Blog Post from a Hard to Find Internet Cafe

Ok, this entry will be brief, hopefully explanatory, and probably not very well written. Sorry. The reason I've been so long in posting to this blog is because the internet cafe that I frequent in Kamsar has had technical difficulties for over a month now (getting close to two months actually...). In addition to this whenever internet has been available (Boke house, mostly), I've ceeded my right to the limited conenctivity time to Tim so he could catch up on all the stuff he needs to catch up on (he's nowhere near as used to being cut off from internet as I am now, and I suppose rightfully so since he actually has farm reservations to make for his WWOOLF plans after Guinea). The culmination of this was this special trip we've made to Boke so he could get access to internet here - last night the stars all aligned (Boke had electricity, our internet provider was functioning, there were no other volunteers who wanted to use the itnernet, etc) and Tim got to use the dial up connection from about 8pm until about 6am or so (got photos uploaded, farms researched, etc). I checked my e-mail and then typed up a blog post (not this one) on his laptop to uplaod to the internet eventually.

Since the internet stopped working this morning (our router battery died), we decided to venture out to the new iternet cafe that just opened in the past week or two that all the Boke voluinteers were raving about. We were told it was a satellite connection, with a generator backup, and that it was in Boke at the University. Only 2 of these 3 things are true - the cafe IS at the university, but what I didn't know was that the university was way the f**k out in the boonies of Boke, like 3 or 4 "suburb" villages away. I didn't know this when I started walking towards it this afternoon. Whenever I asked for directions I was told "you've got to take a moto-taxi, it's far" but since Tim is opposed to moto taxi's and Peace Corps policy forbids me from riding them we walked it. Turns out the university is 7km outside of Boke. We were on the verge of turning back and giving up (we'd been walking for about an hour and a bit in the hottest time of the day) when we got here. The things I do....christ.

Well, I'm here now, Tim is getting the last of his internet business figured out and I'm finally putting up a long awaited blog post (apologies to my regular readers, my mom's already told me that my sister was complaining about my lack of updates). Unfortunately my long post that I wrote last night is on Tim's laptop, this cafe doesn't allow USB drives, and the guys running the cafe couldn't figure out how to set up Tim's computer on their network (they're not used to windows Vista, and they're not used to computers being in English) so I will hopefully put that post up in a few weeks when I go to Conakry (or if the Kamsar internet gets fixed....this next weekend).

The quick and dirty summary is this: Tim and I have been hanging around in my village, I've been teaching and I only have a week or two of teaching to go before final exams - my school hasn't decided on the schedule yet. Our plan is to do "The World Map Project" on the elementary school wall in the time that Tim is here - painting a 2x4 meter map of the world using a draw-by-grid system. I picked my girl's conference participants (more on this in a later post) by doing an essay contest with all my 9th and 10th grade girls.

Girls Conference is basically a 4 day workshop where each volutneer brings a girl from his/her village and they are sensibilized about women's rights, female circumcision, HIV/AIDS, public speaking, etc etc all together in Boke. Their food, lodging and transport is covered by Peace Corps. For this essay contest I told my girls to write a page about "The biggest problem girls/women in Guinea face, and a possible solution". Of about 70 girls I got 6 essays back. Of the 6 only 3 actually addressed the topic (one of the other three actually wrote about how married women need to listen to their husbands because their place is in the house cooking the rice...). I narrowed it down to two girls - my principal's daughter Fatim, and the former Peace Corps host family daughter Merie - after consultation with the volunteer organizing the conference I decided to take both of them since there's room in the budget for more girls.

Other exciting news is that Tim and I made a trip out to Mankountan to see Teale in her village, we saw a girls soccer match that she had organized and spent the night in her hut. Pictures from this can be found on Facebook if you look up "Tim Baker" within my friends - his photo albums should be public. Also, his blog can be found at http://timjbaker.wordpress.org - he's written more than I have about what we've done during his time here.

Anyway, my itnernet time is running low - plans currently involve going to see the Fouta and go hiking with my friends John and Marg from Dalaba at the end of the month when I'm done teaching. Hopefully I can write a more complete blog post about the past 2 months and I wil be able to upload it when I pass through Conakry for this trip.

Now I've gotta figure out a way to get back to Boke, then back to my village before it gets too late....wish me luck!