Fed in Guinea (and Mali)

Transitional Blog Post

2009-12-18T17:55:00.000-08:00

Alright, so this will be the final post in this blog (though many of you have probably already given up on it since it's been months since my last post). For those who don't know, I will be continuing on as a Volunteer in Liberia for the next 8 months or so starting in early January, then hopefully working in France - and after that....who knows. Because of this I have decided to end "Fed in Guinea" and transition to "Next Stop: Liberia" which is located at fedtravels.blogspot.com. This way, as I change countries in the future I can just change the blog title without needing to change the URL as well. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Updates on the Situation

2009-10-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

So this morning we got the official word that we have suspended the Peace Corps Guinea program, which means I am definitely not returning to Bintimodia. Tomorrow morning our options will be presented to us for transfers, so I would assume I'll know what I'm doing with my life in a day or two (depending on how long it takes me to make up my mind, and/or negotiate end of contract dates with Peace Corps). The main issue is that a transfer would normally require a one-year commitment, and I'm not willing to commit until next November. If I can negotiate an earlier end-of-service date (my original date was set for June/July, but I would settle for as late as September), I may be moving to another program, most likely in West Africa.

I will definitely need to be somewhere else by this time next week, I will be forced to decide one way or the other (transfer or finish service early) by Friday, and will be a free citizen on Sunday if I choose to finish my service. I suppose that's enough info for now, I'll update this when I have concrete plans.

Evacuation

2009-10-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

So by now most of my readers have probably given up on my blog since it's been so long since my last post, but I'll still use this avenue to let you all know what is happening with me (and the rest of Peace Corps Guinea).

With all that's happened, I'll start with September 28th, when after having finished training for the new group I made a trip out to visit my best friend Jarrad's village accompanied by another of my good friends Marg. Jarrad lives(lived) 85 km or so from Boké, on a pretty bad road (mostly rocks and potholes). We were lucky enough to find a car going out there early in the day and so by noon of the 28th we were in his village. We enjoyed the day, said hello to everyone, etc etc. Around 8pm we went to his principal's house to chat a bit, and (because we had heard rumors in the preceding week) I asked his principal "so, did anything happen in Conakry today?". This is when we found out that 60 people had been killed in violent protests and 5 of the main presidential candidates for the elections coming up in February had been attacked. Upon hearing this, we immediately went to the village "video club" - a generator-run TV that people crowd around for the evening news, soccer matches and/or pirated DVD movies. The state-run news program (gov't runs the radio and TV stations) started with a 10 minute lesson on the history of Guinea's independence almost 51 years ago, showed a 2 minute story of "violent protests" in Conakry which showed a lot of property damage, but didn't mention deaths. The remainder of the program (a good 20 minutes or so) was coverage of President Captain Moussa Dadis Camara's recent trip to Labé where (based on the televised proceedings) thousands of people seemingly showed up in support of Dadis, and where long-winded speaches were made by key community members all of which mentioned how great he was, and how nice it'd be if he stayed in power. People were very upset and demanded the channel be changed to the stations that broadcast out of France, but by the time the video-club owner did so the "France 24" coverage of Guinea was wrapping up.

The next day, Marg and I hiked with Jarrad up to his "reseau point" - the point nearest to his house where he can get cell phone reception (a 5-6 km hike uphill past a couple of wide ankle deep marshlands). When we got there we made a few calls to find out what the status of Peace Corps was at that point (we wanted to make sure we were allowed to travel back to Boké). We found out we could travel, and were worried we would be trapped in Jarrad's village with no cell phone access if that changed so we caught the first car out of his village that would take us.

The trip back to Boké was interesting, for starters we had to wait by the side of the road for about 3 hours before a car came that would take us (only one other car had passed on this road, but it was full). Once we were loaded into this mini-bus (think cargo van with wooden benches nailed to the floor of the cargo space so that 25+ people can sit in the back, windows are triangles cut out of the sides of the van) we started down the road. It took us over 8 hours to travel the 85 km back to Boké. This included a storm that poured down rain for about 4 hours (I was fortunate enough to be sitting directly under a hole in the roof of the car, so I was completely drenched within minutes and stayed that way the entire ride (my hands were so pruned up that the skin on the back of them was beginning to wrinkle by the time we got to Boké)). At one point (mercifully after the rain had abated) we got a flat tire, then we had to stop in the first village we saw to get the spare patched up in case we got another flat on the way. The fixing of the flat took over an hour, and it was cold enough to make me (and most everyone) shiver, but there was a lady cooking dinner for her family nice enough to let about 10 of us crowd around her cooking fire and warm up/dry out a bit. We made it into Boké around midnight, found out from the volunteers there that the unofficial story at that point was 157 people had been killed by the military in Conakry, then went to sleep. I woke up to my phone ringing at 2am, but was too asleep to get to it in time, I woke up again at 4am and this time managed to answer in time to let my (very worried) mother know that I was safe and that I would call her as soon as I was awake enough to explain the situation.

The next day I got a call from my director letting me know that my parents had called Peace Corps Washington worried about my well being and would very much like to hear from me. I never thought I'd be that volunteer....but there you go. I called my dad and filled him in, then called my mom to give her the rest of the story as well. I spent a day in Boké getting my bags packed again to go to my village, anticipating that I might be stuck there for the duration of this mess on "standfast" orders. The next day I caught a taxi back.

My taxi actually was going to a different village, but they dropped me off on the road 2k from my house (this is acually what happens about half the time I come back from Kamsar, I prefer to walk the 2k than wait for hours at the taxi depot). As I walked in with my bags people from my village seeing me for the first time in 3 months were so excited that I felt it necessary to stop and say hello to everyone who called out to me, as a result I was a tired, sweaty, but very welcomeded (i nu sene! i nu sene!) mess when I got to my house. I was sent two separate bowls of rice and sauce and a bag full of (very sour) oranges within a couple hours of arriving.

My house, as it had been sitting empty for so long, was a mess. Luckily mold didn't take over like it had in some of my friends houses, but the mice took their revenge on my 10 month period of keeping them in check. They ate through the plastic tub my margarine was in, through the plastic lid of my gatorade mix, the plastic lid of my oatmeal, etc etc. One even chewed a hole into the corner of my peanut oil bottle so that I found a big tacky puddle of oil with an empty bottle in the middle of it. They also tried eating my bar of soap, and chewed up one of my earbud cushions pretty badly. I also found several frogs and lizards had taken up residence in my house. Luckily it was all cleanable and repairable, and luckily the mice didn't find a way into my metal trunk where I keep my cheez-its.

Some of the village kids were showing up to chat with me, and so I put on my iPod's african mix over the speakers and started bringing things out for them to wash while I swept up and mopped my floors. I also got them to pick most of the weeds and sweep my porch so within a few hours my house was looking much better and the kids' energy level had dropped beyond the point of wanting to hang out with me any more that day. They got a hearty amount of Jolly Ranchers as payment.

I finished the evening by spending more time greeting people, then I crashed early (long day). The next morning I had started continuing cleaning my house up and unpack when I got a phone call letting me know that we were starting our evacuation procedure on order of the US State Department. I was told it was unlikely we would be exiting the country, but that we were getting the ball rolling just in case. This sort of killed my enthusiasm for house cleaning so I spent some time greeting some more people and hanging out with kids on my porch instead. A couple of days later I got a phone call letting me know officially that we would be leaving on Tuesday the 6th of October for Bamako, Mali on our evacuation.

After spending the little bit of time I had back in my village, this news was pretty awful. I had learned Susu, made friends, found people I trusted and cared about in my community and all that was all the more evident by the welcome they gave me, yet in 2 days I would be leaving again, and may never see any of them again. Most sadly, my best friend Corso was in Kindia, home for the summer break and wouldn't return for another week. I called him first to break the news and he was as upset about it as I was. I then went to my principal and told him what was happening and that I was going to Mali with the rest of Peace Corps and that I didn't think I'd be returning. In addition to me one other teacher wasn't going to be returning to our school this year (he's dying of some abdominal cancer, as best I can figure out from what's been told to me about his treatment), so our already overworked and underpaid school is going to be stretched so much thinner this school year. I gave all my chemicals to the French teacher Tavara Diallo who I gave a quick training on since he'll be teaching my classes this coming year.

I spent a pretty misrable couple of last days going through every emotion imaginable while packing up my bags. I forced myself to spend much of that time working on and finishing my world map (it's done, all countries labeled, list of people who worked on it with the year painted on). In the end, I found myself up at 9pm with my headlamp on during a storm finishing the last few countries (Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe) while Mèrie, one of the three girl students I taught who is going on to high school, chatted with me about what I thought she should specialize in the following year (Guinean high school students focus on either social science, experimental science, or math science).

The next morning I set my bags outside and read on my porch for an hour until the Peace Corps car showed up. I had already said my goodbyes to the main people I cared about, and at that point most people who I had worked with knew I was leaving. Around 9am the car showed up with Dan, Mary, Jarrad, Astrid, Marg, Annie, Julie, Molly, Daffé and the driver. I said my last goodbyes to my neighbor and susu teacher Fodé Moussa, thanking him (in susu) for having been my teacher and friend the last year. He gave me like 10 different benedictions (god bless your ... family, health, work, travels, self, and a few others I didn't quite decypher) and hugged me goodbye.

The car drove off, and we were on our way to Coyah where we would meet up with the Peace Corps bus which took us to Mamou that night. I found out in Coyah that we would be picking up the volunteer from Kindia, so I called her to see if she would mind Corso being there when we picked her up so I could say goodbye to him in person. She didn't, and so I called him. We ended up getting delayed but he waited with her outside her house for 2 hours until we pulled up and had our 5 minute goodbye. She later told me he spent most of the time chatting with her about how much he was going to miss me and how great an english tutor he thought I was. When we said goodbye he gave be a plastic bag with gifts in it, a new pair of bazin melange pants, a new indigo dyed pants and shirt outfit, 2 pictures (one for me, one for Tim), and a very heartfelt note. He is definitely the best friend I've made during my time here, and I'm really going to miss him.

Our trip to Bamako took two days (we spent the first night in Mamou), and in the end took me 29 hours from Bintimodia to Bamako, excluding the time in Mamou. We are staying in the Peace Corps Mali training compound which means we are staying in a large group of huts, 3 to a hut (Jarrad, Bryan and I are hut-mates), getting 3 meals provided to us, shuttles into the city, are sharing 3 computers in addition to people's laptops to use internet, edit resumés, etc etc. This is partly why it's taken me this long to finish this post.

The upside is that because Peace Corps is worried about our morale we are getting good food, and activities planned for us (outing to a waterfall this weekend, trip to a world cup qualifying soccer match (Mali vs. Sudan) last weekend, etc. We're not sure if we'll be going back to Guinea, we originally were not very hopefull but it seems DC wants us to wait and see for a couple of weeks to a month while they determine if it will be safe for us to return.

I've gone through so many decisions on what I'm doing with my life from this point on that I'm not even going to bother mentioning them now. I may go back to Guinea if that's an option, I may transfer to another Peace Corps country, I may go home soon while I seek out a new job abroad (those options include high schools in Guatemala, Japan, and France who need Chemistry or English teachers, etc etc). I will write a post when I figure out where I'll be going next, but for now, expect that I'll be in/around Bamako until at least next week unless the situation in Guinea changes drastically for the better or worse.

Longwinded Return to Blogging

2009-09-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

Alright, so since my last blog post (3 months ago!), I've been a busy person, I went to an HIV/AIDS/Malaria/Excision workshop with my best friend from my village Corso, then I spent a week and a half helping get the last details worked out for the new education group's training before their arrival. During this process I wrote a 50 page chemistry experiment guide with appendices explaining where to find chemical materials, and how to build certain apparatuses from market materials (mayo jars, etc).

I then took a WONDERFUL month long vacation that was much needed. I spent two weeks traveling in France with my Mom, sister, aunt, cousin and cousin's daughter. We mostly stuck around Paris, but took a 4 day trip to the Alsace region to see small towns, staying in a "gite" aka a guest-house in the small town of Breucshwickersheim (or something like that...). After this I took a train to Madrid and met Tim there and then traveled around Spain with him, his parents and sister to a farm in the Asturias region of Spain (near Arriondas), then to a wedding in a tiny town (population 9, seriously) near Burgos, finally we spent a few days in San Sebastian (during which Tim and I took a day trip to Bilbao to see the Guggenheim there) before returning to Madrid for a couple of days before I made me re-entrance to Guinea.

I arrived just as the new training group was about to depart for their site visits, and so I arrived in Conakry at night, slept, woke up and got right into a bush taxi headed for Boké to lead the 4 new Basse Côte volunteers on their first visits to the villages they'll live in the for the next two years. It was a fun week, though a bit hectic at first (didn't really get to eat in one of the villages because nobody offered to feed us and we hadn't brough anything with us - we eventually found bread and mayonnaise for dinner, in another village we were stranded for several hours while attempting to leave because there just weren't any cars going anywhere, we eventually found our way out). It was a trial by fire return to Guinea, especially as I was responsible for the happiness of 4 trainees, but it really just reminded me what I had come to realize in my last week of vacation in Europe - I really like Guinea and am completely willing to sacrifice some creature comforts in exchange for the more wild and make-do lifestyle you find here...at least for the next 9 months or so left in my service.

I then spent a week in Conakry starting a translation of my chemistry manual into French to give Guinean teachers at the December Teacher's Conference I'm helping organize before heading down to Forecariah to be a trainer for the last 3.5 weeks of the new groups training. This period is known as "Practice School" and is when they all teach full-sized guinean student classes while being supervised and evaluated by experienced volunteers (comme moi), and their Guinean trainers. The first few days my evaluations were quite long and involved (things like "don't let students talk over you when you're lecturing" and "remember to leave things up on the chalkboard long enough for students to take notes" were just the beginning), but they quickly responded to the criticism, and by the end I spent most of their classes reading my book in the back, while making the occasional note on minor issues. I'm really excited that there are more teachers in Peace Corps besides my group, especially since a few of them are going to be living relatively near me.

During this time I had some tough decisions to make regarding where I'm going with my life after Peace Corps (did I mention I'll be done in 9 months....yikes!). I'd very seriously considered doing a third year in Guinea as a professor at one of the main Universities, after speaking with chemistry professors from the University of Conakry it seemed that even with my undergraduate degree, I could have something to offer their organic chemistry students, and I was excited to teach real chemistry for a change as opposed to reviewing basic math and introducing the idea of atoms, etc to middle school students. The more I thought about this option however, the less and less it appealed to me, especially considering the host of other options available to me.

In short (and I need to be, because attempting to write out everything I'm considering would take about 9 months), I've decided that, as much as I love Guinea and enjoy the fact that I've adapted pretty thoroughly to the culture here - I don't want to stay here for a third year when I have the option to instead spend my time abroad exploring other countries (and hopefully other continents, though I'd also love to explore other regions in Africa). I am very tentatively looking into being a trainer for a new Peace Corps program that will be starting with education volunteers next summer in Sierra Leone (this would mostly likely be June-September of next year, but at this point there isn't enough information to know who or what they'll need for this). I am also very seriously looking into a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) teacher position in France for 9 months starting next October (to give me a chance to de-Guinea-ify my French, and live in Europe for a while, which is on my list of things to do before I die), I'm also planning on sending my resumé out to other Peace Corps programs that interest me as a potential third year extension somewhere else (Southeast Asia, and South America both interest me, I would love to get into teacher-trainer positions where my job is to work with local teachers on improving their methods to stimulate critical thinking, etc). Anyway, the list is long, and I've only scratched the surface of what my options are, one thing I AM fairly certain of though, is that I will be out of America for at least the next 2 years, and possibly longer (I'm looking at International Organizations (UNESCO), and NGOs (Academy of International Education Development, etc), and tons of other jobs that might keep me away and abroad for a while.

Wow, that wasn't short at all...

Anyway, this plan makes maintaining personal relationships stateside difficult, and while I know I have the support of my loved ones back home I do worry about not seeing my family enough (especially my little sister who I'm sure are starting to forget what I look like), losing contact even more throroughly with my friends, etc. This decision to remain abroad has already led me to break off one relationship that was/is very important to me, but given the circumstances it seems like the best thing for everyone involved from a long-term POV. ...Enough about that.

Anyway, so I hope this post catches everyone up a bit on what I've been up to the last few months. I will hopefully get another out before I leave Conakry for Bintimodia in a few days, but seeing as how I'll be helping the Trainees(soon to be Volunteers) find and bargain for all the stuff they need for their new houses/huts, I don't know how much time I'll dedicate to blogging.

Don't forget, you can always call me, my phone number is listed in my facebook profile (I changed it, if you have one that starts with (224)65 instead of (224)62, then you need to update it), and I always welcome letters, care packages, etc. Until next time (hopefully before 2010 comes around)...

Quick Update Regarding the Lack of Updates

2009-06-23T16:03:00.000-07:00

So I've once again been spotty on my updating of this blog - part of that is still the continuation of Tim's visit keeping me busier than usual, and the other part is the fact that the Kamsar internet café STILL isn't opporational. I started a post with details of my hiking trip to the Fouta (Dalaba, Doucki, Labé, Mombeya, and Kankalabé) but it is unfinished, and I don't think it's going to get finished in the next couple of weeks...BUT here's my schedule for those interested in knowing what I'm up to for the next couple of months:

I have finished with all school related things in my village and I am now free to do more traveling than I would be during the school year, this is also when conferences tend to happen (for the same reason), and soon the new training group (G-18) will be here and I will be training them. So, the plan is to drop Tim off at the airport in a couple of hours (literally), then leaving for an HIV/AIDS conference for a couple of days (it started this morning, but I got a reprieve due to Tim's flight - I will be there for the second half of it). This weekend I'm probably going to take a Peace Corps car to Forecariah to do a training development workshop (to plan the final details of how the new group's training will be structured, etc). This will end just in time for me to spend 4th of July in Conakry - then spend a couple of days writing a chemistry demo booklet for the new training group before their arrival around July 8th. I will be around to do their training in Conakry, then I will see their adoption ceremony in Forecariah before heading back to Conakry just in time for my "real" vacation. I fly out of Conakry for Paris July 15th, I travel around Belgium and France with my mom, aunt, sister, cousin, and counsin's daughter for 2 weeks then take a night train to Madrid and travel around with Tim, Tim's parents, and Laura (Tim's sister) for two weeks including attending the wedding of a friend of the family. I fly back to Conakry in mid-August.

Phew, so it'll be a busy couple of months, and I assume my blogging will continue to be sporadic at best. I hope to be able to finish writing about my Fouta trip, and about my final weeks in the village before I head off to Europe, though, but that probably won't happen until early July when I'll get access to internet again. Until then!

'Cause Mariana Said So...

2009-05-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

Alright, I was going to slack on the blog writing because it's been a long day and I'm about to spend a good chunk of time uploading pictures to Facebook, but since my sister (and loyal reader) requested an entry, here goes...

Since my last post (which, by the way, was chosen as "Peace Corps Voluneer Blog of the Day" by some Peace Corps Twitter thing, as I've just found out in an e-mail), Tim and I have gotten a good start on the world map project, Jarrad came by and helped us out one day, I finished teaching my classes, and I decided to bring an entirely different girl to Girl's Conference.

The World Map Project is basically painting a mural of the map of the world to whatever size you want (1:2 ratio), we did 2x4 meters on the wall of the outside of the elementary school - facing a map of Africa and a map of Guinea done by previous volunteers (Sam and Michelle, respectively, I think). There is also a smaller map of the world on another wall of the middle school, but it's pretty small, only labelled the continents, and south america fell off when the wall cracked a few years back. Anyway, we measured out exactly the dimensions of our rectangle plus a 4cm border like 5 times, we penciled it out, we painted it white, painstakingly measured our 7 cm grid (28 squares high, 56 wide), and spent a few days penciling in the countries by a square by square grid system. For this process we used some of my students - though after they were done we had to make some minor (and in one kid's case, major) repairs. My two 10th graders did pretty well save for tilting spain at and odd angle and messing up a few international boundaries, but my 9th grader COMPLETELY screwed up Africa. After he left we had to erase it entirely and start from scratch. I was hoping nobody would notice but a bunch of kids who were watching us (there is usually a crowd) were chattering away about how so-and-so did it so bad that we had to re-do it...hope word didn't make it back to him.

Anyway, so we got the penciled countries in and went back to erase all the gridlines, this is where we enlisted the younger elementary school kids (though one of them kept erasing the map and I had to follow behind him redrawing where he had obliterated Hawaii or Equador). Afterwards we used small paintbrushes to do black paint borders of all the countries - something we just finished before leaving for this trip. Luckily we managed to talk Jarrad into coming to my village for a night, and then spend the morning helping us paint before he headed back to Boké. We also made a nice dinner (salad, mac and cheese, a bottle of wine) to celebrate the one-year-before-Jarrad-finishes-with-Peace-Corps mark (he's cutting out a bit earlier than I will next summer).

In other news yesterday was my official last day of teaching for this school year!! Well, sort of...I had planned around stopping this week all along because all around the country school is supposed to end around now, final exams happen, and school should be completely done by early June. As it turns out (and as I found out yesterday) my school is going strong for another couple of weeks because enough of our teachers are behind their syllabus that they're just going to hold out until June 8th to start finals, by the time most other kids will already be on break. I had already planned this trip I'm currently on, and I had finished my syllabus a couple of weeks ago (I've been reviewing since then), so I told my principal as much and called it a school year. When I return I will have to grade my final exams and remaining homework, then turn in grades. But, once that's done, I'm good until next October or so (except for my extra side-projects, etc).

It's weird, even though I haven't quite reached my one year mark (10 months and 2 weeks...and counting), I'm mostly done with roughtly the first chunk of a 2 chunk commitment. Time here is weird because it seems like days take a long time, but the months seem to be flying by. In no time at all Tim is going to be out of here, I'll be in Europe, and then school will have kicked in for a second school year...and then what??

Well, I'm still working on the big "and then what?" questions of post-Peace Corps life - I'll write more about that when I'm more concrete about it (hopefully by September or so....I might need/want to start applying for certain programs as early as then if I'm still seriously considering them (grad schools, JET, TFA, NYCTF, and probably half a dozen others).

Anyway, today was a long day - I woke up around 6 and Tim and I were out of the house by 7, yet we didn't make it to the peace corps compound in Conakry until 4:30pm (and I NEEDED to get there by 5 to get money out of the safe for this trip, so I was kinda stressed). Plus (and this is the thing that really ticks me off) I left my brand-new never-used Barack Obama umbrella in one of the taxis (ARG!). We ended up waiting over an hour at the main-road taxi stop for our car to leave, then the back tire lost its tread (it didn't go flat or blow out...the tread just fell off) so we had to wait under a shady tree for it to get replaced by the completely bald spare tire. Not an hour later the spare did the same thing and this time we didn't have a spare tire. Luckily we were able to duck into someone's porch along the road while the driver and a passanger "fixed" it by cutting off the loose flap with a razor blade. We drove on this disaster-waiting-to-happen for another 10-20km or so until the next big town where we waited another hour or so for a new tired to be put on the car. Of course this meant we got into Conakry right at rush hour and then our taxi made us switch to another car for no reason, on top of the third car we had to get in Madnia towards the Peace Corps office (this, I think, is where I left my umbrella....argh!). In the end we made it in time to get money, and I've since eaten (oh yeah, I had a small piece of fried dough at 8am, then 3 chawarmas at about 7pm, nothing in between...). What a day.

The good news is tomorrow (bright and early), we're going to Dalaba in the Fouta, hanging out with a couple of my friends for a few days, then going on a 3 day hike through the mountains in the middle of the country (Doucki), THEN going to Labé to show Tim around there before heading back to Conakry for a VAC meeting and back to my village. I'm excited to be away from my village for a while, not have to be responsible for work (though...I guess I'm going to be working on budgeting for a teacher's conference, but at least that's different).

Anyway, if you made it this far, I'm glad you're this interested in my life, I don't feel like editing this right at the moment, but i'm guessing it's one of my least-cohesive entries yet...I hope to write a better one from Labé or when I'm back in Conakry.

Blog Post from a Hard to Find Internet Cafe

2009-05-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

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!

Phew, kinda

2009-03-30T21:16:00.001-07:00

Alright, Tim is here sending a quick e-mail to let his family know he made it ok. The taxi driver showed up early (what?!?!) and so I got there 30 minutes before his flight. I waited for a while outside sitting on a wall with like 40 Guineans for about an hour, and then I noticed that there was a lot of movement in the terminal. I walked over to a sketchy part of the outside and peered through the bars and tried to spot Tim. Someone asked me the name of my friend and they went and looked for him just as I spotted him. I noticed he was having some conversation that didn't seem to be going well so I decided to try to abuse my white-ness and get past the guards to give him a hand.

I went to the exit from baggage claim and asked the guard nicely then a little more sternly in French to let me through to help my friend who spoke no French. He refused and didn't seem in a mood to change his mind so I said "awa" without really thinking ("ok, goodbye" in both susu and pulaar) and walked away, and he immediately called me back and let me through. Right as I got to the next set of guards with the other guard escorting me through Tim was walking out of the terminal with a security guard carrying his bag. I thanked the couple of Guineans that seemed to have helped him get through and offered to take his bag, but there seemed to be some issue that nobody was telling me about.

Finally we stopped and the english-speaking Guinean woman who helped translate for Tim in my absence tried to explain to me what the situation was in English, and then I asked her to tell me in French because I wasn't understanding her and I found out that she had gotten Tim through by promising the Custom's officer a bribe that I was supposed to go back and pay.

To cut a long story short - I went on a rant to her, then to the security guard about a lot of different reasons why they were corrupt and why I wasn't paying them anything. My usual strategy is to argue until they get sick of me and let me go but since Tim looked tired (and I was also sleepy) I gave in and handed over 5,000 ($1) - my first bribe in Guinea. At this point the guard started saying that wasn't enough and then I went off on him some more, shoved the bill in his hand, ripped Tim's bag away from him and walked away.

The taxi driver took us back and charged me a very reasonable rate considering he picked me up at 2:10, and dropped me off at 4 in the morning, and now I think it's time to get some shut-eye.

Crossing My Fingers

2009-03-30T19:03:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I've been in Conakry for a day and a bit now. Most of the first day was spent hanging out in the volunteer house and getting lunch and dinner at the beach bar. Today I talked to basically the entire staff of Peace Corps Guinea for one reason or another, some relating to getting Tim cleared for his visit, some relating to medical issues, some relating to what's going on in my village, some about this upcoming training schedule, etc. Afterwards I tagged along with Jarrad to a medical appointment, and we had lunch with Sue - our assistant PCMO - at Conakry's indian restaurant (Restaurant Taj Majal). It was a pretty good meal, and then we had a brief moment to browse stuff downtown before going back to the office.

I've since been hanging out in the compound, and getting stuff ready for Tim's arrival. His flight is scheduled to arrive in like 45 minutes, and I called my taxi driver (who I called this afternoon to set up a "deplacement" for 2:30am). I think I woke him up, but I told him I would be waiting for him at 2:30 at the gate to the Peace Corps compound. I really hope he's not running on Guinean time, and he will get me to the airport in time to help Tim through whatever bit of Customs, etc I can. I'm a bit nervous between dealing with the taxi (I'm going to pay him to take me there, wait for an hour or so, and then take us back - because it's not really safe to just grab any old taxi at 3am in Conakry - especially if you're clearly not Guinean and have baggage) and about dealing with potential problems with airport staff, but I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope for the best all around. Ideally, within 2 hours I will be back in the compound with Tim. I just hope the taxi driver doesn't screw me on the price more than is appropriate for this sort of 3am wake-up and drive me, wait, and drive me business.

Alright, I'll probably update about this adventure in the next day or two...for now wish me luck.

Going to Boke and Riz Gras Gift Cards

2009-03-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

So this morning I decided to finally get around to cleaning up my house in preparation for Tim's visit. I was in the middle of this when I got a call from Jarrad, letting me know that the following day there was an embassy car going from Boke to Conakry, and that I should try to come along to get a free comfortable ride down. I decided to clean as quickly as I could to do this, since it would make my life that much easier, and I could spend a little time in Boke getting my secret gift-card mission taken care of (details on this come later).

Around 5pm I was done with the clean-up and packing for Conakry and so I went out and started my usual method of getting to the main road - walking the 12k until someone passes by and gives me a lift (this has variable success, especially later in the day). I hadn't made it very far before someone called out to me and asked if I was going to the main road. When I said I was they told me they were driving there as soon as their meeting was over. I went over and sat with them, played snake on my phone, and waited for the meeting to end.

Of course, I should have known better than to expect a quick ride. When the guy asked me if I was going to Conakry and I said that I was going to Boke, he said "ok, good, you can probably get a ride to Boke even at 8pm". I took this to be an exaggeration giving the latest probably time of finding a car, but it turned out to be hopeful guess. Indeed, after more of the meeting happened, including ending with speeches all around and sharing a plate of rice and sauce (I was given a spoon and ordered to join in) I found myself waiting until about 7:30 to leave the village, and was looking for a Boke car around 8pm at the main road.

Luckily I got there just in time to find the last Kamsar-bound car leaving the gare (there were no Boke cars at that time), and so I got a ride as far as Kolaboui, the crossroads between Conakry, Boke and Kamsar. Here I got off and found a Boke car and only had to wait about 20 minutes for it to fill up, and we were on our way. I thus made it into Boke around 9pm or so.

At this point, I went on my gift-card mission that I'd been scheming for a while. See, for my birthday, my friend Jarrad gave me a bottle of liquor and told me he had thought of getting me a gift-card to the attieke (ivorian manioc based delicious street food) lady in Boke - this would have involved explaining the concept of gift cards to the lady - but he didn't have time/the french skills to pull this off in time. Now, I don't think it's very original of me to have taken his idea, but he does like food and never cooks when he's in Boke, so I took the idea and ran with it. In my village I made 2 gift cards, one for the attieke lady, and one for the riz gras lady (a senegalese rice dish) that he usually goes to. I planned on buying him 10 plates of each to last him a few months of meals here in Boke. However, last time I was in Boke, I was never alone in the market, he was always with me (despite my attempts to lose him a couple of times).

This time however, I was alone and on my way to the restaurant anyway to get my own dinner, so I managed to talk to the riz-gras lady and explained the concept of "I pay now, he comes later with this piece of cardboard and gets food". It was surprisingly easy to explain, and I know she understood because she then showed her daughter (who sometimes runs the place in her absence) the card and explained the system to her in susu (I understood just enough to know she got the point correct). The nice thing is that she knows both of us pretty well, so I know she'll remember when he comes back. He's the "giant black-american" and I'm "the giant black-american's friend, with a beard" (Jarrad frequents the place more than I do, so they know him better, though I suspect she likes me more since I speak some Susu and Jarrad doesn't).

I still haven't managed to get the attieke lady onboard, and I don't expect to have time before leaving Boke, so I'm going to add a mediocre quality bottle of liquor to the gift as well. I feel pretty awesome at having managed this transaction though.

By the way, I explained this on the phone to my Mom, and she basically told me I was just making people's lives difficuly and should just give Jarrad the money to buy his own rice if that's the present I wanted to give him. But the thing is - it's not the riz gras itself that makes this a good present, it's the fact that nowhere else in Guinea is any sort of gift-card system/credit system in place for street food, and it's something of a reminder of the ridiculous consumer culture in the states. Also, Jarrad will know that the effort of making the cards and especially of explaining the concept to the merchants was more so important than the money value of the food (though riz-gras isn't cheap). Even if (and I hope this doesn't happen) the lady forgets, or refuses to honor the card, etc - the effort was the important part.

But yeah, so that's that. After this escapade, I came up to the house, watched "Pirates of the Caribbean III" with people, and made plans for tomorrow morning's Conakry trip. Since I wasn't sleepy I took advantage of the free internet (Boke power is on!) in the adjacent office, and will soon now be going to bed. Next stop, Conakry

From Kamsar, again

2009-03-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I’ve been out of communication for some time now, I didn’t come to Kamsar last week and so it’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve checked e-mail, and about 6 days since my cell phone battery died (I was planning on charging it at the village nightclub last Saturday (they run off a generator), but they didn’t open for some reason…I found myself running around after dark to random houses that I thought had a generator going, but nobody seemed to be running them this past week (no important soccer matches on TV, and so no need to gather half the village and run a generator for the TV)). I’ve certainly been out of communication for longer (I spent almost 3 months with no internet in Forecariah – and the cell phone reception there wasn’t very reliable), but it was still a bit annoying.

Village-wise, not much has happened. My Country Director came for a visit a little over a week ago, he showed up after my classes had ended so I was able to show him around for the whole 2 hours he spent in my village – we took a few pictures in front of a large baobab tree stump (the tree had been cut down to build a canoe) and chatted with my sous-prefet and principal. We also started brainstorming a potential “Tour de Basse Côte” for us to do at some point – he’s big into biking and has already done a trip with volunteers between Kissidougou and Kankan out in Haute Guinea. I’d like to have it involve going the 80k to Jarrad’s site from Boké – since I plan on doing that at some point anyway, but we’ll see how it goes.

There was also a “Community Development Meeting” last Saturday in my village (we’re the sous-prefeture, sort of like the county seat, so people from all the neighboring villages came to our meeting room for this event). I showed up at 9 because nobody ever told me what time the meeting was supposed to be at, and I figured I’d go and ask, then go home and come back when I was actually needed. I was welcomed and told the meeting would start “tout de suite” (real soon) and so I busied myself looking over the village computer – which I’d promised to set up (The village got a new-ish PC, printer and copy machine from the gov’t, but nobody but me seems to know what to do with them so I’m going to set it up for them, teach them basic word processing, and set them up with template letters for the kinds of stuff they’re probably going to want typed up from now on (the current system involves hand-written letters and carbon-copy paper)). After I evaluated that they had almost everything they needed to get the machine going (they need to buy a current regulator so the fluxuating generator power doesn’t fry the system) and I think tomorrow we will finally turn it on and see what it contains (I hope it has the necessary software, otherwise it’s going to be (even more) useless). Anyway, after I’d checked all the cables and thought about what they needed to get, I went into the room where the meeting was set to begin, and sat down amongst the other people, many of whom had already arrived. I had just started writing a letter to help pass the time when I was ushered to one of the seats at the front of the room, facing the “audience”. I kept writing, finished the letter, waited around and finally around 11 or so they took attendace by calling out all the necessary villages and seeing how many people from those places had shown up by a show of hands. I was counted under “Bintimodia-centre”. Then there was some brief (10 minute) speech given in Susu that I didn’t understand a word of. Then, apparently, someone important showed up and so the meeting stopped and we waited again while something (I still don’t know what) kept the main people busy. I waited around some more, started a second letter, and watched people move chairs back and forth trying to decide the best way to arrange people. Finally at 12:30 I decided I didn’t feel like waiting any longer to hear a meeting in a language I wasn’t going to understand anyway, and I went home. The next day I got the 5 minute version (in French) from “Bob”, the guy in charge of youth development in the village.

So that’s pretty much it, other than that I’ve been teaching as usual (we started conjugating the verb “to be” in English class this week – a step up from memorizing random phrases like “how are you?”) and reading as usual (on book number 85 currently, I would say that I’m going to be very well read when I’m done here, but I do spend a lot of my time on trashy fantasy and detective novels so I don’t know (I loved “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “Oliver Twist” though, neither of those really felt hard (or impossible) to read the way “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” did (I gave up on that one half-way through)). Anyway, upcoming highlights include going to Conakry in a few days to pick Tim up from the airport and then maybe staying there about 8 days waiting for a committee meeting I’m supposed to be at (though I may skip it since it was pushed back 4 days - making it sort of inconvenient with the plans I made around the original date). Anyway, so I will write again in a few days from Conakry, and hopefully post some newer pictures of my house now that it’s pretty much set-up.

Until then.

Travel Plans

2009-03-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

So I'm still in Boke for one more night, I'll be going back to my village tomorrow morning (too late to teach, unfortunately), mostly because I got kinda sick today (I hope it goes away soon, I had only thrown up once before this here in Guinea, but today I did 3 times within a couple of hours, though that was partly motion sickness from being in a car on a bad road)).

This will be a quick post because we're running on generator power (Boke power is out, again) and other people want to use the internet. Basically I'm just excited since my mom officially purchased my plane tickets for Europe. I'm flying to Paris in mid-July, hanging out with her and my aunt for a couple of weeks, taking a train to Spain, hanging out with Tim (and his family a little?) for a couple of weeks, then catching a flight from Madrid back to Guinea in mid-August. This will be my one big vacation while I'm here, though my friend Jarrad and I are talking about making a trek out to Togo for Christmas (they have the best food in West Africa from what I hear, and we generally both really want to go there to check it out).

Well, that's good for now. The only other bit of news is that my Country Director is visiting my village this week to see where I am and how things have gone, I'll probably post about that visit this weekend. Until then.

A Visitor!

2009-03-13T06:28:00.000-07:00

So I'm in Kamsar for the day once again. I was here last week, and even wrote a lengthy post about a funeral I attended and some paint I'd bought - but then the computer froze/spazzed out and I lost it all. I assure you it was a great loss to the world of online travel literature. I may resurrect it one day, but not today.

So I'm in Kamsar despite the fact that I had plans to bike with one of my students to his house today. I got a text message at 8am from my friend Jarrad - saying he was in Boké with nothing to do and wanted to go to Kamsar. I planned on going up to Boké tomorrow anyway when the mail-run (Peace Corps car delivering my mail, comes once a month) drops by - I would catch a ride with them back up to Boké. I left a note for my student telling him I was sorry but I had to cancel, and caught a car up to Kamsar to meet Jarrad and get my usual market/internet stuff taken care of.

So now we're here in the internet place, soon to go to the pool and then we're going back together to Bintimodia where he'll see my village for the first time, I'll show him around a bit, then tomorrow we'll both catch the Peace Corps car to Boké, spend a night there, and he'll keep going with them to drop off his mail while I'll take Tiffany's bike back with me to Bintimodia for Tim to use while he's here (I'm thinking of biking from Boké to Bintimodia, but it's like 50k, and I've been lazy lately, so I might just toss it on a bush taxi and call it a day).

Anyway, my internet time is running low and I unfortunately won't get another chance for a week or more (the internet in Boké is apparently down) so I'm going to do some quick research on plane prices and then go read by the pool. O'oo.

A Day of Luxurious Excess

2009-02-28T03:21:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-26T10:55:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-21T06:25:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-15T02:00:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-13T14:06:00.000-08:00

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.

----------

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

2009-02-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

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....

Realization

2009-01-31T11:25:00.000-08:00

So I made it up to Boke today, having accomplished not much else, but on the walk up to the Volunteer house with Jarrad, he said "you know...there's a lot of stuff we take for granted now that would have been way too much to handle 6 months ago". Here's a summary of the day and the reasons for this comment:

Tiffany, Jarrad and I left Conakry this morning, I got a bean sandwhich from the girl on the corner, and didn't even bother spitting out the pin bones that were in with the fish, nor did I consider the potential health risk of eating street food (I do it almost daily). We walked a while until we got a taxi to take us to Madina, the big market where we usually catch a Boke-bound taxi. Our driver told us Bambento was closer and better for Boke cars, and not only did I know where he was referring to, I realized he was right and thanked him for letting us know.

At the taxi gare in Bambento, we were delayed while we waited for our car to fill up, so Jarrad and I split a plate of atteke (grated and fermented manioc couscous-type dish) with fish and aloco (fried plantains) when we realized a lady next to us was selling some. After a while a little girl came over to stare at us and we all smiled and waved at her. I asked her her name in Susu and she didn't seem to get it, Jarrad asked her in Pulaar and she didn't respond with her name but she started greeting us in a mixture of Pulaar and French. After a while she came and sat with between us and we chatted with her (mostly "bonjour" and "ca va bien?" as her vocab wasn't huge...she was probably 2). We played with her by taking turns poking her when she covered her eyes and then pointing at each other in a "he/she did it" sorta way. At one point she took her sweater off and put it around her waist then handed me the ends so I could tie it for her, at another point she was hanging off Jarrad's neck...she was very cute.

We got out car out of Conakry and at the final Conakry checkpoint the soldiers who check IDs didn't approve of our Peace Corps IDs, and made us get out of the car and asked to see our passports. This, again, we simply handled by telling him who we were, what we were doing, explaining that we didn't need passports to leave Conakry and that the ID he had in his hand was good enough. When he didn't believe this we called the Safety and Security guy from Peace Corps and he straightened the soldier out and we were on our way.

The trip was uneventful, my leg fell asleep and I was really sweaty by the time I got to Boke, but it was fine. In the market I had Jarrad stand guard as I took more money out of my bag (I had forgotten my wallet in a pair of pants that I had packed). We went into the market on our way back to the volunteer house, we got bissap and while I was paying I noticed 4 or 5 ladies walking with big ceramic pots on their heads*. I flagged one down and bought one from her speaking exclusively Susu to ask the price and so on, I'd been trying to get one of these for months! We then walked the 2k up the hill to the volutneer house, I was carrying my backpack, my duffel bag, and a big ceramic pot.

Near the top of the hill one of the ladies who lives near the Peace Corps compound in Boke complimented my pot in Susu and we had an exchange that went something like this:

-Your pot, it's pretty. (I poti, a tofan.)
-Thank you (I nu wali)
(greeting - this is mostly "how are you, how is your family, etc")
-Where is your home? (I xoni na minden?) (I'm used to being asked "Where are you from?" (I kelife minden) so this question threw me for a second, but then I realized what she had asked and said....)
-My home is in Bintimodia. I'm Bintimodian. (N xoni na Bintimodia. Bintimodia ka na n na)
-Oh, is Bintimodia where you work? (Awa, Bintimodia I walima na?)
-Yes, I'm a teacher there, I work with Peace Corps (Iyo, xaranderaba na n na, n walima na Corps de la paix)
-Oh, ok (awa)
-I'm your neighbor (I doxobore na n na) (I recently learned the work for neighbor and was excited to try it out)
-Yes you are, well, goodbye (Iyo, awa, O'oo)
-Ok, see you tomorrow. (awa, O'oo, won tina)
-ok, see you in the morning (awa, won gesege)

After this Jarrad turned to me and said "wow, that was a long conversation!" and I agreed. He complimented me on my Susu, since he had no idea I spoke so much of it (everyone in Mamou speaks Pulaar, so my Susu was useless there). We then had the conversation about things that would have overwhelmed us 6 months ago. We walked to the woman who is friends with Jarrad and Astrid - the one Astid was visiting when she found my kitten. I met her, and she told us to come back later in the evening and she would give us gingam with piment (sugary ginger drink with chili pepper...I'm excited as I love it). I'm going to head over there with Jarrad now, and continue on into town for dinner.

O'oo.

*In villages, people use big unglazed ceramic pots as a refrigerator system. You fill the pot with water and stick a cover on it. Since it's porous it allows evaporation and the evaporation cools the whole thing down like 10-20 degrees so you actually get cold water. It works especially well in the dry season, which we're in now. I'm going to use it to keep my eggs, and maybe some butter cold, also I can drink the cold water when I'm feeling overheated (hot season is coming up...)

IST Summary

2009-01-30T11:07:00.001-08:00

Alright, so I'm back in Conakry for a night, and will be continuing on to Boké, and possibly Bintimodia tomorrow. I have so much to say and only so much time and patience to dedicate to this, so here goes a general summary of the past weel.

I left Conakry with a Peace Corps car and mostly just tried to sleep on the way up. A lot of us crammed in, so it was actually about as comfortable as a bush-taxi except it was free, had A/C, and I could speak in English instead of French/Susu.

Upon arriving in Mamou I was quickly reunited with all my friends from pre-service training (PST), some of whom I hadn't seen since we finished training in September. As is usual in these instances, there was some drinking and partying, but for the most part everyone was just happy to see each other again, compare stories, share frustrations, laugh and simply enjoy the fact that we were finally talking to people who really understood what we'd been going through and who are going through some of the same themselves.

The training sessions for this were a bit of a mixed bag. One session on how to raise funds for a project that needs money (like, say, a library...) via a couple of different grant applications that work through Peace Corps. I don't expect I'll need to use this since most of what needs to happen with the library doesn't need money yet, but more on that later. Another session focused on how to deal with finding a secondary project and how to decide if it's worth doing (based on community interest, overall benefits, costs, etc). We had a few technical (chemistry ed) sessions with Mendeya (a Guinean chemistry teacher in Conakry who was our trainer in Forecariah) which were sort of boring in themselves, but getting to chat with Mendeya again was pretty cool. We told him about what we needed to get (a few chemical supplies that we never got like CuSO4, BBT, HCl, pH paper, etc) and he told me where in Conakry they could be found and that he would do his best to get them for us when he returned to Conakry (more on this later....).

We had a few other sessions including a medical one where I got 2 more vaccines (I've lost the total vaccine count at this point) and then had a few language classes on Thursday (I took a Pulaar class....which was sorta helpful except Pulaar is freaking hard and all I really learned was how to say a few phrases mostly of the "good morning"variety).

Outside of the official trainings, I had a long discussion with my APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director) who is in charge of all Education stuff of Peace Corps Guinea, and I explained what had been going on between my "school official"and myself with regards to my being shot down for secondary projects, and felt pressured to do things his way despite the fact that I disagreed with him. After I got all the recent frustratons off my chest we talked about the purpose of secondary projects (to benefit the community at large, and not just one sub-set), my role in secondary project planning (absolute power...basically. My "school official"has power over me when it comes to my teaching, but he can't tell me to do anything I don't want to regarding secondary projects, though it is my responsibility to listen to the community - my plan is to listen to the entire community (or at least it's figureheads) and not just the leader of the school), and basically I explained all that I had been trying to do against my "school official"'s approval. Added to this was the fact that I eat at his house twice a day (his family is also my host family) and so disagreements in the business end of things makes the whole experience complicated.

Anyway, my supervisor is going to call my "school official"to politely put him in his place and let him know that I have the power to do whatever I want with the library - including making it open to the community, and also including not doing anything and focusing my effors elsewhere if I feel my views aren't being taken into consideration. I'm hoping this will allow me to work on the library project without needing to worry about or seek his approval. I'm going to try to walk around and talk to the figureheads I'm interested in getting involved and see what they think - not promise anything - and perhaps get my own committee together and figure something out for a first meeting of the minds on this project. I feel that if I can get the sous-prefet to approve of my community library (as opposed to a school one), then I'm going to be able to continue with the project with less pressure from the school to make it exclusive.

As far as money goes - I don't think any is necessary for the time being. All this time I've been getting hounded to get more books and get money for more books, but we HAVE books. Granted, we are lacking in certain important areas such as school books, easy french magazines, etc - but the first priority really is to get the library organized and started on cataloguing before I will need to worry about getting additional materials. Plus, I was told by a higher up in the Guinean education district in Mamou (a man involved in Chemistry education using local materials) that I could probably request free school books for the library through the DPE of Boké (the American equivalent of a State Board of Education, kinda). I'm not fully convinced of this, but it's worth a shot before I start looking to buy books.

As far as "petty" material expenses that will pop up (for example, the stamp that will read "Bibliotheque Communitaire de la CRD de Bintimodia" or something along those lines). I know for a fact that my "school official" received $100 from someone who said "This is for the library, Federico should decide what it should be spent on" pretty much word for word. This will more than cover the level of expenses I foresee in the organizing and cataloguing of the library. I'm skeptical that this money still exists as its been 4 months since it was donated, but I have a feeling that mentioning this money will quiet future pestering for money. After all, if the money was simply pocketed or used to buy a motorcycle what's the point in me bringing in more before it needs to be used? Ou bien??

Anyway, in short I got confirmation from my APCD and my fellow volunteers that I have every right to demand more independence and more support from the adminstration and that ultimately my decisions to work on projects like the library, the environmental club, or anything else are mine to make and generally I need to stop being a pushover in the name of integration and cultural adaptation. Basically, I'm going to need to be the "my way or the highway" ugly american once in a while if I expect anything to get accomplished. Hope it works...

In other news, I'm also going to help my friend Marg with a Teacher's Conference that she's organizing. This would be a 3 day conference in Mamou where Volunteers would bring teachers from their villages who are interested in getting trained in various teaching techniques such as critical thinking development, alternative techniques, incorporating experiments, gender equality, etc. I'm going to help put together the session for chemistry teachers on how to use locally available materials to do demonstrations in class (example: cut open a D cell battery, use the zinc external case as an easily oxidized metal in redox demonstrations, use the graphite electrode running down the middle in a set up for hydrolysis or for copper plating using CuSO4 (which will be provided to them), get a magnet out of a broken radio speaker and use it to separate iron fillings from sand to explain ferromagnetism, etc).

On a related note, I'd been trying to get CuSO4 and BBT (bromothymol blue - a pH indicator) to use in my class for some time, and finally I got information on where in Conakry it can be found (not surprisingly in Madina, the huge market downtown, specifically at a lab near a bridge there). So on my way in from Mamou, I got out of the Peace Corps car at an intersection and caught a Madina-bound taxi. I got dropped off in the right general region and asked a few people where exactly the building was. I found it and walked in, past a napping guard, and up some stairs. I found an open lab door and knocked as I walked in and greeted the surprised Susu woman who appeared to be on the verge of napping herself (it was mid-day, it's not uncommon). After I explained who I was and why I was there I met a "Doctor" who told me he could get me the materials I was looking for the following morning since the person in charge had gone home already. We exchanged information (I mostly wanted to have a contact within this lab) and I went to the compound.

About an hour later, Mendeya called my phone and told me he was in the office and had something for me, it turns out while I was sneaking into labs he was talking to his buddies at the University of Conakry and had managed to get 4 containers (the kind 35mm film comes in) of CuSO4, one for each of the Chem volunteers, and also about a gram of BBT for each of us. He asked if I would be in Conakry tomorrow and when I said I was leaving in the morning he said "ok, well, I'll be back in a few hours then" and left. He came back in a few hours with a booklet written by some Conakry chemistry teacher which is basically a 30 page book of notes and practice problems to prepare 10th grade students for the chemistry portion of the Brevet exam (high school entrance). He told me to make photocopies of it and send it out to the others on the mail run, then leave it with my APCD. It's amazing how dedicated he is, and how much he went out of his way to get us the materials we semi-casually requested from him a couple of days earlier in Mamou. I'm really looking forward to working with him this summer to train the new Chemistry volunteers.

Alright, time to get going, until next time.

Last Post before IST

2009-01-24T12:43:00.000-08:00

So, Conakry has been nice. I haven't been good about leaving the compound, but I've had a good time with people here. We did manage to go downtown and get food at Le Damier (super fancy restaurant where the amazing buffet cost $24 (most meals on the street cost less than a dollar), most meals in a regular restaurant cost about $5)). I ate way too much of everything (highlights included roast capon (fancy chicken), plantain chicken stew, crepe with chocolate sauce, mango/papaya/lime juice, capuccino with chocolate shavings, lots of small meat/vegetable/cheese filled pastries, a mini creme brulé, etc. We showed up early, brought magazines, and sat and chatted between plates for the 4 hours the buffet was open. It was a great experience, even if it cost 2/3 as much as my cell phone...plus it's not like I'll be eating any of that again until maybe the summer when we are thinking of organizing another trip to this place around the 4th of July when we're all together again.

Anyway, other than this, I've seen "The Dark Knight" (someone brought the DVD back from the states after going home for Christmas...great movie), along with like 4 other movies, and generally enjoyed my time here in Conakry. I went to the leb store and bought tahini so I can make tahini dressing to take over to the Shwarma guy for him to use in place of mayo next time I eat there...that will make a big difference, I also got some spices to take back to Bintimodia since the herbs and spices in Kamsar are terrible and expensive.

I've managed to get a lot of internet stuff accomplished, and even managed to upload a video to Facebook (and another one is in the works right now) along with about 60 new photos. I'll be leaving for Mamou in the morning tomorrow and probably won't use the internet much there since I've gotten so much done here in Conakry. I will hopefully post again next weekend from Conakry before heading back up to Bintimodia.

From Conakry before going to IST

2009-01-23T04:08:00.000-08:00

So once again, I write from Conakry, only this time the country isn't in crisis or striking, so I can actually get out and do stuff. So far I've made a quick trip to the market to get dinner, and watched a couple of movies in the house. I'll make another - more thorough - trip to the market later today, and tomorrow I'm going "en ville" (downtown) to get food from the all you can eat fancy brunch place that's super expensive because everything is imported (but where you can get a real espresso, good fruit juices, quiche, etc) assuming they're open. If not, I'll probably get Chinese food from the place run by ex-pat Chinese people mainly for ex-pat Chinese people (the menu is in chinese and nobody there speaks very good French, so we usually need to order via sign language (sizzling beef is "boeuf SSSZZZSSZZZZSZZ" with both hands making a fire motion with the fingers)).

Otherwise, I plan on spending my time hanging out with my friends here at the house, using the internet to upload pictures and gmail-chat with friends, and hopefully cooking something for myself at some point (so far I've just been buying pre-made street food, shwarma's mostly -though, depending on who I buy it from it tastes like I'm eating a carne asada taco, a salad wrap with french fries and a little beef, or a barbeque beef wrap, not one of them tastes like a real shwarma).

I'm here in Conakry as an extended stop-over period before going to Mamou for IST (in-service training). My entire training group (minus the one guy who quit) are going to get together for a week of training at the conference compound there. This means we'll be living dorm-style 3 to a room, getting meals and tea breaks on a schedule from the compound's kitchen (hard boiled eggs, bread and margarine for breakfast, rice and sauce for lunch and usually dinner (though sometimes they make something like chicken with fries....which is great)). It will be nice to see everyone again, and to get a better quality of rice and sauce given to me twice a day, however I think I'll definitely be ready to get back to my house after this week of having my day scheduled out for me.

As far as life in Bintimodia goes, things have been ok. Teaching is a bit frustrating, but nothing too bad. I was told by my vice principal that grades are due on February 2nd (the day I get back from Mamou), he told me this the morning I was leaving for over a week...so that's not going to happen, though I'm sure I won't be the only one to have fallen behind. Our biology teacher got a job with a different school and quit mid-year, so now there's no biology classes. My principal is looking to hire someone buy I'm tempted to offer to teach it at least to 10th grade - since they have a large high-school entrance exam coming up with a biology section - if he doesn't have someone by the time I get back. However, I'm going to talk to my friend Jarrad about this since he's been teaching biology at his school along with chemistry since his school was in the same situaton as me when the school year started.

I left Barté with my principal again since things went well last time, but as soon as I dropped him off, he followed me back to the house, then fought when I was taking him back. He eventually escaped and ran across the street to the Credit Rural (some sort of government bank-like loan institution, I think, there's one in most villages) where his best friend Fodé Moussa works (an older guy who I speak with in Susu (he doesn't speak French) and who my cat loves more than me). I'll probably just ask him to look after him next time I need to leave the village since I don't think he'd mind, I just don't have the communication skills in Susu to get this request across.

Anyway, I think I'll post again before leaving on Sunday, so until then...

Frustrations, Successes, and Exploding Batteries

2009-01-16T04:28:00.000-08:00

Alright, so it’s been a while since my last entry, partly due to me not going to Kamsar, and partly due to the internet being down when I do make it in. (At least they brought the price down to 5,000 from 6,000 since gasoline is now cheaper (they run off generators when the power goes out). Because of the inconsistent electricity, my battery charger just made a loud popping noise and started smoking (sounded like a blown transistor if my Analytical Chem electronics lab experience served me well), luckily I have a backup.

Anyway, the past two weeks have been a mixed bag of sorts, I got strep throat, killed two mice, saw an ENORMOUS rat that my cat just sorta followed in a “what’s this?” sort of way as it ambled into my latrine, yelled at and walked out on one of my classes (the English lesson for the day was “you’re all wasting my f**king time!” – it was a chemistry class), had a power struggle with one of my students (he wouldn’t stop talking in class, so I kicked him out, and he just sat there and stared at me defiantly until he realized I wasn’t kidding around when I grabbed his notebook and threw it out the window (I’m pretty sure he was older than me, and was experimenting with the “petit” system where he’s higher on the food chain than me)), had another conversation with “a school official” who keeps trying to wedge me out of any decision making in the library project and insists on calling the shots while having me do all the work (I want it to be a community library so we can extend it to all of Bintimodia and have the community take an interest in it which might help preserve it in the long-term – he insists it should be the school’s library and wouldn’t even hear my thoughts about getting important community figureheads (the head of the Women’s group, etc) involved in the committee, which currently consists of the school admin and one teacher (oh yeah, and me, I guess, though I’m starting to wonder if I’m just the token American whose job it is to find books and money, organize the entire system, and let the big boys call the shots))).

On the upside, I’ve started getting out to the neighboring communities more with one of my better friends, going for walks in the afternoons and stopping by with people to chat, etc (every time I go out I end up coming home with an armful of “cadeaux” oranges (‘tis the season), and on one memorable occasion two of the best grapefruits I’ve ever had). I’ve made more friends in the village, and my cat and I are coming to an understanding about what he should and shouldn’t do (though his new little game is running to Guineans during prayer time - when they’re kneeling and bowing to Mecca - and try to get them to play…it’s not as cute after the first few times. I got some awesome cargo shorts commissioned (I just had to move the button over by an inch or so since they were a bit too large), and I finally got my bamboo closet/wardrobe/shelf thing for my room, though getting it was an adventure.

I commissioned it after my last entry, finding the bamboo guy on my bike home. After some bargaining I got him to lower the price to 200,000 (I wanted it cheaper, say 150,000, but I’m always hesitant to bargain too much with someone who hasn’t made the item yet, so it doesn’t turn out to be crap later). We agreed that it’d be ready the following Saturday, so I showed up Sunday morning fully expecting it to be almost ready but not quite, I wasn’t disappointed. I told him to reinforce one part of it (the bar I intend to use as a “closet”) and that I’d be back in 6 hours to get it. I went about my business as usual, then went back to find it finished. I told the guy I’d be back with a car soon and walked over (about ½ mile) to the taxi area to find a car headed to Bintimodia. I expected to pay about 6,000 tops for this trip (a seat in a Bintimodia bound car is usually 4,000 – I figured tack on 2,000 for the large baggage). The first guy I talked to listened paitently, and say “ok, 100,000”. Now, since “cent-mille” and “cinq-mille” sound so similar, I knew I must have misheard him. “5,000?” I asked, and he said “no, 100,000”. About an hour of bargaining, yelling, pleading, name-calling, laughing and running around to most of the cars in the area later, I agreed to pay someone the last 14,000 left in my wallet (literally the last of the money I had), in exchange he’d meet me over by the road near the bamboo guy whenever the car filled up with people (anywhere from 15 minutes to….???). I walked back paid the bamboo guy, had a guy help me carry the thing (about the size of a smallish entertainment center) to the side of the road. I took out my book and read for about 90 minutes, talked to my mom for a while, and then the car showed up (I was a bit worried since I had no money, a big entertainment center, nowhere in Kamsar I could sleep and the sun was setting, but I just kept my faith that someone would get me eventually). We got it back to my village though, and it’s made a big difference as far as organization goes. Now I just need to buy and/or commission some hangers.

The new training group did their site visit, but since none of them are that close to Boké they didn’t go and do a regional capital visit like I did back in August. I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever meet them (maybe 4th of July?). I’m looking forward to going to In-Service Training for a week in Mamou since I’ll get to see all my training group again and spend a week with them catching up on the last 3 months of our lives. I’ll also finally be able to pin down the people I need to ask about getting materials for the library project, and figure out if there’s a more diplomatic way of convincing my “school official” to stop treating me like a child.

Anyway, there’s probably tons more to say, but nothing is coming to mind and I should wrap things up here anyway, until next time.

Happy New Year

2009-01-03T05:12:00.000-08:00

Alright, so since my last post, I’ve left Conakry along with my fellow northern Basse Côters and went to Boké in hopes of sorting out my furniture business (back in September, I commissioned 2 shelves and a table through a Guinean friend of mine with a wood guy in Boké (I was told there were no good wood workers in my village). Since then it’s been one problem after the other, and to make a long story short, I got my bookshelves in November, and am still waiting for the table, which has been sitting in one storage place or another for a while now). I managed to talk my friend into moving the table up to the regional house so that my regional coordinator can bring it on the next mail run (this next week?) and am crossing my fingers. I also finally purchased a mortar and pestle so I can grind my own pepper, cinnamon, etc (and make pesto, I planted my basil seeds yesterday in an old soup can, but like 30 minutes ago I found local basil in the Kamsar market (I think I both amused and frightened the market lady when I was like “A munse???? Basilic na a ra??? Iyo?! Ehhh allah!”)). I tried to ask if it was always there, but I don’t entirely believe her. On Tuesday when I was passing through Kamsar on my way home I found green beans, bell peppers and parsley with one of the vendors (all of which probably came from Conakry) and I asked if she had it everyday, she said yes but she didn’t have it today when I went back….she says she always has it on Tuesdays…my busiest teaching day, dammit. But anyway, it’s nice to get more and more familiar with all the market ladies in a market as big as Kamsar’s, and to know that at least some of the time I can find good herbs and vegetables if I’m lucky and persistent (I promised the bell pepper lady that if she saves me a couple I will buy them next Thursday).

Another market accomplishment was finally picking a tailor (semi-randomly) and trying him out on some “comme ça” cargo shorts. I bought some local fabric, gave him my favorite pair of khaki shorts and told him to make a copy of them. He charged more than I thought was fair (15,000 GNF = $3), but hopefully that means he will do a good job. If he does a decent job I’ll finally make my leppi (an expensive indigo dyed fabric from the Fouta, which I bought in September while in Mamou) into the cargo pants I planned for them initially (I’ve been hesitant to trust just anybody with the fabric since it’s very hard to find here, and even where it’s common it’s 3 times as expensive as the standard “wax” fabric).

Anyway, so I’ve been in my village since Tuesday, and things have been good. On New Year’s Eve, my host family killed a chicken for dinner (the second time I’ve had chicken at their house in 3 months or so). I got parts of the same chicken for both meals of the next day, and I realized something about my standards that has changed. I was excited and happy to eat chicken that I knew had been dead for like 36 hours, and I knew had been kept at roughly the temperature of an incubator since nobody in my village has a fridge. Yet, I was still happy about it. How will I ever take that whole “thaw chicken in the fridge” business seriously after living here? And I’m pretty sure that’s just the tip of a large iceberg (I’ve also completely stopped caring about bedbugs. To quote from a Steinbeck book I read recently “After they got used to the taste of him, and he grew accustomed to their bites, they got along peacefully”).

Anyway, after dinner on New Years Eve, I went home and read by my kerosene lamp (my headlamp is somewhere in the Conakry house…I hope) until about 11. I then went outside and was shepherded into the nightclub (which on Monday mornings is the market, and the rest of the time is an abandoned shell of a building with no roof) by my best friend (an elementary school teacher) who spotted me immediately and had me accompany him and his girlfriend (one of my 10th grade students) to the bôite. I watched people dance for a while, then some of my students got me up and dancing as well. The music was a mix of reggeaton, bollywood, local African music (I found out that the “yi xili di” song is from Cape Verde), etc. At midnight, nobody seemed to notice or care that it was officially 2009, so I said “Happy New Year” to myself and kept dancing. I took a break to make a phone call, and then stayed until like 2am. It’s not a beach in Sierra Leone, but it’ll do.

Otherwise, it’s been a lot of the same old. My kitten is bigger, and he’s more adventurous with exploring now (he ventures as far as the hospital now, even while unsupervised). I’ve decided he’s probably big enough to maybe not get picked off by an eagle, so I’m less nervous about him wandering out of where I can keep an eye on him. I need to figure out a way to get him fish on a regular basis though, I could walk to the bridge in the morning and buy it from the fishermen like all the village women do, but I’m lazy and rarely awake much less properly dressed to walk outside that early in the day. I’m tempted to ask my host mom to just buy a couple extra fish and I’ll pay her for them, but haven’t yet.

Alright, well, I think that’s good for now, I’m gonna go swim and maybe treat myself to a fancy meal at the restaurant in honor of the New Year, then bike back home.

Joyeux Noël!

2008-12-26T16:36:00.000-08:00

Alright, I'm running out of languages to wish you guys Merry Christmas in (I don't know if there's a Susu version, I sorta doubt it). Luckily I think this is my final Christmas related post for this year.

So yesterday, Christmas dinner was very nice. I got a call from my Dad right before heading over to the Country Director's house, and it was fun to talk to my little sisters for the first time in several months (I think for the first time, one of my little sisters switched into english for the majority of the conversation). Dinner was a very interesting mix of dishes pot-luck style (turkey, guacamole, fried plantains, baked plantains with cheese, cole slaw, fruit salad, fried rice, potatoes o'brien (leftover from Christmas brunch), brownies, maple fudge and cookies. It was mostly Peace Corps (our director and his family, our small enterprise development director, our doctor, and us 19 volunteers) plus 3 volunteers from IFISH, a USAID worker, and a Fullbright scholar doing some sort of research here.

After dinner we headed back to the house and continued the party for a while, but since I hadn't really slept more than 5 hours total the past 2 days I called it an early night around 1am. I'm still kinda exhausted.

Today was mostly spent sitting around watching movies or chatting with people, as before. I'm definitely ready to get out of Conakry, though I'm hoping I won't have to spend New Years by myself in my village (it's looking that way, though my near neighbors and I are hoping to spend it in Boké together). We've been doing the standard Peace Corps Guinea lockdown routine - watching lots and lots of movies. They've been going in themes: The day I got here and the military coup was annoucned "Blood Diamond", "The Last King of Scotland" and some other movie involving an African country having .... problems. On Christmas day it was: "Home Alone", "A Christmas Story", "Elf", and "It's a Wonderful Life".

A really memorable moment was during one of the last scenes of "Elf" when everybody in New York is singing Christmas carols to get Santa's Sleigh going again. All of us broke into song as well ("Santa Claus is Coming to Town", I believe). I had a hard time singing along because I was fighting back tears (anyone who knows me well will tell you I get a little teary eyed in movies, but throw in the emotional roller coaster of a Christmas Coup without the family and resistance becomes futile). I took a quick look to make sure nobody had noticed and realized that almost everybody in the room was just as teary eyed as me. Someone commented on this and we all started laughing.

Coup-wise, things continue to be calm, Lansana Conté was buried earlier today in his home village and people continue to seem happy with the new government. Today we were allowed to go within walking distance of the compound, but since it was the funeral day most of the market was shut down. I went out anyway just to get out of the house. I walked around a bit, walked well past the market and discovered a soft-serve ice cream guy about a 15 minute walk from the compound (they tend to exist wherever there's semi-consistent electricity, though are hard to find usually). I stopped and got 5,000 GNF worth (a lot! about 150 mL?), and sat and ate it on the little bench the guy had in front of his shack because it was shady (I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt with flip flops, but still sweating by the way....no Portland or Iowa snowstorms here). The guy sat with me and we listened to the radio while I watched people go by (it was about 1:30pm on Friday (, so everyone was going to the mosque in their nice outfits). I got a couple of avocados (they're coming back into season!) and walked back to the compound.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T03:49:00.000-08:00

Alright, things have remained very calm here and so far today's Christmas is turning out to be very nice. I stayed up late last night uploading pictures to facebook, and then chatting with a couple of people until like 2 or 3 am. I slept until 6 (I don't know why I never sleep when I'm in Conakry, I think I stock up on sleep in Bintimodia and then can manage fine without here). I got up and saw that people had already started on Christmas breakfast (ended up being ready at 11, so it was Christmas brunch). I opened my care package under the tree and shared some of the goodies (someone is going to use my "dried fruit mix" in place of rasins to attempt Irish soda bread, etc) then peeled like 100 cloves of garlic. After this we got authorization for 4 of us to go to the market with a specific list of things we need to Christmas dinner, so I went with 3 others. My friend Conor and I teamed up with the "produce" list.

The market was very busy, it's been closed the past couple of days so I think everyone was re-stocking up. Everybody seemed calm and there was no sense of danger at all (or we would have gone straight back to the house). Conor and I bought: 12 cucumbers, 6 kilos of tomatoes, 6 kilos of onions, 2 kilos of green bell peppers (you can get more vegetables in Conakry than anywhere else, expensive as hell though), 7 kilos of carrots, 1 kilo of green beans, 16 avocadoes, 10 eggplants, a bag of garlic (about 15 heads), 10 limes, 4 kilos of cabbage, ....and some other stuff. Obvously we did this in a few different trip and then walked the stuff back to the waiting Peace Corps car. A Liberian kid (spoke decent-ish english) kept following us for a while trying to interpret english to susu for us, but when he saw that I could argue with the market lady in susu about how she was overcharging for tomatoes he gave up, asked for money then walked away confused. The highlight of this was near the end when Conor (who speaks Pulaar, not susu) and I were both bargaining in our respective local language with the same lady (who, being Pule herself mostly ignored me) and most of the market around us stopped and stared at the white people who speak the local native dialects. Later I got payback when a Susu lady ignored Conor, and told me in Susu "he's a Pule and a Diallo, watch out for him" (Guieans have a lot of joke (kinda) family feuds, I'm a Bah, she was a Balde (same thing, sorta), and we all think Diallos (and Camaras (also the same thing?) are thieves, they in turn thing we're sorcerors, obviously this is just a country wide local joke, but it's awesome that calling someone a goat thief will usually get you a better price for whatever you're trying to buy). I think market ladies are my favorite people, possibly in the whole world.

Anyway, we got back to the house unloaded all our stuff (the other couple of people got roughly the same volume of other foodstuffs) and then I sat down with a bunch of people to watch "Home Alone" while brunch got finished. As the thieves were being driven away in a police car (in the movie), brunch was announced. Scrambled eggs with basil, garlic, onions and green peppers, fried potatoes and onions with good spices, fruit (pineapple, coconut, bananas), fresh squeezed orange juice and toast. Real coffee too (usually you can only get instant coffee here). So good. We had all-around "Merry Christmas" hugs and dug in. Now everyone is working on cooking for dinner at our Coutnry Director's house later this afternoon, potluck style.

For a Christmas spent during the middle of a military coup in a (temporarily) constitutionless country, we did pretty well for ourselves. Now, I'm gonna go help one of my best friends (who incidentally I hadn't seen since September) make some fried rice for tonight.

Merry Christmas.

New President

2008-12-24T09:17:00.000-08:00

Alright, well the coup is still going and military is still in power. A little while ago they officially announced the new president (I think) - Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, the guy who has been the spokesman for the military faction who took over control. Again, I won't comment on what I think of this, but here are some links:

http://www.africanews.com/site/list_messages/22357

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jaQPxwTr7Ls-HVfZkk2xle0dPUhQD9596KMG0

While this may not be what organizations such as the African Union orthe United Nations would want, as it is a departure from a civilian government and continues in the military strongman control - it does seem to have made people here very happy. They have taken to the streets not to riot and protest, but to dance and cheer (and all the Camaras are especially happy, since the new president is one of them). I suspect they are especially happy that the waiting period has passed and hopefully things will get better from here. As of now things are looking better for safety. We will still be waiting to see that things stay calm before going back to our villages, I will most likely be here until at least Monday.

Edit: Another link (I got word out before the BBC, go me):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7799279.stm

Feliz Navidad

2008-12-24T01:06:00.000-08:00

-- Disclaimer, if you are the parent of a volunteer who is out somewhere in their village with no cell phone reception, please be aware that everyone is accounted for, and they are probably safer in their respective villages than they would be in Conakry (the trainees are also safe back with their host families). --

So, it's December 24th, and Christmas is here. I'm Mexican, and in my family (and in general all of Mexico) the 24th is the big day and the 25th is for cleaning up the previous night's party (and for kids to open the presents Santa left...all other presents get opened after dinner, though I think as I kid I opened Santa's presents on Christmas eve as well....mom?).

Anyway, somewhere in Mexico City I assume most of my relatives from my dad's side of the family are getting together for a big family dinner (there are a lot of us...I've lost count but it's somewhere around 25-30 cousins all together (I could come up with a number if I felt like going uncle by uncle (or aunt by aunt....let's not forget gender equality) counting the kids...but I won't)). I assume most of my mom's relatives are also getting together, but they're a bit more scattered to the winds. My sister is visiting my parents in Arizona, having brought her puppy Chloe with her (who I have yet to meet), and they'll be having the first Christmas without me in my 22 years of existence. My little sisters will be opening their presents from Santa tomorrow, I expect they're outgrowing the Disney Princess stuff...but sad to say I don't know for sure.

As for me, I can probably now claim to be the only person in my entire (vast) extended family who can claim to spend Christmas in a leaderless country under military control in the beginning stages of what could (but hopefully won't) dissolve into a civil war in the worst case scenario (We've made top story on BBC.com world news! Last time Guinea was this newsworthy there probably wasn't a BBC.com). I would say I did not sign up for this when I started down the Peace Corps path....but who am I kidding, a part of me loves it.

I'm also glad to be in Conakry where I can see news sources other than what I can get on my shortwave radio (if I had to find out the details of this through "World Have Your Say" I would probably be much more annoyed). Someone just read off someone's comment from WHYS online, the source was "Nene Binta Diallo from London" which is hillariously appropriate as I'm sure every one of us knows at least one (if not a half dozen) "Nene Binta Diallo"s. ("Nene" is sort of like Mama, Binta - probably short for Fatoumata Binta is a very common first name, and Diallo is a very common last name). Upon hearing this we all chuckled and I caught myself saying "I love Guinea" (my usual responce to this sort of thing) and realized that it's really true. I love it here, and I hope all this gets sorted out peacefully so we can go back to our villages and keep working on stuff (I was JUST getting started on setting up the library in Bintimodia, having made contacts with the Kamsar Library staff, and talked to some teachers about helping me catalogue all the books that were donated to the last volunteer who was in Bintimodia).

Anyway, I'm glad to be here with the other volutneers since we can have our own Christmas party here (In all honesty, Thanksgiving at site kinda sucked despite my village squash "pumpkin" pie). We have christmas music, food, beer, and most importantly other people who celebrate Christmas (and even a couple who usually don't). I also have two care packages waiting for me (one from my mom, another from Ana) which I have not yet opened so that I can have something to unwrap later tonight for Christmas (and then something to give other volunteers for Christmas). It probably wasn't the safest thing to travel to the capital city knowing there was an inevitable coup d'état, but I'm sure glad I did it and was lucky to be able to before things got out of hand (though I don't think they've really gotten too bad yet).

One of my contacts - a higher up in the bureau of tourism who is requesting a SED volunteer for the upper basse cote (my area) - has been calling me every so often with updates (usually hours before the same news gets put online - I guess it's good to have friends (or passing acquantainces in this case) in high places). It also really goes to show a couple of aspects of Guinean personalities that I greatly admire. Starting the day I met him he would call me roughly every day to see how I was doing (it's not uncommon for a Guinean to call you just to say hi, ask about your health/family/house/cat/work/etc and then hang up - village ettiquette apparently extends over cell phone networks) and to see how the volutneer request was going (even though I explained to him several times that I don't have much say in it besides recommending him to the APCD - he understood this, but still called to check up on me and invite me to visit him and have dinner with his family while I was Conakry for the holidays (I met him a week ago, by the way)). What's more, when he heard about the problems he called to tell me about it, ask if I was safe, and tell me something to the effect of "well, if I end up losing my job with this change of government I'll be sure to let me replacement know to contact you about the tourism volunteer...so how's your family?". Like I said, I love Guinea.

Oh....Guinea

2008-12-23T10:55:00.000-08:00

So in case you don't keep up on international political disasters, President Lansana Conté - who had been in power for 24 years in Guinea - died a few days ago and his death was announced this morning over the radio. Since then the military has declared a coup d'état. I am hesitant to talk about Guinean politics in this blog, as I am not here to pass judgements or express my opinions about how the country should be run - so I leave you these links to find out the details.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5il-w1kVcVAD9cU9Ac9_IXzMzF3zAD9587HIO0

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i-uQEQhRUpG9E2ib-0EZPvcxwYRg

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/world/africa/24guinea.html?em

...anyway, here I am, once again stuck in the Peace Corps compound in Conakry waiting to see how this new development (a big one, I might add) plays out. I wanted new and exciting things in my life when I joined Peace Corps, and what's more exciting than traveling on the day a 24 year "presidency"ends and a military coup is declared (apparently tanks are out on the streets? I didn't know Guinea even had tanks). So I'll explain my day in as much detail as I feel comfortable making completely public:

I left my house early this morning (around the time the radio was announcing the President's death), dropped my kitten off with my Principal's kids and started the 11km walk to the main road (there's not really any transportation in and out of Bintimodia unless it's Thursday (market day)). After about an hour of walking I got picked up by a passing bush-taxi and got to go the rest of the way that way. I got to the main road around 9am and this is where I heard that Lansana Conté had died from Titi, the guy in charge of the cars at this gare-voiture. I thought about going back to my village, but since I had virtualy no battery left on my cell phone and I didn't want to spend Christmas alone in my village I decided to press on and continue to Conakry. I figured (correctly, it turned out) that any major turmoil would take at least several hours to get itself organized and that getting in to Conakry quickly was probably my best bet.

I flagged down the first few cars that went by (accidentally flagging down a "VA" license plate - government vehicle), and eventually one stopped and had a seat open for me. I gave Titi a 300 GNF tip ($0.06?) since he didn't really do anything except chat with me about Lansana Conté while I found my own vehicle, and got in.

Now, I've had uncomfortable rides before, but this one so far takes the cake. I was in the back-backseat of a retrofitted Renault Nevada from the 70s or 80s. This is a small station wagon/hatchback car that would normally hold 5 people and have a spacious space for storage. Here, this space contains another row of seats where 3 people can (sort of) fit. The result: the car ends up holding 10 people total (for those doing the math, add a passanger to the middle row and front passanger seat...there you go). I'd sat in the front passanger seat of one of these taxis before, sharing it with a man who very patiently allowed my kitten to claw at him. I usually ride in the middle row of seats (what would normally be the back row) which is uncomfortable, but at least you sort of were designed to fit in this space anyway. The 3rd row, however, is a little higher up than the middle row, so I had to bend my neck the entire trip (I just curled into a ball and slept part of the way - man I'm getting good at that). I also had my legs getting crushed by the seat in front of me since there was absolutely no leg room. Had I been one inch taller I don't think I would have fit in this seat. Fortunately my driver drove like a maniac and we made the Bintimodia-carrefour to Conakry trip in record time (only having to swerve dangerously out of oncoming traffic once!), and we stopped twice for people to pee where I managed to get up and beat feeling back into my limbs.

Once in Conakry I told the driver where to drop me off so I could catch a car headed to the Peace Corps compound. I walked a ways and foudn a guy who would take me for 10,000 if I bought out all the seats in the car. This was a bit steep, but nobody else was going my direction, and I did my "put it in perspective" trick (converting 10,000 GNF to the USD equivalent of $2) and agreed on the condition that he'd drive me to the door of the compound and not just to the market where I would normally get dropped off. He and I chatted briefly about what was happening to Guinea now that Conté was out of the picture. He compared the current situation of Guinea to Guinea-Bissau (our neighbor to the north, for those who don't have the African map memorized) with regards to drugs and prostitution, etc. It's always interesting to get the point of view of Conakry people vs. village people (Bintimodia village....not the music group), it's like being in a completely different country.

Anyway, now I'm here in Conakry, once more on lockdown with about 20 other people (mostly from my training group) who will be here until things get resolved or completely go to shit. Obviously I'm hoping for the former.

The timing of this is terrible for us in general, many people are traveling (our volunteers are currently in 8 different countries), many more wanted to travel but are stuck in their villages until things change (I dodged that bullet by not having a working phone when the "stay at your site"announcement was made). I'll try to keep people abreast of the situation via this blog as much as I can.

December Already?

2008-12-13T02:29:00.000-08:00

Alright, so I’ve made it to the internet café here in Kamsar once again, hopefully I can get online to upload this and research the few things I want to research (I keep a post-it note at home where I write down things I want to look up when I get internet, today it says Burkina Film Fest (sometime in February….maybe I’m gonna go if the dates and costs work out ok), herringbone pattern (something that’s come up in like 3 books that I’ve read so far – and I don’t know what it looks like), kitten sucking cloth (my kitten has a habit of burying his face in cloth (usually my dirty clothes that are on the floor), and sucking on the cloth while purring very deeply, I want to know if this is normal cat behavior or if my cat’s just …. special), and fatuous (I want to see if it means what I think it does, I wrote it in my journal without thinking the other day and then I wondered if I used it correctly)). It’s funny how little things that one would normally just look up on wikipedia or google out of curiosity need to be written down ahead of time for me. Otherwise I get here, I write a blog post, check e-mail, check facebook, and don’t know what else to do, then I get home and remember I wanted to look up such and such.

Anyway, enough about my faulty memory – the past couple of weeks have been sort of exciting. I’ve been hanging out in my hammock a lot reading books (I recommend “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” and “The Time Traveler’s Wife” pretty highly) and grading papers (I never realized how much of teaching is grading papers, and I don’t even give out much homework!). I also have taken to teaching the little kids that come visit me English (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, so far) while they play with my kitten (several times a day – sometimes several times in an hour – my neighborhood kids come over and say “Monsieur Abdoulaye (my Guinean name) – le chat!” (except they pronounce “le chat” as “le ka”) and then if my kitten comes outside they take turns grabbing him and petting him. I tend to keep an eye on them to scold them when they get too rough, but I figure if Barté is unhappy he can always run back in the house, where I don’t let the kids follow. He’s surprisingly patient with them, I hope I haven’t tamed him too much – I want him to fight back if kids (or dogs, other cats, eagles, owls, etc) hurt him.

In other news, we got 29 new trainees last week who are doing their training now. These are all extension volunteers (health, small enterprise development, and agro-forestry) so they are being trained by the group of volunteers who got here last December, but I will get a chance to see them at Christmas which should be cool. We’ve been given a list of potential sites where they will eventually be placed, and unfortunately none are coming near me – but that’s probably because there’s already a relatively high density of volunteers in my region. I gave my old host family a call on Tuesday and was almost immediately passed over to the new trainee who is staying with them. He sounded a bit dazed and confused (he didn’t realize I was a volunteer from the previous training group until the end of the conversation, even though I mentioned it twice) but that’s to be expected for the first couple of weeks, especially the first day with the host family.

I had another mouse in my kitchen yesterday, and while Barté didn’t kill him, he gave him a good chase (after I plopped the cat down right in front of the mouse – he wasn’t too good at realizing there was another animal in the house) back to his hole. Hopefully I can get some cement soon to plug up some holes in my floor and walls.

Also, I think I forgot to mention this in my first post where I mentioned Barté’s name – “Barté” (bar-teh) is Susu for tiger. In reality the é would look like an epsilon (backwards 3), but this keyboard doesn’t have the Susu Alphabet on it (only a couple of letters are different – 2 different types of “e”s, “o”s, and “n”s).

Alright, this is a short blog post, but hopefully I’ll write a longer one next time (next week? Christmas?). Until then!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-29T03:35:00.000-08:00

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.

Rodent Disposal, and Thanksgiving (plus a kitten!)

2008-11-21T03:31:00.000-08:00

So, it’s been a while since my last update, I haven’t fallen off the face of Guinea, I’ve just not been to the internet in Kamsar in a while. I am typing this entry up on another Volunteer’s laptop in Boke while I’m here for my monthly visit, which is why I am not in Kamsar this weekend (I will upload it to the internet next week). Last weekend I was in Kamsar but I didn’t bother trying the internet place because I wasn’t really in the mood to fight with computers that day.

Anyway, I’ll start at the beginning: after leaving Conakry, I took a bush taxi back up to Bintimodia, sharing it with two other volunteers for part of the way (their villages were also near the main road between Conakry and Boke). Partway there we stopped to re-arrange passangers, and I thought I dropped my wallet because it had suddenly disappeared from my pocket (we were 4 adults tightly squeezed into the backseat of a small sedan, so I had a hard time reaching that pocket to check if it was there). We stopped and I went back to look for it, and then decided it was just lost. I wasn’t too sad because I knew I only had a little money left in it (most of it was in my backpack), and the only major loss was my bank card (a slip of paper with my account number written on it), and my Peace Corps ID – both of which were easily replaceable. I had already paid the driver and I had some extra money in my backpack, so I decided – ah well, it had to happen sometime.

I got to my carrefour, or crossroad where my village’s road meets the main road, and got off. I couldn’t find any transport to my village except motorcycles which I’m not supposed to ride, so I walked the 11km to my house. Once there I discovered that in my absence, my village had built a fence around my back-yard. I’d been asking around for a while about how I could get one built, but people kept flaking out on me or saying "oh yeah, sure, we’ll get some kids to build one for you one of these days". I guess they decided "one of these days" was while I was in Labe (note: fences here are made from palm fronds with sticks/tree limbs in the ground for structure). Nobody asked me to pay them for this (the materials are free, and the labor was well…students who work for free), and since I didn’t know which kids specifically did it (my principal said he just got some of the 8th graders to do it), I couldn’t track them down to thank them, I wrote a note on my blackboard out front saying thanks.

While I was in Conakry, I had purchased some "Atrarat" non-poisonous rat-glue. This is a thick rubber-cement like glue that doesn’t actually harden. You spread it on some cardboard and put food in the middle and mice and rats walk into it and stay there. I had been struggling with the mice in my house for a while and I was desperate. I set up a trap and went to have dinner with the Diallo’s (my principal’s family who I eat with twice a day … whether I want to or not), when I came back there was mouse number 1, stuck to the cardboard. I tried to think of a way to quickly kill it so that it wouldn’t have to starve to death or die of anxiety on that damned piece of cardboard, but nothing came to mind, so I just left it there overnight and went to bed.
Around 7am, I woke up and discovered that the mouse was gone, and the trap was moved over several inches, and there was a glue stain on the floor…uh oh. I checked the path the mouse usually takes to its nest (via my latrine), but it wasn’t there, I checked the other nest hole (in the spare room) but it wasn’t there. Then I checked the kitchen, and there, glued onto a tuna can, was my mouse. See, I don’t have furniture yet, so all my food is either in a trunk, or out on the floor, the canned goods are out on the floor since the actual food is protected in the can. This mouse was coated in "non-poisonous rat glue", and had scurried too close to my stack of tuna cans, and got himself stuck to them. Oh, I was pissed. After much deliberation, I decided the best way to deal with it was to get a plastic bag, put it next to the mouse, and then use my broom to rub the bag on the mouse – thereby sticking the mouse to the bag. I then pulled the bag away, and the mouse came with it. I chucked the bag over my (new) fence in the back where I’d seen an ant hill before – so long mouse number 1.

That night I set out another trap like the first, because I suspected I had more than one mouse. I got up a couple of hours later, and there was mouse number 2, stuck just like his buddy was 24 hours earlier. He was already making his escape, and I didn’t want to have another mouse gluing itself to my canned goods, so I decided spraying the mouse with insecticide right in the face would probably kill it relatively swiftly. I did so, and then realized that the (kerosene based aerosol) insecticide dissolved the (petroleum based) glue and so the mouse managed to get free, run around a bit while I chased it, then huddle in the corner, lie down and die. He soon thereafter joined his (decomposing) friend over the fence. So long mouse number 2.

I saw mouse number 3 later, but it did not fall victim to trap number 3. In fact, I haven’t seen it since. I worry that it was a pregnant female because it looked a bit bigger than mice numbers 1 and 2, and perhaps it disappeared to have a litter of mice somewhere. I’m just hoping it sensed that the other mice had died, and decided to find a nest somewhere else. Inchallah.

Anyway, so that was how I dealt with my crawling rodents, as for my flying rodents (oh yeah, I have bats too), I chose a different tactic. At first I was just ignoring them, because other than their leaving at dusk, they generally don’t bother my in my house. AND THEN, one day, I got into my mosquito net to go to bed, and I hear and feel fluttering next to my head (a bat had been roosting inside my mosquito net during the day!). I screamed for the first time in I don’t know how long and fell to the floor, I then saw the bat crawling around on my sheets in my bed. Remember how I said I was pissed when the mouse glued itself to my tuna cans, this was a whole new level of pissed. I got the broom (which I usually have handy for moments like this – I’ve gotten really good at killing wasps with it) and managed to get the bat off my bed – or so I suspected, but I couldn’t find it. I went around the bed and finally spotted it stuck in the corner of the room next to the bed, hiding. I used my sling shot to get it to get out of that corner – and thus scared it out into the open. I don’t know if it was the broom or the sling shot, but it seemed like it couldn’t fly, so it was crawling along. I got my umbrella (which I also keep handy for this purpose) and beat the bat with it until I was sure it was dead (I broke my umbrella in the process). It was a bloody battle, and I was pretty freaked out after this. I wrote a very curse-heavy journal entry, then disposed of the bat over my fence. I still have at least 2 or 3 bats sleeping somewhere in my house during the day and leaving via the front door at dusk – but other than the once or twice I’ve tried hitting them out of the air with my broom, I mostly leave them alone now. The next morning I asked all my students to find me a kitten though.

Anyway, a couple of days later, my nearest Peace Corps neighbor (about 20km to the south) came to visit. She biked to my village, saw me teach my classes that day, walked around the village with me (everybody asked me if she was my wife – when I said she was just a friend they gave me a sly smile and said "oh ok!"), and came to dinner with my host family. The next morning we took off to Kamsar together (she’d been wanting to do the bike ride, but since it’s 40km each way for her, she wanted to crash at my place the first time). It was really fun having someone visit, but since I’m still struggling with getting all my furniture it was a little awkward at the same time. I’m looking forward to her visiting again in the future (we will be working on a project together for my village which I will talk about later). Also, it was great because having her meant I could take pictures of myself along the road to Kamsar. I now have pictures of us crossing the river on the canoe, crossing the stick bridge halfway there, and also on the bike ride itself. I will post these next time I’m in Conakry (Christmas?).

A few days later I brought up to my Principal that I might be spending Thanksgiving in Conakry with some other volunteers. He said "Thanksgiving….that’s when you eat turkey right?", and so I explained the history of Thanksgiving and the reason we have this feast to give thanks for what we have, etc. He really liked this and told me "That sounds nice, I’m going to have Thanksgiving too, I’ll kill a chicken for it" (can you see why I really like this guy?). I spent another day or two thinking about it, and decided to skip Thanksgiving in Conakry and have it with the Diallos in Bintimodia. I was running low on money anyway, and I would spend way too much money in Conakry, plus my favorite part of Thanksgiving Dinner is mashed potatoes, and I can make that in Bintimodia. I’m thinking I will make 2 kg of potatoes worth of garlic mashed potatoes (enough for everyone to try it), and also attempt a pumpkin pie using village squash and a Guinean "oven" (big metal pot balanced on 3 rocks with a wood fire under it). I just need to get some raw eggs and a squash before I leave Boke. I’m looking forward to it.

Since I wouldn’t be going to Conakry next week, I decided to come up to Boke this week and get some shopping and furniture organizing done so all this stuff can be dropped off on the next mail run (I get my mail once a month when the Boke car picks it up in Conakry and drops it off in my village – along with anything else I leave for myself in Boke or Conakry – such as a table, 2 bookshelves, 2 bamboo mats, 2 small wooden tables, a sack of potatoes, a trunk full of books, etc…I feel a bit bad for Bella, our regional driver, but it sure beats strapping a large wooden bookshelf to my bike). I am a bit sad that I won’t get to see one of my better friends from training who I haven’t seen since training, but I will hopefully see him at Christmas, and I’ve left a note for him here in the Boke house (he’s 80 km away from Boke in the other direction).
Anyway, the best part of this Boke trip happened a few hours ago. I mentioned in conversation to another volunteer that I had been looking for a kitten (partly for company, mostly to kill mice, bats, cockroaches, frogs, etc), and a few hours later when she was visiting a Guinean family nearby she discovered a kitten looking for an owner and brought it to me. Apparently the mom is feral "chat brousse" (bush cat), and this little guy tends to be semi abandoned. He(?) is TINY, and ADORABLE. His eyes are kinda crusty, and I still haven’t gotten him to have any milk, water or tuna (I was having tuna salad for dinner anyway, so I saved a bit of fish for him), but I got him to get comfortable with me. At first when I set him up with a bed, a small dish of water and another of milk in a bathroom, he immediately went behind a shelf and hid there. I removed the shelf and then he hid behind the sink and would hiss at me. Eventually, after some scratching and hissing, I got him to realize that I wasn’t trying to hurt him, and then I just carried him around while I did stuff around the house, letting him get used to me. Now, when I tried getting him to go to sleep by himself, he attaches himself to me and doesn’t let go, so I have him sleeping on my (dirty, and therefore me-smelling) t-shirt in a small box by the keyboard. I’m gonna try to leave the box by itself in the bathroom without waking him. I just hope he starts eating tomorrow so he doesn’t die of thirst or starvation. I’m excited to have a pet at site, I just hope everything works out.

Out on the Town

2008-11-06T10:32:00.000-08:00

Not much to say, but while I have internet, I'll say it.

The situation here has cooled down a lot (some say Obama's victory had a part in this), so we were allowed to go downtown to do what we needed to do there (I got money out of the bank, got Chinese food from the one Chinese place in Guinea (run my Chinese ex-pats for Chinese ex-pats - best Chinese food I've ever had, though I may have been eating rice and sauce in my village too long to be a good judge), got a couple of things at the American/European goods store (shampoo to keep in Conakry, more cheese, some powdered lemonade mix, and a cup of yogurt). I also got some pictures developed from the one photo place here that actually has a few of those Kodak do-it-yourself kiosks to print digital pictures. I printed some pictures that I plan on sending out in holiday letters, and also bought some Obama pictures (photoshopped so he was in the middle of an American flag, standing next to the Guinean president, etc) that were being sold on the street for 2,500 GNF in the form of name-tags. I got about 10 (at 1,000 GNF from the people who were making the name tags) to send out to people I think will most appreciate them. I'm definitely keeping one for myself too. I'm actually regretting not getting more of them, they're really great.

I'm actually surprised at the level of excitement his victory has caused in Guineans. I expected them to be happy (heck, they've been reminding me about the Nov. 4th date pretty much since I got in country), but this is a whole new level. On the street most people saw me and said "Obama! Vive Obama!". One guy asked if I'd voted, and then shook my hand and thanked me when I said I had. People were dancing in the streets at 4:30 am when BBC officially called it for him over shortwave radio broadcasts. There are tons of products out on the streets with his face all over them (wallets, watches, umbrellas, name tags, t-shirts, .... several of my students' notebooks are have him on the cover (my grade book has him giving a speech on the cover)). We were tempted to start an "Obama! Obama!" chant at the bank to have people let us cut to the front (we waited in line about an hour), but we decided not to.

It's really great to see people here be inspired by his success. The best part is that I don't think they are excited because they expect him to make vast changes to Africa (which he probably can't and/or won't) as some people are saying, but simply because it's a symbol that African-Americans in the States aren't being limited by a glass ceiling anymore. It seems like a similar admiration that they have for wealthy musicians (Akon, 50 cent, etc), simply because they made it in the states despite the color of their skin - showing that maybe that factor is beginning to matter less and less in modern America. ...or maybe I'm just projecting my thoughts onto them, who knows? In any case, Guinea is very happy with the news, I can't wait to talk to people in my village about it (I'm actually a little sad I could be there when the results came in, I would have loved to have danced in the dirt road in front of my house with fellow Bintimodians - I'll just have to organize an inauguration fête for January 20th).

Anyway, I will (most likely) be headed back to my site tomorrow morning, until the next time I post from Kamsar...

Yay Obama!

2008-11-05T05:33:00.000-08:00

Ok, so what I forgot to mention in my previous post was that I was going to watch the election results on "Armed Forces Network" TV at my Country Director's house. This is about 10 or 11 channels that apparently the military gets along with foreign service officers, embassies, and apparently - Peace Corps staff. The "news channel" kept changing from ABC to NBC, FOX, CNN, etc every half hour or so, but the general coverage was of the election (though we did have a half hour of "around the military" news right as the first set of polls closed at 11pm Guinean time). We watched there until about 1am, which was around when we found out that PA went to Obama. After this we went back to the volunteer house to let our Director and his wife get some sleep. I listened with some other volutneers to the hissing SW radio to try to get more results, but around 2am, I decided to go to bed.

I woke up this morning to the news that he is our new President-Elect. Exciting stuff. I will leave you with a quote from his speech at the DNC....

"...Because the future of our nation depends on the soldier at Fort Carson, but it also depends on the teacher in East LA, the nurse in Appalachia, the after-school worker in New Orleans, the Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, and the Foreign Service officer in Indonesia....and double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011 to renew our diplomacy...."

Too bad I'll be done with Peace Corps by 2011, though if I do a 3rd year extension....hmmm.....

Labé Summary and Conakry Situation

2008-11-04T08:03:00.000-08:00

Alright, well since my last post I have: attended an awesome halloween party in Labé with other volunteers, attended the VAC meeting, ended up staying in Labé a couple of extra days due to travel complications (more on that soon), and then came to Conakry on a Peace Corps car via the scenic route (5 hours longer on a much rougher road than the way I came). I am now in the Peace Corps office in Conakry until the situation here gets resolved. But first...

So, there was a large gathering of Volunteers in Labé to celebrate Halloween, we made mexican food (tortillas, beans, salsa, guacamole and tortilla chips - all from scratch since there's no canned beans or pre-made tortillas ehre) and had punch. Everyone made costumes from stuff found in the market, I found a track suit from the 80's in the market along with some sunglasses, and was a mobster from the 80's, pictures will be on Facebook in the next day or two. Some highlights include a Sarah Palin costume that was very well done, I think it was the hair and glasses that really did it, a cracked out and pregnant Britney Spears (I've heard rumors she's getting famous again for legitimate reasons...good for her?), and Guinean-Spice Girls (Maggi, Fish, Palm Oil, Piment, and MSG...I think the Maggi costume was probably the best one of the whole party) among others. It was really great to see everyone again (all of the Fouta people from my training group, 10 of them I think, were there, along with lots of people from the previous training group who I hadn't met yet).

The VAC meeting was also a great experience. I mostly listened at it, though I did have a couple of suggestions to throw in here and there.

Now, the beginning of the drama. On Saturday I decided I didn't have enough time to get to Conakry if I left after the VAC meeting, so I waited until Sunday. However, on Sunday I discovered that no taxis were moving because there was no gasoline being sold anywhere. It turns out that when the price of oil dropped 50%, the price of gasoline here only dropped like 20 or 30%, so gas stations refused to buy the gas, and so nobody could gas up their cars. The only gasoline available is via the black market (aka, anyone who had some before the gas stations closed, who are now selling it by the liter for the equivalent of about $20 per gallon). Because of this, I decided to wait one more day and get a Peace Corps car ride down to Conakry, since a car was going to be going down the following day.

The next day we left, and I was in the car that was taking a back road that cuts sort of diagonally from Labé to Kindia, and then rejoins the main road. This means I was travelling a shorter distance than I did when I drove up in the first place, but it took over 5 hours longer (about 12-13 hours). This was partly because we stopped at the village of a Volunteer who had switched villages to get her stuff (the reason for the detour), but mostly because the road was very very rough and so we could only go so fast (and believe me, we were going FAST for the quality of the road, my back is still sore from the ride). We heard over the SW radio that there were issues in Conakry and we may have a hard time getting in, but we weren't entirely sure what all was happening.

We got to Conakry last night and unloaded, soon after our arrival we got a phone call from our security officer who had been told we had arrived safely. We were told not to leave the compound without his permission and we were informed that there had been demonstrations and at least one death that day in Conakry. This morning we were told we could wander a bit if we needed to go to the market for food, etc - but we couldn't go anywhere in a car. So I will be in Conakry until this blows over. I don't want to personally explain the situation via this blog to avoid any miscommunication or misinterpretation, so I will instead direct you to these news stories that explain what has been happening recently.

http://www.afrol.com/articles/31551

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gqtIf8t8waZ_euDFPqjH7q8IV8Yw

...more on Google News (search Guinea and/or Conakry)

Rest assured, I am absolutely safe here since I am in a guarded and fenced in compound that is relatively distant from the main trouble spots. All other Volunteers that are out up-country in their villages are also safe, since the violence has been centered around Conakry.

Happy Halloween from Labé!

2008-10-31T02:23:00.000-07:00

So my time in Conakry was well spent, I managed to upload like 180+ pictures to my facebook (these aren't as small as the ones last time, sorry about that), and have a long online chat with Tim and several shorter chats with other people (Lyndsey, Pookie...). I only got a couple of hours of sleep, but it was worth it. The next morning I woke up early, had a talk with our doctor about being part of the communication chain for my nearby voluteer who developed 3 allergies (one pretty severe) to things here, apparently they decided to keep my village open to have someone near her "just in case". She and I had a good laugh about this, my fate was sealed when she stepped on a bee 3 months before I got to Guinea. We then got going to Labé only a bit behind schedule. The car ride was sort of uncomfortable, but very fast (only 7 hours....in a bush taxi it would have been closer to 10, or so I'm told).

The Fouta (another region of Guinea in the mountains/highlands) is beautiful. Everything here is very different from Basse Cote. The vegetation is much less tropical (kinda reminds me of Oregon a bit). The weather is much cooler (I'm wearing a long sleeve shirt), and the people are different somehow. Also, this city has more infrastructure than Boke (I think it's a bit bigger, but also since it's colder here people are better about having roofs and whole walls....logically this also leads down the path of electricity and running water). The volunteer house in this region is also really nice, it's actually a hotel for complicated bureaucratic reasons, and their office is very nice (I managed to grab a few books from their library to take back with me to site). I'm excited to spend Halloween here, and I'm excited to take part in my first meeting for Voluteer Action Commitee VAC - of which I'm the representative for my region (basse cote) from my training group. I'll write more about both these things when I get internet again (maybe Sunday in Conakry, if not next time I'm in Kamsar).

I'm not looking forward to a repeat bush-taxi trip to Conakry (especially since roads here are curvier and it's a longer trip), but I'm probably going to go alone again because nobody is headed back as soon as I am (I'm hoping to attend the meeting on Saturday and still be in my village to teach Monday morning...this may not happen since I may not be able to leave Labe until late Saturday (getting into Conakry at night...no), and I wouldn't be able to make it from here to my village in one day on Sunday. Well, worst case scenario I fall behind a bit with 9eme, but I figure I can just hang out at the school later in the week until someone doesn't show up to teach them, and I'll give my lecture then.

Alright, until next time!

What a day...

2008-10-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

Alright, greetings from Conakry. I made it here today all on my own all the way from Bintimodia. I was originally planning on coming down with some other volunteers but plans changed, and I sort of got stuck going it alone this first time. I'm glad though, because now I have a much better idea of how to get around in bush taxi's, and how to find my way around Conakry (more than one road? what!??).

So I left my village around 8:30 this morning, I wanted to leave at 6:30 or 7 to get an early start, but I waited on my front porch with my bags, watching the only road out of my village, and didn't see a car until 8, and didn't get a car to stop and take me the 11km to the main road until 8:30. Luckily, I got a car headed for Conakry on the main road soon after getting there at 9. It was a mini-van style bush taxi (This means three in the two front bucket seats, four in the middle seat, and 3 in the back row). I took this car most of the way, and it was relatively comfortable, since we weren't full to capacity. I made the mistake of getting in and leaving without first settling on a price with the driver - so I spent most of the ride wondering how it was going to play out when we got to Conakry if the driver tried ripping me off (I mean, I would already be in Conakry, so what could he really do?) luckily, this didn't happen.

What did happen was, after I'd been sleeping for about an hour (maybe on a large Susu woman's shoulder? I'm not sure...) we stopped and I was told we were switching to another car. We were about 3/4 of the way to Conakry at this point. I was kinda groggy, and had no idea why we were changing, but since I still hadn't paid for my fare, I figured - what the hell. We got into the other car (a much tighter squeeze - smaller car, 2 more people) and I realized this was as far as our driver was taking us, I paid him a reasonable fare (45,000 GNF) to cover what he drove plus what the new driver was going to do to take me into Conakry. The new driver took us the rest of the way and about an hour later, we were in Conakry.

I'd been in Conakry only a few times before, and never by myself. I knew the name of the general area I was going to (the name of the market closest to the Peace Corps office). My driver kept dropping people off and kept driving, and I just crossed my fingers and looked out the window for familiar landmarks. Eventually we got to the "end of the line" where he told me to get off and look for a taxi headed to where I was going (he didn't want to get off the highway) and gestured to where I would find them. I walked that direction, asking a few people for the taxi gare that would go where I was headed. I eventually found it and had to "deplace" - buy all the seats in the taxi to the destination - and I had the driver take me where I was going.

I recognized the market, but I knew the office was next to a hotel (or I thought so anyway...) so I asked the driver to keep going. We got past the hotel, and everything was unfamiliar, so I just told him to drop me off there. I called a volunteer I knew was already at the house, and she gave me some directions that got me a little more lost (she didn't understand where I was when I explained where I had gotten off). I eventually figured out my way back to the market I had recognized, and from the market I got my bearings, and walked to the office. All of this was about a 3 km walk after a 7 hour travel day at about 3pm on a hot afternoon with my duffel bag.

I made it to the Peace Corps house though. I since went to a supermarket and got mouse glue (to spread on a piece of cardboard to hopefully get rid of my mouse infestation) and some blue cheese (12,700! a steal for real cheese here!). I then had a sandwich with half my block of blue cheese and 3 "brochette" beef(?) kabobs from the market on half a baguette (oh my god, cheese! non-fish meat!). I've since spent like 5 hours on the internet here, chatting with Chris, Jeanette and Cate. It's so nice to have good, free, reliable internet!

Anyway, I'm going to take a break, have a shower (holy crap, hot shower!), and come back to this. I can always sleep in the car tomorrow (7-10 hour car ride tomorrow - luckily this will be in a Peace Corps car).

First Week of School

2008-10-24T04:48:00.001-07:00

Alright, so posting last week here was a bust, I paid for an hour of internet, and spent an hour trying to upload the previous entry (which I’m assuming I’ve been able to post by now, if you are reading this – the next intended entry) and failing due to stupid computer errors (the date on the machine was set to Jan 1, 1990, so all the websites kept having security license errors (because they weren’t valid for 1990, they were valid for 2008) and I couldn’t edit the date and time because this “client” workspace doesn’t give me administrative clearance….of course not that I could explain this to the people who were running the internet café, since they don’t seem to really get computers as much as they should.

Anyway, end of rant. Hopefully when I use my 30 minutes that I paid for I will be able to publish both these entries and check my e-mail. I will be going to Conakry in the not to distant future so I can use the internet at the bureau which is just about guaranteed to be working. Hopefully I can post some pictures then too.

So, another week, another set of adventures. This week was the start of school. I taught two 2 hour sections of 9th grade chemistry on Monday (8-10, 10-12). Tuesday was two 2 hour sections of 10th grade chemistry followed by two 1 hour sections of 9th grade English (8-10, 10-12, 12-1, 1-2, with only a 15 minute break in the middle of the 10-12 class). Wednesday was two 1 hour sections of 10th grade English (12-1, 1-2). I had a really good time. Despite it being the first week and the fact that my English classes were combined into one large class (about 60 students), I really enjoyed teaching. I reviewed balancing chemical equations in both my chemistry classes – 10th grade got much farther than 9th – but that’s fine because I need to review more material with them before starting on actual 10th grade stuff. I also taught the same English lesson to both 9th and 10th grade, which is something I will continue to do since this is all of their first exposure to English (This week was “Introductions- Getting to know each other” – Hello, how are you?, I’m fine, what is your name?, my name is Federico, What is her/his name?, etc). Next week is the alphabet A-M.

Teaching chemistry is fun, because I like chemistry and generally – so far, my students have seemed at least semi-interested. But teaching English is a blast because the students actually have a strong desire to learn it. To them, learning English is getting them one step closer to going to the states and/or getting a good paying job in Guinea. It’s also a way for them to understand some of their favorite music (Akon, Sean Paul, R. Kelly, Lil Wayne, um….that’s all that comes to mind now). So in class they’re very attentive, they get rowdy but quiet down when I ask (yell) at them to (they didn’t take me that seriously in English class until I kicked someone out for talking while I was teaching…while I’m glad they enjoy the class and find it fun, I can’t let them forget that it’s still a class and they still need to follow the rules). Anyway, the best part was seeing that my students are teaching their siblings and parents some of my classes (I had a few little kids and one older woman come up to me and say “good afternoon” and then walk away laughing). This will be a nice way for the knowledge to get out to the community even if the class is only for the 9th and 10th grade kids.

Otherwise, life has been pretty much the same. I made curtains for my doors and windows so that I can keep them open without kids peeking in while I’m changing/sleeping/eating/breathing. It also makes a more firm barrier at the door. Usually people wouldn’t walk into your house without asking, but when I had my door open with no curtain people would pause, then walk right in. Now they get to the curtain and call out & I meet them outside.

I also finally made it out to my village’s closest market, Coliah (sp?). It’s on the main road – so it’s about 11km away, but it’s very large – maybe about the size of the Forecariah market. I was able to get some eggplants (I was desperately craving vegetables, it’d been 3 weeks since I could remember eating anything besides red-oil fish-head sauce with rice). Unfortunately, eggplants and onions was all that market seemed to have in terms of vegetables. I got some cucumbers today from Kamsar’s market (along with bananas, guavas, & potatoes). Hopefully I can make a tuna cucumber lime salad later when I’m feeling vitamin deprived (not that cucumbers are a shining example of nutrient rich foods, but still).

Anyway, hopefully all of you are doing well. I’ve been trying to write letters to as many of you as possible. I have a US mailbox that I can use here in Kamsar – the address is on my Facebook, or you can post a comment and I will try to e-mail it to you. This means you can send a letter to a Pittsburg address and it will find its way to a mailbox here in Guinea that I can check about once a week or so. I can also send letters out, so if you want one, let me know. Paulina, recibi tu carta la semana pasada, pero aun no he podido mandar una respuesta – voy a pedirle a mi mama que me mande timbres internacionales gringos para poder escribirte a ti y a mi tia lupita.
Alright, I’m gonna try posting this now, and then try checking e-mail.

p.s. – Student notebooks here have paper covers with various famous people on the cover (99% of the time it’s a soccer player – my lesson planning book has David Beckham playing for Real Madrid on the cover). This week I saw (and bought) a Barack Obama notebook. I sought it out after seeing a couple of my students with notebooks with his face on them (There are at least 3 different styles). I also saw an umbrella with his face all over it in Conakry, but alas I already owned an umbrella. Don’t forget to vote, even I managed to send a federal absentee write in ballot (not that it will ever make it there or get counted…but I tried).

Kamsar entry number two

2008-10-17T04:45:00.000-07:00

Alright, Kamsar entry number 2. I came to Kamsar last week as well, but the internet was down so I wasn’t able to post anything or check e-mail. However, I did manage to meet up with 5 other volunteers from the area who all agreed on meeting then. With their help I got to know the “Patron” part of Kamsar that we all take advantage of. This is, in fact, the good internet café, the other one apparently is spotty (then again this one didn’t work last week…ah well, c’est la Guinée). I also found the pastry shop and the hotel where the US mailbox is (sending out another set of letters today) and where there is an amazing swimming pool (I’m gonna go for a swim after I finish up here with the internet). The other nice thing about last week was getting up the courage to get off the road and step into a small Kamsar market (luckily, unlike most Guinean markets there is a little more walking space, so I was able to walk my bike with me while I shopped). I bought a cheap plastic basket and used some zip ties (second best $1 item I brought to Guinea, my cheap swiss army knife being the best) to strap it to my rack and was able to carry some pots, mugs, and bananas home. Today I went one step further (or several steps deeper) and went into the really big market where I got some guavas, a ton of bananas (For cheap too, the lady was trying to rip me off by charging 4,000 for about 10 bananas, then a girl yelled at her in Susu, called her a thief, and told me it was 1,500 (about $0.30)), some cooking oil, a kerosene lamp (the candles I’ve been burning are really inconsistent and more expensive than kerosene), and a good padlock for my front door (I don’t know where the other key to my current padlock is, so I’m replacing it). I chatted with the padlock vendor and he seemed really nice (he told me I was attractive, which I’m a bit confused about, especially since I was covered with mud and sweat after my bike ride). I also stopped in to the photocopy store next to the internet place and got my journal copied from where I left off last time I sent it to Tim. There’s a lot there, so I will probably send it in two installments, one this week one next, or it might not go through the Kamsar mailbox regulations. Also, I had a really cool moment, my first non-in-Bintimodia person I knew. A teacher from my school who met me at the Emploi de Temps meeting (Monday, when we all decided who was teaching what and when…more on this later), came into the photocopy store and chatted with me for a while about school business. I think the shop owner was a bit surprised that 1, I knew any average (non-“Patron”) guinean, and 2 – that I was a teacher here. Anyway, I have too much to say and I am anxious to get my interneting out of the way so I can go have lunch and swim a bit, so I’ll just summarize the last 2 weeks of my journal, since I have it sitting right here anyway….
After the last time I posted, I biked home. I hadn’t found anywhere to eat anything (I was biking through the village around 2pm when everyone is at the mosque for Friday prayer) and so I hadn’t consumed anything that day besides water. I stopped and got a sack of bisap (very sweet hibiscus tea (agua de Jamaica super dulce), usually sold by younger girls by the side of the road, it comes in small tied-off bags that you bite a hole into) and continued on my way. I was worried I wouldn’t make it home (biking 40km in one day on an empty stomach in the African heat…pas bon!) but I got there eventually. The road had a few more forks on the return voyage since it split off to all the small villages in the area, so I had to keep asking for directions whenever I got to a fork, but it was fine (On the ride home, I pondered the book that I may write one day about my time here, and I thought “Bintimodia kira masen be” (“Show me the road to Bintimodia” in Susu) would be a good title – remember I was dehydrated and semi-delirious). Then I was home for another week, I read a ton (I’m keeping a list of all the books I read here, I’m up to 18 now since July, 10 of them in the last 2 weeks), and sit on my front porch and say hi to people. Mostly the village is starting to get used to my presence, they don’t stare quite as much, they greet me by name, some of them know me better and ask how I’m doing and how I’m enjoying my time here. Kids don’t harass me quite as much (though I still get asked for money – I’ve decided that the best way to deal with it is to tell them it’s THEM who need to give ME 100 GNF – they tend to get a kick out of that). I met the counterpart to the first Bintimodia volunteer William (c. 2001) a health extentionist who apparently made a CD of him playing guitar and singing in Susu about AIDS and HIV prevention and nutrition, etc. His counterpart seems really nice, I might try to work with him if I need someone other than M. Diallo for a project. There are a few people who get annoyed that I don’t remember their name yet, but most people are happy that I’m trying.
I did my laundry (I’ve now done my laundry twice), which was a big accomplishment for me. In Forecariah my host-sister would not let me do my own laundry, handing me something to eat and ordering me to sit down while she washed it for me. This was very nice of her, and it was great to hand her dirty clothes and get clean, dry, folded laundry later, but I didn’t join the Peace Corps to have someone wash my dirty boxers. SO, I went to the pump, got my water, set up my washboard and basin, used some natural palm oil soap, and scrubbed the heck out of my clothes on the washboard. I was half-expecting the kids of the village to come and watch the foté wash clothes, but nobody seemed to care that much. A few women said hi to me, and a couple offered to help, but I told them I could do it, thanks. I’m glad to be able to throw at least a small wrench in the “men don’t do housework” mentality that exists here. Afterwards I hung my clothes up to dry – I really like the smell of line-dried clothes. Bounty has nothing on a Guinean breeze.
I discovered that the loud music that I’d been hearing at night on Wednesdays was not just end-of-ramadan parties, I live across the street from a nightclub. Yes, my village doesn’t have a market, you can’t buy phone recharge cards, you can’t really get anything here, but we have a nightclub that runs their ENORMOUS speakers off a generator. This would be bad enough by itself, but, of course, in Guinea dance music is very very VERY much the same. They have a couple of songs that they play all the time, most of them last a good half hour, and repeat the same techno beat in the background while an African drum beat plays in a 30 second loop. AND, they have like 3 or four other songs that they love (Akon is huge here), so you hear 10 different (bad) remixes of the same (bad) song in one night. Ah well, take the good with the bad right? Maybe once I get to know more people in my village I can charge my phone at the nightclub off their generator (currently I charge my electronics in Kamsar).
I commissioned a table and 2 shelf units through my Guinean friend Thierno in Boké, it was kinda expensive, but would have been way more if I’d gone myself. Hopefully these can be delivered via a peace corps car on the next mail run, and I can put my books, clothes and food somewhere other than the floor and that clothes line I have in my room.
I had another trip to Kamsar last week, which I’ve written a bit about already. The bike to Kamsar was pleasant because I knew what to expect. The one snag was when, in a small village, I biked into a clearing with 30 or 40 small kids (ages 3-8 or so). Now, here’s the thing, kids here are adorable, but when they see me they FLIP THE F**K OUT and run screaming “FOTE! FOTE! FOTE! FOTE!” as loud as they can. This is manageable when it’s one or two, or even 10, 30-40 was a disaster. I slowed down (big mistake) and debated turning around, but then I was already getting swarmed, so I just biked through them hoping they would be smart enough to get out of my way. They weren’t, so I had to maneuver around them while trying to go fast since the ones to my sides and behind me were grabbing at me. Once I got clear of them all one of them threw a muddy stick at my shoulder. I’m proud to say I had enough self-control not to get off my bike and throw it back at him, though I thought about it. The rest of the trip was nice, it was cloudy so I didn’t get too hot.
The bike back was nice, I’d eaten, so I wasn’t feeling weak, and again, I knew what to expect. Before I knew it I was back in the canoe crossing the river to get into Bintimodia.
A couple of days later I had a hard time feeling lonely and isolated again, some days I don’t want to leave my house (kids screaming at you gets old, when adults do it, it’s just obnoxious), I got to the point of boredom that I wrote a letter using a stencil to outline every letter – so it would take up more of my day, I ended up throwing it away halfway through and writing in my journal instead. In addition to isolation, I was really bored. I was out of books to read except the book I’m currently reading (Einstein: The life and times – an 800 page biography) which I was then sick of. My broom was broken (I had gotten a new broom-head in Kamsar and tried using my old broomstick in it, but it didn’t work, and so I had nothing to clean with), I had nowhere to put things so I couldn’t organize anything. I don’t have a rake so I couldn’t work on my yard, it had rained hard the night before and somehow a bunch of water got into my kitchen covering all my canned goods with dirty water (I suspect it came through my roof – which means it filtered through the crawlspace which I believe is infested with mice and bats, definitely mice from the scurrying I hear). Generally I was having a bad that. These happen, but are fortunately rare. Usually writing in my journal makes me feel better (having a medium to write out my problems makes me look at them more analytically and I realize they’re not so bad).
The next day I was the meeting to decide teaching schedules. It was a mess (or rather, it was a Guinean-style meeting – which from an American perspective, is a mess). I was told 8am, I knew that times here are very …. relaxed, so I showed up at 8:15, armed with a book to pass the time. Around 9am, I went to my principal’s house because nobody had shown up yet, we hung out on his front porch, around then more teachers started showing up so that by 9:45 most of the ones who eventually made it (roughly half the teachers) were there. We chatted, there was a prayer, we ate, and around 10:30 we went to the school to start the meeting. Everyone stood up and shouted at each other at the same time – my principal was in another room dealing with some other business. The teachers argued for about an hour, and then, slowly, a schedule started forming (very meticulously neat) on the chalkboard. Everyone argued over which color chalk to use to make the lines….eh allah! I was told I was going to teach 7th, 8th, and 9th grade chemistry. I up to this point had been very quiet, but I got up, and in true Guinean style shouted back at everyone else that I was going to teach 8th, 9th and 10th grade, because the 10th graders were preparing for their big exam and they needed a teacher who could teach them well (I was more subtle than that, but not much more). They agreed, and it went up on the board, after while it was all set, and then my principal came back and we discussed the schedule some more. He and the director d’études sort of ganged up on me, and talked me into teaching English (generally middle-schools don’t have English in the curriculum, but my principal wanted the 9th and 10th grade students exposed to it so they could be more ready when (if) they went to high school. I think it’s a good idea, but I don’t really know how to teach English, so I was hesitant. They insisted, and I figured it couldn’t hurt, so I agreed and am now teaching 2 9th grade sections of chemistry, 2 of English, 2 10th grade sections of chemistry, and 2 of English. Chemistry is 2 hours per week in one sitting, English is one (or it is now at my school anyway). So I teach a total of 12 hours per week to the same 4 classes. The nice thing is that I’ll see the same students for 3 hours a week, so I will hopefully get to know them pretty well, and will more quickly figure out who is struggling because of math issues, who has language issues, who’s just lazy, etc.
I spent most of the rest of the week reading and getting some stuff together for class, then yesterday, the mail run came. I got two packages – one from my dad, another from Tim. My mom’s packages have yet to arrive, I’m wondering if perhaps the first one she sent has gotten lost…. Anyway, I got tons of great food from my dad including a big thing of Gatorade mix, 2 boxes of cheez-its, some doña maria mole sauces, some candy (gummi worms got eaten by mice en route, but Mexican candy and the candy corn made it ok, some fruit loops, some Mexican hot sauce, and a hair clipper set (which I need to charge in Boké or Conakry before I use it, I cut my own hair here because a Guinean haircut is someone shaving your head to the skin with a razor blade). Tim’s package had a nalgene bottle, a bunch of Cliff bars in assorted (Delicious) flavors, some cheez-its, some postcards, some energy gels for biking, good pens, and some other goodies. I also got a lot of mail from PC including the newsletter (in which I found out that one of my training mates has decided to go home after being at site for 2 weeks, which is unfortunate, I hope everything goes well for him in the states).
Alright, that is the general update. I’m glad to have figured out that I can use the computers in the internet café for free as long as I buy internet time. I can then type up stuff like this in MS Word, and then upload it when I punch in my internet code (thus saving the internet time for actual browsing). This means I can pre-type e-mails and posts and not need to economize so much on writing later on. Photo-uploads will have to wait until Conakry though….assuming I find a USB cable to use. Alright, that’s all for now.

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

2008-10-03T05:53:00.000-07:00

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).

Whoo! Finished with Training!!!!!

2008-09-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

So I had the final day of training last Tuesday, and Wednesday was our farewell ceremony in Forecariah. I will probably wait a bit before transcribing my paper journal (there's a chance I'll do it myself this time, since computer time in the PC house in Conakry is free....but then again there are like 35 people here who want to use the internet).

Anyway, I'm uploading tons of pictures to Facebook now, so I will probably be here for a good long while, which will hopefully give me time to write in this blog while the files upload. The pictures should line up with my transcribed journal....so hopefully I can do that soon.

Saying goodbye to Forecariah and coming to Conakry to prepare for swearing in (officially becoming Volunteers at the Embassy), and installation (getting dropped off at site) is a bit surreal. We will be going from having almost no control over anything (work schedule, sleep schedule, food schedule, food choice, etc. etc.) to being alone in an (empty for me) house where every last decision is up to me (something that will be awesome...once I get used to the idea again....I spent a while deciding on which fabric art to buy (or whether it was even wise to buy it)). Speaking of indecision....I want a dog...specifically I want a puppy to vaccinate and train, who will be my companion in Bintimodia and who I will potentially bring back with me to the states after service.

Having a dog = RESPONSIBILITY, finding a family to watch it while you're gone for meetings, trainings, keeping it healthy, dealing with it killing the neighbor's chickens, not being able to travel as much, not being able to travel at the end of service (unless I give it to Guinean family or a new PCV just starting service), dealing with all the frustrations of a puppy while adjusting to a new village, etc etc...etc. Companionship, unconditional love, someone to talk to about how annoying X or Y student was in class that day, and it means one less Guinean dog is going to live a shitty life of disease and getting kicked by everyone.

I don't know which way I'll go on this issue, but I keep leaning more and more towards the "have a dog" side. I might wait until I find a puppy that needs saving (a weekly occurance here....usually), rather than seek one out, that will give me more time ot think it over.

Hmm, I'm mostly done uploading pictures for today, I should give the internet over to the crowd of people behind me....go look at my facebook albums, if you can't get access to them let me know and I can send you an e-mail invite to the album.

Catching up with Federico in Forecariah...

2008-09-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. Okay so this is Tim, and Federico asked me to assist him with a blog update while he’s finishing training and has sparse internet access (though he obviously had a chance for a brief post last Wednesday). He was able to photocopy his journal about a month ago and mail it to me from Kamsar to Portland. And so over the last few days since it arrived, I’ve been able to type up this little synopsis. Of course it’s all a tad out of date at this point, but still gives a good picture of how he’s been getting along.

His journal is fairly lengthy but I was still able to type up most of it, though some entries I skipped and some entries I summarized. Also, to be considerate about discussing people in Guinea, I substituted first letters for their names. And to be clear, everything I noted or summarized is Italicized, so that everything un-Italicized is pretty close to what he wrote down. I’ll use ellipses (like this … ) to indicate if part of an entry or a day has been cut, skipped, whatever. Here goes, enjoy!

…

There were entries for some days prior to 7-14-08, but he was able to keep his blog fairly up to date until then. So I’ll begin with the first entry after he arrived at his training village:

7-14-08

Je suis arrive a Forecariah. The last couple days of training in Conakry went well. I went to the beach, played some games with local children and had a good time.

…

Forecariah is a beautiful village in the southern Basse Cote region of Guinea. Upon my arrival here I met my host family at the adoption ceremony. My host sister and my host father’s second wife came to greet me. They were accompanied by three of my younger host brothers. Although initially it was a bit awkward we all soon figured out that I am pretty good at French and we managed to communicate fairly well.

Generally my family and I just hung out and tried to have a conversation, it went pretty well. At dinner they sat me down in the living room while they all ate in the outdoor patio. Also, I always had a chair, and my host brother O. would move it for me whenever we switched rooms.

Just now I got served a second dinner and I’ve never been less happy to see food. The plate of spaghetti swimming in palm oil with fried whole fish was clearly an expensive fancy meal. But I am not hungry, I don’t like fish and I don’t like that much oil.

It’s going to be an interesting adjustment. I also had a conversation with 3 other guys about religion and that was a BAD idea. Explaining agnosticism in French to Muslims is apparently not my strong suit.

This entry is very scattered, hopefully I can elaborate on it when I’m in a better mood.

7-15-08

I have never been so proud of myself for being able to take a bath. That was actually kinda fun.

7-15-08

…

I was nervous about going home because my stomach was still iffy and I was SURE they were going to feed me. I was able to avoid eating by pretending I’d just eaten, but I knew that was just a temporary solution.

My host brother O. and I went with a PCT friends to the lycec and played basketball with a large group of Guineans. This is when my mood began to change because even though I played badly, everyone was super nice and complemented me.

After this we came home and my host sister gave me some fried manioc, which was delicious. Granted, I was starving but it was soooo good to eat something non-fishy for once in this house. I also had some rice and sauce, only this time it was peanut-piment-goat sauce and it was tasty - except I’m still sick and I didn’t eat much.

O. and I walked to the Cchez Vicky bar to meet the PCVs and PCTs there and it was fun. I realize how much I like my host family and I think I will get used to life here. It’s a beautiful country. If I could just begin to feel better.

7-17-08

Fed mostly discussed how training was going as far as language and technical classes and the conflicting personalities of the instructors. They also received some health lessons and things to be careful of when living in Guinea. For the language class they took a trip to the market where he bought an umbrella and laundry soap and tried a sandwich. After training he met his brother O. and they went to the bridge in town and watched kids fishing and little boats that were hauling “sable” or cement and mud, nearly sinking.

7-18-08

Today was an intense language day at training, 6 hours of language with a 2 hour tech session. It was the longest day ever and it was so great to end for the day and go home.

It was my selfish time alone. I went straight to my room to read and came out for dinner, then briefly explained to my family that I’d been doing French all day and needed a break before going back to my room.

I went to Chez Vicky where I tried the fries and found out from D. that I will most likely be near Boke in Basse Cote and perhaps near some PCT friends.

I came home to salad dinner (avocado, cucumber, onion, tomato, and oil and vinegar which was tasty. Also, I bought peanut butter in the market today so I am set meal-wise for a while. J

7-19-08

So this morning I got my bike, a Trek 3700 mountain bike. I showed off my bike maintenance skills to the group then raided the unwanted bikes for parts (tire-pump holder, rack). Afterwards I went for a ride with some of the others.

When I got home I had myself some “Chad Time” where I read a bit. Then I did laundry - which is to say my host sister tried to tach me how to do laundry and then laughed at me and took over. My clothes did not know what they had coming. She is a washing maniac.

After a bit more reading I went out with J. to play basketball and again I made an ass of myself. I did manage to get a basket though. O. said he’s going to teach me tomorrow.

We had a PCT/PCV party at the PC house here tonight. It was fun, people drank, danced and just had a good time.

Generally I’m settling in more and enjoying myself here. I’m starting to miss life in PDX, but I’m also happy with the life I’m building here in Guinea. Anyway, Ontina, o’oo.

…

7-23-08

I’ve gotten more comfortable with my family and spend more time just chilling with them without doing anything. My French is coming along as well, and they’re beginning to figure out what I like and don’t like to eat. I had a good conversation with my host dad that was basically the shrimp scene from Forrest Gump with manioc in its place. I’ve been feeling better stomach-wise for the past couple of days but don’t know if it will last.

7-24-08

…

I had a food breakthrough with my family today. I refused to have breakfast because I was sick and I also turned down late lunch. Then for dinner they brought me bacon with beef and fries. It was the first non-fish dish I got, and I was surprised that my Muslim family cooked bacon for me. They made sure I finished it, probably because they wouldn’t eat the leftovers.

…

7-26-08

Alright, so now that I’ve slept a bit, time for some epic journal writing, in keeping with the epic days I’ve had.

So during yesterday’s training we had our last French session with M., and next week we continue with D., the actual classes did not get re-arranged. I’m tempted to ask to be moved to the advanced level, but M is teaching it, so I’m looking forward to seeing D.’s style before requesting the move.

After training I went home to a house full of strangers who were discussing the price of flour (my Dad’s the head of the baker’s union here). I hung out in the back with my brothers until it was time for the PCV house party to celebrate H.’s and J.’s birthdays. I went with I. and J. and had a pretty good time. The punch was terrible this time (the gin was not as good as last time, it‘s so weird to have so much variety in quality from bottle to bottle).

S. eventually (midnight) came to pick us up and take us to the big dance party at the nightclub to celebrate the end of the brevet, the test people take to get into high school. He did his usual round-the-village leading us to the party while telling us exactly where to walk.

The nightclub started off kinda awkward with people staring at us, but after a few songs we began to loosen up and get into it. For the most part, the music was good, but all very similar - quasi Latin or rap-like beat played on African sounding percussive and string instruments, very repetitive. There was some African reggeaton in native languages, and at one point they played “Dale Don Dale” by Don Omar and I. and I sang along with it in Spanish. Also, during a Bollywood song we did our best Bollywood dance impersonation.

…

We walked home around 2am, and took the long way through neighborhoods and bushes to avoid the military police. Apparently being out after midnight can get you in jail if you don’t have ID and are under a certain age. I escorted S. across the street so he wouldn’t get in trouble.

Today I woke up late and got out with other PCTs to “play sports”. I took my Frisbee and headed off to the stadium with I. and J. We played Frisbee for a while, then enough people showed up for us to play soccer. Once the game got going (I was playing defense) it started pouring down rain but we kept playing, it was lots of fun even though my team lost. While we were playing I saw some kids playing with my Frisbee, then later it was gone. Damn.

Afterwards, I. and J. and I played cards with my family, went to Vicky’s, and watched “Prey” on my iPod. Also, the three of us and L. went fabric shopping. I got enough fabric to get a regular button down made, as well s a full pants and shirt outfit. I’m not sure I got the message of what I want across to I.’s mom, a tailor. I had been in a bad mood after my Frisbee got stolen, but shopping lifted my spirits, also I’m excited to have custom made stuff.

Finally I had a mouse in my room last night. I heard it moving around after I went to bed and I managed to spot it before it ran away from my headlamp beam. At first I was a little freaked out because I thought it was a bush rat, but it was cute and small, so I didn’t mind so much. I threw out the food he/she was munching on so I’m not sure if it will return. If it does, I might name it. I think I’ll name it Cheeto. Anyway goodnight.

7-27-08

Today I got up late, had breakfast, 2 hours later I got lunch, then 3 hours later I got dinner. I like that my family lets me sleep in, but I wish they wouldn’t expect me to eat 3 meals even when I start my day late.

The rest of today consisted of reading while D. braided I.’s hair, then going to a movie with some of my family, and I. and J. Movies in Guinea are CRAZY fun. They are either in English (Van Dame movies mostly) or are Bollywood with English subtitles. Thus nobody really understands what is being said. During the dance scenes little kids get up and dance along, and during action scenes Everybody cheers and claps when the good guy kicks some ass. Everyone dresses up to go to the movies, eat rice and sauce, hard-boiled eggs, peanuts, etc and chatter throughout the movie. Best of all it only costs 600 GNF to get in, about the price of 2 lollipops, or ¼ a bottle of water, or 1/8 the price of a beer.

I think I might be over the hump as far as being comfortable here in Forcariah. I still don’t love the food but it has been getting better. I really like my family and am getting to know my neighbors better. I feel much more optimistic about my 2 years here.

7-28-08

I just had my dinner/lunch, and again I had an emotional reaction, like when my first fish pasta, and like with the bacon. This time it was because they had cooked my rice with tomato paste and onions, like Mexican rice. I had a conversation with my host-dad the other day about how food is different in the US and Mexico and I mentioned Mexican rice. I’m not sure how, but they got the proportion dead-on because it was really tasty. I mostly avoided the sauce on top of it because it was fishy and manioc, but the gesture alone was really touching.

On a related note, my host brother O. (about 11 years old) burned himself on a motorcycle and his leg has a 2-inch wide circular burn that has been getting kinda quasi-borderline infected looking. I finally couldn’t take it anymore, an whipped out the antiseptic ointment and helped him clean the wound. If it gets any worse, I will bandage it for him too.

7-28-08

So the rest of today was good, I got my outfit from Mme. C., I.’s mom. It’s a bit bigger than I would like, but I think that’s how it is supposed to be to be authentic.

…

This is the first entry I’ve written in the living room by candlelight while my family watches. As I’ve said before, I feel more comfortable with them, but it is still odd to be the center of attention in this household. I hope I will continue to blend in more with them and seem like less of an invited guest. It’s hard though because the things that would be important to me for acceptance - doing chores, cooking, sitting on the floor with them - are things that men of my age wouldn’t do anyway. By giving me my own chair and doing everything for me they are accepting me as part of their family and I need to get used to that. Oh, I think they’re bringing food again, this whole being force-fed might be the hardest part, especially not having control over what and when I eat. I never feel comfortable turning down food when I think they’ve gone out of their way to prepare or serve it to me. Anyway, hopefully it’s off to bed now, I am not at all hungry. Good night.

7-30-08

Today was an OK day as far as training goes, but really training has been reduced to same-old-same-old. Soon we will shift gears in preparation for our site visit, where we will meet our site people like the chief of the village, school principal, etc., as well as see our houses. After this we will prepare for practice school, the last 3 weeks of training where we will teach real Guinean students.

At this point Fed went on to describe that his host brother’s burn had gotten worse. He cleaned it again and used some ointment and bandaged it. He suggested some medication to his host dad, who agreed to buy it in Conakry the next day. He was worried about getting too involved, especially if something went wrong with the meds or if they became dependent. He went on to say…

I doubt any of those things will happen and my family is really…I don’t know, touched that I helped. I can tell they’re super grateful and don’t know quite how to say it. My brother O. said something about how we were really family, and I told him I agreed. He said he’d come visit me in the States and I told him he would always be welcome at my house. I just hope the infection doesn’t spread into the leg muscle.

Also, I found out why there has been a crying woman in my house. My dad’s sister-in-law’s mother (?) passed away and so the parents will be gone all day tomorrow. I expressed my condolences to my host dad. The upside is that he’ll be in Conakry tomorrow to buy the medication. Anyway, I’m going to play cards with the fam and go to bed. A toutte a l’heure.

8-1-08

Ok, so the most exciting part of today was finding out my site for the next two years. I will be in Bintimodia in the northern Basse Cote, about 50 km west of Boke and about 20 km or less east of Kamsar. I’m a bit off the main road, but I’m going to be super close to lots of resources. Kamsar is a mining village that serves as an oasis for western ex-pats and mining officials. I’ve heard they have a large Leb store (Lebanese-owned American food store: Kraft mac and cheese, etc), a clean pool, internet, ice cream, and a US post box to send and receive mail as if you were in the States.

While I’m excited to have so much near me, I hope I will not neglect my village in exchange for American creature-comforts. I plan on spending as much time as possible in my village truly living as a Peace Corps Volunteer should. However, it is nice to know that a slice of pizza is only 20 km away (totally bikeable, no problem).

I still don’t know much about my actual village, but I think it is relatively small and predominantly full of mining families, I’m really looking forward to my site visit. That will give me a better idea as to how my daily life will actually be.

Training and family-wise not much has changed. O.’s leg is still infected, but I cleaned it again yesterday. The infected area seemed bigger but the flesh looked better. His dad bought something in Conakry, but it wasn’t what I suggested and I’m not even sure it’s an anti-biotic. I didn’t get a very good look at it though. I hope whatever it is works.

Anyway I’m off to some waterfalls tomorrow to go swimming, so I should get to bed.

8-2-08

Today’s trip to the waterfalls was incredible. All 25 of us went, and along the way we stoped at a Leb store supermarket/gas station. They had everything from Nutella to ice cream, cereal, good liquor, candy, etc. It was all ridiculously over priced (154,000 for Nutella, 200,000 for gin, 8,000 for a candy bar, etc). I splurged on a cold plastic bottle of heat sealed 1.5% milk. It was imported from Belgium an was good for a year from the production date. It was only two months old but it tasted a little sour. It was still nice to have milk after a month without it.

The waterfalls themselves were beautiful. They were just outside of Dubreka, and it was so much fun to go swimming and climbing around with the currents and falls. There was a section where the current was really strong and fast where we kept attempting to cross, but kept getting swept away by the current. There were also sections where we could sit and watch the falls, or even sit under the falls, it was tons of fun.

8-3-08

Today, I slept in and read which was nice, then I got up to wash and hang out with my family. I ended up watching D. and A. cook lunch, which was cool, if a little smoky. The cooking hut is separate from the house and is an open-air roofed area with a thatch hut-style roof. They use wood and light fires using broken bits of plastic buckets as starting fuel. They light the plastic on fire and the molten burning plastic sticks to the wood and starts the fire. They set pots on top of rocks to suspend them above the fires. I saw D. make the red oil fish sauce by pounding some fried eggplant with some tomatoes and parsley then fry whole fish chunks then mix it all together with onions and lots of spices, mostly fish bouillon by Knors, and salt. It sounds tasty but it really isn’t, especially when the fish is old, smelly and spiny. I later got this for lunch and mostly ate plain rice.

…

8-4-08

So today I had a pretty good day, training was pretty good - language was a bit boring because nobody tries anymore and I’m a bit more advanced than the rest of my class at this point. I hope to move to the advanced class next week when we readjust. My atoms lesson went really well, I changed my lesson plan a bit as I was starting and completely improvised most of the lesson. I’m glad my French is good enough that I can talk nonstop about atoms for 30 minutes in a coherent manner with almost no preparation.

…

After training I went home and read a bit then had a quick dinner before going out to the Peace Corps house to watch a movie on T.’s computer while the electricity was going. I think it was called “Eastern Promise” - for a mob film, it was pretty good. Most of the volunteers went.

I was excited to find fried plantains among the fish heads and bodies in my pasta tonight. I usually eat around the fish because it is very spiny (pin-bones) and kinda old, but the plantains were delicious. I look forward to cooking for myself, I think I will probably become almost vegetarian on my own partly due to the cost of meat, and partly due to the conditions under which it is stored. Beef hangs outside on hooks in the market sun and gets randomly hacked off when you ask for it. Guineans do not understand how to butcher animals - beef tends to be full of the bone fragments that the butcher’s machete broke off. Pork is nearly impossible to find in the predominantly Muslim country, but I think it is usually even dirtier. Chicken seems the cleanest animal to eat here because it is always fresh - in fact it is hard to buy it when it is not still breathing. Killing, plucking, and cleaning are all part of the cooking process.

Anyway, so I’m writing this entry while watching TV with my family and some neighboring extended family. When the electricity is running the TV is usually on. I think there is only one channel - which seems to be an assortment of shows from badly acted “sitcoms” filmed in Conakry or nearby villages, news shows where people argue back and forth in a mixture of local languages and French, and some public information shows, like the one playing now about some poisonous caterpillar. Earlier during the sitcom, my family laughed with me and teased a little because they saw that I understood the Soussou greetings on the TV. When they saw me look up from my writing there was a laughing good natured exchange of “Tang mu fehe” and “I nu wali” with some “Tana yo mu” mixed in. Ah, good times.

8-7-2008

I’m starting to get a little lax/lazy about updating this journal. I should keep an eye on this habit, it’s no good. However I should probably be planning the 40 minute lesson acids and bases that I need to teach tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll get some of that done before sleeping.

I’m a little amped up right now from a battle I just had with a lizard which had snuck it’s way into my mosquito net. At first glance I thought it was on top of the net, then I realized it was clinging to the net, from the inside. Now, I like to think of my bed and mosquito net as a sanctuary - a safe zone from all the nature that surrounds me. I tuck the net under my mattress when I sleep to keep the creepy crawlies out. I did not expect them to get in during the day only to get stuck inside with me. I will not make that mistake again (I hope).

Now I’d like to say this lizard was a huge vicious monster that needed immediate killing but in reality it was relatively small (3-4 inches) and not that threatening (except it was sleek and slimy looking - which could mean it was toxic).

Anyway after a long failed attempt to trap and release it, I decided the easiest though most barbaric method to get ride of it was to sneak the tip of my scissors just under its belly and thrust and cut it in two. Its tail end twitched for a while after this even after I used a shoe to crush the skull. There was a lot of blood and I felt terrible about not just using my hand to grab it and toss it out the window. I just really didn’t want it to fall and get lost among my bed-sheets. It was in my freaking sanctuary. Hmm, I hope I get less squeamish about creep crawly things before I encounter something really serious like a snake or a large rat (my mouse, Cheeto, has not returned, I wonder if the cat got to him).

Anyway, I should lesson plan. Ugh, I hate how the humidity is f’ing with all my pens and paper, everything looks like the pen is out of ink.

8-8-2008

So after my last entry my mouse returned at night, knocking something over around 3am and scaring the crap out of me, I think the mefloquine is starting to get to me in the form of paranoia because my heart kept racing well after I realized it was just Cheeto. Also, the shadow my pen cast while writing the firs tfew lines scared me because I thought it was a spider. Crazyville, here I come. Anyway as far as Cheeto is concerned I think I’ve blocked his entrance to my room with some steel wool I bought in the market today. I just hope he has a way out so he doesn’t die in his hole and stink up my room in a few weeks.

Anyway so training today was relatively uneventful, the most exciting part was the 40 minute lesson on acids and bases I gave. I lesson planned during the period before and ran out of prepared activities 20 minutes in - however I pulled off the full 40 minutes with some more improv - M.’s main comment was “Be careful with NaOH” and “Have students erase the board for you.” Incroyable, mais vrai.

After training I read a bit (I’m onto “Three Cups of Tea” now, having finished “Nightmares and Dreamscapes”, “Blood Hunt”, and “Kafta on the Shore”). I then chatted with J. about VAC and JET - Volunteer Action Committee is the PCV-based branch of admin, with representatives from each region deciding how to spend money, etc. Je t'ented is a peer-PCV support network. It is pretty much guaranteed that J. will do one for G-16 Basse Cote and I’ll do the other. Initially we both wanted to do VAC because there is more traveling and power involved in it, but today we both offered to give it to the other in order to do JET. We decided to just wait and see what happens in the future.

Afterwards we watched “Titanic” with my host brother, and his friend who lives across the street from me, whose name I forget. It was interesting to watch this movie with them in a setting where there was constant conversation because I got to see the cultural differences and lack of understanding about life outside of Guinea that my brother - who I think represents the typical Guinean man - shows. When the boat was going under and women and children were being placed in lifeboats he laughed and was incredulous that men would try first to save women and children (who rank at the bottom of the Guinean social ladder a very rigid and central social ladder). He also kept mocking the fact that Jack would try to save rose over love and couldn’t understand why the musicians kept playing despite the mess around them. He insisted they didn’t understand what was going on. His friend, however, was with me on all these points and generally corrected or argued with him which was nice because it meant I didn’t have to. His friend is surprisingly well educated and knows a lot about Western culture. I may try to get to know him a bit better while I’m here, he’s definitely someone I can chat with and have conversations about interesting non-US rap or sports-related things.

Oh and on a side note, this morning I was told that someone had shot Barack Obama, only to find out later that someone had been holed up in a hotel with guns and claimed to be trying to assassinate him. It’s crazy how the news changes so quickly via word of mouth. However, I have my radio set up with the BBC. So I get to be in the know whenever I have time to listen to it. Anyway, time for bed.

8-9-2008

Part of this day’s excerpt was cut off on the photocopy but this is more or less as Fed wrote it:

So I should probably update before going out to the boite to go [sic]. Today was calm, I read in my room until noon, bathed for the first time in a few days and washed my hair for the first time in a long while. I still am using the same tiny bottle of shampoo I got at the hotel in Philadelphia a month ago.

…

Eventually my brother S. and I walked up at a house with a bunch of kids where S.’s girlfriend lives. I played with these twin kids age 6 or so and held a baby who peed on my leg. She disappeared and was back 10 minutes later bathed, smelling of soap and wearing a pretty dress. She and her brothers were adorable, one boy followed me when I left and cried when his mom came to get him. I could really sense the difference between Soussou people and Pules as far as physical and emotional distance. My Pule family - attentive as they are - are never that touchy feely with me.

Anyway, as I said before I’m off to meet some volunteers to go dancing. I managed the small victory of convincing my family to let me go alone and meet me at the club later. It’s a big step in terms of them letting me be out at night alone. Oh, damn, it just started raining.

Oh - one more thing - J. noticed that my host brother O.’s beat-boxing imitated the sound of a broken speaker unable to handle the bass beats of a song. I laughed so hard when I realized he was right. Also, that fact says a lot about Guinea. Eh Allah.

8-10-08

So I had a pretty laid back day today. Slept in, listened to BBC, read a bit, and hung out with I. and J. after playing cards with my family. I’m a bit worried about my sister who is sick with what seems to me like semi-serious Malaria. There’s not much I can do for her, so for the time being I’m just letting her be. I think she is healthy enough that she’ll be fine in the long run.

Reading “Three Cups of Tea’ is odd because the development of education in the third world is at the same time so different from what I’m doing - while technically being in the same field of humanitarianism. Also, I’m in the middle of a less interesting section on the late 90s and a war in the area. Parts of the book inspire me to work hard at bettering Bintimodia, especially in educating girls.

I’m looking forward to the site visit, there is so much I want to know about my village - and it will all be at least partially unveiled by this time next week, maybe sooner. I also need to get a new phone because mine seems to have shorted out. I hope to get enough extra money to not worry about taking money out of the safe in Conakry. Hmm, I should try to get some sleep.

8-14-08

Greetings from the Boke house. Once again I’ve been a bit lax about writing in here, however I’m also about ¼ of the way through the notebook after just over a month - meaning at this rate I’ll need about 6 moleskines - I suspect this won’t be the case.

Anyway the past few days have been training - more of the same old except that I found out my host brother O. is moving back to Conakry while I’m in Boke, so he will most likely be gone by the time I return.

…

Anyway so the drive to Boke from Forecariah was nice - we traveled in a PC car which was fairly comfortable. We were blazing on the road and made it up to Boke in about 4 or 4.5 hours or so. Upon our arrival we had some rice with sauce that Y., the regional coordinator had made for us. There was chicken, cabbage, carrots, green beans, and potatoes in a red oil sauce - it was so nice to have some vegetables again - especially carrots.

And that’s it - that’s as far as he wrote before mailing the journal. Hopefully he’ll catch us up on the rest soon.

Whoo! Another month, another post!

2008-09-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

So, after my last post I spent the rest of the month doing about a week of training, and 3 weeks of "practice school" in Forecariah, where all 25 of us from my training group taught guinean students in our specific subjects for 2 hours a day. For them this was a free opportunity to get either a review of the grade they just finished, or a glimpse of the grade they're about to start, for us we got to teach real guinean students under observation from our trainers.

I taught 7th grade "Why is Chemistry Important" and "Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Mixtures"

I taught 8th grade "Atomes and Molecules" "Chemical Symbolism" and "Balancing Chemical Equations"

I taught 9th grade "Metals" and "Quantitative Chemisry" (mole calculations, mole/gram conversions, gas volume, etc).

I taught 10th grade "Oxydoreductive Chemistry"

There is more detail, hopefully I will write this tomorrow or the day after while I'm still having access to internet.

I am out of Forecariah now and I'm in a training center where I will work with my counterpart (the principal of my school) on getting my schedule and course load figured out. I go back to Forecariah (training village) this weekend, then 3 days later go to Conakry to spend a week getting everything ready to swear in and officially finish training, then go to my village and begin the "vrai" peace corps exprience. I've been volunteered/nominated to give a speech in Susu at our swearing in ceremony, so I'm both looking forward to and dreading that.

I will hopefully update again soon, I've done many interesting things, I swear, I just don't see computers very often, so I don't get to tell you all about them. This is why you should all be calling me. Tim has received the journal photocopies I sent him and he should be posting that here soon(ish). When I get to site I will have a chance to use internet a little more frequently (I've gotta bike an hour, which is waay better than most other people in my sites).

Anyway, I should get to bed.

Reaction to Bintimodia

2008-08-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

Hello again, I ended up returning to Boke (my regional capital) earlier than I expected due to transport issues in/out of my village. Luckily this means I get to upload pictures and post here again.

So, after leaving the other day, my closest neighbor Teale and I took off towards Bintimodia first in a Peace Corps car, then in a bush taxi for the last 15km or so off the main road. The bush taxi was missing most of the non-essential internal parts of a car (door covers, window crank handles, a window, upholstery, a dashboard, etc) but it was road-worthy enough to get us all the way to my village without any problem. The road had some major ditches and potholes (it is a dirt road), and at some points it was barely wide enough for the small re-assembled 1970-something Renault to make it through, but the driver knew how to make his way around, no problem.

Upon arriving in Bintimodia, we went to my principal's house, the guy whose family is to show me around town and meet people, but unfortunately he wasn't informed that I would be arriving this week for a visit so he was out of town on business (he's actually here in Boke, but I haven't yet been able to get ahold of him). His wife showed me my house, and introduced me to a geography teacher from my school who took me around to meet the sous-prefect (big government official in the area), the older members of the community, the head of the women's group, the Imam (highest religious position in the village), and a few other important community members. Everybody in my village is amazingly friendly, welcoming and nice. Everyone who has any power whatsoever told me to come to them with any problems and they would help me solve them, and the Imam gave me his blessing (literally) to work in the community, for my health, the wellbeing of my loved ones, etc etc. He was an intimidating dude, but I think I'm on his good side, so...awesome.

My house is a freaking palace (relatively). It used to be the old Sous-prefect's house, but when they got a new guy 4 months ago they built him a new house and saved the old house for my arrival. It is a concrete house, it has one large bedroom plus 3 smaller rooms that are probably meant to be 2 bedrooms and a storage room - but in my case will probably become a guest bedroom, a kitchen and a storage room. I have an indoor bathroom with a pit latrine (basically an indoor outhouse) and a small tiled area that I think has a drain for bathing (which involves a bucket of (usually cold) water, a large plastic mug, and creative ways to make a mug of water rinse as much of your body as possible). I also have an outdoor structure that is covered which would usually be used for cooking by Guineans (who generally cook over an open flame) but since I plan on having a small butane stove, I will possibly retrofit it as a chicken coop (yes, I plan to have chickens - and maybe a goat). Pictures of my house will hopefully soon be up on facebook, probably starting near the end of "Guinea 2". The only drawback to my house is the fact that the roof leaks in a lot of places. There is a space between the roof and the celing, so for the most part the inside of my house doesn't get wet - except for a couple of walls in the living room - but I talked to the people in my village and I think they're going to work on fixing that before I arrive in October.

I live next-door to the hospital which has 4 employees (I'm amazed my village even has a hospital), and near the school. My school has 8 teachers (I think that includes me). My house is on the main road (the only road that leads somewhere outside of Bintimodia) and is about a half a kilometer from the end of the road where there is a broken bridge. One can take a small boat across this river to reach the dirt road that leads to Kamsar. I plan on canoeing my bike across so I can bike the 20 km or so to Kamsar (where there is internet, refrigerated drinks and foods, and the only concrete, chlorinated swimming pool for several hundred miles). There are also vast (like, several thousand acres) rice fields around my village which are beautiful. At night there are fireflies all over the place. My village has no electricity, but a couple of the houses run a generator at night to watch TV (which half the village goes to watch). I have a water pump across the street from me, so I don't need to go very far to fetch my water.

Bintimodia has a couple of small boutiques that sell some candy, some essentials (candles, matches, sugar, tea, oil, cigarettes, etc) and phone cards. My village seems to have bread on a daily basis (baguette-style bread is the only bread I've seen here - but most parts of Guinea get it at least once a week), but I think it might come from a neighboring village. Market day is Saturday, which is when vendors from all over my region set-up shop in Bintimodia to sell anything from dried fish to soap. I'm not sure how big my market will be, but I'm not worried because I can probably get anything I want in Kamsar when I make the trip there.

My bike will be very useful because the only day that cars leave my village is Thursday. I wanted to leave my village for Teale's site on Monday, but it took me (and the 4 most important men in my village) 4 hours to find someone willing to drive me the 11 km to the nearest village with taxis. In the future I will be able to bike this distance and then catch a car to wherever I'm headed.

I've really enjoyed my time in the northern Basse Cote, I am a big fan of Boke, my regional capital, and I really like Bintimodia. One of the main complaints I've had in Forecariah has been the food (there is bony, spiny fish in almost everything, and even when there isn't the food just isn't good). However, everything I've eaten this past week has been amazing. There are bean sandwiches here in Boke that are very good (usually contain cooked beans, spagetti, some fish, some palm oil, some mayo, and some onions). The rice and sauce here (basically the only thing Guineans eat on a daily basis) is delicious. I am looking forward to finishing training and moving up to this part of Guinea. That being said, the hospitality of my family in Forecariah has been amazing, and they've really gone out of their way to accomadate me.

Hmm, ok, I still need to talk about the past month. But I think I will still leave that up to Tim to summarize my paper journal. I miss you all, feel free to call me sometime to chat with me, my phone number here (if you're dialing from the states) is on my facebook. It costs me nothing to receive calls, and information on a good calling card is on www.friendsofguinea.org. My address is also on facebook.

Also, leave comments on here with any (ANY) questions or comments you want to leave me. I will respond to them in future posts. Won tina, o'oo.

Holy Crap, A Month's Worth of Updates All At Once!...or not

2008-08-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

So I am at my regional capital (the closest "big city" with a Peace Corps transit house - there are 3 currently in Guinea). I'm here with the other members of my stage (training group) who have been assigned villages in the Basse Cote region to do our site visit - that is see the house we will live in, meet the principals of our respective schools, discuss which classes we will teach, etc. Currently we are having a party with the intermittent electricity as a welcome to the 6 of us from my training class that will settle in this region after training around 6 weeks from now.

I have been assigned to a small village in the northern Basse Cote named Bintimodia, I will teach middle school Chemistry here, and probably do an additional project (secondary project) which will be developed with my communities needs in mind (health education, english lessons, community development, pretty muchanything I want to do that seems appropriate). Bintimodia is a reasonable bike ride from Kamsar (a village that has a US mining company, and thus some ammenities such as internet, american food stores (expensive by Guinean standards, which I'm sort of being paid at....sort of), and a pool. It is also a short bush taxi ride to Boke, the prefectorial capital. There are supposed to be lots of monkeys in/around my village, as well as lots of rice fields. I am in one of the hotter regions of Basse Cote, which is the most humid region (by far) of Guinea. I have heard that in order to get out of my village I will need to get on a pirogue (small canoe) to cross the rivers around my village (Rio Nunez is one of them). What I've seen of the region so far is the epitome of small villages nestled alongside rivers in a tropical humid environment with wildlife all over.

As far as training has gone, I have so much to say and so little time and space to say it in. My paper journal has about 60 densely handwritten pages already describing the experience of adjusting to life in a smaller Guinean village with my host family. ~~I will attempt to summarize it for the rest of this post. Here goes:~~

Ok, I don't have time to summarize my journal, but I photocopied it and sent it to Tim, hopefully in a couple of weeks he will get it and be able to post a summary on my behalf. I'll have internet again in a week or two, hopefully I will upload some pictures to Facebook then. I'm on my way out the door to go to Bintimodia now, later.

Leaving to the Training Village

2008-07-13T13:56:00.000-07:00

So I am leaving for the village, about 2 hours away from the capital where I will train for the next 11 weeks. This will go from basic technical langauge all the way through more advanced langauge and cultural stuff and ending with practice school where for the last 2 weeks I will teach a group of random students gathered together for us to practice on (This will also be during Ramadan which means they will be hungry and grumpy), I sort of feel bad for them, but it will be an invaluable help to be able to teach under supervision from our trainers.

So there are 4 chemistry education volunteers, and there was already one here who will be leaving when we finish training. The math teachers have tons of resources from previous volunteers and the physics teachers have some amount of materials as well. Chemistry is a new program that got started right before everyone was evacuated, and we are literally going in blind, with no previous Peace Corps resources to guide us except our trainer who is a chemistry teacher in Guinea. They are hoping that one or all of us will take it upon ourselves to organize some sort of class notes and lesson plans for future volunteers. So basically, we are the pioneers of Peace Corps Guinea Chemistry Education, which is both intimidating, and really awesome.

Anyway, I will be off the grid (literally) for the next 3 months and won't have access to internet with the exception of one or two short trips in to Conakry. This means this blog will slow down, but I hope to post updates eventually.

So basically, stay tuned....and wish me luck!

Language Lessons, Safety Lessons, Cross Cultural Lessons, and Little Kids

2008-07-12T11:46:00.001-07:00

Ok, so today was another busy day. Everytime I sit to update this it seems like more than just one day has passed since my previous post.

First thing this morning we had Language training orientation (after breakfast, which here at the Peace Corps house has been baguette-style local bread with jam and butter, and hard boiled eggs). At this orientation we were told more about the langauge program and its standards. The proficiency levels are Novice, Intermediate, Advanced and Superior. All of these levels except superior is sub-divided into low, mid and high. In order to be a TEFL (teaching english as a foreign language) teacher, you need to be Intermediate mid. to "pass" training. In order to teach math or science you need Intermediate high.

I tested into Intermediate mid to start with, whcih is just a sub-level below what I need in 11 weeks to "pass" but I hope to make it to the upper levels of advanced by then (our native french speaker volunteer made advanced high, and the assortment of french majors mostly made advanced low or intermediate high). Considering I haven't had French in several years, I feel pretty proud about my placement.

This relatively higher placement meant that I had my "survival language" training today in Soussou. That is, the instructor taught us Soussou in French. It was sort of a head-trip because I was learning a completely new foreign langauge through a foreign langauge that I am still a bit shaky on, but it was such a great experience, and of my group of 4, I think I did pretty well (almost on par with the native speaker) at understanding everything our trainer said. Soussou is such a cool language from a linguistic point of view. Infinitive verbs all end with -fe, and to make the verb future tense you change it to -me, most present tenses cut off the -fe, and you don't need to conjugate with respect to the speaker. The pronouns are N, I and A, which correspond to I, you and him/her, respectively. I am only learning basic Soussou for now because this is the language that they speak in the village where I will be training for the next 11 weeks. Once I know where my site is, I will begin to really learn Soussou, Malinke or Pular, but that won't be for at least 3 weeks.

We had some US embassy representatives come talk to us about Guinean politics, economics, and safety issues. This meeting was useful, but probably wouldn't interest most people who read this (e-mail me if I'm wrong).

The best part of my day, my week, and possibly this whole month was going out to the beach next to the Peace Corps house after training and bringing my frisbee along. I, along with 5 or so other volunteers started tossing the frisbee back and forth, then a football back and forth. Soon some of the (many) local kids came up and made teeth-sucking noises at us (which in this culture means "hey, look at me" or something like that) and we soon got them involved with the game. After some time (not much time, at that) we had like 50 kids of various ages running around with a frisbee, playing volleyball with a soccer ball, playing with a football, and chasing us and each other around.

I managed to chat with a couple of them in French and get some names, as well as told them who I was. We were all having a fantastic time. There was one little boy of about 5 or 6 who was the smaller of the group, and he was very shy and kept standing close to me, and looking at me. He barely spoke, even to his peers, but seemed just generally amused to be playing with us.

The best part of the whole thing was when some of them had to go and called out "Fote!" to me (FOE-tay, which is Soussou for white person) to get my attention. When I turned around a group of like 10 Guinean children fist-bumped me (like Barak and Michelle Obama did that one time) and said something which I'm pretty sure had the words for "thank you" in soussou mixed in there somewhere. It was so incredible. Also, whenever the frisbee got caught up a tree, went into the ocean, went into the neighboring bar, etc like 10 kids would run after it, climb trees, throw soccer balls or do something to get it back. I think short of some little kid running off with the thing, it is very unlikely I will ever lose it.

Conakry is a very interesting city, it is more developed than I had expected, but still has some issues with garbage on the beach due to the sheer number of people who use it. I've heard that the rest of Guinea is very different from Conakry because it is not a big city, and it doesn't have all the associated pollution and noise. Apparently, volunteers who are in the far east of Guinea in Haute Guinea have drum circles in their villages on a very regular basis that are just for the villager's enterntainment. The different parts of Guinea have different representations of the local ethnic groups, and the culture in each of these reflects that.

On Monday I will be going to my training village about 2 hours away from the Capital. There I will live with a local family who will host me for the 3 months of training. I will periodically visit Conakry (every 2-4 weeks or so), but other than those visits I don't think I'll get much access to internet, so the blog may slow down for a while. I will be keeping up with my paper journal which has about 16 densely written pages already, and hopefully I will be able to post summaries of the intervening weeks.

Also, I am thinking of starting a mailing list of people for more sensitive topics that I don't feel comfortable posting for all to see online (such as names, locations, opinions, etc) so if you'd like to be on that list e-mail my gmail address with "Mailing List Request" as the subject line. If I won't recognize your e-mail address then let me know who you are in the e-mail.

Flights, Arriving in Conakry, and Langauge Interview

2008-07-11T04:43:00.000-07:00

So I write this from the PC house in Guinea. On Wednesday morning the volunteers took a bus over to JFK from Philadelphia where we waited 5 hours for our flight. We all thought we were going to be bored out of our minds getting to the airport so early, but between checking in, making calls home, getting lunch and buying our last American things (I got two baseball caps to give my to my host family who I will live with for 3 months), and playing Apples to Apples at the gate, the time flew by.

The flight from New York to Senegal was only about 7 hours, and the meal we got was the best airplane food I've ever had. I also got 2 Heinekens as part of the beverage service free of charge. I didn't sleep at all on the plane, partly because I never do, and partly because I was really excited. Luckily the plane had the idividual movie screens so I watched a couple of movies along the way "I am Legend" and "Juno".

After we landed in Senegal, we had to go through immigration to get to the part of the airport where we checked in to our connecting flight, then we had to go through immigration to get to our gate. This was a bit time consuming and frustrating because most of us were tired (this was at 4am east coast time, 8 am local time), and we were dealing with African French for the first time (different accent and pronounciation) not that regular French would have been much better.

We made it to our connecting filght which was only about an hour and then the Peace Corps staff from Country Director down to Janitors were there to meet us, help us with our bags, and welcome us. They took care of customs and immigration for us before we even got there so we were out of the airport as soon as we had all our bags. A short van trip later and we were in the Peace Corps compound which contains the transit house - a place for trainees and volunteers to sleep, shower, watch movies, etc while traveling through the capital, the Country Director's house, and the office building which has all the support staff offices (medical, program directors, housing people, etc).

We were all sleep deprived to some degree or another, but we arrived around 10am, and after lunch at noon, we had two orientation meetings to introduce us to the staff, and get general PC Guinea facts and figures told to us. We also filled out some administrative stuff to get our bank accounts, etc. After this we had dinner, and some of the volutneers went to a bar and tried Guinean beer, it was called Guiluxe. It is a pale beer sort of like PBR, other volunteers said it was "skunky" but I thought it tasted as good as Pabst (interpret that however you want). The other type of local beer is called Skol. The bar also sold Heineken, but it was almost twice as expensive (though even Heineken is only $2). I went to bed almost immediately after going to the bar.

Today we had a medical orientation, got our medical kits (containing tons of stuff including vitamins, gauze, scissors, various medications, stool sample collecting kits, malaria blood slide preping kits, insect repellant, etc) and typhoid fever vaccination. I also had a brief medical interview where we talked about snakes for like 5 minutes. Apparently I don't need to worry about anything other than a black mamba, nothing else should be able to kill me. :-)

At my language interview, my interviewer and I chatted for 15 minutes where I did most of the talking. I talked about where I'm from, what I will be doing here, my family, my pets, my hobbies (wow, trying to explain horn playing in French was sort of a challenge), and did a scenario where I was trying to buy an apartment. Here we ran into confusion when I asked how much the apartment cost and he said 1,000,000 GNF. When I was like "whoa that's too much" he was confused, and then I realized that's like $300. Anyway, I think I did ok in my interview, I'll find out later where I placed for language training. I'm hoping to have done well enough in French to being working on Soussou or Pular right away.

Oh yeah, and I will definitely be a chemistry teacher, apparently to younger kids, like the 8th grade equivalent. I still don't know where though, I will find that out in 3 weeks.

Staging: from Philadelphia Arrival to Last Supper

2008-07-08T20:42:00.000-07:00

So I got to Philadelphia for staging late Sunday night. I met my hotel roommate, L. who is from the Pac. NW area as well, and is pretty awesome. The following morning, after uneventfully exploring Philly a bit, I started Staging, and met the rest of my 25 member Peace Corps Guinea G16 group. We are all going to be teachers, roughly 7 English teachers, 9 math, 5 physics and 4 chemistry (or so). I still do not know if I will teach physics or chemistry because both of these are lumped under "science" and almost all the science teachers have a stronger chemistry background than they do physics, especially the three or four bio or pre-med/Islamic studies majors. Given the spread, I think my chances of teaching physics is up there, but I might try to weasel my way into chemistry as I'm one of 3 actual chemistry majors (one of which is strongly physics inclined).

So my training group has had several chances to hang out after our training sessions, we all got dinner together last night, and then wandered Chinatown in search of a good bar (which we never really found). Then tonight, after our staging ended about an hour early, we all went out for dinner, splitting between Chili's (a desire for one last American Chain Restaurant meal) and a family style Italian restaurant which was very very good, if a bit expensive. Our waitress was going to be going to Indonesia soon, and when she found out we were heading out for Africa tomorrow, she set us up with a special dessert tray to end our 5-course hearty Italian meal.

After our "last supper", we met up again at an Irish pub, and played trivia games. Our training group split into three teams: Guinea or Bust, Peace Out, and The Guinée Pigs, of which I was a member of the latter. Of the three PC teams, ours got the highest score, but we still didn't make it above 4th place overall.

This staging has been an amazing way for all 25 of us to not only learn each other's names, colleges, majors and PC assignment, but also to get to know each other in a deeply friendly way that only 25 people bound to train and work together for 3 months, then be among the only Americans in a third world country can.

I'm anxious about the fact that in 11 hours I will be on the road, where my final destination about 18 hours later will be Guinea, my home for the next 2 years. I'm anxious about every challenge and adaptation struggle that awaits me, but I am also very excited to meet my host family, train in French, Soussou, Malinke and/or Pular, eat the local foods, and begin to expand my understanding of the local culture. I'm excited to being teacher training, and soon be in front of my own class of élèves who will (with any luck and some skill) learn a bit of science from me. Yeah, mostly I'm excited.

Alright, soon to bed to see if I will have the infamous mefloquine induced crazy dreams.

Leaving for Staging in 10 hours...

2008-07-06T02:14:00.000-07:00

So it's 2:30am, the night before I fly to Philadelphia for Staging. I will get there a day early because none of the Monday flights from Tucson would have gotten me there on time for training. I've said goodbye to my 3 sisters, my dad, my stepmom, most of my good friends, T, and pretty soon my mom....generally my entire life as I've known it for the past however many years.

The significance of this, and some of the emotional impact is starting to become very real. Up until now it's been something I was going to do. Even saying goodbye to T and my Portland life was somehow manageable at the time. How many times had I left from Portland to Arizona only to return again a few weeks later. But no, this time I'm leaving for Philadelphia, and then in 3 days time for Conakry, Guinea, West Africa. This is very different.

I'm stressed out thinking about whether or not my bags will be slightly over the weight limit, causing me to need to reorganize stuff into my backpack at the ticket counter. Worrying about getting to the hotel in Philadelphia from the airport cheaply and effectively. Worrying about not having appropriate "business casual" clothing at Staging. The list goes on, and continues well into not being adequately prepared with the langauge or techincal training once I'm in Guinea. Or hell, maybe I won't get along with my host family for XYZ reason.

All this on top of the fact that next time I see my little sisters, they will be about a foot taller. My parents will move on with their lives, their careers, etc. My friends will be even more scattered around, and in completely different parts of their lives (well...except the grad students :-p). T as well, while I am very hopeful for the preservation of what we have, the realist in me worries about losing that once the distance and communication barriers start to get to us.

At the same time, holy crap, I'm going to be living in Africa in 4 days. This is the exciting, life-changing, thrilling adventure that I've been planning for over a year. I'm going to have my own classroom where hundreds of young Guinean students will learn physics or chemistry from me in French. I will live in completely different conditions, and eat completely different food than even I with my adventurous nature have experienced. This is freaking awesome.

I haven't even left my hometown and I can already begin to see why the Peace Corps says that you will experience your highest highs and your lowest lows while in service. But this is an emotional roller coaster that I am ready for, and I know that in the long-run, no matter how many times I get intestinal parasites and malaria - or how many kilometers I'll need to bike in the African heat to get to an internet connection or a working phone, I will be a stronger person for my experiences, and the relationships I form or maintain will also be strengthened.

Now if I could only finish packing to my satisfaction, maybe I can get some sleep before the flight.

5 Days to Staging, Packing List (edited with comments 4 months later)

2008-07-02T02:28:00.000-07:00

So I have been home in Arizona for a few days now after my road-trip. I have seen friends, family, etc, and generally had a good time. I also have finished the last of my shopping and gathering for my bags. The Peace Corps limits me to 2 checked bags with an 80 lbs total weight limit, with no bag weighing more than 50 lbs. I got a suggested packing list from the PC, and also spent lots of time online browsing other people's lists in blogs, websites and books. I took bits from several lists and sort of came up with my own list of stuff that I thought I could use. This list was modified as time went on but this is a list of the stuff that is actually in the suitcases I'm taking. I'm posting it in case any of my friends care, or if any future volunteers want yet another list to go over.

Two "Olympia" wheeled suitcases: one large, one medium. (handy, especially the wheels, but I wish they were less flashy)
A small duffel bag (absolutely necessary, you will take several short trips, bring some sort of overnight pack)
A backpack (also handy)
"Blowfish" Camelbak Pack (I bike a lot (chances are you will too), this is very very handy)
One light rope (stupid, of course they have rope here, and it's cheaper)
Several carabiners (handy, especially the two climbing grade ones I (will) use for my hammock)
Gel bike seat cover (eh, sorta nice, but I wish I'd brought one of those bike seats designed not to cut off the circulation in your groin, 40km bike rides in the bush sorta suck on a regular bike seat)
Bike rearview mirror (kinda useless, and makes my bike even more flashy)
Camping towel (sorta nice, but molds easily, getting a swatch of cloth here is easier)
Regular full size pillow and case (possibly the best thing I brought, even good pillows here suck - try to bring a mold resistant one though)
Hand-crank flashlight (I gave it to my host family in Forecariah, I never used it)
LED headlamp (Most useful item, I wish I'd brought 2, in case I break or lose the first one)
Keychain LED flashlight (Never really use it, the cell phone I got here (Nokia 1200 RH-99) has a built in flashlight)
Keychain compass (don't really use it, I just ask Guineans for directions)
Solar calculator (handy)
Grundig S350DLB shortwave radio (BIGGEST REGRET, expensive, heavy, flashy - you can get shortwave radios in the markets here really easily and cheaply, they work well enough, and (most importantly) you can carry them around in your village/ask for help finding stations, a lot of people have them - an American radio just sticks out and makes you seem that much wealthier)
Portable ipod speakers (they were broken and I didn't notice this when I brought them - check your electronics before packing them, however I'm perfectly happy listening to music using headphones so I haven't looked to replace them)
60 GB video ipod with 15 GB of music, and as many movies as I can burn before Sunday (useful, I already had the iPod, and I don't know that I would recommend buying one just for Peace Corps, but I'm really glad to have lots of music choices, a decent battery life, and the ability to watch movies in my village)
Battery powered ipod charger (it broke, but the one time it worked, it was nice to have)
AAA and AA rechargable batteries (eh, I never really recharge batteries since I don't have electricity. You can get D-cells and AAs anywhere here, I brought a bunch of regular AAAs from the states, but I think you can get them in Conakry or have them shipped to you later)
Solar powered battery charger (ecotrends) (kidna useless, I sort of wish I'd brought a Solio so I could charge my phone and iPod, I don't really use this charger because it only charges AAA and AA batteries)
AC power battery charger (see previous two)
Cell phone that works on Guinea networks (Motorola Motofone F3) (useless, flashy and broke quickly in country and nobody could fix it. Phones here are way cheap (~$20 for the Nokia Torch, which has an integrated flashlight) and if you have a locally bought phone, you can easily get parts, get it fixed, and nobody will think it's flashy since it's just like all the phones they see everyday)
Travel alarm clock (kinda handy, but my watch has an alarm too, and between mefloquine and the roosters, I never oversleep)
Digital Camera (Canon 7MP digital ELPH) (very handy, I especially like that it's small and easily concealed)
3 2-GB SD memory cards (one would have been fine, It's not full yet, and I've been backing up all my pictures (I'm at almost 500 now) to my flash-drive, if it gets lost/broken/stolen, you can buy a replacement in Conakry)
2 4-GB flash drives (I've only used one so far, but I'm glad I have the second one since I use my flash drive as a secondary storage for photos)
Leatherman Wave multi-tool (gift from my dad) (handy, but too bulky to carry with me)
3" folding pocket knife (was handy until I lost it, you can get sharp pocket knives for cheap in the markets here, and then you won't be sad you lost a $30 knife)
Small swiss-army style tool (VERY USEFUL! It's kinda nasty from being used too much (I used it to cut open batteries to remove the zinc for chemistry demos - so it got kidna gross), I wish I'd brought two)
Razor blade scraping-tool (handy, but so not necessary)
3 kitchen knives (chef, paring and cleaver) (very handy, but I like to cook)
Knife sharpener (very handy, though you can get knives sharpened in the market on a rock....)
Maps (political World, illustrated World, Guinea, NW Africa) (they have tons of maps here, but I'm still kidna glad I brought some)
Arizona license plate and Aztec calender plaque (for decoration) (good to have at site)
Photos (very nice to have to show your host family - bring pictures of buildigns and stuff in your hometown, pictures of your entire family, etc)
2 Moleskine journals (One is almost full, but I write a lot, there's a lot of down time to write at site)
2 day planners (I never use them, but I never used planners in the states either)
Scotch tape, Masking tape, Duct tape (VERY USEFUL!)
Combination padlock, regular padlock (eh, you can get these here, but they're not very secure. I wish I'd brought a big paddlock for my front door, but I did eventually find a good one in the Conakry market)
Travel Sewing kit (handy, if only for the well organized container, you can get most of these things here from a tailor, or have him/her do all repairs for you (usually for free if it's minor))
Safety pins (handy)
Pushpins (walls here are solid concrete, or mud, pushpins don't work very well)
Lots of ballpoint pens (blue, black and red) (regular ballpoints freeze up here for some reason, I had some Pilot G-2 gel pens sent, they work great)
4 multi-color "med-school" pens (again, regular ballpoints freeze here, I think it's the dust and the humidity of the paper)
Small stapler (don't think I've used it once)
Sharpies (Very useful for flipcharts, but you can get markers here (they're not as good))
Playing cards (SO USEFUL during training when you will probably spend an hour or more a day playing cards with your family, bring 100% plastic cards that can be washed - the paper ones get destroyed by dirt/humidity/use/sauce/who knows what)
UNO cards (eh, not so useful, the most popular card game here is sorta like Crazy 8's, and so Uno is semi-irrelevant)
4 toothbrushes (I'm glad I brought more than one or two)
2 sticks deodorant (same as above)
Neosporin (you will get this in your medical kit on day 2)
Travel toothbrush and soap holder (the toothbrush holder was just a breeding ground for mold, the soap one is useful though)
Burts Bees lipbalm (I don't need it in my region because it's very humid, I'm gifting them to my friends in the dry part of the country)
Band-aids (you will get them in your med kid)
100% DEET insect repellant (very handy!)
Ammonia itch-relief pen (kinda handy, you get hydrocortizone cream in your med kit)
Ziploc bags (VERY USEUL, especially the gallon sized ones)
Tupperware (Also very useful, ones with a good seal keep humidity out of jolly ranchers (which will melt if left out in the normal climate))
Waterproof matches (They have matches here, believe it or not)
Zipties (very useful)
Superglue (you can buy it here really easily)
Frisbee (nice, but got stolen)
Candy (jolly ranchers, caramels, etc) (kept me sane during training)
3 Water bottles (Nalgene, filering, and metal) (I only use my nalgene, I had another one sent)
Lockbox (good to keep money in, remember money here is bulky)
Spices (like 2 lbs) (Wish I'd brought more - you can get them in conakry but they're expensive, and they make cooking for yourself/your family once in a while really nice)
Tea leaves (like 1 lbs) & reusable bags (also nice)
Seeds to grow some veggies and herbs (I'm pretty sure this is ok by customs, right?) (This is ok by customs, but I've been too lazy to get on this, herbs are a good easy bet though)
2 small stuffed animals (one a gift from Tim, another is a stuffed "giant microbe" malaria)
Passport/money belt (never use it)
Lots of boxers (washboards destroy undergarments, and you will probably crap your pants at least once while you're here, it's good to have replacements on hand)
Not so many socks (HA! I wear flip flips every day, haven't worn a sock once so far)
3 long-sleeve button up shirts (way too hot to ever wear these, though having one nice one is a good idea)
4 short-sleeve button up shirts (nice to have, you can always get more here, I usually teach in these)
3 regular t-shirts (rarely wear these since they're kinda warm for humid heat (cotton doesn't dry very fast), and it's sort of innappropriate for me since I'm a teacher)
2 sweat-wicking t-shirts (oh my god so comfortable, wish I'd brought sweat wicking button ups so I could teach in them)
2 "Reed" basketball-type athletic shorts (never wear them outside the house, but they're nice inside the house)
2 pair of shorts (don't wear them in my village, don't take them off outside my village)
4 dress pants (handy, especially lightweight dress pants that hide dirt well)
Swimsuit (DEFINITELY bring one, maybe 2 if you like to swim, sometimes they get caught on a rock...)
1 necktie (Ha! never worn it, when an occasion is important enough to call for "nice" clothes, Guinean nice clothes are usually more culturally "cool", and more comfortable.)
6 bandanas (very useful, though you can also just get a piece of cloth from the market and cut it up yourself into bandana-sized pieces, but I use them all the time)
Dress shoes (never worn them)
Chacos Sandals (wear them a lot)
Leather flip flops (wear them even more)
Plastic flip flops (wear them sometimes, especially around the house, in the "shower")
Casual belt (wear it all the time (guys, expect to lose weight, girls (sorry) expect to gain weight)).
Dressy belt (wear it sometimes)
Books (useful, but I only brough 3, and I quickly read them in Forecariah and then started borrowing from other people, you can even only just bring the book you read on the filght over, then start the borrowing process)

(Bring some US money if you plan on travelling, some airlines are cash only at the ticket office here, and getting money sent from the states via Western Union is expensive, I brought $500, wish I'd brought more since it's just going to sit in the Conakry safe until I go back if I don't need it anyway. I think it's better to have it and not need it, than need it and have to scramble to get it somehow).

Wow, looking at this list....forget what I said in my previous post about packing lightly. This is a pretty huge list.

On the Road (Away From?) Home - 2 Weeks to Staging

2008-06-24T14:52:00.000-07:00

So I am in Berkeley, CA visiting a friend on my way to my mom's place in Arizona where I will leave some of my things before leaving for staging in Philadelphia. I will be in Las Vegas tomorrow night for a day or so visiting another friend along the way.

Leaving behind everyone I know and, in one specific case, love in Portland was hard. I had gotten my life together in a way that made me very happy. However I am comforted by the fact that I will keep in touch with my Portland people while I'm away, and hopefully - in one way or another - many of the aspects of my life will still be there waiting for me when I get back.

I met with a former Guinea Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) here in the Bay Area who needed a package sent securely to Guinea. She was a physics teacher at a secondary school, and was in Guinea as recently as December 2007, seeing the new group of Volunteers arrive. Her experience along with her pictures really got me over some of my minor fears and concerns and very excited to get going to Africa (even though she had bats in her house for a while). I had read and heard of many volunteer experiences, but none up until this meeting were specific to Guinea, or any more recent than 2002 or so. She recommended I take her old post in Guinea, and I might look into it if I'm given a choice, but wherever I end up there, I am optimistic about the connections, friends and experiences I will have.

Everything that I can think of has been arranged, plane tickets and hotel in Philadelphia reserved, visa forms sent off - again - after being lost the first time, most of the buying and packing finished (though honestly, does anyone ever feel they've packed sufficiently for a 2 year trip to the third world?). At this point I think my luggage is about 50 lbs or so, which is less than the 80 lbs limit. Then again, 80 lbs is the limit - not the suggestion - and I tend to pack lightly anyway, so then why do I feel like I am going to get to Africa and realize I've forgotten X or Y.

At this point, I'm just looking forward to enjoying these last couple of weeks before training, eat some good food, sleep, watch movies, and study French. I will figure something out in Africa if anything is missing.

Done with Reed!

2008-05-13T18:32:00.001-07:00

This is not exactly Guinea related, but I finished my last final exam at Reed yesterday morning, and I defended my senior thesis and turned it in to the library last week. I am completely done with everything for Reed, and once my quantum mechanics class at PSU ends in June, I will be completely done with undergrad.

It hasn't entirely hit me yet, I keep thinking I should be doing work or studying (which I guess I should a little, for quantum). I am realizing that I am about 7 weeks away from leaving and I still need to sell a lot of my stuff, and start buying the equipment I'll need in Guinea (knife, multi-tool, headlamp, flashlights, shortwave radio, etc).

All in due time I suppose.

Invited and Finshing up at Reed

2008-04-23T04:07:00.000-07:00

I am starting this blog primarily as my way of keeping in touch with my friends and family back home, but will leave it public for any and all to see.

My name is Federico, and I am going to be departing on July 7th, 2008 to be a secondary science teacher in Guinea, West Africa. I accepted my invitation about a month ago, and am now in the process of finishing my undergrad degree in chemistry at Reed College.

I will post to this in the following weeks as I prepare to depart for Africa, and then I will update periodically with news regarding my new life in Guinea.