My Two Dads

Happy Father’s Day to my two dads: Andrew (Andy) Bowman and Hamat (Bukary) Sallah.  For my Father’s Day post I decided to interview my two dads.  It’s been a fun paternal comparison from two different parts of the world.  But I am so glad to have two strong role models of men and humans in my life.  I am reminded by this interview of how much I still have to learn from both my dads.

My two dads on my family’s recent visit to the Gambia.

First, a little bit about my dads.  Andy is 61 and has been a father since he was 34 years old.  He has three children from 23 (almost 24!) to 27.  He is a city planner, grew up near Detroit, MI and currently lives in Grand Rapids, MI.  Hamat is 43 and has been a father since he was 22. He has eight children from 1 (almost 2!) to 21.  He is a teacher and farmer.  He grew up and lives currently in Misera, the Gambia.

The Interview:

What is your favorite memory of your own father? 

Andy: I think it had to be his famous motorcycle ride.  A friend of his at work (who ended up marrying his niece Suzy) brought his big new motorcycle to our little house in a freshly minted subdivision in sprawling Novi, Michigan.  His friend was a young hefty man with a humor similar to his own (Bowman humor), and Dad was always talking about Terrell. My dad was never one to let his inability to walk get in the way of anything, so he agreed enthusiastically when Terrell asked if he wanted a ride. The logistics were quickly hatched (no sense over thinking a senseless act), and they made themselves ready – much to the dismay of his wife (my mom) and the delight of his 3 young sons.  He lifted Dad out of his wheelchair, positioned him on the seat and fixed his feet on the foot pegs.  I would guess my two older brothers might have helped, but his legs were permanently in a bent position so he fit the bike just fine.  The minor indignity of his being lifted on the bike disappeared as soon as Terrell mounted the driver’s position, righted the machine and started it up.  A huge smile spread across my dad’s face as he donned his cool sunglasses, hugged his friend and readied for his ride.  Terrell fired up his bike, gave a few deeply bellowing revs of the engine and took off.  Dad looked so cool, happy and NOT a victim of the American polio scourge.  Thanks to my Mom for that memory as well since she did not employ a wife/mom override and stop this event. The story is anti-climatic for the reader since the ride went without a hitch.  But for this man and his family, it was far from that!

Hamat: I cannot remember him.  I was 2 when he died.  I don’t know how he looked. He was a tailor.  My mom kept a cap he’d sewn.  I would look at it sometimes.  It is somehow different than how they sew caps today.  I use that to think of him.

Did you feel prepared to become a father?  (Why or why not?)  

Andy: Yes, but prepared is not how it felt. It may have been similar to the way my dad was “prepared” for the motorcycle ride in the story above. It was kind of a leap of faith but maybe more like a leap of nature. By 34, I knew myself pretty well and, with that many years living a human life, I had a lot of training for the job.  Having children and raising a family, despite our best efforts to over-think it, is in essence an act of nature.  If you feel ready to fully share what and who you are, having children is amazingly easy and rewarding.  It is not like sharing your life (as with a lover, companion or spouse).  It is a creative act in that one is creating another human being (from scratch in our case).  But it is mostly the ultimate act of giving… not sharing, but giving.  I had the great fortune of sharing that portion of my life with such a wonderful brood, but it was the act of giving myself fully to the formation of their human nature that is the most rewarding.

Dad, Kam, and I on a Father’s Day from many moons ago.

Hamat: No.  Traditionally, you marry and sit for some years in your father’s compound before you start bearing children.  For me, it was different.  My biological father past away when I was 2 years old so I was raised by my step father.  When I married, I started bearing children. This made me a responsible person at an early age.

Dad and my baby brother Lamin.

Why did you become a father?

Andy:  I was ready, (as mentioned above), and I had recently committed myself to sharing my life with a loving partner who complimented my ability to be a father biologically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, socially, etc., etc.

Hamat: Because I married and bore children. As far as life is concerned, I always knew I would be a father.

What is the best part about being a father?   

Andy: The successful lives of my children.  Not economic success, but the exertion of their respective capabilities in living a good human life.  It is the kind of reward that makes one feel like they passed the last great ordeal of their membership to humanity.

Hamat: When you bear children and they grow up – they help providing some of the needs.

Dad with Lianna and I.

Dad and baby Lamin and Sheik on his farm.

What is the most difficult part about being a father?

Andy:  I think all parents, from all cultures, would agree on this one.  It is letting your children learn from failure without remedial interventions.

Hamat: Providing the necessary things – clothing them, feeding them, giving shelter.

What are you proud of? 

Andy: My children, of course.  But not so much all the details of their new lives (though I am very happy about that and feel a smaller sense of pride).  I am most proud of them as having responded so well to their mother’s and my way of raising them.  I think we were all a part of a successful family and we all enriched each other’s lives in the process. They are making good decisions for their lives, contributing to society, and remain an ongoing part of the story of our family as well.  I could not be prouder!

Hamat: My age-mates also are fathers.  I am proud of bearing children, especially boys.  Some people become fathers and don’t bear children.

My dad is the one with the knife to the rams throat.

My dad working on a world map project with one of the boys from my village.

What item is indispensable for a father? 

Andy: Permeability. It is sometimes hard for men to open up and fully share their lives with their family.  It is also hard to recognize what their children (and life partners for that matter) give back as elements for their lives. Fathers have to train themselves to allow the flow of experiences and feelings in both directions.

Hamat: Eh! Is it not food?

Dad preparing the meat for Tobaski.

Dad preparing the meat for Thanksgiving.

What advice do you have for young fathers?  

Andy: Commit to becoming an integral part of a family, especially during child rearing years. Creating or adopting children makes one a father in name only.  It is the founding of a functional family that really makes one a father. Active participation in this ultimate creative act is at least a 20 year proposition. In our fast changing world it is getting much harder to determine exactly what will happen with the next 20 years of your life, so it is even more important today to make a specific and strong commitment to participating in the creation and fulfillment of a family before becoming a parent.

Hamat: They should plan before marrying.  They should get prepared. Because the generation today is quite different than before when you had a large family in order to go to the farm and cultivate big land.  Now we are in the modern world, having a large family is always a problem.  You should plan to minimize difficult living conditions.   Some men think Allah will provide everything if you bear children.  But it’s not so.  You have to struggle to provide food and shelter for your children.  It will not be easy.  Traditionally, when you become a father, dependency is very high because we believe in social living.  Some of the family will always depend on you. So I think planning for your future before being a father can minimize those problems.

How do you think being a father in the US is different/similar to being a father in the Gambia? 

Andy:  I think much of what I have talked above is shared between our cultures.  However, I think one big difference is in the way fathers allow their children to fail (learn). In the US, it seems like fathering is looked at as an attribute of judgment. I think Americans in general tend to see the world through their own individual lives and put the performance of their children on display as a sign of their own personal success or failure. This leads to overprotective parents fearful of diminishing returns on their children if they don’t attend the right school, or win the prize at the game, or wear the right clothing, or get the right grades, or get the right car, job, etc., etc. These are all signs of success in the US and in some ways make it seem like we now even commodify family life like everything else we do.

In the Gambia, it seemed like children must learn the skills of survival as part of daily life.  Their success is sustenance for both for themselves and their families.  Children are agents of the family and help make things happen.  Successful families appear to be ones with lots of children. Fathering also seemed more like a management technique, (they are makers of key family decisions while the wives and children carry out the menial tasks of daily living).  In subsistence conditions, there may be little time for cultural learning outside the family or village and aesthetics or artistic enjoyment are made more a part of daily life in the compound (singing, dancing, clothing, etc.).

In America, there has been a new awareness of missing a vital organic form of learning – exploring the world!  It is called “free range” parenting.  It is so odd to think that we have so overprotected or children and insulated ourselves from adversity that we have to re-learn how important it is to freely explore the world and grapple with survival. On the other hand, while visiting my daughter in the Gambia, I was heartened to see many important efforts for creating infrastructure and schools and a concerted emphasis on education and other cultural advancement for all Gambians.  Perhaps both of our respective cultures have lots to learn (or re-learn) and so much of it surrounds the value of creating good, healthy families.

Hamat: Here, people like being fathers and bearing so many children to have a large family.  In the US, I think they plan.  Here, we don’t plan, we just jump and get into it.

My dads working together to create a meal in my compound during my family’s visit. (Thanks for the photo, Dan Tanner)

Thanks to both my dads!

Family Fun – Gambian Camping Trip

School is still in session for a month and the temperature has been in the hundreds for a while now.  My thoughts fly to the US. I think about how exciting this time of year is.  School is out and summer is here, full of green plants, sunshine, and possibilities.  Summer in Michigan makes me think of gardening, lawn mowing, trips to the lake, and, of course, camping.  Though I haven’t been able to mow lawns or spend my birthday at Lake Michigan in two years, my whole Peace Corps experience is reminiscent of the summer camping trips I loved growing up.  In the Gambia, we live life close to nature, with very few luxuries, exposed to the elements, and we have to be resourceful, much like spending a week at Ludington State Park, right?  I’ve been thinking for some time of a way to share the Gambian way of life with my mom’s daycare kids and the families that have shown interest in my Peace Corps service and the Gambia.  So, I came up with a Gambian camping trip guide for those families that are keen on roughing it and looking to add an extra challenge to this summer’s camping experience.  Let me know how it goes!  (And send pictures!)

Fetch Firewood

Carrying cous on my head like everyone else…notice all the stares.

I know you will spend your camping trip cooking over a fire, the way that every meal is cooked here in the Gambia.  Fetch firewood the Gambian way.  Head out into the bush, collect your kindling and tinder, tie them into a neat bundle, and balance it on your head all the way back to the campsite.  Gambians often put a piece of cloth under the wood to protect their heads.

Fetch Water

My cousing Rokey, fetching water.

Bring a bucket or water container to your water source. Carry the water back to your site by balancing it on your head.  Gambians often use a piece of cloth on their heads to make it more comfortable.  Don’t worry about spills, it’s refreshing and part of the fun!

Bucket Bathe

Bucket bathing! I know exactly how much water it takes to bathe now. I skip washing my hair a LOT more often.

Time for a bucket bath!

For a bucket bath, you need a large bucket full of water, some soap, and a plastic cup.  Splash water on yourself and then soap up.  When you are good and sudsy, use the cup to pour water over your body and rinse off.  During the hot season, we take bucket baths multiple times a day to cool off.

Bucket Launder

Wrap skirts even dry quick

Bucket laundry

This one is a challenge!  Use two buckets, one wash (with powder laundry detergent) and one rinse.  Scrub your laundry with your hands, rinse it well, and hang it on a clothesline to dry.  Our clothes dry in less than an hour during the hottest part of the day!

Food Bowl

Lunch! Rice with peanut-sauce. No surprise there.

Make “Domoda” or peanut sauce over rice.  Serve it in one big bowl on the ground.  Sitting on a mat, squatting, or in chairs around the bowl, eat with your hands!  Gambians eat with their right hand only, forming little balls out of the rice and sauce and popping it into their mouths.  This takes some getting used to, but is fun.  Wash your hands with soap!  (This activity may be followed by a bucket bath.)

Snacks!

I visitor brought oranges (they’re green, I know). I help peel them for my brothers.

Snack on whatever is in season.  Foods that are plentiful to snack on at various times of year in the Gambia are watermelon, oranges, peanuts, corn, and mangoes. Right now is mango season, they’re everywhere!  During peanut season, people spend all afternoon sitting on mats, shelling peanuts, and munching on them while they chat.  During corn season, we eat corn right off the cob after cooking it over coals until a few kernels pop!

Drink Attaya

They start brewing young

Make green tea and add generous amounts of sugar.  Attaya is shared throughout the day, but especially in the afternoon when it is too hot to do anything but sit in the shade of a mango tree.  Gambians drink attaya out of small, shot-glass sized glasses.  And even on the hottest day of the year, it is served hot!

Football and Braiding

Check out my style!

Young boys in the Gambia spend their free time playing football (soccer).  No ball, goal, or field?  Improvise with some balled up socks and sticks for goal posts. Girls spend lazy afternoons plaiting (braiding) their hair.  Have a hair braiding afternoon or practice braiding with string, corn husks, or whatever you can find.

Dance Circle

Have a dance party!  Gambians love dance programs with big sound systems that boom into the wee hours of the night.  But children have impromptu dance parties all the time by clapping loud, fast beats or beating sticks on plastic buckets used as drums.  Pump those arms to the side and stomp your feet to the beat.

Family Time Under the Stars

My favorite part of the day is in the evening after dinner when it has finally cooled down some.  The entire family sits outside in the dark, under the stars.  It is too hot to go inside yet, so we just relax, chat, lie down, and even sleep.  Spend an evening stretched out on a mat, enjoying the sounds of nature and the people around you.  Share news about your day, share gossip from the campsite on the other side of the loop, or just sit comfortably in the presence of your family.  The day was hot and you worked hard.  Life isn’t always easy, but we’re in it together.