Friday Afternoon
on Phil Bradfield (The Gambia), 01/May/2010 12:27, 34 days ago
(Written 30/04/2010 16:30, My House, Janjanbureh)Half past four, Friday afternoon. The middle-of-the-day lull between the two o’clock and five o’clock prayers, when everybody retreats from the blazing heat as the sun send its daily reminder of just who’s the boss round here.Today’s not so bad as some: a slight breeze has taken pity on us poor humans, rustling the leaves on the few trees and bouncing the washing hung on the line across the compound. That’s about all that’s moving though, apart from the odd hardy soul plodding past the compound gate. Even the flies arereluctant to take flight when I shake them off me.But there are signs of life still, if you open your ears wide enough. The town is suffused by a soothing murmur of voices, barely audible but definitely there, and there’s the odd sheep’s baa or cock’s crow which cuts through the background hum. Closer to hand, just a few feet from where I’m sitting out on the step of my house, I can hear the voice of my landlord’s wife, Mrs Ceesay, speaking in Mandinka to one of my neighbours, a lady called Hawa. They’re in Hawa’s house, and I can only catch the odd word of what they’re saying, but even of those I can only understand maybe one in ten anyway.The lethargy is broken: six year old Babasol wants something from his grandma, his shrill voice shredding the air. Mrs Ceesay shouts something unintelligible back at him, and the exchange is over. Even Babasol, aka Hyperkid, isn’t wasting any energy at the moment.“What’s your name?”A young girl’s voice, speaking English. I glance up at the gate and see two of them there peeking in at me. Maybe eight or nine years old“My name’s Sankumbaa. What’s yours?”No response. I suppress a sigh and revert back to the only way she’s likely to understand the question, the way she’s probably learnt it by rote in school: “What’s your name?”Half hiding behind her hand, the speaker tells me her name’s Wuday. At least I think that’s what she says, it’s not a name I’ve come across before. Wide-eyed, the two of them move on, giggling about their short conversation with thetoubab.A new sound is suddenly added to the mix: two of Janjanbureh’s mosques have started their calls to prayer almost simultaneously. The fainter of the two, somewhere away to my left, is having problems with their sound system, and strange pops and echoes disrupt the chant. But the nearer of the two, just a few compounds to my right, is much clearer. Today’schanter is good, his voice rising and falling in both pitch and volume while maintaining a mysterious, almost hypnotic rhythm.Right on cue, the door immediately to my left rattles open and my neighbour Mr Bah emerges, smoothing his immaculate patterned robes.“Sankumbaa, i be siiriŋjaŋdammaa”, he says as he locks the door behind him. I have to ask him to repeat himself, and when he does I still don’t understand the final word, which he pronounces “dam-mar”. “Dammaa means alone”, he tells me.Nodding in comprehension, I cobble together a reply:“I je moolu doo baŋ?” This time he doesn’t understand me: as usual, I’ve got the Mandinka wrong, so I have to switch back into English: “You see any other people here?”He chuckles as he gets what I mean.“Hanii, m maa moo je”. No, I don’t see anyone. He turns towards the gate. “N ka taa saloo”.I don’t need his gesture of prostration to understand him this time: he’s telling me he’s going to pray. “Iyoo”, OK, I respond as his worldly, paternal figure heads out of the gate. Then, on the spur of the moment, I call him back to ask a question: What is the word for mosque in Mandinka? “Jaamaŋo”, he tells me. He’s used to this kind of thing: Mr Bah is one of my many unofficial language tutors here. He himself is Fula, not Mandinka, but he speaks Mandinka fluently and his English is also excellent, even by Gambia’s high standards. The occasional evenings that I spend drinking ataayawith him and another of neighbours, Sering Diwa, are prime language learning times for me.By the time Mr Bah returns after twenty minutes or so, the air has noticeably cooled and the buzz of voices from the town is increasing in volume. Mrs Ceesay’s voice has also got louder, though no more intelligible, and Babasol is getting his vocal cords ready for the evening with a few warm-up shrieks. He bounces up to me and says something very fast in Mandinka, the only word of which I catch is “mobiiloo”. This, combined with the way he pointsto his ears, is enough to tell me roughly what he’s jabbering about: the fact that I’ve not got my earphones in, listening to music on my phone. A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to some music and let Babasol and his friend Ebrima listen in for a while. I played them a little bit of everything I had stored on there: some Bob Marley, some BB King, a bunch of other stuff. Figuring that they wouldn’t have a clue whatever I played, I also took a secret pleasure in playing them some music which, back in Britain, would have been considered highly age-inappropriate: System of a Down, RageAgainst the Machine, Disturbed, NWA. It still makes me chuckle to think that I introduced two Gambian children to Western music by playing themKilling in the Name.The compound is definitely waking up from its afternoon slumber now, ready to take advantage of the short window between the heat of the day and the darkness of the night. A man I don’t recognise appears, and Mrs Ceesay introduces him as her brother, Umar. I study his face closely, hoping I’ll be able to remember it. In Janjanbureh, people who recognise outnumber people who I recognise by at least two to one, and I’d like to improve that ratio if I can. Besides, in Gambianterms Umar is practically family, given that I was named by his sister’s husband, so I really should make an effort.With prayers over and the sun dropping, Janjanbureh is now fully back in action: there are more footsteps in the street outside, and their crunching is joined by the rhythmic swish of Mrs Ceesay’s brush as she sweeps the step. Hawa, along with Mrs Ceesay’s daughter Tida, have also emerged from Hawa’s house and are busying themselves with bucket and bowls. At the far end of the compound, the sheep and chickens set up a cacophony as Mrs Ceesay’s husband, Baba Jaabii, gives them theirevening feed. I sigh, and put aside my pencil. The Gambians around me are telling me what I knew already: that it’s time to stop sitting around and get on with some work. I have to collect water from the tap in the compound, trying not to step on the chickens in the process, and my house needs agood sweeping too. Sweeping must be one of the most time-consuming activities in The Gambia; no matter how careful you are, the dust gets everywhere and on everything. It’s one of those ongoing battles which you can never win; no matter how frantically you fight, the best you can hope for is not to be overwhelmed. Just like the daily standoff with the sun, in fact. Apollo may have relented for the meantime, leaving us free to get on with our lives, but we all know that tomorrow, regardless of anything we might do, he’ll be back to remind us once again of who’s really in charge.