When I look at the sky, those are the times I feel the most clarity.
I came here to figure things out. I came here to be alone, to be reliant on only myself, to figure out WHO I AM as a person. I came here for very selfish reasons.
This experience is hard in different ways than I thought it would be. Than I anticipated. I never anticipated forging the relationships I have now with these people so quickly.
I spend a lot of time looking up. I have been deprived of the sky and its beauty and vastness and simplicity and complications for too long (having lived in LA for the last 5 years). When I look up and see thousands of stars it’s hard for me to pull my eyes away. Something about it speaks to me deep inside in ways I can’t express. And it just puts shit in perspective.
The first thing I see whenever I look up is Orion. I see him EVERY time I look up. He is clear and dominant and stretches across the sky. My eye is drawn to him every time.
I just thought my battles would be within me. Maybe they are.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Death
Today the little girl who lives next door to me died. I would guess her age at about 3, no more. She was one of the petites who would faithfully scream out, “Fote, ca va???” every time I passed. With a genuine smile, excitement, waving hands…It never got old to her, even though I live next door.
All Yarie said was that she was “malade”. Caitlin’s family told her she had malaria, but here they call all sickness malaria because they don’t really have a way or the funds to truly diagnose or treat any maladies. I never knew her name, but today Yarie named her as “Bangoura”, so that’s what I’ll call her.
At night, I would see her praying with her grandfather, who also lives next door. He is the one who sings out the call to prayer in the morning, wandering around the neighborhood. He would let her pray next to him, which is actually against Islam, which dictates women can only pray behind men, not with them. But he would let her pray there next to him and she did all the steps, all the bowing, kneeing, hands to the head, everything, right in tune with her grandpa as though she really knew what she was doing.
That little kid loved me, to be honest. She was malnourished as hell. She had a huge distended belly. One day I even had Scott and Juliann (public health) weigh her to check her risk and told them to invite her mother to their nutrition sensibilisation, which they did and she attended only days before little Bangoura passed on.
When Yarie was telling me she had died, she dragged her finger across her throat and I wasn’t sure at first who she was talking about until she said the little girl that always played with Mohammed, whose grandpa I faithfully greet with “Salaam Aleikhum” every day, who I faithfully wave back to and reply “ca va bien” to every “fote, ca va!” she could throw out there. The little girl that I was so happy to see my family feed at times.
The little girl who got so excited when I blew bubbles. One day, I busted out this old blue plastic fish figurine thing that I had haphazardly thrown in my suitcase and started blowing bubbles for Mohammed. At first, he thought the bubbles were trying to attack him, then realized they were harmless and would laugh and cheer every time they came out of the wand. That little girl eventually found her way over to us and absolutely nearly had a heart attack every time a bubble started to come out of the wand. I will never forget how she would bounce up and down and press her hands together and scarcely breathe as the magic bubbles permeated the air in front of her. It could easily have been the highlight of her life. Her very, very short life.
After Yarie told me she had passed, she told me to put on my pagne and walk to the mother’s house, which is behind ours. As we were about to round the corner, she stopped and told me what to say, which I can’t even remember now and only feebly mumbled out to her mother after saluating “good evening and is all well” (which seemed ridiculous). She looked miserable. Yarie pointed to a spot in the yard and said the little girl was buried there, though Caitlin’s (who lives in the same neighborhood) family told her she had been buried at a cemetery.
Then I went to greet the grandpa and I know he could see the tears welling in my eyes and I don’t even know how I made it through both condolence calls without springing waterworks.
After giving him my condolences, I turned to walk back to the Bureau, where I knew I had a safe place to cry and people who would understand and Yarie said, “Out u va?” I told her I forgot something at the bureau and continued on my way. I made it about 5 steps past the compound gates before I made the cry face and stumbled towards Juliann and tried my best to tell her what happened without the ridiculous cry gasping, which wasn’t entirely possible.
Later, Caitlin came back with me to try and saluate the grandpa, who tonight did not pray, and as she waited outside my house for me to bring her some toilet paper, burst into tears as she watched Mohammed play on the patio. When I came out all she said was, “I can’t even look at your brother right now.”
And they don’t get it. Guineans don’t understand what affects us so much about things like this. This happens all the time here. They don’t cry in front of other people. They can’t understand why we would, which is why I made a fucking valiant effort to hold it together until I was inside the gates of my “little America” at the bureau.
Even as I write this in my bed, tears stream down my face in a manifestation of a very American sense of loss.
I am proud to be an American.
And at the same time, it’s depressing as hell.
All Yarie said was that she was “malade”. Caitlin’s family told her she had malaria, but here they call all sickness malaria because they don’t really have a way or the funds to truly diagnose or treat any maladies. I never knew her name, but today Yarie named her as “Bangoura”, so that’s what I’ll call her.
At night, I would see her praying with her grandfather, who also lives next door. He is the one who sings out the call to prayer in the morning, wandering around the neighborhood. He would let her pray next to him, which is actually against Islam, which dictates women can only pray behind men, not with them. But he would let her pray there next to him and she did all the steps, all the bowing, kneeing, hands to the head, everything, right in tune with her grandpa as though she really knew what she was doing.
That little kid loved me, to be honest. She was malnourished as hell. She had a huge distended belly. One day I even had Scott and Juliann (public health) weigh her to check her risk and told them to invite her mother to their nutrition sensibilisation, which they did and she attended only days before little Bangoura passed on.
When Yarie was telling me she had died, she dragged her finger across her throat and I wasn’t sure at first who she was talking about until she said the little girl that always played with Mohammed, whose grandpa I faithfully greet with “Salaam Aleikhum” every day, who I faithfully wave back to and reply “ca va bien” to every “fote, ca va!” she could throw out there. The little girl that I was so happy to see my family feed at times.
The little girl who got so excited when I blew bubbles. One day, I busted out this old blue plastic fish figurine thing that I had haphazardly thrown in my suitcase and started blowing bubbles for Mohammed. At first, he thought the bubbles were trying to attack him, then realized they were harmless and would laugh and cheer every time they came out of the wand. That little girl eventually found her way over to us and absolutely nearly had a heart attack every time a bubble started to come out of the wand. I will never forget how she would bounce up and down and press her hands together and scarcely breathe as the magic bubbles permeated the air in front of her. It could easily have been the highlight of her life. Her very, very short life.
After Yarie told me she had passed, she told me to put on my pagne and walk to the mother’s house, which is behind ours. As we were about to round the corner, she stopped and told me what to say, which I can’t even remember now and only feebly mumbled out to her mother after saluating “good evening and is all well” (which seemed ridiculous). She looked miserable. Yarie pointed to a spot in the yard and said the little girl was buried there, though Caitlin’s (who lives in the same neighborhood) family told her she had been buried at a cemetery.
Then I went to greet the grandpa and I know he could see the tears welling in my eyes and I don’t even know how I made it through both condolence calls without springing waterworks.
After giving him my condolences, I turned to walk back to the Bureau, where I knew I had a safe place to cry and people who would understand and Yarie said, “Out u va?” I told her I forgot something at the bureau and continued on my way. I made it about 5 steps past the compound gates before I made the cry face and stumbled towards Juliann and tried my best to tell her what happened without the ridiculous cry gasping, which wasn’t entirely possible.
Later, Caitlin came back with me to try and saluate the grandpa, who tonight did not pray, and as she waited outside my house for me to bring her some toilet paper, burst into tears as she watched Mohammed play on the patio. When I came out all she said was, “I can’t even look at your brother right now.”
And they don’t get it. Guineans don’t understand what affects us so much about things like this. This happens all the time here. They don’t cry in front of other people. They can’t understand why we would, which is why I made a fucking valiant effort to hold it together until I was inside the gates of my “little America” at the bureau.
Even as I write this in my bed, tears stream down my face in a manifestation of a very American sense of loss.
I am proud to be an American.
And at the same time, it’s depressing as hell.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Africa
I have thought for awhile now that my experience in Africa is different than I thought it would be. Different in ways that are difficult to put into words or express. This experience is hard in different ways than I thought it would be. In ways, less poetic than I thought it would be.
Sasha gave me Nine Hills to Nambonkaha last week as she had finished reading it. It is a book chronicling the service of Sarah Erdman, a volunteer who served in Cote D’Ivoire (just southeast of Guinea) in the 90’s. I am only 60 pages into it (I took a repose over the weekend to blow through Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without A Country, a cadeau from Scott) but it has put into perspective a lot of what I have so far been experiencing here. It IS poetic, I just haven’t found the words to express that.
For example, my grandma. She is the cutest impish old lady. She is the one who most often opens the door for me late at night (by late I mean 10 or 11) when I’ve been out with other volunteers, her eyes just barely open, shuffling quietly across the floor. When she laughs it’s as though it’s the funniest thing she’s ever seen and it explodes out of her mouth. Her eyes are always smiling.
She prays faithfully at all the prayer times, even if there is a child crying and pulling on her clothes, as little Oumou was yesterday. Grandma would try to gently push her away, her lips still moving in her quiet prayers, but Oumou was just screaming, inconsolable. I was sitting right next to grandma and trying to get Oumou to come to me but I didn’t want to stand and scoop her up as she has been afraid of me since she arrived with my aunt a few weeks ago. At first, she would burst into tears whenever she saw me and as time went on she slowly began to smile at me from her mother’s arms and wave. I was afraid to just scoop her up because it might just make her scream even more and I wouldn’t know what to do. I did manage to get her to come to me and she cried into my pagne for a few moments until I decided to pick her up and plop her bare bottom on my lap. Surprisingly, she did not object (though she was still crying) and I bounced her up and down gently until she quieted down and ultimately fell asleep there in my lap until grandma finished her prayers, let out one of her impish laughs and scooped Oumou up to put her in a bed for a nap. It was one of those moments where I felt…useful. Part of the family.
Africa is a poor continent and Guinea in particular is a very poor country despite its rich soils and mineral wealth of which the poor infrastructure and imbalanced mining contracts have prevented the Guinean people from enjoying the benefits. But despite this being a poor country, I have never been overwhelmed by a feeling of poverty here. Every morning I drink my tea out of a plastic mug that leaks out the bottom, I get my hot water from an ancient Chinese thermos, I sit on old particle board chairs that in the States would be suitable for a child’s playhouse, I see the distended bellies of the malnourished youth everywhere I look, I buy goods from the open fronts of old shipping containers, stands made of sticks and off old rice sacks on the ground but I have never felt a sense of real poverty. This is just how things are here and I don’t feel an overwhelming need to change those things drastically or in quick fashion.
Everything here needs to be done “petit a petit”, little by little. You have to start with the most pressing issues and work for change in very small ways, as people here are used to doing things the way their parents taught them and the way their parents’ parents taught them. In their eyes, this system has served them well and they do not have a burning need to change. These are the reasons that development work must be done so carefully, on such small scales. Encouraging regular hand washing with soap and condom use and diet diversification are very noble causes here.
The only times I really feel despair is when I think about the relation between the sexes here. Polygamy is a reality and I had done what I could to prepare myself to understand and accept it before I came here but when you talk to the women and you hear them talk about how their husband jumps from room-to-room or house-to-house on a nightly basis to be with two or three or four different women and then STILL have affairs on top of it, it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart because somewhere inside me I do believe in love and in commitment and in shared responsibility and shared life between two people. I don’t know if that exists here.
In addition, the rate of female circumcision, or female gential mutilation, is VERY high here (I think our session said the rate was something like over 90% of women have had it done). So in general women don’t experience much pleasure from sex, and are obliged by at least religion if not law to submit to sexual relations with their husbands at any time it is demanded, even directly after having been beaten by said husband. The rate of the FGM is going down, for many reasons including that the women told us that there are women who come to Guinea from the surrounding nations (Mali, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire, Sierra Leone) that have not been circumcised and the men have realized that they enjoy sexual relations much more with an uncircumcised woman.
I don’t know. I think for me the part that really gets me is maybe not the lack of love, but rather the lack of being IN love.
Sasha gave me Nine Hills to Nambonkaha last week as she had finished reading it. It is a book chronicling the service of Sarah Erdman, a volunteer who served in Cote D’Ivoire (just southeast of Guinea) in the 90’s. I am only 60 pages into it (I took a repose over the weekend to blow through Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without A Country, a cadeau from Scott) but it has put into perspective a lot of what I have so far been experiencing here. It IS poetic, I just haven’t found the words to express that.
For example, my grandma. She is the cutest impish old lady. She is the one who most often opens the door for me late at night (by late I mean 10 or 11) when I’ve been out with other volunteers, her eyes just barely open, shuffling quietly across the floor. When she laughs it’s as though it’s the funniest thing she’s ever seen and it explodes out of her mouth. Her eyes are always smiling.
She prays faithfully at all the prayer times, even if there is a child crying and pulling on her clothes, as little Oumou was yesterday. Grandma would try to gently push her away, her lips still moving in her quiet prayers, but Oumou was just screaming, inconsolable. I was sitting right next to grandma and trying to get Oumou to come to me but I didn’t want to stand and scoop her up as she has been afraid of me since she arrived with my aunt a few weeks ago. At first, she would burst into tears whenever she saw me and as time went on she slowly began to smile at me from her mother’s arms and wave. I was afraid to just scoop her up because it might just make her scream even more and I wouldn’t know what to do. I did manage to get her to come to me and she cried into my pagne for a few moments until I decided to pick her up and plop her bare bottom on my lap. Surprisingly, she did not object (though she was still crying) and I bounced her up and down gently until she quieted down and ultimately fell asleep there in my lap until grandma finished her prayers, let out one of her impish laughs and scooped Oumou up to put her in a bed for a nap. It was one of those moments where I felt…useful. Part of the family.
Africa is a poor continent and Guinea in particular is a very poor country despite its rich soils and mineral wealth of which the poor infrastructure and imbalanced mining contracts have prevented the Guinean people from enjoying the benefits. But despite this being a poor country, I have never been overwhelmed by a feeling of poverty here. Every morning I drink my tea out of a plastic mug that leaks out the bottom, I get my hot water from an ancient Chinese thermos, I sit on old particle board chairs that in the States would be suitable for a child’s playhouse, I see the distended bellies of the malnourished youth everywhere I look, I buy goods from the open fronts of old shipping containers, stands made of sticks and off old rice sacks on the ground but I have never felt a sense of real poverty. This is just how things are here and I don’t feel an overwhelming need to change those things drastically or in quick fashion.
Everything here needs to be done “petit a petit”, little by little. You have to start with the most pressing issues and work for change in very small ways, as people here are used to doing things the way their parents taught them and the way their parents’ parents taught them. In their eyes, this system has served them well and they do not have a burning need to change. These are the reasons that development work must be done so carefully, on such small scales. Encouraging regular hand washing with soap and condom use and diet diversification are very noble causes here.
The only times I really feel despair is when I think about the relation between the sexes here. Polygamy is a reality and I had done what I could to prepare myself to understand and accept it before I came here but when you talk to the women and you hear them talk about how their husband jumps from room-to-room or house-to-house on a nightly basis to be with two or three or four different women and then STILL have affairs on top of it, it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart because somewhere inside me I do believe in love and in commitment and in shared responsibility and shared life between two people. I don’t know if that exists here.
In addition, the rate of female circumcision, or female gential mutilation, is VERY high here (I think our session said the rate was something like over 90% of women have had it done). So in general women don’t experience much pleasure from sex, and are obliged by at least religion if not law to submit to sexual relations with their husbands at any time it is demanded, even directly after having been beaten by said husband. The rate of the FGM is going down, for many reasons including that the women told us that there are women who come to Guinea from the surrounding nations (Mali, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire, Sierra Leone) that have not been circumcised and the men have realized that they enjoy sexual relations much more with an uncircumcised woman.
I don’t know. I think for me the part that really gets me is maybe not the lack of love, but rather the lack of being IN love.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Yesterday I received my second package. At first the return recipient was only vaguely familiar to me but then Chris-Heijn said, “that’s your surprise!” and Amy said it was from her mom! And then I remembered Amy’s mom had left a comment here early on that she was reading my blog. She sent me something! It was awesome and totally unexpected! So thanks Mama Urban!!
Also, I hear a lot of the parents of fellow G-17ers are keeping tabs here and I just wanted to say your kids are all great and everyone’s doing fine and we are a strong group of people who have made it so far without having lost one yet (a fairly common occurrence in each stage). Keep up the support. We need it.
Today I received my third package. It was from my mom. Mail is such a huge thing here. Whenever we find out there is mail, there is a skipping, running stampede to raid the boxes and envelopes. People who get something have the highlight of their week and the people who still wait are a little down. Thanks for the package mom!
As for the rest of you! Letters, people! Pictures, comics, news clippings, magazines – it’s only .90 for the one ounce! My address is on the right! However, at this point you should start addressing it to PCV, instead of PCT because we swear in in two weeks!!
Which leads me to my next point: WE SWEAR IN IN TWO WEEKS!
I think the general consensus is that people can’t wait to get to site and figure things out and finally have some privacy and control over our lives, but also that leaving each other and the support we provide, even the ability to send and receive calls and text messages for the ones without reseau (service) will be tough.
I have made some great friends here and I’m sure I will write more about that as PST comes to an end and I am lucky in that a lot of the people that I am closest with are within acceptable distances from me. At least I am not on the coast with my closest friends straddling the border with Mali clear across the country.
Also, I hear a lot of the parents of fellow G-17ers are keeping tabs here and I just wanted to say your kids are all great and everyone’s doing fine and we are a strong group of people who have made it so far without having lost one yet (a fairly common occurrence in each stage). Keep up the support. We need it.
Today I received my third package. It was from my mom. Mail is such a huge thing here. Whenever we find out there is mail, there is a skipping, running stampede to raid the boxes and envelopes. People who get something have the highlight of their week and the people who still wait are a little down. Thanks for the package mom!
As for the rest of you! Letters, people! Pictures, comics, news clippings, magazines – it’s only .90 for the one ounce! My address is on the right! However, at this point you should start addressing it to PCV, instead of PCT because we swear in in two weeks!!
Which leads me to my next point: WE SWEAR IN IN TWO WEEKS!
I think the general consensus is that people can’t wait to get to site and figure things out and finally have some privacy and control over our lives, but also that leaving each other and the support we provide, even the ability to send and receive calls and text messages for the ones without reseau (service) will be tough.
I have made some great friends here and I’m sure I will write more about that as PST comes to an end and I am lucky in that a lot of the people that I am closest with are within acceptable distances from me. At least I am not on the coast with my closest friends straddling the border with Mali clear across the country.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Back in Forecariah
We arrived back in Forecariah yesterday and boy was I glad to be home. The prospect of not having to repack my bag again in the morning was AWESOME and having a bathroom right next to my room is amazing and having my family cook great food for me every night is so awesome and I now realize how much I have grown to like Forecariah and living with my family. It is a little different, though, because Fatim is no longer here, she is in Conakry at university.
So I had all these dirty clothes and Yari came to get me from the café at the Carrefour to give her my clothes and when she saw the pile I had for her, her eyes got real wide and she exclaimed, “Nagnouma! C’est beaucoup!!” I said thank you about 50 times and hauled the water from the well to the house for her, though she was the one to actually haul the water UP the well. I am not ashamed to admit that a 16 year old girl (hell, even a 10-year-old in Mamadaba’s case) is way stronger and more capable to hauling water than I am. Plus she won’t let me haul the water because she says I’ll fall into the well.
So then I went out again and when I got back she had all my stuff hanging out to dry and I thanked her again and went to my room to get her some bon-bons. I had one of my favorite African bon-bons which is like a strawberries and cream Chupa Chup lollipop to give her and a roll of Smarties. I said, “Un petite cadeau pour toi” and she seemed genuinely stoked to be getting bon-bons right up until Mohammed spotted them and started insisting on having some. She tried to give him the lollipop but he was dead set on having the Smarties so I finally went back in and got another roll. Then grandmere is helping Mohammed open his roll and she starts to try to get him to give her some and he keeps moving his hand towards hers but then reversing direction and popping it into his mouth instead, each time of which grandmere would give him a little slap on the back and try again. He finally gave her one and then as he toddled off I caught grandmere popping one into her mouth from her other hand, which contained about half the roll. Sneaky old lady, she loves the Smarties!
Anyway, everyone’s site visit went pretty well, I think I was the one with the best horror story aka the Diahrrea Dash to the End Zone or “Hey, blanc, ca va?” which the whole ordeal has been boiled down to. Tomorrow we do a debriefing and my APCD will be here so I will bring up the housing concerns with her as well. I think as long as I end up with a workable house all will be well in my village.
So I had all these dirty clothes and Yari came to get me from the café at the Carrefour to give her my clothes and when she saw the pile I had for her, her eyes got real wide and she exclaimed, “Nagnouma! C’est beaucoup!!” I said thank you about 50 times and hauled the water from the well to the house for her, though she was the one to actually haul the water UP the well. I am not ashamed to admit that a 16 year old girl (hell, even a 10-year-old in Mamadaba’s case) is way stronger and more capable to hauling water than I am. Plus she won’t let me haul the water because she says I’ll fall into the well.
So then I went out again and when I got back she had all my stuff hanging out to dry and I thanked her again and went to my room to get her some bon-bons. I had one of my favorite African bon-bons which is like a strawberries and cream Chupa Chup lollipop to give her and a roll of Smarties. I said, “Un petite cadeau pour toi” and she seemed genuinely stoked to be getting bon-bons right up until Mohammed spotted them and started insisting on having some. She tried to give him the lollipop but he was dead set on having the Smarties so I finally went back in and got another roll. Then grandmere is helping Mohammed open his roll and she starts to try to get him to give her some and he keeps moving his hand towards hers but then reversing direction and popping it into his mouth instead, each time of which grandmere would give him a little slap on the back and try again. He finally gave her one and then as he toddled off I caught grandmere popping one into her mouth from her other hand, which contained about half the roll. Sneaky old lady, she loves the Smarties!
Anyway, everyone’s site visit went pretty well, I think I was the one with the best horror story aka the Diahrrea Dash to the End Zone or “Hey, blanc, ca va?” which the whole ordeal has been boiled down to. Tomorrow we do a debriefing and my APCD will be here so I will bring up the housing concerns with her as well. I think as long as I end up with a workable house all will be well in my village.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Site Visit
Well, site visit has gone well and not so well. Ian and I were finally able to get out of John’s site at noon yesterday (still with two empty seats which were subsequently filled along the way rendering the whole waiting a day and a half to leave thing frankly dumb), making our trek from Mamou to site a total of three days. I’m betting we win for difficulty of getting to site.
When I got here I was brought to the Sous Prefet’s house, who is the government-appointed leader of the sous-prefecture which is comprised of five districts. My district, where my village is actually located, has a population of a little over 4,000. The Sous Prefet is really cool and speaks very well so I can understand almost everything he says! So does his wife, which is great because I can speak to both of them very easily, even in my broken French. The others are not so easy to understand, but such is life. At the SP’s house I also met the President of the CRD, which is an elected position and if I understood correctly the same dude has been the CRD Pres since the beginning in 1992. I also met the Director of the Primary School. Then I ate rice and sauce. It was a chicken sauce with manioc (I think). I didn’t eat the chicken, but the sauce itself wasn’t bad. Until it hit my guts 7 hours later and I spent half the night in my toilet, which is actually like 100 yards away from my house and requires me to leave my house and my yard and travel down a path where I met strange men each time I went. More on this later.
After food, we went to tour the government buildings. We went to the Centre de Sante where I met the Doctor (at least, they called him a doctor) and saw the facility. It is basically this: a waiting room with benches and a desk and some signs about tuberculosis, 3-4 sick rooms with 2 beds each where sick people can come and rest and be hooked up to IVs for 3 days (if they are not better after 3 days they are sent to the closest larger city), a room where he gives injections, plus two offices (one for him and one for the Chef du Sante who was sick and in the bigger city). The doctor’s office had a fridge in it where he kept the medicine, but the fridge wasn’t working because he was out of gasoline to power it (there is no electricity in my village). Oh there were also two rooms that had something to do with pregnant women, I’m assuming delivery rooms, but I did not know the right words to ask if he had a midwife he works with for those as well or what.
I also saw the Salle du Reunion, which is just a place to hold meetings and sensibilisations (I will be using this a lot), and the offices of the Sous Prefet, CRD Pres and I think the last one was my counterpart’s office (he is the Chef Cantonnement du Forestiere) but I also think the SP referred to it as “my” office as well. Who knows.
Then I was taken to my house, which is in the middle of town right near all the aforementioned places. It’s very big with 4 bedrooms and a living room and…no toilette. When they walked me to the toilette (as I said before, about 100 yards away) I was kind of distraught but thought, hey, it’s only for two days and then I can tell them if they want me to live here for 2 years I have to have a toilet at least on my property. …and then I had diahrrea all night and decided there was NO WAY IN HELL I would live with this being my only toilet. In fact, once I just popped a squat in my yard because I got sick of walking there and having to saluate every weird dude who said, “Hey, blanc, ca va?” on my way there.
Oh, also, I say it has 4 bedrooms but one is a store room that the owner is using and one has an old woman living in it that the SP said if it wasn’t cool, she would go away. And I’m like…really? You want me to kick an old woman out of her room??? But seriously, I need my house to be MY HOUSE and I simply cannot share it for two years while I NEED my privacy, space to cry, and freedom to walk around without my knees covered.
Anyway, before the diahrrea, the SP sent who I think is one of his daughters, Hoodia, to show me the pump, which is like 1 kilometer away. She got me a bidon of water and I decided that either A. a petite will be getting my water for me or B. I will be using my bike to trek bidons back and forth once a week to build up a stockpile of water in my house.
Then I told her I wanted to take a bath, which I was told I would do at the SPs house, but she took me down to this watering hole where this girl was doing laundry on the rocks and was like “Here you go” (in Pular). I was kind of like…should I be doing this? But then both Hoodia and Kadiatou (the SPs other daughter, I think) stripped into their underwear and started washing themselves and my clothes and I was just like what the hell. It was actually kind of nice. The water was nice and cool and it’s always fun to bathe outside, though I don’t think I got as clean as I do with a bucket bath and I saw a worm in the small bit of water left in my gobelet today so I hope I didn’t get schisto or something from doing that, though I did make sure to ask them before doing it “is it not dangerous?” and they said no. I guess all the women bathe down there.
So after my night-o-diahrrea I was awoken by a “conk-conk” on my door (that’s what they say when they’re knocking) from my counterpart who had shown up with two other dudes and I answered the door bra-less in my tank top and pagne, which was kind of embarrassing, but he took me by surprise.
So after another trip to the bathroom, we took off for the pepiniere which must have been like 3k away near the President of the Groupement’s house. The groupement is the group of people who work in the pepiniere. The site is right next to the river, so there is a ready source of water and is fenced in with a metal fence to keep the animals out. There are no actual trees in it right now, that’s my job, though he said the groupement works on Tuesdays and Saturdays though I’m not sure what they do.
After the long walk back, he asked if I still wanted to go to the schools and I told him another time because I felt like dying. I then spent a few hours laying in my bed feeling miserable until Hoodia conk-conked and I went back over to the Sous Prefet’s house and spent the entire afternoon kicking it with his wife, Hoodia, Kadiatou, Mamadou (7) and Alpha (1.5). He was out of town for the day and won’t return until tomorrow so I didn’t get to talk to him about my house concerns, though I did write him a note about it I plan to drop off before I leave tomorrow. However, his wife speaks French so I talked to her for awhile about various things and I think we will be friends. I would guess her age as late twenties.
Tomorrow is market day so I’m going to try and hit it before Ian shows up with the taxi (inshallah) and purchase some avocadoes, of which the SPs wife said there would be many.
I would say the thing that would have improved my site visit the most would be the lack of modified stool. Second most would be having a bathroom in/around my house. Thirdly, more clean clothes. And last, no old woman living in the room next to me. The end.
When I got here I was brought to the Sous Prefet’s house, who is the government-appointed leader of the sous-prefecture which is comprised of five districts. My district, where my village is actually located, has a population of a little over 4,000. The Sous Prefet is really cool and speaks very well so I can understand almost everything he says! So does his wife, which is great because I can speak to both of them very easily, even in my broken French. The others are not so easy to understand, but such is life. At the SP’s house I also met the President of the CRD, which is an elected position and if I understood correctly the same dude has been the CRD Pres since the beginning in 1992. I also met the Director of the Primary School. Then I ate rice and sauce. It was a chicken sauce with manioc (I think). I didn’t eat the chicken, but the sauce itself wasn’t bad. Until it hit my guts 7 hours later and I spent half the night in my toilet, which is actually like 100 yards away from my house and requires me to leave my house and my yard and travel down a path where I met strange men each time I went. More on this later.
After food, we went to tour the government buildings. We went to the Centre de Sante where I met the Doctor (at least, they called him a doctor) and saw the facility. It is basically this: a waiting room with benches and a desk and some signs about tuberculosis, 3-4 sick rooms with 2 beds each where sick people can come and rest and be hooked up to IVs for 3 days (if they are not better after 3 days they are sent to the closest larger city), a room where he gives injections, plus two offices (one for him and one for the Chef du Sante who was sick and in the bigger city). The doctor’s office had a fridge in it where he kept the medicine, but the fridge wasn’t working because he was out of gasoline to power it (there is no electricity in my village). Oh there were also two rooms that had something to do with pregnant women, I’m assuming delivery rooms, but I did not know the right words to ask if he had a midwife he works with for those as well or what.
I also saw the Salle du Reunion, which is just a place to hold meetings and sensibilisations (I will be using this a lot), and the offices of the Sous Prefet, CRD Pres and I think the last one was my counterpart’s office (he is the Chef Cantonnement du Forestiere) but I also think the SP referred to it as “my” office as well. Who knows.
Then I was taken to my house, which is in the middle of town right near all the aforementioned places. It’s very big with 4 bedrooms and a living room and…no toilette. When they walked me to the toilette (as I said before, about 100 yards away) I was kind of distraught but thought, hey, it’s only for two days and then I can tell them if they want me to live here for 2 years I have to have a toilet at least on my property. …and then I had diahrrea all night and decided there was NO WAY IN HELL I would live with this being my only toilet. In fact, once I just popped a squat in my yard because I got sick of walking there and having to saluate every weird dude who said, “Hey, blanc, ca va?” on my way there.
Oh, also, I say it has 4 bedrooms but one is a store room that the owner is using and one has an old woman living in it that the SP said if it wasn’t cool, she would go away. And I’m like…really? You want me to kick an old woman out of her room??? But seriously, I need my house to be MY HOUSE and I simply cannot share it for two years while I NEED my privacy, space to cry, and freedom to walk around without my knees covered.
Anyway, before the diahrrea, the SP sent who I think is one of his daughters, Hoodia, to show me the pump, which is like 1 kilometer away. She got me a bidon of water and I decided that either A. a petite will be getting my water for me or B. I will be using my bike to trek bidons back and forth once a week to build up a stockpile of water in my house.
Then I told her I wanted to take a bath, which I was told I would do at the SPs house, but she took me down to this watering hole where this girl was doing laundry on the rocks and was like “Here you go” (in Pular). I was kind of like…should I be doing this? But then both Hoodia and Kadiatou (the SPs other daughter, I think) stripped into their underwear and started washing themselves and my clothes and I was just like what the hell. It was actually kind of nice. The water was nice and cool and it’s always fun to bathe outside, though I don’t think I got as clean as I do with a bucket bath and I saw a worm in the small bit of water left in my gobelet today so I hope I didn’t get schisto or something from doing that, though I did make sure to ask them before doing it “is it not dangerous?” and they said no. I guess all the women bathe down there.
So after my night-o-diahrrea I was awoken by a “conk-conk” on my door (that’s what they say when they’re knocking) from my counterpart who had shown up with two other dudes and I answered the door bra-less in my tank top and pagne, which was kind of embarrassing, but he took me by surprise.
So after another trip to the bathroom, we took off for the pepiniere which must have been like 3k away near the President of the Groupement’s house. The groupement is the group of people who work in the pepiniere. The site is right next to the river, so there is a ready source of water and is fenced in with a metal fence to keep the animals out. There are no actual trees in it right now, that’s my job, though he said the groupement works on Tuesdays and Saturdays though I’m not sure what they do.
After the long walk back, he asked if I still wanted to go to the schools and I told him another time because I felt like dying. I then spent a few hours laying in my bed feeling miserable until Hoodia conk-conked and I went back over to the Sous Prefet’s house and spent the entire afternoon kicking it with his wife, Hoodia, Kadiatou, Mamadou (7) and Alpha (1.5). He was out of town for the day and won’t return until tomorrow so I didn’t get to talk to him about my house concerns, though I did write him a note about it I plan to drop off before I leave tomorrow. However, his wife speaks French so I talked to her for awhile about various things and I think we will be friends. I would guess her age as late twenties.
Tomorrow is market day so I’m going to try and hit it before Ian shows up with the taxi (inshallah) and purchase some avocadoes, of which the SPs wife said there would be many.
I would say the thing that would have improved my site visit the most would be the lack of modified stool. Second most would be having a bathroom in/around my house. Thirdly, more clean clothes. And last, no old woman living in the room next to me. The end.
Monday, January 12, 2009
2 Days at John's Site
So after Counterpart Workshop, which was two days in Mamou filled with sessions with our homologues, great rice and sauce and one trip to the night club, we all set out to go to our respective sites for site visit. Everyone started off with at least one other person and their counterparts.
In my group was Ian, John, Kate and Katie. The ride to Kate’s site was not bad at all (paved road and all) and there we parted ways with Kate and Katie who went on to their sites and John, Ian and I continued on with John’s counterpart (my and Ian’s counterparts went by moto).
We got to John’s site yesterday at about 4 after being in a taxi since 8am and eventually were taken to John’s house. It’s a new house with a vrai toilet, sink and shower head, but no running water which renders them moot. We had dinner at a little café by the marche (omelettes with fries!) and have already become regulars as we had breakfast there (omelettes again) and dinner (spaghetti with a tomato-ey sauce, fries and onion) today.
So this morning Ian and I get all ready to go on to our sites further north and after breakfast bring our stuff to the taxi going our way, buy our tickets and throw our stuff on top. It was probably 9am, maybe earlier.
So then they tell us they are waiting to fill two more spots in the taxi before we can take off and Ian and I make the mistake of thinking this should not take long at all. WRONG.
After waiting all day and wandering around John’s site, eating at a rice bar, buying multiple sachets of Coyah (water), hanging out in the office of the NGO John is assigned to, at about 6pm Ousmane makes the call that we are not to take the taxi today and instead wait for tomorrow. He made this decision based on many factors: volunteers generally are not to travel at night, this is our first bush taxi experience (including yesterday), and our counterparts will not be riding with us (Ian’s counterpart had already gone ahead to his site and my counterpart was having his moto fixed and stayed around for this whole fiasco but was riding his moto to site).
Starting at about 3pm, Guineans were shocked that we were still there. Apparently it isn’t that common to wait ALL DAY for your taxi to leave. We think the other people waiting for our taxi might have been a little peeved at us for backing out so they would have to wait for tomorrow, but that’s just how it is. I am very doubtful they would have filled those other seats tonight anyway and hopefully in the morning some others will arrive and we can take off. Ousmane said that if we haven’t left by noon tomorrow, we should call him and he will adjust our schedule, though we don’t know what that means.
I think we win the prize for longest time taken to get to site, beating even those out in the middle of nowhere in Haute.
It’s just so frustrating because it should only take an hour to get to my site once we finally leave. It’s the actual leaving that is taking the longest.
Boredom at John's NGO office:
In my group was Ian, John, Kate and Katie. The ride to Kate’s site was not bad at all (paved road and all) and there we parted ways with Kate and Katie who went on to their sites and John, Ian and I continued on with John’s counterpart (my and Ian’s counterparts went by moto).
We got to John’s site yesterday at about 4 after being in a taxi since 8am and eventually were taken to John’s house. It’s a new house with a vrai toilet, sink and shower head, but no running water which renders them moot. We had dinner at a little café by the marche (omelettes with fries!) and have already become regulars as we had breakfast there (omelettes again) and dinner (spaghetti with a tomato-ey sauce, fries and onion) today.
So this morning Ian and I get all ready to go on to our sites further north and after breakfast bring our stuff to the taxi going our way, buy our tickets and throw our stuff on top. It was probably 9am, maybe earlier.
So then they tell us they are waiting to fill two more spots in the taxi before we can take off and Ian and I make the mistake of thinking this should not take long at all. WRONG.
After waiting all day and wandering around John’s site, eating at a rice bar, buying multiple sachets of Coyah (water), hanging out in the office of the NGO John is assigned to, at about 6pm Ousmane makes the call that we are not to take the taxi today and instead wait for tomorrow. He made this decision based on many factors: volunteers generally are not to travel at night, this is our first bush taxi experience (including yesterday), and our counterparts will not be riding with us (Ian’s counterpart had already gone ahead to his site and my counterpart was having his moto fixed and stayed around for this whole fiasco but was riding his moto to site).
Starting at about 3pm, Guineans were shocked that we were still there. Apparently it isn’t that common to wait ALL DAY for your taxi to leave. We think the other people waiting for our taxi might have been a little peeved at us for backing out so they would have to wait for tomorrow, but that’s just how it is. I am very doubtful they would have filled those other seats tonight anyway and hopefully in the morning some others will arrive and we can take off. Ousmane said that if we haven’t left by noon tomorrow, we should call him and he will adjust our schedule, though we don’t know what that means.
I think we win the prize for longest time taken to get to site, beating even those out in the middle of nowhere in Haute.
It’s just so frustrating because it should only take an hour to get to my site once we finally leave. It’s the actual leaving that is taking the longest.
Boredom at John's NGO office:
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Counterpart Workshop Apprehensions
Tomorrow we leave for Counterpart Workshop in Mamou followed by site visit. Today was not a fabulous day for me and every little thing stressed me out, most of all packing for this ordeal.
I am apprehensive for several reasons. First, that my counterpart will even show up to the workshop. AgFo is different from other disciplines (especially SED) in that our counterpart is the local Chef Cantonnement du Forestier, which is a government appointed position and is the default counterpart for all AgFo volunteers in Guinea. I am supposed to be relying on this dude for everything, basically. He is supposed to get me to my site, provide food and a place to stay (if my house isn’t ready yet, more on this later), introduce me to the community and get me back on a bush taxi to send me back. And hopefully he speaks French because if it’s only Pular there will be problems.
Now to the house situation. No one has seen my house or even knows for sure that the town has officially decided on one. The only thing keeping me optimistic is that my APCD said my Sous-Prefet (local government official) is really enthusiastic and I should be able to rely on him for stuff once I get to my village.
Now the part about getting to my village. John, Ian and I will leave Mamou together with our counterparts and go to Kate’s site, where we will need to get out of the bush taxi and get in another one to go north to John’s site. At John’s site, we will have to get out again to find another taxi to take us further north (on the same road). Ousmane said that by the time we get to John’s site it will be late afternoon and the likelihood of us finding a taxi going north at that hour will not be easy, meaning we will probably have to stay the night at John’s and catch a taxi the next day.
To get back to Forecariah at the end, we will have to go to John’s site and spend the night again, then get a taxi to Kate’s site, where we will spend another night and then the NEXT day finally get a taxi to Forecariah. The only thing keeping me slightly sane about this is that Ian will be with me the whole time as his site is north of mine and the only time I might have to get a taxi and ride in it alone is on the way back on the my site to John’s site leg, which should actually be fairly short and painless. The really painful rides will always have at least Ian by my side which is at least comforting.
I think I am just very pessimistic about the whole thing. I just need to sleep on it. In the morning when I’m all packed and ready to go, I’m sure I will feel better. I really think it’s the whole figuring out what to take and then hauling it all around and being paranoid about the dude riding on the roof of the taxi stealing my stuff or having forgotten something key that I can’t get at my site (I only have market once a week and I don’t know what day it is). Hopefully it will all work out.
In other news, tonight was the last evening I will see my sister Fatim as she is leaving for university in Conakry while I am gone. So tonight I gave her her cadeau (gift), which is a shiny metal keychain I got in a swag bag from WE TV for I think the Independent Spirit Awards. She LOVED it. She squealed when she opened it and then showed it to everyone in the family. I think the family thought that they weren’t going to get gifts, only Fatim, but I am just waiting until I am fixing to leave to give the other gifts I brought (Hello Kitty hairties for Mamadaba, CSULB hat and Obama bracelet for Yari, Rubix cube-like thing for Mohammed and a can opener for mama – they open cans with knives here, though tomato paste and condensed milk are the only cans really - …hmmm I still need some cadeaus for Oumou and grandma!! A project for Mamou or Kindia…). I also gave the family my remaining pineapple from Maferinya and mama looked really surprised and pleased when I handed it to her as pineapples are relatively expensive and difficult to find here even though there is a huge pineapple plantation a half hour away.
Also Fatim told me a chicken has to be over a year old before it is big enough to eat and that once the chicks are big enough to live on their own they will eat the year and a half old mama…or all three of them (we have 3 mama chickens right now and 15 chicks, all of which Allah decided would be girls). In fact today I identified all of our chickens (3 other adult chickens besides the mama hens). I think the family might give me the chick I saved a few weeks ago when I leave. I keep calling her “ma petite poussin” and I think once Fatim asked me if I would take her with me to site. She still won’t be very big but if I feed her rice she should be fine. I dunno. I think that when I go out of site and need a neighbor to watch my animals they might just mange (eat) my chicken. But at least she’d have a good life until then? Or would her life be better if she could spend it with her siblings? Am I reading too much into the life of a chicken? Food for thought (but not for belly…I am a vegetarian after all).
I am apprehensive for several reasons. First, that my counterpart will even show up to the workshop. AgFo is different from other disciplines (especially SED) in that our counterpart is the local Chef Cantonnement du Forestier, which is a government appointed position and is the default counterpart for all AgFo volunteers in Guinea. I am supposed to be relying on this dude for everything, basically. He is supposed to get me to my site, provide food and a place to stay (if my house isn’t ready yet, more on this later), introduce me to the community and get me back on a bush taxi to send me back. And hopefully he speaks French because if it’s only Pular there will be problems.
Now to the house situation. No one has seen my house or even knows for sure that the town has officially decided on one. The only thing keeping me optimistic is that my APCD said my Sous-Prefet (local government official) is really enthusiastic and I should be able to rely on him for stuff once I get to my village.
Now the part about getting to my village. John, Ian and I will leave Mamou together with our counterparts and go to Kate’s site, where we will need to get out of the bush taxi and get in another one to go north to John’s site. At John’s site, we will have to get out again to find another taxi to take us further north (on the same road). Ousmane said that by the time we get to John’s site it will be late afternoon and the likelihood of us finding a taxi going north at that hour will not be easy, meaning we will probably have to stay the night at John’s and catch a taxi the next day.
To get back to Forecariah at the end, we will have to go to John’s site and spend the night again, then get a taxi to Kate’s site, where we will spend another night and then the NEXT day finally get a taxi to Forecariah. The only thing keeping me slightly sane about this is that Ian will be with me the whole time as his site is north of mine and the only time I might have to get a taxi and ride in it alone is on the way back on the my site to John’s site leg, which should actually be fairly short and painless. The really painful rides will always have at least Ian by my side which is at least comforting.
I think I am just very pessimistic about the whole thing. I just need to sleep on it. In the morning when I’m all packed and ready to go, I’m sure I will feel better. I really think it’s the whole figuring out what to take and then hauling it all around and being paranoid about the dude riding on the roof of the taxi stealing my stuff or having forgotten something key that I can’t get at my site (I only have market once a week and I don’t know what day it is). Hopefully it will all work out.
In other news, tonight was the last evening I will see my sister Fatim as she is leaving for university in Conakry while I am gone. So tonight I gave her her cadeau (gift), which is a shiny metal keychain I got in a swag bag from WE TV for I think the Independent Spirit Awards. She LOVED it. She squealed when she opened it and then showed it to everyone in the family. I think the family thought that they weren’t going to get gifts, only Fatim, but I am just waiting until I am fixing to leave to give the other gifts I brought (Hello Kitty hairties for Mamadaba, CSULB hat and Obama bracelet for Yari, Rubix cube-like thing for Mohammed and a can opener for mama – they open cans with knives here, though tomato paste and condensed milk are the only cans really - …hmmm I still need some cadeaus for Oumou and grandma!! A project for Mamou or Kindia…). I also gave the family my remaining pineapple from Maferinya and mama looked really surprised and pleased when I handed it to her as pineapples are relatively expensive and difficult to find here even though there is a huge pineapple plantation a half hour away.
Also Fatim told me a chicken has to be over a year old before it is big enough to eat and that once the chicks are big enough to live on their own they will eat the year and a half old mama…or all three of them (we have 3 mama chickens right now and 15 chicks, all of which Allah decided would be girls). In fact today I identified all of our chickens (3 other adult chickens besides the mama hens). I think the family might give me the chick I saved a few weeks ago when I leave. I keep calling her “ma petite poussin” and I think once Fatim asked me if I would take her with me to site. She still won’t be very big but if I feed her rice she should be fine. I dunno. I think that when I go out of site and need a neighbor to watch my animals they might just mange (eat) my chicken. But at least she’d have a good life until then? Or would her life be better if she could spend it with her siblings? Am I reading too much into the life of a chicken? Food for thought (but not for belly…I am a vegetarian after all).
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Giant Araignee
So today when I got home from training I went into the bathroom to germicide (Dettol) my bath water when I saw an araignee (spider) bigger than my hand chilling on the wall right next to my bucket. I did not Dettol the water and instead went back to my room for my Birkenstock, then stood in front of the spider for a good minute considering whether or not my Birkenstock would be big enough to kill it or if I would have to hit it more than once or if it would sense me trying to kill it and start running which would freak me out even more! I then turned around and decided that it would just go away and if it didn’t I would not bathe today.
A couple minutes later, my mom walked into the bathroom and killed it with one swift swat of a FLIP-FLOP and then fed it to the chickens. Yup.
Also, there is something living in my ceiling. I usually only hear it moving around in the evenings and as Scott put it, “it has some girth to it”. Although, last night at like 3am it was GOING TO TOWN up there scratching around and making lots of noise. I was almost afraid it was going to come through the particle board and land right on top of my mosquito net. It didn’t, and I just heard it scurrying around again. I don’t know what it is. Maybe a rat. Hopefully a rat and not a TRULY giant spider!! It is way too big to make its way into my actual room (unless it falls through the ceiling), but still…I have a roommate.
Today there was also a large araignee at Jake’s house when we went by there this morning. But his was way up on a wall above the door to his bathroom in the hallway. Neither I nor he nor his second mom would kill it and it was still there when he got home from training. Apparently his mom finally used the “broom” (a bundle of thin stick-like things tied together) to chase it all the way out the front door.
Inside my actual room I have only had a couple of smaller bugs and spiders but nothing major. Right now there is a cricket hiding somewhere by my door and the last two nights has been singing it’s heart out. A lot of other people have mice and rats that make noise in their rooms at night but not me. Well, other than whatever it is that’s living in my ceiling.
And the weird worms living on my bathroom floor. They look like tiny leeches and I have only noticed them because when I’m squatting in there at night with my head lamp on with only the floor to stare at, I see moving things and on closer inspection see that they are, in fact, little worms living in the water that is perpetually on the floor of my toilette. I wonder what they actually are. No wonder Peace Corps insists you wear flip flops in the bathroom!
I would have to say, though, that one of my bigger fears is getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and stepping on one of those giant araignees as I get out of my mosquito net. I once mentioned this to Dave (who is the bug-phobic-est of all of us) and he was like, “that’s why I keep a flashlight in my net! And then I check my whole net before opening it and examine the whole floor before stepping on it!” And actually, last night Jake peed in a bottle because he knew there would be spiders in his bathroom if he ventured in there.
C’est la vie en Guinee.
PS yesterday my mom gave me a vrai apple that she had bought in Conakry! They are expensive at 2 mil 500 francs a pop (same as an avocado), as they are imported. It was the most amazing apple I have ever eaten and I shared it with Scott.
A couple minutes later, my mom walked into the bathroom and killed it with one swift swat of a FLIP-FLOP and then fed it to the chickens. Yup.
Also, there is something living in my ceiling. I usually only hear it moving around in the evenings and as Scott put it, “it has some girth to it”. Although, last night at like 3am it was GOING TO TOWN up there scratching around and making lots of noise. I was almost afraid it was going to come through the particle board and land right on top of my mosquito net. It didn’t, and I just heard it scurrying around again. I don’t know what it is. Maybe a rat. Hopefully a rat and not a TRULY giant spider!! It is way too big to make its way into my actual room (unless it falls through the ceiling), but still…I have a roommate.
Today there was also a large araignee at Jake’s house when we went by there this morning. But his was way up on a wall above the door to his bathroom in the hallway. Neither I nor he nor his second mom would kill it and it was still there when he got home from training. Apparently his mom finally used the “broom” (a bundle of thin stick-like things tied together) to chase it all the way out the front door.
Inside my actual room I have only had a couple of smaller bugs and spiders but nothing major. Right now there is a cricket hiding somewhere by my door and the last two nights has been singing it’s heart out. A lot of other people have mice and rats that make noise in their rooms at night but not me. Well, other than whatever it is that’s living in my ceiling.
And the weird worms living on my bathroom floor. They look like tiny leeches and I have only noticed them because when I’m squatting in there at night with my head lamp on with only the floor to stare at, I see moving things and on closer inspection see that they are, in fact, little worms living in the water that is perpetually on the floor of my toilette. I wonder what they actually are. No wonder Peace Corps insists you wear flip flops in the bathroom!
I would have to say, though, that one of my bigger fears is getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and stepping on one of those giant araignees as I get out of my mosquito net. I once mentioned this to Dave (who is the bug-phobic-est of all of us) and he was like, “that’s why I keep a flashlight in my net! And then I check my whole net before opening it and examine the whole floor before stepping on it!” And actually, last night Jake peed in a bottle because he knew there would be spiders in his bathroom if he ventured in there.
C’est la vie en Guinee.
PS yesterday my mom gave me a vrai apple that she had bought in Conakry! They are expensive at 2 mil 500 francs a pop (same as an avocado), as they are imported. It was the most amazing apple I have ever eaten and I shared it with Scott.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Site Announcements
Today was site announcements and language placement interviews. For site announcements they drew a big map of Guinea with chalk on the floor (however inaccurate/not to scale it may have been) with all the names of the sites and major cities. Then the APCDs read out a description of what each trainee said they wanted in their site placement interview and announced the site that they were given, which in general fit pretty well to what people had asked for in their interviews. There were a few disappointments but everyone has moved on into the acceptance and readjustment phase and all are excited to go for site visit.
My site is near the middle-west of the country just north of a bigger city. It is right on the border of Basse Cote and Fouta Djallon in what we like to call “the foothills of Fouta”. My closest neighbor from G17 is John about 20k away and then Ian about 40-50k away. Scott is about 100k from me on a passable road.. According to the Rough Guide it would take 2 days to bike it, so it may be more of a bush taxi trip than bike trip (we hear that it takes 6 hours by bush taxi because they have to drive very slow). However Ian is willing to make the trip with me. Our regional capital is technically Boke (Basse Cote) but we think it will be faster to get to Labe (Fouta regional capital) so we may try to switch that.
My site is a small town (not sure of the population yet) but on a good road. It has it’s own market once a week, so I won’t have to go to another village for market, but if you miss market day, you’re screwed! There is no running water or electricity but I forgot to ask if there is a pump or if it’s all well water.
My APCD said that when she went to my site they showed her two houses, neither of which were appropriate. Apparently one was HUGE and on the outskirts of town and just was way too big for a volunteer and not in the ideal location which is immersed in the community. The other one was ok but it was right by the marche and a mosque, which they try to avoid because of all the prayer calls and safety issues surrounding being very close to the marche. So apparently the town decided on a third house that she has not seen and I will be the first to lay eyes on next week during site visit. I hope it is a hut!! I hope it is perfect!! She also said that my Sous-Prefet (local government official) is really excited and accommodating and is still in office after the coup, so that’s great!
In total, the most people ended up in Fouta but there are great sites in Haute and Basse Cote that I plan to visit and do tech exchange (every Public Health volunteer I can find!) and a lot of my closer friends will have the same regional capital as me (if I switch to Labe, which I might).
The national language I will be learning is Pular, which I have heard is hard. Also, I placed into Intermediate Low on my French interview today so I still have to take French classes until I reach Intermediate Mid. Then I can start Pular. I hope that maybe by the time I get back from site visit I will have practiced and studied enough to petition for another interview so that I can study Pular for the last 2.5 weeks.
All-in-all a very nerve-wracking kind of day. But as predicted, now that we know our sites and who will be close to us, now all we want to do is see our villages!
We leave for Counterpart Workshop (followed by Site Visit) on Thursday.
My site is near the middle-west of the country just north of a bigger city. It is right on the border of Basse Cote and Fouta Djallon in what we like to call “the foothills of Fouta”. My closest neighbor from G17 is John about 20k away and then Ian about 40-50k away. Scott is about 100k from me on a passable road.. According to the Rough Guide it would take 2 days to bike it, so it may be more of a bush taxi trip than bike trip (we hear that it takes 6 hours by bush taxi because they have to drive very slow). However Ian is willing to make the trip with me. Our regional capital is technically Boke (Basse Cote) but we think it will be faster to get to Labe (Fouta regional capital) so we may try to switch that.
My site is a small town (not sure of the population yet) but on a good road. It has it’s own market once a week, so I won’t have to go to another village for market, but if you miss market day, you’re screwed! There is no running water or electricity but I forgot to ask if there is a pump or if it’s all well water.
My APCD said that when she went to my site they showed her two houses, neither of which were appropriate. Apparently one was HUGE and on the outskirts of town and just was way too big for a volunteer and not in the ideal location which is immersed in the community. The other one was ok but it was right by the marche and a mosque, which they try to avoid because of all the prayer calls and safety issues surrounding being very close to the marche. So apparently the town decided on a third house that she has not seen and I will be the first to lay eyes on next week during site visit. I hope it is a hut!! I hope it is perfect!! She also said that my Sous-Prefet (local government official) is really excited and accommodating and is still in office after the coup, so that’s great!
In total, the most people ended up in Fouta but there are great sites in Haute and Basse Cote that I plan to visit and do tech exchange (every Public Health volunteer I can find!) and a lot of my closer friends will have the same regional capital as me (if I switch to Labe, which I might).
The national language I will be learning is Pular, which I have heard is hard. Also, I placed into Intermediate Low on my French interview today so I still have to take French classes until I reach Intermediate Mid. Then I can start Pular. I hope that maybe by the time I get back from site visit I will have practiced and studied enough to petition for another interview so that I can study Pular for the last 2.5 weeks.
All-in-all a very nerve-wracking kind of day. But as predicted, now that we know our sites and who will be close to us, now all we want to do is see our villages!
We leave for Counterpart Workshop (followed by Site Visit) on Thursday.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
2 Days til Site Announcements!
Well it has been creeping up on us, Week 5 starts Monday and commences with language placement interviews (to see if you have reached the required level yet so you can start local language) followed by the site announcement session at 10:30am. Apparently they will make a big map of Guinea out of rocks under the Mango trees and we will all go stand on our sites and look around to see who will be close to us and who won’t. It will be intense.
Monday also brings the new volunteer trainers and for AgFo it’s Sarah and Brienne. They will be with us for Counterpart Workshop.
Thursday we leave for Mamou (in the Fouta) for Counterpart Workshop Friday and Saturday, where we will meet our counterpart for the next two years and try to communicate with only the hour and a half of survival language training on Wednesday. It should be tre interesante!
My advice to future volunteers is to get in as much French (or whatever language they will speak) as possible because the better you are at it, the easier things are and the more you will get to learn your local language before going to site. I hope I test up on Monday and get to start local language but we will see.
On Sunday we leave Mamou for site visit which will take all week. We will get to see our houses, meet our town, see our market, etc… Everyone is really excited to figure everything out and the prevalent sentiment is that no matter what site you end up with, you’re going to love it in the end despite whatever hardships it will put on you.
We all can’t wait until Monday and then I’m sure once we know our sites we will be tres anxieuse to see our villages! It never ends.
Just to clarify, I did receive my mom’s first package over the New Year’s holiday, it was postmarked December 8 and hadn’t been tampered with in any way. And she didn’t even follow all of the suggestions on the epic mailing guidelines post. However, she was very vague and boring on her description of contents so I’m sure that helped…
If anyone else has sent something please let me know in some way (via email, comment on this blog or phone call) so I can keep an eye out for it and track what I am and am not receiving. This includes letters as I appear to have not received a Christmas letter from my mom.
Today I went to Jake’s house for dinner and his second mom (polygamous family) taught us how to make a meal. It was fries, hard boiled egg, tomato and an onion sauce which contained onion, garlic, peanut oil (2 spoons, 1 to start and 1 near the end), water (6 spoons?), half a Maggi cube and finished off with some squirts of fresh lime. It was tres bonne.
Almost as good as Animal Style Fries =).
But it was nice to get a tomato for dinner (I miss tomato!!). Tomato is actually kind of expensive at 1 mil for a decent (not spectacular) medium-small sized tomato. But considering the lack of other vegetables available is worth the cost. A good bunch of lettuce is also 1 mil and I have had lettuce with dinner the past 2 nights and it’s been great!!
A small (by US standards) onion is about 200-300 francs, a thing of peanut butter is 1 mil 500 francs (it is literally just pressed roasted peanuts – fresh and with no additives!), potatoes are 500 francs for four small ones or 1 mil for three bigger ones (keep in mind that the terms “big” and “small” are subjective and by US standards all would be considered small), a loaf of French bread is 1 mil 500 francs. Eggs are about 800 francs for a fresh one and something like 700 francs for a boiled one which doesn’t appear to make much sense because it takes more labor to prepare the boiled egg, n’est pas? Actually come to think of it I bought 2 hard boiled eggs from a woman on the street at the military checkpoint near Conakry for 1 mil…so I guess you can get boiled eggs for as little as 500 francs each. Not sure about the Laughing Cow frommage, but a tub of margarine (which I am not too fond of) runs about 15 mil, which is tres cher.
Today for lunch I got 2 eggs and onion in a bowl at the café for 2 mil and put on it half of one of the avocados Scott achete-d for me in Conakry. It wasn’t ripe when I had sliced it open in Conakry so I put it in a plastic bag and prayed it would still be usable when it softened. Well today it was fine and after scraping off some minimal bruised/brown parts I had a brilliant meal. The avocados were 2 mil 500 francs each, which is expensive but they are GOOD and big. I have another to mange tomorrow. I think about it like this: I bought avocados every day in the States even though they were an expensive fruit (at $3 a pop), so if I do the same here I’m not really acting out of character (at .50 cents US a pop). Plus they are just coming into season and will only be around until, like, May. This is how I justify the expense. And many an avocat will be manged.
Monday also brings the new volunteer trainers and for AgFo it’s Sarah and Brienne. They will be with us for Counterpart Workshop.
Thursday we leave for Mamou (in the Fouta) for Counterpart Workshop Friday and Saturday, where we will meet our counterpart for the next two years and try to communicate with only the hour and a half of survival language training on Wednesday. It should be tre interesante!
My advice to future volunteers is to get in as much French (or whatever language they will speak) as possible because the better you are at it, the easier things are and the more you will get to learn your local language before going to site. I hope I test up on Monday and get to start local language but we will see.
On Sunday we leave Mamou for site visit which will take all week. We will get to see our houses, meet our town, see our market, etc… Everyone is really excited to figure everything out and the prevalent sentiment is that no matter what site you end up with, you’re going to love it in the end despite whatever hardships it will put on you.
We all can’t wait until Monday and then I’m sure once we know our sites we will be tres anxieuse to see our villages! It never ends.
Just to clarify, I did receive my mom’s first package over the New Year’s holiday, it was postmarked December 8 and hadn’t been tampered with in any way. And she didn’t even follow all of the suggestions on the epic mailing guidelines post. However, she was very vague and boring on her description of contents so I’m sure that helped…
If anyone else has sent something please let me know in some way (via email, comment on this blog or phone call) so I can keep an eye out for it and track what I am and am not receiving. This includes letters as I appear to have not received a Christmas letter from my mom.
Today I went to Jake’s house for dinner and his second mom (polygamous family) taught us how to make a meal. It was fries, hard boiled egg, tomato and an onion sauce which contained onion, garlic, peanut oil (2 spoons, 1 to start and 1 near the end), water (6 spoons?), half a Maggi cube and finished off with some squirts of fresh lime. It was tres bonne.
Almost as good as Animal Style Fries =).
But it was nice to get a tomato for dinner (I miss tomato!!). Tomato is actually kind of expensive at 1 mil for a decent (not spectacular) medium-small sized tomato. But considering the lack of other vegetables available is worth the cost. A good bunch of lettuce is also 1 mil and I have had lettuce with dinner the past 2 nights and it’s been great!!
A small (by US standards) onion is about 200-300 francs, a thing of peanut butter is 1 mil 500 francs (it is literally just pressed roasted peanuts – fresh and with no additives!), potatoes are 500 francs for four small ones or 1 mil for three bigger ones (keep in mind that the terms “big” and “small” are subjective and by US standards all would be considered small), a loaf of French bread is 1 mil 500 francs. Eggs are about 800 francs for a fresh one and something like 700 francs for a boiled one which doesn’t appear to make much sense because it takes more labor to prepare the boiled egg, n’est pas? Actually come to think of it I bought 2 hard boiled eggs from a woman on the street at the military checkpoint near Conakry for 1 mil…so I guess you can get boiled eggs for as little as 500 francs each. Not sure about the Laughing Cow frommage, but a tub of margarine (which I am not too fond of) runs about 15 mil, which is tres cher.
Today for lunch I got 2 eggs and onion in a bowl at the café for 2 mil and put on it half of one of the avocados Scott achete-d for me in Conakry. It wasn’t ripe when I had sliced it open in Conakry so I put it in a plastic bag and prayed it would still be usable when it softened. Well today it was fine and after scraping off some minimal bruised/brown parts I had a brilliant meal. The avocados were 2 mil 500 francs each, which is expensive but they are GOOD and big. I have another to mange tomorrow. I think about it like this: I bought avocados every day in the States even though they were an expensive fruit (at $3 a pop), so if I do the same here I’m not really acting out of character (at .50 cents US a pop). Plus they are just coming into season and will only be around until, like, May. This is how I justify the expense. And many an avocat will be manged.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
New Year's Day
Well, it is officially 2009!! Last night was pretty fun. We went down to the Beach Bar and there were a lot of people and dancing and staring out into the ocean.
This morning I took a shower with running water! And used a toilet that flushes!! It was glorious!!!
We are going to go swimming in Dan's pool pretty soon and then we head back to Forecariah, but just wanted to check in.
Make sure to check out the blogs linked on the right as some people have uploaded pics, which I have been very lax about doing.
I will not be back to internet until swear-in (beginning of February) so I look forward to hearing from you call via letters and phone calls (see Right for instructions to get my #)!
Al'hamdulilaih!
This morning I took a shower with running water! And used a toilet that flushes!! It was glorious!!!
We are going to go swimming in Dan's pool pretty soon and then we head back to Forecariah, but just wanted to check in.
Make sure to check out the blogs linked on the right as some people have uploaded pics, which I have been very lax about doing.
I will not be back to internet until swear-in (beginning of February) so I look forward to hearing from you call via letters and phone calls (see Right for instructions to get my #)!
Al'hamdulilaih!
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