Fall Seven Times, Stand Up Eight
New blog recommendation! Chankan Ouwass: an intimate window into an amazing story of grief and resilience.
If you’ve been perusing my little corner of the Internet with even half an eye open over the past year you’ll know something about my friend Patrick, citizen of The Gambia and survivor of catastrophes that would cause any one of us to deposit soil in our pantaloons with great dispatch. With y’all’s assistance he has become the proud owner of a laptop, which, alongside his natural perseverance and a good bit of luck, has allowed him to get a good ways into an associate’s degree in education from Gambia College. In my bungling way I have found my occasionally ill-informed advice to have been ultimately helpful—Patrick is now living in a city instead of the middle of nowhere; he’s healthy and active and well-fed, and his family is slowly healing from the many wounds life has dealt them.
Pretty good stuff considering how I more or less accidented my way into being his protector by virtue of curiosity and easy access to Google. Patrick has climbed up a few levels on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but the whole point of Maslow’s infographic is that mo money equals mo problems. Good problems though.
What Patrick wants and needs now is some independence. Nobody wants to live on the dole, whether public or private. and our Gambian boy, with his outsized conscience and sense of justice, feels strongly about earning his own money and paying his own way. He doesn’t want to be a burden; he wants to be able to make his own way through the world, and he has communicated this to me more than once. Admirable, but at best he can get jobs washing taxis at about twenty cents per. And washing even one taxi requires time he doesn’t have—he leaves for school early in the morning, arrives home in the evening just in time to cook dinner and then do his homework before bed. On the weekends he does the family shopping and washes clothes. A busy fellow indeed.
Many weeks ago I proposed a solution to this problem: Patrick, I said to him, you should write a blog.
I can’t tell you how many times he has remarked to me that he finds the idea “strange,” but I have assured him it’s the American way, and so we got to work. He wrote; I set up another Substack in which to present his words. And as of this past Sunday, July 3, it is live. Patrick is out there in the world.
The blog is titled Chankan Ouwass, a Manjago phrase meaning “Healing a Heart.” In its digital pages he’ll be publishing pieces detailing his life in The Gambia—who he is for starters, but also lots of interesting cultural nuggets about the languages and tribes and music and art that bubble and boil in the welter of Brikama—Satey Ba' to the locals; "big town.” It’s a fascinating stuff. I know this because we’ve been discussing it almost daily for close to a year. I guarantee you: there’s no facet of Patrick’s life in which you won’t find some detail to blow your mind. I’ve hogged the conversation with him for too long, and I’m excited for all of y’all to have a chance to hear about his life without my intermediation.
Ok, well without much of my intermediation. He writes his posts on paper, photographs them, and sends them to me. I transcribe them and edit them (for clarity only—his words are his own). Each post will conclude with a short Q&A between us to provide additional context. He’s got a short bio up now and personally I find his writing to be lively and personable and breathtakingly honest. You owe it to yourself to check it out.
And of course, if you are able, I ask that you support him with a paid subscription. These are available for a modest price of $5 per month, and your money will be put to good use—supporting Patrick and his family obviously, but Patrick is generous and helps his neighbors whenever they need it.
Often the problems of the world are presented to us in terms of masses—the pain of millions affected by war and famine and drought. It leaves us feeling helpless and hopeless, or at best persuades us to drop a few bucks into the till for some organization that’s probably doing good but who knows really—It’s all so abstract. Here is a single person struggling to reach the safety of a distant shore, and you can see with your own eyes how your help gets him closer to his goal. And you can rest assured he’ll pay it forward: it’s entirely what he wants to do with his life. What could be a better investment?
So head on over to Chnkan Ouwass, read the first post, and consider a subscription. Your generosity will come back to you; I guarantee it.
