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| Elyse Yeager/ Girdwood Rotary Tom and Lenore Yeager with Mr. Yeero, the English teacher of Medina-Wallo, Gambia where Girdwood Rotary is funding a project to build a new kitchen. |
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| Tom Yeager/ Girdwood Rotary Elyse Yeager, daughter of Tom & Lenorre Yeager of the Girdwood Rotary, talk with teachers at the Medina-Wallom school in Gambia. Girdwood Rotary is funding a new kitchen which upon completion will make the school children eligible for aid from the World Food Program. |
By Tom Yeager
Special to the Turnagain Times
On May 4, my wife Lenore and I arrived in Banjul, The Gambia, a country on the extreme West Coast of Africa. We were there to visit our daughter, Elyse, who was in her eleventh month of working as a Peace Corps volunteer. We were also there as representatives of Girdwood Rotary, which was funding a school project to build a new kitchen and latrine in the rural African village of Madina-Wallom, located about 250 kilometers up The Gambia River.
Three days after our arrival, we traveled to the village under a relentless equatorial sun, rising in the West African sky as the three displaced Girdwoodians trudged down the remote up-country road in The Gambia. After a mercifully short walk, dark silhouettes began to emerge from the shimmering heat waves that obscured their view of the road ahead. Approaching to within hearing distance of the increasing number of silhouettes, we slowed our pace as we walked up to the group of village elders and 80 singing children.
After hearing several repetitions of the children’s song: “Welcome Jibbeh’s parents, we are very happy,” it became apparent that this was an unexpected welcoming committee from the near-by Fulla village of Madina-Wallom. We, the visiting toubabs (white folks), were to be guests of honor for a truly remarkable celebration.
The series of events that led up to this unexpected welcome began a few months earlier when my daughter included in an email to me a draft of a proposal she was writing for soliciting funds to upgrade a particularly needy village school. The proposal language was far from what would be expected in a typical American business plan. The villager’s sweat equity for the construction of a mud brick kitchen and latrine included labor for harvesting timber from surrounding land, and transporting construction material in the villager’s donkey carts. A particularly significant benefit to be gained by completion of the project was eligibility for the children to receive food from the World Food Program.
I recognized that this was the kind of project that would qualify as an International Service project for Girdwood Rotary. Club members whole heartedly agreed and voted unanimously to fund the cost of the proposed school upgrades.
While leading the parade of singing children and village elders from the road to the village, we came to the realization that we had unexpectedly been thrust into the awkward position of basking in the reflected glory of my daughter’s hard work and Girdwood Rotary’s generosity.
After being given a tour of the four-room mud brick school, and being dressed in the appropriate African attire, the three of us were led to seats of honor in the shade of a large baobab tree. The formal ceremony opened with elaborate pontification (with English translation) by several village elders, and closed with the energetic beat of African drums. The substitution of empty water jugs for actual drums did nothing to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm. The raucous applause occasioned by our attempts to dance was, unquestionably, polite appreciation for our comedic efforts, rather than acknowledgement of any skill at African dancing.
The day’s events came to a close with a feast. We watched squeamishly as a goat was slaughtered in our honor, an event somewhat placated by the fact that the children’s meal was to include the luxury of goat meat.
At the time of this writing, the rainy season was fast approaching Gambia and the villagers of Madina-Wallom, who are in a race with Mother Nature to complete the upgrades to their school. Even though they may never see a mountain, and know the word for snow, the Fulla villagers are keenly aware of the generosity of their friends from a distant place surrounded by snow covered mountains called Girdwood.