For this post, I wanted to touch on two significant cultural differences that I have learned about Gambian cultural to that of what I'm familiar with in America. There are many differences of course, but these are the two that stood out to me the most.
As I had mentioned in an earlier post, time is not an issue with the people here. They go about their days their own way without being in any rush. I found this to be an interesting and low stress lifestyle, but it goes much deeper than that. Many Gambians are not even concerned about their age, because they don't even know how old they actually are. This is common among those that are born in villages. If you were to ask them when they were born, they would tell that they were born during a particular season and not know the date. So needless to say, many Gambians do not celebrate birthdays. They just go on living their lives without worrying about the number of years they've accumulated.
I have also found marriage proposals here to be interesting. Marriage proposals are done with kola nuts. Kola nuts are what Gambians use for a variety of customary greetings and ceremonies. For marriage proposals, if a man wants to marry a woman. He will present a kola nut to the woman's parents and then go back and tell his own parents. Then his parents will go talk to the woman's parents, and if they decide that they can be married then the woman's parents will give a kola nut to the man's parents. I found this to be a very interesting custom. What I found most interesting about this is that sometimes this can occur without the woman's knowledge, and she will discover that her parents have chosen a husband for her.
I continue to learn intriguing things about the people here. Somethings may be overwhelming at first, but I keep an open-mind about them. I have been living in Baja Kunda for a little over a month now, and the people are getting to know me better. The children in my host family walk with me whenever I venture out into the village and show me around. So things are going great, and I look forward to see what else I can learn from the people here.
