A Day of Luxurious Excess

So this weekend a good number of volunteers managed to meet up in Boké, and so we took the opportunity to go into Kamsar and enjoy the little luxuries it offers. A few of us also had good reason to be a little more carefree with our spending (it was just my birthday, Jarrad has accumulated a lot of money not spending anything in his village out in the boonies, etc) so we went to the restaurant and had a nice lunch (dinner really, since we didn't eat for the rest of the day). Three of the five of us split a bottle of real French wine (it wasn't amazing quality wine, but it was way better than the "wine" you can get here), Jarrad and I both had steak (with a side of steamed (canned) vegetables and some fries), Jarrad had onion soup on the side, Tiffany got a pasta dish, Mary got the lebanese plate (hummus, kafta, baba ganogj, meat kebab, etc), and Astrid had fish kebabs (good non-bony fish). We also had some cheese that we had bought from the grocery store and so I had some nice French blue cheese with my meal, and had a little of Jarrad's gouda with cumin seeds as well. It was a pretty extravagant meal, but by american standards it was cheap (my meal was $5, the bottle of wine was like $16 split 3 ways, the 100 g chunk of cheese was $4 or so).

We also got some stuff at the grocery store which included my birthday present from Jarrad - a 1 liter bottle of Tanqueray gin, this was expensive (not much cheaper than our entire lunch bill) - and was the best present anyone could have given me - I've been eyeing that bottle every time I go into the store but couldn't come up with a good reason to spend that much on any one item. I bought grapefruit juice and tonic, and we made our way through most of it last night (between 4 or 5 people). I'm planning on returning the favor for his birthday, during which we'll be in Conakry.

I was excited to see that my favorite riz gras lady (Mme. Makanera) was back in business (she'd been sick and not working for months now). I debated getting an order to go for dinner, but I was way too full, something to look forward to next time. Upon our return to Boké, I finally met one of the new volunteers who got here in December - a woman who is south of my village by like 40k, we shared the gin and sat around getting to know each other by candlelight (Boké electricity didn't come on last night). I'm now in Kamsar showing her around since she missed out on going with us, and I was planning on going through Kamsar back to Bintimodia today anyway.

Something funny that I noted earlier this morning when I was chatting with Jarrad about it was that lately both my blog and my journal are less and less about Guinean culture things and more and more about seeing other volunteers and getting nice food/drink things. This isn't because I've given up on being thrifty and integrating with Guineans, but rather because Guinean culture is so a part of my routine now that things like topless women, kids playing by pushing old bike tires with sticks, a car on the road that toppled over because it had too much stuff piled on top of it, mangos ripening on trees, etc just don't surprise or amaze me anymore. For example - in my birthday post I mentioned planting piment with a market lady, but I didn't think to mention that as soon as we got there she whipped her shirt off and had her breasts swinging every which way the whole time. Why would I? I see that sort of thing like 5 times just on my way to get onions from the lady 4 houses down from me. Things like going to a restaurant and drinking something other than bissap (hibiscus tea) are the things that to me seem abnormal and noteworthy, but I suppose they don't make as interesting a read to people who can go to happy hour after work. I'll try to keep this in mind.

Alright, well this time I didn't think to type up the entry before plugging my credit into the computer, so I'm on the clock and am going to now browse facebook for the duration of my alloted time, until next time...

A Very Guinea Birthday

So I spent the hours leading up to my birthday trying to get all my 800 or so exams graded so I could be done in time for the big day ... I fell 150 short, which I will be getting done this weekend.

I went to bed, and woke up just before 5am to my phone ringing (I have one of those really obnoxious ring tones). It turned out my friend Maricarol - who I've been friends with since we were 6 - wanted to call to wish me a happy birthday, but hadn't quite figured out the time zone difference....in any case it was great to get a call from her. I went back to bed, then got up to teach. I started my 10th grade on the last section of the syllabus - organic chemistry!. They're only learning about hydrocarbons, but it's still great to teach them something other than balancing equations, etc....though I spent most of the time teaching them to balance equations for the combustion of various alkanes. I then gave my 9th grade English class an incredibly serious lecture on cheating that took like 20 minutes. They could tell I was not happy with them, and they didn't even argue much when I told them I had failed every one of them on the final. I think the lesson went as well as I could have expected it to, I think it got to them enough that at least they'll be more careful about cheating in my class in the future.

I got a call from Tim, and we got his travel dates figured out (he'll be here in about a month!), then I got a call from my mom and we chatted a bit as well. I also got a couple of text messages from other volunteers, and I had already received birthday cards in the mail from my mom, sister, Tim, and a few of my friends both back in the states, and in Guinea.

I went home and started work on my birthday cake. Using the cocoa powder my mom sent in a care package and ingredients I had gotten in the market that weekend I made a pretty delicious chocolate cake. I used the dutch oven system to bake it (explained in this entry) and it came out pretty good. I whitled a regular candle down to birthday candle size and stuck a teddy graham cookie on top for decoration. Since I didn't have "Happy Birthday" on my iPod, I dug out a tape of music that my aunt sent me which contained "Las Mañanitas" among other mariachi hits....so I played that for myself, made a wish and blew out my candle. I then cut myself a piece of cake and was just about finished with it when this lady who I hang out with in my village came looking for me, wanting me to help her transplant some more chili pepper seedlings.

I locked up the house and gave her a piece of cake, then did my best to explain that it was my birthday to her in Susu. After some sign-language she got the point and I realized the Susu word for birthday is the same as the French....I should really start trying that more often. She loved the cake and told me I need to teach her how to make it (I think I can substitute the "hot cocoa" mix you can sometimes find in the markets so she can find all the ingredients here). I told her I would if she taught me how to make these cookies that people sell around here that I really like. I then went with her to her field and spent a couple of hours helping her and her son dig trenches, fill them with manure/compost, pour water in them, and transfer a strong seedling to each one. We probably got like 150-200 of these set up in that time, we eventually got two young boys "helping" though they spent a lot of their time just watching me (I suppose a white guy ankle deep in mud and elbow deep in manure is a rare sight for them...).

After this I went home, took a bucket bath, and watched a movie on my iPod, and called it an early night (between getting woken up at 5am, teaching 6 hours, and spending 2 hours in the fields, I was exhausted). All in all a very good birthday.

Also, I should have some pictures up on Facebook in a few hours - as long as the Boke power doesn't cut out....

From Kamsar

So I’ve finally made it in to Kamsar after being absent for a while. I’d been missing groceries and other nice essentials, but I made the trip out today. I caught a car out of Bintimodia instead of biking (I’ve been lazy lately, and it’s been getting hotter), but I had to wait like 3 hours for a car to show up. I waited with 4 other adults and a baby at the crossroads out of Bintimodia, and made it in to Kamsar around 1pm.

I got my market stuff taken care of (flour and eggs (gonna make myself a chocolate cake for my birthday), avocado, 3 tomatoes, a can of chicken meat (kinda like spam, but made in the middle-east somewhere), a kilo of potatoes, 3 bell peppers, some envelopes, some plastic baggies, unpopped popcorn, some pasta, canned milk, smoked fish (for Barte), and then I made a trip to the grocery store for a box of saltines (I’m always craving salty crackers in my village, but I never feel like paying $3 for a box of saltines (I could buy 12-15 large bean sandwiches for that much money in Bintimodia) – however I decided to just splurge even though it seems ridiculous to spend so much on saltines of all things. By the way, this was an abnormally bountiful trip to the market – bell peppers, canned meat, tomatoes and avocados aren’t usually easy to find.

Now I’m getting some updates taken care of to my blog before heading off to the pool for a bit (it’ll be nice to swim off all the dust from the road). I would just head straight back home but I want to get my iPod charged before going back to my village (I’ve discovered that I can charge my phone if I go to the “night club” – the open air space where they set up a generator and some speakers on Saturday nights – and hang out with the “DJ” – the guy who sorta knows how to work the CD player and shouts over a microphone every once in a while to make himself feel important – while my phone is plugged in to the string of power strips attached to the generator. However, I feel weird taking my iPod there to be charged, so I still take care of that here in Kamsar).

In village news, I’m still working on grading my huge stack of exams from first semester final exams (I made the mistake of giving my students a test like a week before the “official” final exams (I didn’t know we had official final exams, I was informed the day before they started) so I had like 800 total exams to grade between my 4 classes of English and 4 of Chemistry). If grading my 9th grade English tests, I noticed something funny – everybody had a perfect score, and the few people who didn’t hadn’t made transation mistakes (I had asked them to give me the French of 10 English words (boy, house, rice, etc…)) but rather they had made spelling mistakes making up nonsense words that SOUND like the correct word, but aren’t. So basically, everybody cheated. I was in Boke when this test was given and someone else watched the class take it – clearly that someone else wasn’t watching very carefully or didn’t care. I’ve decided I’m going to fail everybody because I made it clear to them early on that they would get a 0 if I caught them cheating on my tests. I’m going to give everybody an 8 (40%) and tell them that they can bring their grade up my doing well on my second semester tests (which I will proctor myself to avoid cheating). English isn’t officially on the middle school curriculum, so my failing them won’t hurt their chances of getting into high school, but it will hurt their pride and will set an example. I’m going to give them a big lecture on this on Tuesday and tell them about their mass-failure then (my birthday of all days….awesome).

Also, I’ve been going to the fields with one of the ladies in my village (she doesn’t speak a word of French, but we sorta get by on my broken Susu). I’ve been helping her transplant piment (chili pepper) seedlings from a big mass of seedlings into individual spots – basically thinning out the crop so that the strongest seedlings get their own space to turn into a fruit bearing-plant. I’m also going to start my seeds that I brought (zucchini, spinach, tomato, cantaloupe) in plastic baggies and ask for a small corner of her field to grow my vegetables (if they work – and that’s a big if since they’re non-native and nobody here knows how to correctly grow them, myself included – she could then sell extras in the Kamsar market for way more than her chili peppers cost (however, chili peppers are probably much easier to grow, given how cheap they are).

Alright, I suppose that’s all for now, I’m going to post this and take care of some other internet stuff before heading to the pool, and then Bintimodia. Next time I post, I’ll be another year older. Until then!

Boke Summary

Alright, so I'm headed out to find a car back to Bintimodia, and I have about 10 minutes or so of battery life on the laptop (it charged with the electricity last night) to post a quick summary of the weekend.

I went to Kamsar thursday and met up with Tiffany by the pool, got some stuff from the grocery store (shampoo, a scrubbing sponge, deodorant, and olive oil) and also some supplies from the lady in the market who sells good vegetables (1 kg fresh green beans, and a cadeau bell pepper). Tiffany and I made it back to Boke early so I got some more stuff in the Boke market that I've been needing in Bintimodia (tomato paste, margarine, laundry soap...).

Afterwards I found Jarrad in the Boke house and we ended up grabbing dinner from the restaurant at the bottom of the hill (possibly the only restaurant in Boke, we're not sure). The lady knows us both - especially Jarrad - since we usually go there when we're in town. She sell riz gras, chicken, spagetti with meat, or a whole fried fish along with a few sodas and yogurt.

We hung out at the house for most of the weekend, we had the option of going out with one other volunteer to a swimming hole, and then to the nightclub last night - but we were mostly looking forward to lounging around the volunteer house, reading and not going to a Guinean nightclub.

So that was my weekend - reading in the volunteer house, making food, making trips to the market for stuff, and getting internet business taken care of while it's free and the battery lasts.

Now I'm off to my village and probably won't make it back on here until the 28th, though I may make a Kamsar trip before then for supplies. Until then.

A Longer Post

Ok, so there is ample battery time, and the internet in Boke died after the "Create Post" window loaded for blogger, so I'm just going to write for a while and hope the internet will be working again when I'm ready to post this.

Anyway, in other village news, I experienced my first death in the village. I was reading in my hammock as I usually do, about 20 yards from the entrance to the hospital when a 20-something guy came out of the hospital and started sobbing against the outside wall of the building, not 15 yards from where I lay reading. I thought about asking him if he was ok since I've never seen an adult Guinean guy cry, but I just decided to pretend I hadn't noticed and keep reading. After a while a late teen to early 20s girl ran out of the hospital shouting/singing/chanting something while sobbing herself. She ran around the village shouting/singing/chanting this way (similar to the Imam's call to prayer) as a form of announcement, but as she was saying something in Susu I didn't understand, I just kept reading and started to really wonder what was going on. Older women (Vieilles) started pouring in from left and right with concerned looks on their faces and chattering away in Susu, and I started to wonder if maybe a woman was giving birth and was having complications so they had called the vieilles to help with the birth (I've heard at least half a dozen women give birth, the perks of living right next door to the hospital with constantly open windows). Then men and teenagers also started to pour in and I realized this was something else.
I got up as discreetly as I could to put my hammock indoors (I felt sort of ridiculous reading on a hammock while most of the village was clearly upset about something not 10 yards from me at this point) and went into the crowd and did my best to evesdrop in Susu, but ended up resorting to asking one of my students to tell me what was going on. It turns out a young man (early 30s?) had died - he had climbed up a palm tree to get coconuts and found a snake up there which bit him 3 times before he could get away, he managed to get down from the palm tree without falling but apparently died from the snakebites. I expressed my condolances, started to feel a bit out of place and went inside my house.

A bit later the true wailing began (women do the screaming/sobbing/wailing mourning tradition here for deaths and other sad events - my host mom in Forecariah did this the day I moved out at the end of training) which was both unnerving and beautiful at the same time. After some time a normal car came, and the shrouded body was loaded in the backseat across the laps of 3 men (family members?). The car then sped off to take the body elsewhere, presumably to be buried. After a couple of minutes the crown dispersed except for the young girl who had initially done the wailing announcement to the village, I later found out she was his fiance. I didn't know the guy myself but it was still an odd experience to observe from that perspective.

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In other news, I finally got to see the Kamsar library while it was open, and I chatted with the head librarian/director of the library, a super friendly and very well educated Guinean woman. I checked out their cataloguing system and asked her about the borrowing system they employ as well as how one might go about getting books via NGOs, etc. I found out about a Canadian man who has an NGO set up specifically to send books and computers to Guinean schools and libraries, apparently this is the guy who donated the books we currently have in stock at my library (I found it a little sad that this woman who is 20km away and has nothing to do with Bintimodia knew way more details about what had been accomplished and how for my library than anybody at my school did). I was amazed at how well organized and well set-up the Kamsar library was, they have tons of novels, a children's section, an english book section (presumably for the ex-pats, but who knows), a computer lab (the computers were mostly needing repairs, but it was there), and a classroom where they do literacy classes! I was also really pleased to see that not only was the director of the library a woman, the assistant-director was too. She gave me the information for the Canadian guy, as well as for the person in Conakry whose job it is to deal with libraries in the country (she seemed to think he'd help out with Bintimodia's librarian training, I'm skeptical but maybe I can at least get a few school books out of his office). All in all it was a great experience. I was also pleased when she asked me if I was French, since my French was so good (I get this from random Guineans all the time, but usually that's because they themselves don't speak very good French, but this lady was very well educated AND she thought I spoke well, nice).

On a related note, one of the things she suggested I do was drop by the local private school where most of the ex-pat students go and talk to the director there about donating books to the library. I was so charged up after this great meeting with her than I went right over to talk to him right then and there, and here I had one of those moment where I realize how much I've adapted to Guinean culture.

Now, in the states as in most countries, you wouldn't drop by a school principals office at a ritzy private school unanounced just to say hi and introduce yourself - but I'm so used to people dropping by my place and just greeting me and going on their way that I thought nothing of it. I made it into his office after some bemused looks from the ex-pat teacher who I first ran into and asked for directions to the principal (all the teachers at this school are French ex-pats who speak perfect French that makes me realize that I am completely fluent only in West African French, and not so much the European variety which actually makes use of tenses like the subjunctive and conditional). I soon found myself in front of a very distinguished and annoyed looking man, who had been clearly doing something, with nothing more to say than "I just thought I'd drop by and introduce myself" in my pidgin French. He dealt with it pretty well, but I suddently found myself on the other side of this greeting process I run into almost daily (the one where the less-Guinean of the two is thinking "really? you just wanted to say hi? THAT's why you interrupted me?"). I left the school and started laughing at how "villageois" I've become.

Also important for today. One year :)

A Quick Post

Alright, I've made it in to Boke for the weekend to spend Valentine's Day with some other volutneers and get some business taken care of online using the free internet/computer use at the house (I have some letters to write asking NGOs and embassies for books for Bintimodia's Library - at the very least I'll need a French and and English form letter...maybe more later on).

In village news, I made it back from IST and found that my cat thinks his time is better spent at my other neighbor's house (giving me a good reason to finally talk with them some more). In the mornings around 6:45 he starts to meow loudly, paw at my head, paw at the door....eventually I grudgingly open it and the traitor runs off to the other house. He comes home for lunch and leaves again (sometimes, if he's really full he just takes a nap in the house first), at night I have to go round him up and bring him in to sleep....he's basically only my cat 20% of the time now, most of it I'm sleeping. At least this way he can still get my mice if they poke their heads out again (they're nocturnal, and have been absent for a few weeks now) and it also makes finding a cat sitter much easier (yesterday I had an exchange with the woman of the house (who likes my cat the most of the family) that went something like "Tomorrow I go to Boke. 3 days. My cat, he sleeps here, he eats here, it's good?" in Susu, she got the message and agreed, I gave her some money for the food and went on my way).

Also, at some point last week in the middle of the night 2 of my villages water pumps were stolen (one of them was the one that was across the street from me....very annoying). Apparently pumps get stolen fairly often, someone comes in the middle of the night, dismantles it, pulls up the gadgetry that makes it work, and take it to sell to some other village. So now my village is dependent on half the amount of clean water and some families are resorting to drinking well water (cholera risk...along with like 40 other diseases). I've started using well water to bathe and wash my clothes in, but I'm still drinking and washing my dishes in pump water. Apparently nobody wants to step up to pay the money to replace the lost pumps even though there's a fund in place just for this purpose....je ne comprends pas.

Also, my school is in full swing with the first semester final exams, I will write more on this in my next entry as my internet time is limited right now (running the electricity on generator power, other people want internet before the gas runs out). To be continued tomorrow....