I’d had it. The women had just laughed at one of my visual aids—admittedly, it was of a stick figure pooping into a latrine—my male colleague at the dispensary had taken to asking probing questions about my sex life, and the villagers kept staring at me as if I were some kind of exotic beast.
Tending the onions, photograph by the author
I grabbed my backpack and hit the road in my jogging shoes, headed for the highway five miles away. I would wait for a bush-taxi to take me to the Peace Corps office in Banjul, the capital. From there I would proceed to the airport, and from there to Knoxville. Home! The mere thought of it made me giddy.
I broke into a jog, my canteen banging against my hip, stopping only when I got a stitch in my side. Drenched in sweat, I wiped my face with my T-shirt and drank from the canteen, my pulse pounding in my ears. Since the rains had begun, the savannah had leafed out into shades of green ranging from citrine to holly, so dazzling they made me squint. Now that I was standing still, an uninvited voice chimed in: Remember how smug you felt when you told all those people who thought you would never join the Peace Corps that you had not only joined, but would be leaving for Africa in a few weeks? How you savored their disbelief, admiration, and envy? What will they think if you return only a few months later? What will you think? If you go home now, you’ll be right back where you started. You won’t have done a thing to help the villagers—worse, you wouldn’t really have tried. You’ll lose what little self-confidence you still possess and fall into a hole so deep you might never climb out of it.
As if of their own accord, my feet took me back to the village, where nothing was beautiful to my eye. All I noticed was the goat dung in the road, the rust on the metal roofs, the puddles buzzing with mosquitos. A woman greeted me with a dazzling smile—and suddenly, to my astonishment, I missed my mother. Alarmed, I rushed to my house, flung myself on the bed, and buried my face in a pillow. By the time I stopped crying, my body felt as if it had melted into the mattress. I told myself I should be outside, engaged with the world instead of hiding from it. But I couldn’t face all those eyes sizing me up, everybody speaking Fula. God only knew what they were saying about me. Couldn’t go out. Tired, so tired. I wasn’t strong, as I’d thought. I was just a girl who missed her mother.
I bolted from the village countless times after that, only to return and hole up sobbing in my house. I gradually came to realize that my meltdowns weren’t just about culture shock. They were also about how my father started cheating on my mother when I was thirteen; about how I didn’t let it break my heart (or so I thought), because my mother had turned me into her confidant and needed me to be strong. My meltdowns were about how she swallowed a handful of sleeping pills after my father moved out, and how she came home from the mental health center two weeks later, finally separating herself from Dad, but in so doing, also separating herself from my sister and me. Physically present but emotionally absent, she was an ambiguous loss I couldn’t fully grieve, so I kept hoping for the return of the woman she had been before my father broke her down. Tender. Fierce. Creative. Funny. Present.
In Medina, deprived of the people, routines, and diversions that filled my life at home, I was thrown in on myself. In Medina, at last I grieved.
If a stranger hadn’t arrived in the village one evening, I might not have lasted. It had been four months since my group was sworn in, and one person had already gone home. Another was about to, and another—a woman who seemed incredibly well adjusted because she hardly ever left her village—had committed suicide by ingesting her entire supply of anti-malarial pills.
Dusk was falling when I heard the full-throated rumble of a jeep, unusual at any time but especially this late in the day. I opened my door just as a UNICEF Land Rover pulled up in front of Alhaji Baba’s compound. A woman got out and, seeing me on my stoop, waved.
“Hi! I’m Samantha Oliver. I heard there’s a Peace Corps volunteer here. Can I crash at your place tonight?”
Drunk at the prospect of company, I welcomed her into my house. In her mid-thirties, she had the look of a person who spent a lot of time in the sun—darkened skin, lightened hair, crow’s feet around the eyes.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “I’ve got some crackers and sardines.”
“I’ve eaten, but I’d love a bath and a cup of tea.”
Tending the garden, photograph by author
She went outside for a bucket bath while I lit candles and made tea. We settled on my makeshift sofa—a twin bed with throw pillows—and talked until two in the morning. She told me about her work and travels and her loves in Egypt, Mali, and Chad. I told her about my disturbing mood swings, my frustration, loneliness, and boredom, about holing up in my hut one day and fleeing the village the next. After I finished pouring out my woes, she set down her cup.
“Africa,” she said, “takes you and turns you inside out. But what you come out of it with is your own.”
Time slowed as my thoughts multiplied, joining into one loud chorus: nothing was wrong with me! I wasn’t heading for a nervous breakdown—Africa was just telling me that if I wanted to grow, to make even a tiny difference here, I would have to start from my softest, weakest, neediest spot, not from an inflated sense of my own strength.
“I want to help the villagers do something that will improve their health,” I said, “but I don’t know what that something is.”
“Just stick it out long enough—that’s half the work. One day you’ll hit on it and it’ll seem so obvious, you’ll wonder why you didn’t think of it before.”
“Wow,” I sighed. “Thank you for telling me this. Maybe I won’t feel so out of control now.”
“Oh, you will,” she laughed. “Just know it’s normal, especially during the first six months.”
The Peace Corps had told me as much, but Samantha’s words resonated in my core. We went to sleep soon after that, and she left at dawn, heading for the mountains of Guinea-Bissau. I never saw her again.
Reframed, my moods became less extreme. I didn’t beat myself up for my weakness, so I bounced back faster. A few weeks after Samantha’s visit, as I was giving yet another health lesson about the nutritional benefits of vegetables, it hit me: other than onions and garlic and the occasional yam, there were no vegetables in Medina. No wonder the women didn’t take me seriously! What we needed was a garden bursting with tomatoes, eggplant, and cabbage, with lettuce, carrots, and onions—lots of onions—a garden that could feed the entire village.
It was so obvious, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.
How does a spirit new to the world, baffled by the family domain and its customs, but above all curious, come to discover its essence? What does any child carry into the present from ancestors whose histories have been assimilated and long forgotten? These are the questions poet Leslie Ullman explores in her sixth collection.
In the process, what at first appears to be a chronicle of a mid-century childhood becomes an interrogation of the very nature of the soul—its origins, its purpose, its evolution in a given lifetime. Sometimes humorous and gently satirical in their depictions of a middle-class America whose values once seemed unassailable, these poems reconstruct a personal history as they mull over the universal burdens of self-doubt, ambition, and inevitable relinquishments, and then taste the pleasures of traveling light.
Linda Gambill has worked in a psychiatric hospital, exhibited her photography nationwide, and taught English as a Second Language. She is currently finishing a memoir about her years in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, an excerpt of which was published in the literary journal Parhelion. The recipient of several residencies at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts, she lives in Tennessee with her husband and their irrepressible rescue cat.