After a 90 minute bike ride through the jungle....internet!...sorta

Ok, so I’ve made it to Kamsar to use the internet, after an exciting bike ride from Bintimodia. I was dropped off on Monday at noon with all my stuff that I’d gotten in Conakry (buckets, washboard, some food, etc) and all my luggage, and I waved goodbye to the Peace Corps car, which I would not see again for 2 weeks when they bring me my mail. I was alone in my village for the first time, and I was going to stay there.

I settled into my house as best I could, which involved a lot of sweeping (tons of dirt and animal (rat? mouse? bat? chicken?) droppings). I also had to set up my mosquito net and I felt pressured to go out and greet people/elders in the community to start integrating as soon as possible. After 3 hours of half-finished unpacking/cleaning tasks and feeling alone, I sat down, wrote 3 pages in my journal, felt way better and then got back to work, in a much more focused and effective manner. I got my mosquito net set up so that whenever I decided to go to bed, I wouldn’t need to worry about hanging rope or nailing stuff to the ceiling in the dark by candlelight. I then walked to the Imam’s house (I’d already greeted the village elder, the sous-prefet, and my principal) saying hello and introducing myself to as many people as possible along the way. I mostly ran into women and children cooking over charcoal in their front yards, so I did most of my introductions like this: “Parlez-vous Français? Non? (shit) I nu wali, Tana mu fegnen? Heri fegnen? Awa. Xaranderaba na n na, corps de la paix, chimie, college Bintimodia” (At this point they were laughing in surprise that I knew any Susu, and one or two of them would look very focused, and then turn to the rest and translate the little bit of French I threw in there into Susu, or, translate it to Pular which is another language that half my village speaks (I can greet in Pular, but nothing else)). They then asked me something about where I lived and I said “N Bintimodia ka” (I’m a Bintimodian) and they would laugh and cheer. Then I’d say “N siga chez l’Imam, O’oo” and they would thank me in Susu, and French (once or twice in English) and I would go on my way.

I immediately felt much better once I got out into the village and started meeting people, there were definitely one or two people who seemed sort of ambivalent to my existence, but most people were super friendly. I then had dinner with my principal and his family (apparently the last couple of volunteers here didn’t ever really cook because Mama Diallo is an amazing cook (by Guinean standards). I’ve eaten all my meals so far at their house, and I will probably continue to have lunch or dinner there on a regular basis and will buy them sacks of rice once in a while to pay for my share. I do plan on cooking once my gas tank gets here on the mail run though (I have a small two burner gas stove which is attached to a small butane tank, I light it with a match) I also have a charcoal stove which is much cheaper to use, but is much more annoying to light (I might get some gasoline to use as lighter fluid, because with the humidity, the charcoal alone takes a long time to get going). I will use charcoal whenever I make something that requires cooking for a long time, but to make oatmeal, tea, pasta etc. I will use my gas stove.
Anyway, my second day in Bintimodia was spent as a recluse in my house trying to get things in order, I set up a clothing line in my room to hang my clothes on, because it’s a little better than living out of a suitcase (I still need to get some sort of furniture in Boke, I only have a bed). I also nailed some kitchen stuff to the walls (hanging my frying pan, serving spoon, colander, cutting board and sieve on the wall to save space). I had a hard time getting stuff on the walls because they painted my house with some terrible house paint right before I moved in, and so if you touch the walls you end up having seafoam green colored dust all over your hands. If you try using masking or even duct tape, you just get seafoam green dust on the tape, and it doesn’t stick. The walls are cinderblock/cement, so most nails bend before they go into the wall unless they’re like 1/3 of an inch thick. I went out to my Principal’s house to eat, but I didn’t so much beyond this outside of the house.

My third day is probably going to remain among the more memorable in all my time here, at about 8:30 am, my principal came to my door, which I opened in PJ bottoms and a t-shirt. He said “come on, we’re going to the mosque” (this was the last day of Ramadan, a big prayer was about to happen) I said “But I’m not muslim, am I allowed to go?” he said “well, it’s not exactly the mosque we’re going to, so yeah, you’ll be fine, come on”. I looked down at my clothes and said “I’ll meet you at your house in 2 minutes, I need to change”. I put on my best African complet, my prayer cap (I got one in Boke because I like how they look) and went to meet him. He told me how to wash my hands, feet, and face in the correct way and order with the right words at the right times (a pre-prayer ritual), then we walked with all (ALL) the village men to a clearing in a palm tree grove, and there everyone laid out their prayer mats in huge rows, he men in one group, the women in another. All the women’s hair was covered, and most of the men had on prayer caps. There were probably 3,000 or more people there, maybe as many as 5,000. The Imam shouted out his blessings for a good while, then he introduced me and had me stand so everyone could see me and know who I was (so weird to be the center of attention at a muslim prayer like that). Then I kneeled back down and listened to the Imam continue his speech. After a while we did the prayer and I followed along with everyone around me, rising to me feet, bending at the waist, kneeleing, and bowing towards mecca in unison with the thousands assembled at this prayer, and probably with every other muslim (and probably a few non-muslims like myself) in my time zone (which I think includes all of Morocco?). After the prayer I said hello to a lot of people and then spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in a chair in front of my house with my principal. At one point Rob, the volunteer I replaced, came for a couple of hours to say hello to the host family and he and I talked about Bintimodia and Peace Corps Guinea in general while different people said hi to us.

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of Guinea’s independence, and again I was woken up at around 8 AM, this time by loud drumming passing by my house. I put clothes on and headed out to join the festivities. At the end of the road there’s the “town hall” building which has a big porch where all the important “elders” of the village and the government officials were seated. I hung out in the crowd and greeted people until one of the elders sent a kid to come get me and bring me into the shade of the porch, where they had a chair waiting for me, between the Sous-prefet and the Imam. I sat and watched several women dance and sing and play a tam tam drum in what seemed like a ritalistic African dance – there were times when there was staged arguments that would initiate a dance off, and there seemed to me some jokes tossed in here and there. They got me up and dancing with them for a minute at one point, then I sat back down and watched some more. I felt like I stumbled into an anthropologist’s wet dream. I then sat through like 3 hours of long rambling speeches in Susu and Pular before I got to go home again. I spent the rest of the day reading in my house and some time hanging out on my principal’s porch.

Finally, today, I woke up, got my stuff together, and biked the 20km through rice fields, villages, and small creeks to Kamsar to use the internet, maybe swim a little (if I can figure out where the pool is) and send a letter to my mom from the mailbox (I will send letters to more people next week, I plan on making this a weekly trip). From my front door to the internet café, it took me 1hr and 30 minutes, but about 15 minutes of this was spent biking around Kamsar wondering where the hell the internet café was. I also stopped in a random village to ask for directions, and had to put my bike and myself in a small shaky canoe that crossed the river next to my village (my first pirogue ride in Guinea, I stood awkwardly at the front of the boat trying to keep my balance). The ride is very nice, but has a few spots that are hard even with a nice mountain bike (which was not designed for sand, apparently). I’m glad I brought my patch kit and pump because I would not be surprised to get a flat tire on that first stretch of road. I also got a little muddy as I had to bike through creeks and waterways that were about a foot deep. But here I am, using the internet (sort of, I’ve typed this into Word because the internet doesn’t work very well here…or at all really, in an hour (6,000 GNF) I’ve typed one e-mail, had it not send, and opened up the facebook and blogger home page. Then my time ran out. I’ve spent most of the time writing this blog post waiting for pages to (unsuccessfuly) load (so, an hour and 30 minutes of mountain biking through the jungle to get to a busy city where I almost got hit my a moto and a car to get to a non-working internet cafe - and I'm one of the most well-connected volunteers in all of Guinea as far as ammenities go), luckily this post was my main objective, and now I just need to buy another half hour to try to get it posted. Wish me luck (I guess if you're reading this then I suceeded, so wish me luck on the bike home).