Feliz Navidad

-- 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.