the lessons we learned as kids will never fail us

Dear friend,

The week ended on a kind of a high, with two solid hours of actual work in the lab! The protocol for my experiment has been finalised, and now it's just a matter of setting up what is needed then trialing it with a patient's blood. It was a welcomed relief, spending a couple hours pippetting tiny micro-amounts of peptides, my thoughts lost in a world of science. It's taken a week of little progress but alas my project is finally up and running.

Fridays are half-days here in The Gambia, as it is the Holy Day of prayer, so work and town in general are a bit quieter on Friday afternoons which is nice. I finished up around one, grabbed some lunch from the little eatery on the compound, followed by a couple hours of reading in my air conditioned room. Then around four, after discussion with one of the other students re- dinner plans (deciding to eat in), I headed to 'town' to buy some dinner supplies. It was another scorching hot day today, but the fifteen minute stroll was actually very enjoyable.

Every time I've been at the grocery store I've fantasized about buying an ice-cream and today I finally did it. Walking out of the grocery store, I unwrapped my ice-cream -- and the first bite was absolute perfection. BUT (because nothing comes easy here!) within twenty seconds the entire ice-cream was began melting away under the African heat, crumbling away on its stick, so I had to shove the remaining half down my gullet in one ginormous bite. Same number of calories for less the tasty pleasure. :( That first bite was worth it though.

Instead of walking straight back to the compound via a kind of short-cut through the back entrance of MRC, I decided to take the long way around. I've seen these paintings lined up against the main road en route to MRC -- beautiful, colourful canvases, two of which have haunted me ever since I saw them a few weeks ago. And if I'm going to buy anything while I'm here, it's going to be artwork. I've looked around some other markets, but haven't seen anything quite like these. So I've been meaning to walk over and inquire about them, which I finally did today. There were a group of people just sitting around this hut near the paintings (as is not an uncommon sight in Africa, people just sitting/lying around all day outside), so I went over to them to ask. They called over another guy who introduced himself as Ibrahim; as we walked over to the paintings by the side of the road, he told me that one of the main artists was his brother. I had noticed that the paintings had distinct styles and the two that captured my fancy had been done by the same person -- Ibrahim's brother. As we talked about the paintings, dancing around a price (waiting for the official 'negotiation' to start) two other men walked over to us, one of whom was Ibrahim's brother, the artist in question. I explained how I really loved his paintings and wanted to buy some. (On retrospect, I probably should have appeared less enthusiastic in order to get a better deal... admittedly, my haggling skills are pretty pathetic.)

In the end, he did give me a 'discount' but I'm sure it's not nearly as much as I could have gotten if I was more staunch. But to be honest, I probably would have paid more than that back home for a painting half as nice. So I've 'commissioned' him to do three and am excited to pick them up next week. He wanted an advance, claiming how he needs to buy paint materials and how it's low season so money's tight and how he needs to pay a carpenter to create the wooden canvas, etcetera etcetera. When he brought up the whole advance thing (and it was a lot! he wanted half of the total!) the idea that I may be getting utterly ripped off suddenly crossed my mind: How did I know that these guys were the actual owners/sellers of these paintings? How did I know this guy who claimed to be the artist really was the artist? I said that to him flat-out, and to his defense said I could ask anyone around to vouch for him (i.e. the people working at the petrol station across the street). I guess that was enough for me.

As I was walking back to the compound along the main road, excited about my newly commissioned paintings, this mini-van started to pull over, the driver waving at me. I kept walking, but this other random guy who was also walking along the street went over to the driver to talk to him. The driver was blatantly ignoring him but rolled down his window and asked me if I wanted a ride. I wondered if, in fact, I had met him before and just couldn't recall or if this really was just a complete stranger offering me a ride. Either way, I could hear every parent's voice in my head saying, 'Never get in to a stranger's car,' so I waved him away with a polite, no thank you, perfectly content on my slow walk home.

The mini-van drove off and I was left with this random guy who had approached the driver not two seconds ago. He was an elderly gentleman in the typical Muslim dress, with a big smile revealing half his teeth that were either missing and/or rotting. He said to me, 'Good job, good good. You didn't get into his car.' I said a quick and sharp 'Hellohowareyou' as is customary, and nodded in acknowledgement of his comment. 'He only offered you ride because you are white woman. I asked for ride and he said no. He only offered because you are white...' He continued to elaborate as I kept on my steady pace home, and went on to introduce himself and talk at me for another hundred metres or so. I listened with polite reluctance, realising we were on the same trajectory on our respective walks. In a situation like this, however, I can never tell if they are just being friendly or if at the end of it they are gonna want something from me. So I remain cautiously suspicious, as is (unfortunately) required here.

In the end he didn't want anything from me, just conversation. But I was still happy when our paths finally diverged and we said our good-bye.

Learning point of the day? The lessons we learned as kids will never fail us. LoL

Always,

-A