Happy Thanksgiving!

Alright, so I'm back in the Kamsar internet cafe for the first time in several weeks. I managed to get a blog post written up in Boke, and hopefully it is now posted and backdated appropriately. Anyway, since then I've had another fine set of adventures:


I spent Thanksgiving in my village with my host family. I had decided to skip out on the Conakry Thanksgiving party because I didn't want to deal with the hassle and expense of travel so soon after getting back from there, especially since I will go there for Christmas. I mentioned in passing to my principal that there was an American holiday that I was going to be in Bintimodia for, and after I explained it a bit he decided he wanted to do it too. He sort of forgot about it until the day before when I brought it up to him again, but luckily I was planning on doing some cooking anyway. I had gotten a whole village squash in Boke, and had brought some raw eggs as well (I don't think you can get eggs in my village, I even had a hard time tracking them down in the Kamsar market just now). I also had some spices from the states, flour, margarine, and sugar - and with this I made a pumpkin pie. I had to roll the dough out on one of my chairs since I don't have furniture really yet, and to bake it, I placed a large heavy pot on a charcoal fire, and used my large pot I use to cook spaghetti as a pie dish by putting it on top of some empty tuna cans inside the larger pot. I added water to keep the heating even and it turned out remarkably well. It took like 2-3 hours to cook fully, but I was amazed by the results. I took this over to the Diallo's and we had it as dessert after the main course of rice with oily fish sauce (again). I was going to make mashed potatotes, but I got kinda lazy and didn't want to bike the 11k to the market just to get 2 kg of potatoes. I enjoyed the opportunity to finally try out the Dutch oven cooking system and the change to cook something "American" for my host family. At one point, I said "Almost everyone in the US is going to eat this same dish today", "Even Bush?" said M. Diallo, "Yeah, and Obama too" - at this he smiled. He also said "Ugh, I ate too much" at the end of the meal, and I had to keep from laughing - I guess it really is Thanksgiving.


I made it back to my village with my kitten with not too many problems. I bought a cardboard box in the market and cut holes into it, put my t-shirt in there and carried the kitten on my lap the whole way. On the taxi ride from Boke to Kamsar he slept and/or was peaceful the whole way, however once we switched cars to go Kamsar to Bintimodia he got a little restless and tried getting out of the box. Now, bush-taxis are a very cozy place where you often find yourself crammed-in awkwardly close to your neightbor. I was sharing the front passanger seat with a middle-aged Guinean man who took up most of the seat. This means I was mostly sitting on the hard plastic divider between the driver and the passanger seats, and having to move my leg over a bit whenever the driver needed to shift gears. I also couldn't really move much, and so keeping the cat contained to the flimsy box was an hour long struggle that got me several scratches and one half-hearted bite. Fortunately the man next to me, who also got his pants sort of clawed at (but not successfully tattered) was pretty good humored about it ("I think he wants to get out", he told me near the end of the ride....gee thanks mister, hadn't figured that one out). Near the end of the ride (last 10 minutes or so, the kitten gave up since it was exhausted, overheated and probably dehydrated and he just lay down on his side and started breathing shallowly - I definitely preferred the rowdy kitten to the on-the-brink-of-death kitten. I had planned on giving him water if the trip got to be too long, so his "bowl" (an empty tuna can) was with him, but my nalgene was in the back of the car with my backpack, so I had no water. We finally made it home and I got him some cool water and he perked right back up in like 2 minutes and began to explore the house (very tentitavely at first).


Since then, he's slowly gotten more and more animated and more and more spoiled. At first I was worried that he wouldn't eat, but then he realized that the milk I was giving him (from my powdered supply) was tasty, and he began to eat (and actually now has a belly). I am trying to wean him onto rice and sauce that I bring back from the Diallo's, since that is most likely what he will be eating 90% of the time if I get my way, but he isn't having it. I think I will break him soon though, I caught him sniffing at it yesterday morning when I took away his milk and gave him nothing but water and some fishy rice. He is also starting to act out more, he took to the "litterbox" idea right away, which I guess is cat instinct (all I really had to do was set a box of sand out, and he started using it), but he has started to mark his territory around the house a bit, which I am not sure if I want to get in the way of. One one hand, I don't want my house to smell like cat piss, on the other, if it keeps other animals (mice, snakes, bats, etc) away, all the better. He also has taken to scratching at and attacking random objects. I don't really care when it's my chairs or carboard boxes since he can't really do too much to them yet, but he used my umbrella as a scratching post and completely shredded it - good thing it was already broken or I'd have been more upset. I need to find him some sort of cat toy and I should set up some sort of scratching post on a doorframe with some thick carpet-like fabric.


Also, last night, around midnight, I heard a squeaking and fluttering noise at one of my windows and realized a bat was stuck between the outer shutter and the screen - I poked at it with a broom trying to kill it, then the bat got in the house (I have some pretty lousy screens) and was trapped. I swung at it with my broom for a while, and eventually landed a direct hit that stunned the bat and got him on the ground. I figued he was disabled, and since he was small I thought he'd be a good "practice" bat for Barté to kill. I brought him over, but while he was sniffing, the bat revived and flew around again. I got him with the broom again, this time killing it, and swept him over near the door to get rid of. I wrote a bit in my journal about it, and I heard crunching behind me, I turned around to discover Barté munching on the dead bat. He ate the whole thing in like 3 minutes, bones and all. Good kitty, he got a saucer of milk to wash it down.


Also, in my search for eggs in the Kamsar market today, I finally sumbled across the really good part of the market. I hadn't seen cucumbers, cabages, carrots, or good eggplants in a while anywhere else, but suddently I turned a corner, ducked under a tarp past some kola nut ladies and there in front of me was the biggest variety of vegetables I'd seen in a while. I managed to get some of everything mentioned above except carrots - I'm really excited to fry up some cabbage - wow, never thought I'd hear myself say that.
Alright, that will do for now, until next time.