Sights and sounds:
Life in the Gambia neighborhood

		Notes from  The Gambia  Tom Brodd

The area that I live is in what one could call a suburban middle class Gambian neighborhood though it is not what we would recognize as such. I am fortunate to live on one of the few paved roads in the area, which is called Kanifing.

Most of the roads are sand as I am only a couple of miles from the ocean. The sand roads make getting around interesting sometimes, especially during the rains.

Surrounded by wall

Almost all of the houses/compounds here and throughout the Gambia are surrounded by a wall.

In the city the walls tend to be built of cement blocks that are plastered over and painted white while in the villages they are mostly made out of tall reeds and grasses.

The reason for the walls is not so much for security but to delineate the property that one owns.

Neighborhoods here tend not to be all one thing or another but are a mixture of houses and small businesses like the older parts of Madison. At every corner and sometime more often there are small one room "mom and pop" convenience stores attached to people's homes, where one can buy basic food items like bread.

Besides food, most of these stores also carry sewing supplies, as there are almost as many tailor shops around as there are convenience stores. Many people have their clothes made for them by the tailors and all of the children have to wear school uniforms.

Life in the Gambia

Because The Gambia is in a warm climate people do much of their living outside. On any given evening many people will be sitting outside of their compound walls just watching the world pass by or talking with the neighbors.

Also children have, in certain ways from us, a much freer life, because almost from the time that they can walk they are allowed to go outside and play without any supervision from their parents. It is not uncommon to see groups of children aged three, four, and five playing together with only a slightly older sibling to watch over them.

One sees many pickup games of soccer, the main sport in Gambia for children and adults, where the children are using a very beat up soccer ball and a make shift soccer field in a empty corner of a side street. All of the children's activity and play is what they make of it and none of it is scripted or controlled by the parents with after school plans.

Since most people cannot afford a car, the main way people get around is by walking. For traveling any great distance, people will take a taxi or mini buses. All of this walking means that, aside from keeping in shape, one sees one's neighbors frequently as they are going about their business.

Sights of the Gambia

Normally every evening I take my chair and sit outside the compound and read and watch the neighbors go by and here are a few of the things I will see in a normal week:

Some young men have started a car washing business in the taxi park across the road from my house. These guys have no access to water at this place so they have to carry water from their homes in five-gallon containers.

Other young men are pushing wheelbarrows around the streets. Some will be full of peanuts or oranges for sale but the more interesting ones are what I call the Wal-Mart on wheels. These are wheelbarrows that have had a wooden frame attached to them and from which hang a wide multitude of items ranging from toothpaste and soap to small radios and soccer balls.

Small children, many under five years old are running around, having a good time, and occasionally trying to get at some of the mango fruit that is hanging on the lower branches of trees.

A man leading his donkey, which is pulling a cart loaded with a refrigerator, furniture, or sometimes lumber.

Market women walking around the neighborhood, selling fruit and peanuts off of plates that they carry on their heads.

There is also much wildlife in the streets. If it is not the neighbor's dog, which always seems to be sleeping in front of his gate, there are the random sheep, goats, and chickens walking by looking for something to eat.

As evening comes on one sees and greets the people walking to the mosque, going to evening prayers. Here there is a mosque every two or three blocks, which, for the most part, are small. The one across the street from my house, however, is what is called a grand mosque. This is one of the mosques that people go to for Friday afternoon prayers, instead of the smaller mosques.

The sun setting behind the palm trees.

Tom Brodd of Madison is living in The Gambia, West Africa, as one of 16 participants in the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Volunteer Program, which provides U.S. Catholics with opportunities to share their skills through CRS and to live in solidarity with their brothers and sisters around the world.

Sperm for sale:
Damages the 'inner order' of marriage

		Making Sense  Out of Bioethics  Fr. Tad  Pacholczyk

Recently the New York Times Magazine ran an article entitled, "Wanted: A Few Good Sperm" dealing with the modern trend toward "open donor" sperm banks, where the donor agrees to meet any children born of his sperm once they reach the age of 18.

'Perfect' donor

The article included the story of a woman named Karyn and chronicled her odyssey as she sought the "perfect" donor for artificial insemination:

"She did have a few ideas of what she might look for: she wanted a man of her same blood type, O positive. Because she herself is so tall, she preferred a medium height . . . She was also attracted by the idea of a donor of another race. 'I believe in multiculturalism,' she said.

"'I would probably choose somebody with a darker skin color so I don't have to slather sunblock on my kid all the time. I want it to be a healthy mix. You know how mixed dogs are always the nicest and the friendliest and the healthiest? If you get a clear race, they have all the problems. Mutts are always the friendly ones, the intelligent ones, the ones who don't bark and have a good character. I want a mutt.'"

She eventually settled on eight units of donor sperm for $3,100. The donor had "proven fertility," meaning that at least one woman conceived using his sperm. His picture was available on the company's Web site, and she printed it out to keep on the coffee table of her Manhattan studio apartment. "I kind of glance at it as I pass," she said of the picture. "It's almost like when you date someone, and you keep looking at them, and you're, like, Are they cute? But every time I pass, I'm, like, Oh, he's really cute."

Violation of humanity

Buying and selling sex cells is becoming increasingly commonplace. Infertile couples, single women, and even lesbians today can seek out the services of a growing number of companies to purchase sperm or ova.

In many people's mind, the transaction is hardly different from buying groceries or office supplies. In a society driven by market forces, human eggs and sperm have rapidly become marketable commodities, with considerable sums of money changing hands as these cells are purchased from college students and sold to customers.

These practices point to a fundamental problem in the way we understand the gift of our human bodies. Our sex cells, or gametes, are special cells. They uniquely identify us. They are an intimate expression of our own bodily identity, and mark our human fruitfulness. Hence our own gametes exist in a discernible relationship to marriage.

Each of us, in fact, has been given a capacity, a radical capacity, for total self-donation to a unique member of the opposite sex in marriage. Our gametes, and their exclusive availability to our spouse through marital acts, are an important sign of this radical capacity for self-donation.

They uniquely denote who we are, and manifest the beautiful and life-engendering possibility of giving ourselves away to the one person whom we singularly love as our husband or wife.

Hence, donating to sperm or egg banks violates something fundamental at the core of our own humanity. It dissociates us from the deeper meaning of our own bodies and gravely damages the inner order of marriage.

No 'right' to children

The notion that it is alright for a single woman to impregnate herself with a stranger's sperm is like trying to play a game of chess with oneself: it may look like you win every time you play, but you really lose every time as well. A truly good chess game requires two participants fully committed to the endeavor, and the same is true for human procreation.

Children, thus, are directly related to the marital embrace of their parents. Sex and babies are integrally connected, but in the wake of widespread contraceptive practice, where sex becomes closed off to babies, this central point is no longer understood by many Christians. Babies, moreover, are never "trophies" or "mutts."

Sometimes those who purchase other people's sex cells imagine that they have a "right" to children. But even when we get married, we don't have a "right" to a baby; rather, we have a right to those sacred marital acts that are ordered and disposed to procreating new life. Those loving genital acts are the unique and exclusive domain in which our sex cells properly become available to our spouse.

Oftentimes, however, strong parental desires can distort the right order of transmitting human life, and a consumerist mentality may subtly convince us that children are our "projects" to be realized through laboratory techniques of gamete manipulation.

Design disrupted

In 1987, while serving as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then-Cardinal Ratzinger issued a document called Donum Vitae (On the Gift of Life) which examines modern forms of reproductive technology. That document also discusses the donation of sperm and egg cells:

"Recourse to the gametes of a third person, in order to have sperm or ovum available, constitutes a violation of the reciprocal commitment of the spouses and a grave lack in regard to that essential property of marriage which is its unity . . . Masturbation, through which the sperm is normally obtained, is another sign of this dissociation: even when it is done for the purpose of procreation, the act remains deprived of its unitive meaning: 'It lacks the sexual relationship called for by the moral order . . .'"

The delicate design that governs this intimate area of our lives calls for a respectful and receptive attitude on our part. Nested within that receptivity to God's ordering of procreation, children can become fully appreciated for what they are: sacred gifts received within the Divine order, beautiful surprises blooming out of committed marital love.

Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., and serves as the director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, Pa.

Humanae Vitae:
Church wise in continual affirmation

		A Culture of Life  Professor  Janet E. Smith

When Humanae Vitae was released in July 1968, it went off like a bomb. Though there was much support for the encyclical, no document ever met with as much dissent.

It was a historic and pivotal moment in Church history. Dissent became the coin of the day. This had not been true prior to Humanae Vitae. Dissenting theologians had never before made such a public display of their opposition on any given issue.

The open dissent to Humanae Vitae was a real watershed in the history of the Church. One can view the phenomenon as either a crystallization of something that had been bubbling under the surface for some time, or as catalyst for everything that was yet to come. Soon theologians and eventually lay people were dissenting not only about contraception but also about homosexuality, masturbation, adultery, divorce, and many other issues.

Church not wavering

In spite of the dissent and in spite of widespread use of contraception among Catholics, the Church continually reiterates its opposition to contraception as a great moral wrong; Pope John Paul II made opposition to contraception one of the cornerstones of his pontificate and wrote and spoke extensively on the topic.

I think the experience of the last few decades has revealed that the Church has been very wise in its continual affirmation of this teaching for we have begun to see that contraception leads to many vicious wrongs in society; it facilitates the sexual revolution which leads to much unwanted pregnancy and abortion.

It has made women much more open to sexual exploitation by men. In fact, Humanae Vitae predicted a general lowering of morality should contraception become widely available and I think it is manifest that ours is a period of very low morality - much of it in the sexual realm.

Western society has undergone a rapid transformation in terms of sexual behavior and few would argue that it is for the better. The millions of abortions over the last few decades and the phenomenal spread of AIDS alone indicate that we have serious problems with sexuality.

The statistics of 10 years ago were bad enough; many thought things could hardly get worse - as did many 20 years ago, and 30 years ago. In the last generation the incidence of sexual activity outside of marriage and all the attendant problems have doubled and tripled - or worse.

Strong families

Statistics do not really capture the pervasive ills attendant upon sexual immorality. Premature and promiscuous sexuality prevent many from establishing good marriages and a good family life. Few deny that a healthy sexuality and a strong family life are among the most necessary elements for human happiness and well-being.

It is well attested that strong and secure families are less likely to have problems with alcohol, sex, and drugs; they produce individuals more likely to be free from crippling neuroses and psychoses. Since healthy individuals are not preoccupied with their own problems, they are able to be strong leaders; they are prepared to tackle the problems of society.

While many single parents do a worthy and valiant job of raising their children, it remains sadly true that children from broken homes grow up to be adults with a greater propensity for crime, with a greater tendency to engage in alcohol and drug abuse, with a greater susceptibility to psychological disorders.

Professor Janet E. Smith is the Fr. Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Mich. These columns, syndicated by www.OneMoreSoul.com, are excerpts of a longer work by Smith.