IST Summary

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.