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 :)