Stichting Humanitaire Hulp Gambia België

The afternoon sunrays embrace the kitchen window.  I am washing up and see the little girl – she is barely six years old – totter to the water pump with two empty yellow jerry cans; her two month old baby brother tied to her back.  The water has to be pumped up by hand.  The village has no mains electricity.  The pump’s solar panel, donated twelve months ago by some Toubab organisation, was stolen shortly after its installation.  She is quite small for her age so every time the crank moves up she dangles in the air.  With little steps, a weighty can in each hand, she stumbles back to her compound.  She is tired.  Her arms ache.  It’s wash day today.  The river is too far away to take the washing there.  She pours the water in the multi-coloured plastic basins and returns to the pump.  After her seventh trip her mother deems there is sufficient water.  The baby is asleep.  Carefully she lays him on the thin mattress in the hut.  She worries.  Last night he kept on howling and even her mother could not calm him down.  She hopes he won’t die, like her other little brother.  He wailed for two days after he had fallen in the smouldering ashes.  Even the medicine man couldn’t make him well.  She defies her two younger sisters from entering the hut and thus waking the infant.

Her mother hands her half a bar of soap.  She rubs it over the children’s clothes, but the soap is cheap and hard and doesn’t froth.  She applies more force on the dirty patches.  If they had more clothes, she reflects, then the clothes wouldn’t get so dirty and the task wouldn’t be so laborious.  She glances at her mother who is lathering the clothes of the adults.  As second wife it is her mother’s duty to carry out the arduous jobs in the compound:  first to get up, stoke up the fire, bake tapalapas for breakfast, ensure there is sufficient water and wood, sweep the compound, wash the clothes of her husband and her children, and yes also those of mama 1 and her offspring.  What’s more, five days a week her mother works on the Alkali’s land: chopping, raking, weeding, fetching water until her back is bent double.  Her mother examines her work but finds it wanting.  Those stains must come out!  What does she think she’s doing!  Silently she slaves on.  She examines the lines on her mother’s face that tell her that her mother is unhappy.  Last night, just as they all fell asleep her father entered the hut.  He woke them and sent her and her two siblings outside.  Go to mama 1, he said.  Her sisters, half asleep, waddled to the dwelling at the other side of the compound but she lingered behind the dark shadows of the cooking hut.  She likes her dad, but to tell the truth she is a little afraid of him.  She heard her father reprimanded her mother because the Alkali was dissatisfied with her: she was not quick enough, her work was sloppy.  Her mother pleaded with her father to ask the Alkali to replace the blunt spades and to have a second waterhole dug because the field was simply too large for just one bore hole.  She heard a blow.  Her father snarled: there was no complaining!  Another wallop.  This was their fate and if they didn’t work harder there wouldn’t be enough money to buy the next bag of rice!  Lie down, he snapped at his wife.  It went quiet and after a while her father left.  When she re-entered the hut her mother lay curled up whimpering softly.  And then the baby started to squeal.

Slap, that blow went home.  Ouch, ouch.  Another slap hits her ear.  You’re daydreaming!  The washing won’t go away!  Her mother is quite angry.  Make haste and quickly!  The sun is past its summit.  Everything still needs to be rinsed and then you have to gather wood for mama 1 to cook the evening meal!  Bewildered she looks at her tiny wrinkled hands.  She rubs and scrubs harder and faster.  She does not want mama 1 to be angry.  She hits harder than her own mother and furthermore when mama 1 is irritated, the portions become smaller.

The baby awakens and cries hungrily.  Her mother puts him to her breast while she rushes yet again to the water hole to fetch water for the mandatory cleansing of hands and feet that precede the evening prayer.
When she returns, she ties the baby to her back and goes in search of kindling wood.  On the way she meets the school children.  The school is two hours walk from the village.  She doesn’t know how long two hours is, but is must be very, very long.  Mama 1’s eldest son is always worn out when he returns.  I’m thirsty, give me water, he commands her.  When I grow up, I too will go to school, she considers.  I don’t want to be doing the washing and working on the land every day.  According to her dad if you can write, you can earn good money.  But then, why don’t mama 1’s other children go to school as well?  She shakes her head; she doesn’t understand.  When I grow up, she muses, what would I do?  What do I want to be?  Certainly not one of those women in white coats who a few times a year visit the neighbouring village to inspect the new born babies.  They inspect the infants, press their tummies, look into their mouths, weigh them (a strange kind of bag on a hook), write in a big white ledger and then with a sharp steel point jab the arm of the babes.  Now that’s just really stupid, because inevitably the little ones start to howl.  No, and besides those women exude a strange odour.  What would I be?  What could I be?  Not like her mother who aged fourteen was married off to a much older man.  As second wife her mother has obey all the demands of her father and mama 1.  No, definitely not that.  But in truth, isn’t this my father’s decision?  She doesn’t want to consider this probability.  She frowns; tries to conjure up jobs done by women who can write.   But the only women she knows are those in the village who are all mothers who have never been to school.  Even her father, who knows everything, has never had any schooling, except with the marabout.   But there you don’t learn to write and moreover that’s only for boys.  Ah, nearly forgot.  Mama 1’s sister, who came to visit during Tobaski dressed in a gorgeous gown, is a teacher.     After she left mama 1 explained that her sister taught a class full of girls in a big school in the city.  Yes, this appeals to her.  What’s more she supposes that teachers don’t have to work during holidays or Tobaski; that teachers can do as they please such as visiting relatives and wearing beautiful – who would wash those - clothes.  Yes, that’s settled, she is determined: she will become a teacher.  Finally sufficient wood is gathered.  She must hurry, the sun is going down.  She runs back to the compound.  She’s too late.  Smack.  Ouch! Right on the ear.  Another smack.  The ear of the cup in my hand breaks.  The water is stone cold, my hands are totally wrinkled; the washing up is only half done.  I throw away the cup; there are eleven more in the sideboard.  I take the washing out of the machine and put it in the tumble dryer.  The pizza from the deepfreeze goes into the oven and will be ready by the time my husband comes home.  After our meal we will visit his mother.  I go back to the washing up.  I open the tap letting the warm water flow pleasantly over my hands and think, I have so much and she has
nothing.
4 juni 2010