Dentistry + West Africa = Do Not Attempt

So this is the most painful and dragged out dental experience I have ever had. The root canal is still not finished, though hopefully tomorrow will be successful. I have been on high doses of ibuprofen and acetaminophen since I've been here and am now on a corticosteroid (to hopefully bring down the inflammation that is supposedly preventing the root canal from being complete) and oxycodone (which I had to go on because the ibuprofen and acetaminophen were not managing the pain, even in high doses).

Then today a couple hours after I took the oxy I remembered that time in college when the health center gave me oxycodone and I ended up projectile vomiting for 12 hours and had to go to the emergency room. I remembered this as I was projectile vomiting over a toilet (hey, a toilet! that flushes!) at the Italian restaurant near the bureau that Julie and I went to for lunch. So far I have not hurled again, though, so I'm sort of hoping I'm not actually allergic, though my tummy feels funny again and my mouth is starting to hurt again meaning I will need to take another dose. So on va voir (we shall see).

I have experienced the worst pain I have ever had in my life while being here in Dakar. I have had seven (or so) root canals in my life and have never experienced pain like this. I kind of chalk it up to this stuff the dentist put in my tooth to kill the root at my first appointment. I have never had this done before, and it did kill the root but also succeeded in provoking excruciating pain in my entire jaw which he claims is the ligaments hurting. I will NEVER let a dentist put that stuff in my teeth again. I would rather have gone through the root canal not completely numb than have gone through the awful week I have just had.

To make matters worse poor John has had to look after my dog, who is not an angel, and I am very anxious to get back and take Yogi off his hands. My sous prefet also called my APCD today asking if I was ok and if I was coming back. When I get home my house is going to stink of rotten potatoes.

I want to go back to my village. Sure cheese and sour cream has been fun, but maybe not worth it. Unfortunately even if we do manage to get through the root canal tomorrow, I will probably have to be here all of next week as well dealing with fitting a new crown. Sigh.

Also I heard that Peace Corps is doing away with Dakar being the Area MedEvac center in the next couple of months so from then on out all Africa MedEvacs will go straight to South Africa, which is far. Apparently this is less expensive than keeping up an Area MedEvac Center in Senegal.

Pain is returning. Time for more painkillers.

Mexican Feast In Afrique

Happy April Fool’s Day! No jokes for us today however Julie and I spent the whole morning getting the remaining stuff for the burritos and then preparing all of it. We were doing this for at least 4 hours.

A bunch of Senegal volunteers and the ones on Med Hold from Cape Verde and The Gambia all enjoyed what was an amazing Mexican feast that surprised even Julie and me.

There aren’t a lot of dishes here so people had to be very creative about what to use as plates.

All in all, we made: tortillas, mango salsa, regular salsa (with fresh jalapenos!!), cheese, guacamole, crème fraiche (sour cream), ground beef, beans (purchased prepared from a couple of bean ladies on the street), and a relish tray consisting of sliced bell pepper, jalapenos and cilantro. It was freaking amazing.

So Dakar is very different from Guinea. For one thing, you are only allowed to put 4 people in a taxi (you know, the number that would normally fit in a car) when in Guinea they would fit at least 6 plus the driver. Also, the taxis themselves are in good condition, as Julie said, “it’s like when a taxi gets too shitty to be used here it gets sent to Guinea.” The coastline is beautiful, with lots of bluffs and islands and a road that runs right along it like the Pacific Coast Highway in California. The roads are really good, too. Like not just paved, but with lines and everything, though there still aren’t really stop signs or stoplights (though there are some). People still drive crazy but not nearly as crazy as in Guinea. Also it’s freaking cold here! We are not that far from Guinea but the climate is WAY different. I had to buy a wrap in the marche the other day to keep myself warm.

Also we found out that most of the avocadoes, bananas and magoes here are imported from Guinea! Guinea has so many resources and so much to offer and it’s just a shame that it hasn’t been put to very good use in the past.

You can get a Flag beer here for 500 CFA (the equivalent of 5000 Guinean francs), which is cheaper than you would find it in Guinea (it would be between 6000-8000). This was a pleasant surprise. Also, I don’t think you can really find Skol beer here and certainly not Guiluxe so Flag is like the bottom of the barrel here whereas in Guinea Flag is a step up.

There is a microwave here in the Infirmary which is awesome (got some microwave popcorn from Casino today) but there are only a few DVDs which is disappointing.

Tomorrow at 11 I am having my root canal and before I go in the morning I REALLY need to do my laundry (no washer in the informary but I heard there is one at the Regional House!!).

That’s pretty much all I have to report from Senegal for now. Still have yet to get my calzone and ice cream (though we did get ice cream bars at Casino). Oh and we are also planning to get traditional Senegalese cuisine (probably Yassa for me) and go to the coast and enjoy some fresh seafood, which is supposed to be amazing here.

Gaining Weight in Dakar

So the best part about Dakar so far has been all the food! There's cheese everywhere! This morning I had an omelette with cheese at a cafe downtown. For lunch I had my leftover pizza and for dinner I had a panini with cheese. Now, the cheese isn't as good as cheese in the US but it's better than no cheese at all! Although the goat cheese I sampled at the giant grocery store was freaking amazing.

Ok so a word about the grocery store. It is called Casino, it is in walking distance of the Infirmary where I am staying and it's HUGE. It has almost anything you could want, except strangely missing were black beans (though I did find those at the little Indian store that is similar to a Lebanese store in Guinea). I bought some creme fraiche and it hits the sour cream spot for sure.

Tomorrow we are making burritos for like 20 people. It's going to be awesome. Oh and the first day we went and had Indian food buffet which was awesome and the only thing I would have improved was to have more paneer cheese in the mixed vegetable dish. I am still planning to have a calzone and ice cream but I have plenty of time to eat that and way more and keep gaining a ton of weight.

In general, Dakar is very different from Guinea, though I can't speak for the rest of the country. It has a huge ex-pat community so there are lots of white people, things are very clean, there are really nice, big houses, horses do work (we don't even have horses in Guinea), lots more restaurants, real bars/lounges, it's like we left Africa completely. I am glad I'm not here all the time, though, because it is expensive and kind of feels a little bit guilty.

Oh, PS, doctor said I need a root canal and will be in Dakar at least another week, maybe two. People at my site are going to think I died. I miss my dog.

"Remember when airplane food was bad?"

So we arrived in Senegal last night. Peace Corps dropped us off at the airport at like 4pm when our flight was at 7:30 and didn't actually leave until 8:30. However, once we did actually depart on the hour and ten minute flight, we were served a MEAL!

Which was great because we were freaking starving. It had GREEN BEANS, real BUTTER, and lasagne with CHEESE on top! Oh AND free red wine OUT OF A BOTTLE. We were pretty freaking excited about this. My friend turned to me midway through our meal and said, "remember when airline food was considered bad?"

That was before we moved to Guinea.

The Epic Journey 100k (60mi) to Scott's Site

Pictures courtesy of John (linked on right).

It all started one morning when John, Ian and I went to the taxi gare at John's site ready to get into our taxi to Scott's site, about 100k away. Having bought our tickets the night before, we had only to identify the taxi, put our stuff in it and wait for it to leave. First up, identifying the taxi. When the dude pointed at it the same thought went through all three of our heads: "really?":














It was an Army green, late model Mercedes which would carry eight people, a dog, a cat and luggage spilling out the trunk down a road we had been previously told was "pas bonne" aka "not good". As it turns out, all the people who told us this have never been on my and Ian's road because if you REALLY want to see a bad road, come visit us.

So after a shared plate of rice and sauce we piled in and took off for what we were expecting to be a 3-4 hour journey. And boy were we wrong. Now, while this is one of the taxis that requires being pushed to start, that's not really all that uncommon. Even having to stop and fill the radiator is not uncommon. What's uncommon is the bottom of the car SCRAPING THE ROAD for pretty much the entire journey. The car during one of the unfortunate radiator fillings:


















Early on in the journey, the car stopped and we were told to get out and walk. We have done this many times before and didn't think it was anything special until Ian rounded the corner, looked back at us and said, "Now THIS will be interesting!" There's a river and this is how you get across it:














John really wanted to crank it for awhile and the dude-who-cranks-the-ferry-across-the-river was more than happy to let him. Guineans took pictures on their camera-phones of the porto cranking the ferry:














Not long after this, the car broke down at the bottom of a hill (making it difficult to restart because, as I said before, this was one of the "push me or I won't start" cars). After an hour or so of kicking it on the side of the road watching Yogi and Pagaille fight, Ian decided to invent a game which consisted of setting up a tripod of sticks, balancing another stick on top, standing a few yards away and throwing rocks to see if you could hit the balanced stick off the top without knocking down the tripod. One of our Guinean taxi-mates joined the fun. Action shot:














Eventually a nice NGO happened by in their Land Cruiser and offered us a ride. At this point the taxi was moving again and we looked at each other weighing our options. We decided to stick with the taxi as the NGO would be stopping at all the towns along the way to do their work and at this point we still thought it might be faster in the taxi. When Ian told this to the Land Cruiser driver he "looked at me as though I had just signed my own death warrant."

So we piled back into the Mercedes and not five minutes later, as were going over a particularly rough patch, we got back out and ran after the Land Cruiser and begged for mercy. So we took the ride with the NGO, even though we had to stop in several towns for them to do their work. In one such village, it appeared as if every resident were collecting mangoes and putting them into big piles by the road. As we were stuck there for about three hours, we were gifted more mangoes than we could eat in a month and John taught a gaggle of petites the Chicken Dance (among other favorites). A kid getting mangoes:














The NGO dropped us off at Schwegel's site which is about halfway to Scott's site (Schwegel had taken off on his bike hours before and was probably already in Labe by that point). We had some rice and sauce (with some surprisingly good fish balls!) and then piled back in to be on our merry way. And by merry, I mean tortured. I would say that all told, we walked 1/3 of the journey, rode with the NGO 1/3 of the journey and actually got to ride in the taxi that we paid for for about 1/3.

By the time we were even getting CLOSE to Scott's site, it was dark and the taxi was breaking down every ten feet or so. We seriously considered strapping our packs on and walking the rest of the way (and are sure glad we didn't because it was a bit of a hike). Then we heard a car coming and it stopped next to us and it was...the NGO we had parted ways with six hours before. I was like, "you mean we could have hung out in ::Schwegel's site:: for a few hours, spared ourselves the frustration and STILL gotten here faster???"

Needless to say we got back in the Land Cruiser and were dropped off right at Scott's feet minutes later. We don't know what ever happened to that old Mercedes, but I hope to never see it again. All told, it was pretty much exactly 12 hours to go 100k (60mi), fueled with just a little rice and sauce and mercifully cold coke halfway along the way.

Praise Allah for cold cokes. And sunsets that nearly made the journey worth it:

MedEvaced

So found out this morning that I will be MedEvac-ed (medically evacuated) to Dakar on Sunday. There is another volunteer who will be going with me at the same time. She arrives in Conakry on Friday and she has already been to Dakar so depending on how sick she is, she might be a good guide!

I will be in Dakar at least until the following weekend (if everything goes perfectly, if not could be there the whole next week as well). I will not be going back to my site before leaving, which is kind of a bummer because I don't really have all of my stuff...but, c'est la vie.

So today I have to go to the market to get enough stuff to feed myself until Sunday and I'll need to go en ville to exchange money to Senegalese CFA and hit up the Leb Store with the sour cream!!

So for those of you who want to call, I will be available on my number until Sunday night (flight leaves about 7:30pm). While in Senegal I will have to purchase another number and will try to get that to you as well.

Dentistry in Guinea

So I called Traian from Labe and he told me to come to Conakry to go to the dentist. I arrived yesterday (after an 8-hour bush taxi ride, sans my pooch who is staying with John - THANKS JOHN!). First thing this morning I went in to meet with him and they made me an appointment with one of the PC-approved dentists here and Traian went with me to explain everything to the dentist.

When we arrived at the clinic, Traian told me it was "one of the luxury clinics in Guinea". Want to know what that means? Think university health center. The dentist is a Lebanese dude who went to dentist school in Senegal. He was nice. He tapped on my tooth and blew air and water on it (which predictably hurt like hell) and took an x-ray, which he developed by hand in this red plastic box.

Then he said that the diagnosis is not good and showed me the x-ray. Basically, I don't need a root canal, as my roots are not infected. What is infected is the gum and bone area all AROUND my roots. Which doesn't seem better to me at all. He said that he would have to, like, cut open my gums and clean it really well and then my gums would be below my roots or something. I am still confused about this. He also said I'd be best off going back to the States to fix it. Traian is waiting to hear back from the head West Africa doctor on whether I can have this procedure done in Guinea or if I need to be sent to Dakar, Senegal. He said this is the first time they have ever had this diagnosis in his five years as PCMO so he doesn't know the protocol. I find this very reassuring.

So that's what I'm waiting on now.

At any rate I will be in Conakry until at least Wednesday so give me a call!

UPDATE: So the decision has been made to send me to Senegal for at least 2 weeks (but Traian said that's if there are no complications, if there are complications it could be longer). However, there is still no decision about exactly when I will be going or if I will be going back to site beforehand or not. I doubt if I'll get to go back to site because it would take me 2 days to get there and 2 days to get back and even if they didn't have me flying to Senegal until Sunday it still wouldn't be worth it (travel to site Wed and Thurs, have to travel back Fri and Sat). Hopefully there will be more info tomorrow (Weds).

Dave, where's my phone call?

Packages Are Awesome

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I’m Irish and I didn’t do any celebrating. Oh well.

First Mail Run. Yesterday Daffe (my regional coordinator) came on the Mail Run. It was freaking awesome because I got a bunch of stuff! I got a package from my aunt Linda and also from my Dad. I got medical stuff, the Peace Corps cookbook, all kinds of PC-related paperwork, a huge bag of sachets for my pepiniere and a letter from Teale, a G15 AgFo Hoe. Her letter was really nice, imparting all the advice she wishes she had gotten when she first got to site. I found it very encouraging and will have to send her a thank-you note on the next mail run.

Packages Rock. So packages are awesome. I got lots of cheese! Granted, it is processed, non-refrigerated cheese but I’ll tell you what, it hits the spot. My aunt Linda actually sent me Laughing Cow cheese and at first I laughed, because that’s the only cheese we CAN get in the market but then I realized that it was a different variety: Swiss, which we can’t get, so thanks Linda!! They sent all kinds of magazines and newspapers, most of them dedicated to Obama’s inauguration but it has been GREAT to read them and catch up on things. The Rolling Stone was awesome and the OK! was mind-numbing and seemed especially airheaded to me at this moment in time but hey, how else am I gonna know how Britney’s doing and that I would make a good girlfriend for Matthew McConaughey? I’ve only been gone for three and a half months but already there are bands, actors, TV shows I know nothing about. Can’t imagine what it will be like in two years!! The Guineans hanging around my house really liked paging through all the magazines and looking at all the pictures.

Pictures. Also Linda sent some pictures of the family so it was good to finally be able to show people pictures of my mom and my aunts and my grandparents. More pictures please! People here love them!

Communication. So it is REALLY hard to communicate with Ian. Whenever he or John sends me a bush note, I receive it, but Ian does not receive our bush notes and I’m not quite sure why. And he would have to come to my site to get any kind of phone reception, so bush notes are really all we have. Here’s the rub: John sent us bush notes on Friday saying that the Labe car only leaves Thursday mornings, meaning we need to push everything up a day earlier than planned. I received this note, but Ian did not, as he did not send a reply down with Daffe yesterday. So today I tried again and sent him a bush note to be delivered to his rice and sauce lady instead of directly to him, as she is right next to the taxi gare and very likely to receive it. Then the problem is just if Ian went to get rice and sauce for dinner or not. But if he doesn’t hop a taxi to John’s site tomorrow, he is going to be in a world of hurt because when he gets to my site on Thursday I will already be gone (in fact John and I will already be gone from HIS site) so Ian really won’t have any choice but to just turn back around and go home. Which is a huge waste of time and taxi fare and a disappointment because he won’t get to go to Labe. So here’s hoping he got my note today or at worst early tomorrow when he’d still have the time to get a taxi to John’s site. GO INTO TOWN IAN! I AM SENDING YOU MENTAL VIBES TELLING YOU TO GO INTO TOWN!!

Hope that works? HEY there’s an idea! We can hone our telepathy skills and communicate that way :).

World Bank

So…I don’t know if my village even needs me here. First of all, they already have a groupement doing reforestation and they know what they’re doing (they have a pepiniere where they are direct-seeding Gmelina to transplant when the rainy season starts). Also, World Bank is in my Sous-Prefecture with $20K American dollars JUST for environmental projects.

Some of the projects they have identified working on are: mud stoves, living fences, reforestation and solar dryers. These are four of AgFo’s biggest projects and World Bank is stealing them from me (just kidding about the stealing, no seriously they are Bahs…they are taking my activities!!). So today I went and talked to the representative, Mr. Diallo, and I told him I have training in those things and he is “voler-ing” (stealing) my activities and he just got real excited and said “THAT’S GREAT! You can help us!” Then he said again that they have $20K just for those projects (well, those and all the other enviro. Projects) and I told him to save the money for other projects because all four of those things are free. He kinda gave me a skeptical look and was like “Yeah…ok.” And I was like no seriously. I can do all that stuff for free. Save the money for the other projects.

I mean, the only one of those projects that could cost money at all would be solar dryers and that’s if you want to have them built by the carpenter and buy grillage and plastic for them instead of making them out of sticks and rice sacks. So maybe I will use money for solar dryers. But how are they expecting to spend money on mud stoves? All you need is cow poop, termite mounds and dry straw. Free. Living fences? All you need is Moringa. Free, as long as you can find it growing. I have a bunch of Moringa seeds and the President of the pepiniere groupement has Moringa trees in his yard that are seeding. And reforestation should be free unless you have to pay someone to do all the watering while it is in the pepiniere stage.

So basically I think a lot of my service will entail me working closely with the World Bank which I guess in the end isn’t such a bad thing, because they drum up the interest and then I show them how to do it for free and make sure it’s sustainable (as in, teaching people how to do stuff rather than just doing it for them – just today I corrected several people when they asked if I would make a mud stove for them and I said I will TEACH you how to make it and they all seemed to think that was a good idea so they could show other people…people in my village seem to understand the philosophy of sustainable development).

Also, my tooth is getting worse. I’m going to call Traian tomorrow or Sunday and ask him if I should come to Conakry and if he says yes I will catch the mail run there on Monday so I don’t have to pay for a bush taxi. That means I will miss out on the Labe trip. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

Trip to Kate's Site

Well on Monday I went to Kate’s site with Ian. We were going mostly to look for jars for jam making and black plastic for solar dryers (scored both of these). But we were also going to have a beer and ice cream and eat the awesome food Kate’s mom makes, use Kate’s running water and electricity and the internet. Unfortunately the internet was broken while we were there so we did not get to go online but should be able to next weekend when we go to Labe.

Ice Cream. A word about ice cream. It’s not really ice cream. It’s like really bad soft serve. It’s pink and white. But it’s cold, sweet, kinda creamy and comes in a cone. It works. We had it twice. Or was it three times?

Running Water. So, Kate doesn’t have running water all the time, only when it magically comes and everyone gets really excited. It magically came while we were there and I took a REAL shower!! I mean, it wasn’t much in the way of water pressure and I felt guilty (GUILTY!) using all that water only once but the water was kinda warm and honestly it was a little bit like heaven.

Kate’s Family. Is freaking awesome. She lives in this little two-room apartment in a family’s house. Her mom LOVES to feed us and we ate so well the whole time we were there, including the two times we made our own guacamole. Which is enjoyed with cuts of French bread since there’s no such thing as tortilla chips here (I don’t even think there are tortilla chips in the Leb stores, but you can make decent chips by frying pitas or making your own tortillas and frying them).

Kate. Is freaking awesome. She calls her apartment “Hotel Kate” and it really is like going away on vacation. She says don’t bring food or soap or shampoo or toilet paper because she has plenty of all of that and she insists that you sleep on the bed and she takes the floor. And when you leave she sends you off with a big Ziploc bag full of goodies: powdered milk, candy, Bumble Bee fish and chicken products, instant soups, gum. She insists that it’s because she will never have occasion to eat it because her mom feeds her three meals a day plus bread and vegetables and fruit.

Kate’s Dad. Has had an amazing life. He was born in 1922 (and it’s rare for people here to know the year of their birth, especially at his age, so I don’t know if this was a guess or if he knows this for sure). He has lived through French colonization, Toure, Conte, and now the CNDD. Under Toure he was a political prisoner for 9 and a half years and was tortured. His cell mate spoke English so that is where he learned his English. Several of his kids have moved to America and gone to great schools (Berkeley!). Even he has been to the US for six months once to visit family and have eye surgery. One of his daughters is the one that owns/runs that big, amazing education farm just outside of Kate’s site (and she makes the best banana chips EVER!). He has been the governor of nearly every major city in Guinea and his family was one of the original settlers of Kate’s city. Listening to him talk is enthralling and it’s always a treat to hear him.

TV. Both nights we got to sit and see a little bit of a French CNN type channel. They talk so fast I can’t really understand what they’re saying but can I just say that it is so cool to see my boss (OBAMA!) being the President!! Just wish I could hear what he’s saying when they show him.

Bush Taxis. So on the way there, less than an hour from Kate’s site, we blew a tire. No big deal, right? Except the tire iron broke and we had to wait for about 8 passing vehicles until we found one with the same size iron. THEN the tire was not put on correctly, or something, and we basically had to stop another 5 or so times to keep trying to fix it and it added another maybe 2 hours to the already six hour journey (from my site, from Ian’s it is almost 8 hours). On the way back, we blew a tire again, but it was changed correctly but THEN there was some sort of problem with the engine (the engine is held together with string and pieces of corrugated tin, no joke) and we spent almost three hours at John’s site waiting for it to be fixed before we continued on, which means we didn’t get to my site until almost ten (and we stopped a couple of times on the way here for more banging, string, and random metal pieces). That means Ian did not get home until almost midnight, probably…hopefully. I hope he got back!!

Every time I go somewhere I say to myself, “this is the last time I am leaving my site for a month!! Travel is too difficult especially with the dog” (although Yogi was actually really good in the taxis this trip). And already I have another trip planned for next weekend with Ian and John to check out Labe and hit Scott’s site for a night on the way. It is going to be just as long a trip on a crappier road. Woohoo!

I have a toothache. I think it is the tooth I had crowned just before I left and now I think it is telling me I need a root canal. I am to the point of having to take pain killers all day (but only 3, it’s not like I’m popping two every two hours) so I have started wearing my mouthguard at night and if it isn’t better by the time we head to Labe next weekend I will have to call Traian and ask him what to do. I am sure it will require a trip to Conakry to the dentist (and everyone is afraid of the dentist here) and if it DOES need a root canal I believe they send you all the way to Senegal. I don’t know what I will do with Yogi if this is the case. I mean, that could take me out of commission for a couple of weeks. I would probably try to leave him with Ian or maybe Kate, as I know John doesn’t have the patience for Yogi. Ugh. Stupid teeth.

Into The Wild

So…I am going to admit that seeing the film “Into the Wild”, screenplay and direction by Sean Penn, starring Emile Hirsch, changed the direction of my life. When I saw it at the end of 2007, I had an overwhelming urge to get the heck out of LA. And just GO…experience life, figure things out, see the world while I’m young and not tied down. I remember having a teary drunken conversation with my father to this effect, unpacking all of my longing and discontent and confusion and lack of direction. He encouraged me to just GO - just DO it.

And that’s when I decided to join the Peace Corps. I am a big pansy. I don’t have the gall to do what Chris McCandless did, though I sure wish I did (except for the part about starving to death in the Alaskan bush). I needed an adventure with a safety net, a bit of structure. Hence, Peace Corps: I would get to go to a far away land and live under great hardship, learn a new language or two and come out of it feeling like I had perspective and maybe I had done something with my life. At the end of this I hope I do feel this way, but now, at what is still the outset, I almost feel as though Africa is much the same as anywhere else, even LA.

The point is that I finished reading Into the Wild today and the book contains a lot of information that Mr. Penn opted to leave out of the film for artistic, narrative and editorial purposes (someday, if I ever do meet Mr. Penn and still feel that his film changed my life I might ask him to explain himself with great interest [and hope against hope the conversation goes better than the one with Emile Hirsch did]). The idea that McCandless’ life ended with acceptance, with a short but optimistic farewell note and a photograph of his emaciated yet smiling and serene face, that he did not seem to lament his passing but rather see it as a rather logical end to his journey of self-discovery is something I appreciate knowing.

I still have a thirst for travel, for experience that I don’t know my time here in Africa will quench. I’ve had a long-suffering burning desire to go on an extended road trip all around the US. I, in fact, have a big US road map on the wall of my living room here in Africa that is peppered with stickers marking some of my planned stops along the way (Yosemite, Mt. Rushmore, D.C., Death Valley, etc…). The things stopping me from taking this trip in the past were: having a car I didn’t think would make it very far, not having a traveling partner, and gas being WAY too expensive to cover the distance desired. But when I get back to the States, I think one of the first things I will do is take that trip, even if I have to do it alone (or better yet, with Yogi):














There will be plenty of people to visit along the way (heck I’ve just added 28 people who come from all over the country to my arsenal) and maybe even some who will join me for a week or so and catch a bus home. This is a trip I want to take more than the desire I have to tramp through Europe for a few months, which would be a lot more expensive, but is also an experience I know I need to have while I’m young. That, however, is one I will not do alone. Although I think Sajay did it alone. Sajay is a greater man (in the sense of being a human being, not a male) than I, in many ways.

Looking Up

So today I stared Giardia in the face and said, “BRING IT!!” Giardia has yet to respond. What I mean by this is that I went to the Sous Prefet’s house and was served a big plate of tomatoes and onions in a mayonnaise sauce (seriously, it was tasty. Don’t like mayonnaise? Come to West Africa. You’ll love it in a matter of weeks.) eaten with French bread, shared with the Sous Prefet and Nene (I like the whole eating ensemble thing they do here, it makes you really feel like a family). The point is, when we eat fresh vegetables we are supposed to soak them in bleach water for like 15-30 min before we eat them. There’s no way those tomatoes were washed in even drinkable water, let alone bleach. MAYBE they were dry before she cut them up which would reduce the risk of whatever was in the well water being now in my system but the point is…BRING IT ON GASTROINTESTINAL ISSUE! It was worth it!! I am almost optimistic though because I don’t feel anything at all yet and it’s like 9pm and I ate it at maybe 1ish. So maybe…

Today I felt like things were going better at my site. This morning Hoodia came over first thing and got me three bidons (20L each) of water. It was freaking awesome. I gave her a bon-bon and 1 mil for each bidon she brought. She tried to refuse the money but I said it was necessary because it is very hard work (and 1 mil a bidon is probably the going rate for people who hire it out). She is now supposed to get me a bidon every other day, which is awesome.

I fought off petites all day. It was market day so there was a CONSTANT flow of petites on my porch all wanting my attention. In the morning I put one of them to work and gave her 500 francs and told her to go buy me some onions, which she did and I gave her a toffee. There’s one thing petites are good for. That and once they realized I liked onions gave me two more throughout the day. And they gave me a bunch of oranges and a banana and a cashew fruit. It was actually kind of strange.

After noon and finishing my book, I went to the market and was followed by a loyal group of petites and stopped by all the crazy people and only bought tomatoes and then some sardines for the dog from Conte, a dude who is a friend of Ian’s at his site. I also gave him a note to give to Ian, which only occurred to me this morning. That is a great way for us to pass notes because it’s through someone we both know that I see once a week and he sees nearly every day.

After the marche I went by the Sous Prefet’s office and we talked for a little bit about the three goals of Peace Corps. He also said my wardrobe is currently being made which is great because Yogi is getting big enough to pull my clothes off of the thing I put them on and that will NOT do. He also dispatched some guy to help me find a language tutor, which when found will be AWESOME (PS having the Pular-French dictionary has already been awesome so a big THANK YOU to my Fouta folks for buying and sending that to me). I still need to ask for a couple of dudes to come help me change the position of my bed so I can open and close my screen/window.

After that was when I had the tomato salad (which as I said before, was really tasty). After that I went out back and watched Nene and Madame Bangoura make a sauce I had not had before (which included lots of eggplant and pile-d beef…hmm). It’s fun to watch people cook here because you get a better idea of what goes into what you’re eating and if it’s something you like, you can learn how to make it! I still want to learn to make peanut sauce. I dunno if Madame Bangoura makes peanut sauce or not but if she does maybe she will teach me. The experience was good because both of them really seemed to enjoy that I was there, and I felt like I was integrating. Afterwards I ate some of the sauce with rice and it was good!

Figured out where the well is when Nene and Mamadou went to fill bidons (I’ll really never have a reason to get water there but it’s nice to know where it is) and there is a garden down there that looks like it might be completely manioc. Just before that I met with the DPS (who is in charge of the schools) and asked if I could come and introduce myself to all of the students and he said, “Of course! Come tomorrow at nine!” So that’s my first order of business for tomorrow. Second order of business might be hiking to reseau to call Traian about my ankle.

When I finally left the Sous Prefet’s house about 4:30 they sent me off with a bunch of oranges and a big slice of watermelon. This is in addition to the huge banana and oranges I ate when I was there. I had a well-balanced diet today.

On the way back to my house this woman who I see a lot who only speaks Pular but I guess was very good friends with the last volunteer called me over and gave me 3 eggs as a cadeau. I was like thanks!! They are small and sort of white. I had seen these eggs before but I thought they were duck eggs but according to Nene they are chicken eggs. Not that it should matter, I bet duck eggs and chicken eggs taste almost the same. I had them for dinner. One of them was fertilized and had a beating heart in it and veins. I had to fish all that out of the cup before I cooked them. That was a little bit gross.

Oh AND this morning the forgeron came by with my dabas (hoes) so I can now start my garden! And my counterpart came by for a little while and got a real kick out of the Pular dictionary and said he would call Kristine when he gets back to ::the bigger city where he lives:: since he missed her yesterday.

Basically I feel a lot better about my position in the community today and hope to “officially” start my etude de milieu tomorrow by asking the education questions to the DPS and maybe the principals, a couple of teachers and a couple of the older students.

Chuggin along.

Visit From APCD

Well, my APCD came for a visit. Yesterday she came through on her way to and from Ian’s site and I hitched a ride to John’s site so I could buy some stuff in the marche this morning (15 eggs for 11.5 mil and only one broke on the way home!). Then after John got locked outside of his house and they had to break the door to get in, we finally set off for my site.

In the car I asked Kristine for advice about my feeling of not fitting in with my community. She basically just said give it time. Every experience is different and it can take awhile to feel like you are fitting in. She said when she was a volunteer she didn’t feel like she was really a part of her community until she had been there for a year.

My conclusion is that I need to do more language study. Kiki sent my Pular-French dictionary on the mail run (and Kristine brought with her whatever mail we had) so I have that now and that should be helpful. It was made by some missionaries.

Anyway I showed Kristine and her sister (who is visiting from the States) around my village – the main drag, where my garden will be, the schools, where my water is, the pepiniere, my onion lady, the health center and we had rice and soup sauce at the Sous-Prefet’s house. There isn’t too much to see here! Unfortunately my counterpart had been whisked away by some delegation from the Prefecture so she didn’t get to talk to him at all.

My right ankle is swollen. It started to swell yesterday and today it has been blowing up. Tonight I noticed that it sort of sprang a leak at the top and is leaking some sort of pus from this weird sort of irritated/scarred area. If it gets worse tomorrow I will have to hike to the reseau spot and call Traian (the PC Medical Officer). I hope it’s not some sort of weird parasite. I know it’s not a sprain because it doesn’t hurt like that, just hurts from the pressure of the swelling. And kind of itches. Weird.

Got my second letter today, again it was from Megan (THANK YOU MEGAN!). COME ON PEOPLE. SEND ME A FREAKING CARD! It would just be nice to hear from you all and hear what is going on in your lives and in the world (I get next to no news here, even what may seem the most mundane or obvious of news will be completely unknown and appreciated by me). She mailed it February 17 and the stamp on back says it was received in Guinea on the 20th (but I don’t know how accurate that stamp really is). 94 cents. Seriously. My address is on the right. Oh also a book my mom ordered for me finally got here with a stamp on it that says, “Your mail was mis-delivered to Papua New Guinea”, hence why it took so long to get here. So whenever you send something just make sure to write WEST AFRICA at the bottom so they send it to the right continent.

Officially March

Well, it’s officially March and the beginning of my fourth month in Africa. I can hardly believe I have been here three months already, but at the same time…I can. I’m starting to miss going out for dinner. And going to Wang’s for nachos and a pitcher of beer with Lisa. And the Daily Show. Seriously. NOBODY TELL ME WHAT’S HAPPENING ON LOST! Just send me the new season when it comes out on DVD .

Dinner. So, honestly, I only eat dinner about half of the days out of the week. I don’t know why, but a lot of the time I’m just not hungry when the sun goes down, especially if I didn’t eat lunch until late (or made some – albeit poor – popcorn in the afternoon). And if I’m not fixing to make dinner when the sun goes down, I just do all my before-bed rituals, get under my mosquito net and read til I’m too tired to keep reading. The other half of the week, when I do eat dinner, it’s almost always a concoction from the dehydrated foods I brought with me and my mom has sent in packages from Harmony House. My standard meal has been the following: black beans, beefish bits, corn, bell peppers, tomato, spiced with cumin and garlic salt and topped off with a triangle of Laughing Cow cheese and piment sauce. Well, regrettably I ran out of that dehydrated stuff during my last dinner and tonight had to come up with a new concoction…which ended up VERY similar to the old one: taco bits (which I think are just beefish bits with some spices), pinto beans, bell peppers (had another package), FRESH tomato (from my marche!), sautéed onion (also from my marche!), Laughing Cow cheese, cumin, garlic salt, piment sauce. So, basically the same thing. If things go the same way they did before, this should last me a couple of weeks. But THEN what (perhaps kidney beans with taco bits? But I’ll be out of peppers! OH THE HUMANITY!). I really have to try making stuff with the chickenish chunks. Maybe I’ll try chickenish chunks, peas and boiled potatoes (from John’s marche). OR sweet potatoes (from my marche!). That’s a nice American meal right there. The other thing I have made with my dehydrated stuff is Hamish bits and tomato in a cheese sauce consisting of cheddar cheese powder and evaporated milk. I eat that with bread. It’s not that good.

The point is, if I don’t want to have rice or pasta for dinner every night, eating the dehydrated stuff is kind of my only option unless I have been to John’s marche and stocked up on stuff like eggs and potatoes, but even then that’s usually what I have for lunch (breakfast is usually fresh squeezed orange juice). It’s bad to depend on food brought from home, but considering the narrow scope of ingredients available and the time it takes to prepare it, it’s just way easier, especially because I’m only preparing one serving. And a lot easier to get protein that way.

Package Ideas. Anyway if you are fixing to send me a package, the following from Harmony House is always good: black beans, beefish/taco bits, corn, bell peppers, tomatoes. Like the burritos I used to eat five times a week for dinner, this is my staple dinner. Also, spices. With suggestions on how best to use them (the only spices I really know how to use are cumin and garlic salt, so if you send me something else suggest what I should use it in!). Other things I will always rejoice to receive in care packages: dark chocolate, Jiffy Pop popcorn (you know the kind that sort of comes with it’s own disposable pan and pops into a big bubble on a stove top), cheese, granola bars (for bike rides), dried fruits (particularly apricots or dehydrated blueberries and strawberries would be awesome!), doggie toys/treats for Yogi, and single-serving (fun sized) American candies to give to my water fetchers. Never underestimate the power of a bon-bon. Also, I have gotten more colds in the last three months than I can count (in fact, I have one right now!). Echinacea (or Elderberry/other natural immune system boosters) and Emergen-C (I’m particular to the Tropical flavor and not a huge fan of the orange flavors but the Immune Defense one is also good for the extra Zinc) would be AWESOME. Oh, and books. Especially novels. I am blowing through books here faster than I can think! MERCI!

Books. I started a new book today, called The Time Traveler’s Wife. It seems cheesy but it’s one of the only ones I have left (I got it from another volunteer during training). The other unread books on my shelf are: Walden (or Life in the Woods – yeah, not sure if I’ll ACTUALLY get through that one), Angela’s Ashes, Sea of Poppies (from Ian, who finished it, but apparently it is only the first in a trilogy, the remaining part of which he does not have), and Into the Wild and Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, both of which I have found difficult to finish in the past (they both have bookmarks in them somewhere where I stopped reading). There are libraries at all the regional houses and other volunteers send books they’ve finished around, but if you’ve read something really good or entertaining, feel free to pop it in your next package. The books I have thus far completed in Guinea: A Man Without a Country, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, Sundays at Tiffany’s, Howl, Digital Fortress, Tonto and the Lone Ranger Fist Fight in Heaven, and Archy and Mehitabel.

Bedtime. The majority of nights I am in my bed by 8pm and asleep by 10. Even on Saturday nights when the dance hall bumps until the wee hours of the morning (last night it went til 4am). I haven’t had too hard a time blocking out music and movies playing at the video club next door. I get up depending on what my dog is doing. Sometimes he makes me get up REALLY early (like 5am today) and sometimes it suffices to ignore him and he’ll entertain himself until maybe 7. If I get to sleep until 8 or 9, it is a great morning.

Laundry. Sucks. It’s not super easy to do and the whole time I’m doing it, I’m being laughed at because I don’t do it right. However, my stuff is clean at the end, so as far as I’m concerned I am doing it right. For the most part I only wear my wrap skirt on bottom. So my laundry pile is pretty much my wrap skirt, a bunch of Old Navy tank tops, a couple of bras and a pile of underwear. Oh, and towels (kitchen towels, dog towels, bath towel). Although recently I started wearing my long shorts when I am going to bike somewhere. So I’ll have to wash those, too. But yeah. Laundry is hard. Never stop appreciating your washing machine, people, even if you have to go down the block to use one. Ian pays a neighbor 5 mil to do his laundry (about a dollar). I have not easily found someone to do the same for me here, but I haven’t really looked. It’s hard enough just finding someone to help me with water.

Anyway, I’m getting tired, and I’m sick, so that’s all from Africa tonight.

First Visitor

Ian:












came to my site yesterday. He BIKED here. I could not do that. For sure. He said it took 2 hours and 40 min with some long breaks. Which doesn’t seem like very long. But he is in better shape than I am, to be sure.

We spent the day mostly trying to get water! The water issue is huge at my site. Water is FAR and it’s difficult for me to get. In the end we ended up getting two big bidons and one small bidon from the pump with the help of a young dude from my village and his wheelbarrow. But it took all day.

We also went down to one of the changols so Ian could have a bath and I gave the dog a bath. When we were walking down there, I had Yogi in my tote bag and he was like, “Hey LA! Way to bring dogs in bags to Africa.”

After, we walked through the marche a bit. There were tomatoes! And eggplants! And sweet potatoes! This is the first time I have seen any of those things in my marche and I bought all of them. Oh, and hard boiled eggs, which we enjoyed for lunch on French bread with Laughing Cow cheese. I can’t wait for avocadoes to show up in my marche. That will be awesome.

We decided to make rice and sauce for dinner with our standard pasta sauce (we were too snobby to make pasta since we had made pasta when I was at his site last Sunday) which consists of olive oil, onions, garlic, tomatoes, tomato paste and fresh piment. It’s tasty.

We stayed up until like 1am listening to music and chatting. He left this morning about 9am, hope he made it back to his site ok! There’s no way for him to inform me if he got home ok other than sending a bush note which would take a day or two to arrive. So here’s hoping!

After he left I went to my reseau spot (about 20 min away by bike) to try and reach John to make sure he was going to be at his site this weekend but his phone was off. So I sent him a text message telling him I was coming and if he has decided to leave town I will just buy a place in a returning taxi right away before I do my shopping so I’m guaranteed to get home the same day. I have a whole list of stuff to buy.

First Loss For Real

Well, the SP’s secretary general took me to the reseau spot today. It is about 2-3k away kinda in the middle of nowhere. It looks down into a big valley and the mountains beyond. You can get an unreliable one bar there. Actually there are two spots. At the first one it kept dropping the call but at the second one it hung on pretty well. Of course, the second spot is harder to get to.

So I talked to Jake for a little while and he told me that Dave really did call it quits this time and is already gone . You better eat that burrito for me, boy! With EXTRA sour cream!!! We’ll miss you and your Spaceballs bike helmet. Stay in touch!

RIP Dave (Jessica, Dave, Me):















I was also shown the spot where a nice gardener has been kind enough to donate a piece of land for me to cultivate. It is across from the schools and down a path, it has a water source right there which is great. The gardener said I could cultivate the whole field if I wanted to (it’s probably half an acre) but I think I’ll stick with maybe a 25x25 foot space close to the watering hole. At least to start ::wink wink::. The forgeron is working on making my dabas so once I have those I will go down there and start tilling it up (it’s got grass and stuff all over it right now, but that’s a good sign, because it was green grass that obviously no one had been watering so plants should grow well there). I also think I will dig myself a compost pit. I have lots of kitchen scraps.

OH! Somebody ate Melvin’s corpse! Nene said it was probably a goat. As I was tossing water or some food scraps or something over the side of the porch I noticed that the rocks I had put him under had been moved and his body was nowhere to be found. So I guess I don’t have to worry about it stinking! Somebody got a good meal out of it. Come to think of it, maybe it was the cat that seems to live in the rock pile outside my bedroom window. Bet he thought Melvin was delicious! Also, I am starting to suspect that there is a second mouse in my house because I have seen a few more poo pellets and I thought I had cleaned all of Melvin’s out. Hmm. Time will tell.

Tomorrow morning I have to be at the pepiniere at 8 (which means leaving my house at 7:30) as some chef is coming to town and the whole groupement will be there. Something tells me I will be the first one there.

Finally, my poor puppy is sick. He had been scratching and whining all day so I decided to give him a bath in the insecticide before going to bed so I did and he’s not scratching as much anymore but after the bath he shivered for a long time (like he always does, even if I bathe him in the hottest part of the day) so I wrapped him up and laid him on my chest to keep him warm. Then after awhile he started gagging so I put him on the floor and since then he has thrown up probably about 10 times. I’m not sure why he is vomiting. It could be from stuff he ate in the yard, like the rotten eggs I threw out today (the eggs I bought at Ian’s site were ALL rotten – beware!). I saw him chewing on some egg shells and there were egg shells in his puke. So who knows. I just hope he feels better in the morning.

First Trip to Ian's Site

Well, though we lost Melvin today, a lizard moved in when I opened the latrine door and I couldn’t chase him back out. I dunno where he is now, but he’s in here somewhere. I’ve named him Iggy.

So yesterday I went to wait for a taxi first thing in the morning, thinking it shouldn’t be more than an hour before I’d get one going one direction or the other, especially since it was marche day at John’s site. So I commenced to sit and read Eat, Pray, Love. NOT ONE TAXI came by and I was still sitting there after 1pm, and finished the rest of my book (another one down!!). Then, a blue SUV drove into town, headed Ian’s way, and stopped a ways down the road. I decided to just wander down there and see who it was. Turns out it is this dude who is from Guinea, but lived in the States for nearly 20 years and is just now moving back and building a house in Conakry. He was taking his friend to Ian’s site to visit family in his car (which came complete with driver). He spoke great English, having lived in the States so long, and I told him I had been waiting for a taxi ALL FRIGGIN DAY and then he offered to drive me to Ian’s site with them. I was like sweet!! So I grabbed my stuff and we took off and of course Yogi was a total pain until they had me sit by the window and he stuck his head out. THEN he was just fine. I am definitely dosing him with Benadryl before I try to take him to Labe.

So about 5K outside of Ian’s site, we broke the car. This is my first break down and we were lucky that we were so close to where we were going so we just walked the rest of the way and left the driver to deal with the car trouble. The dude took me right to Ian’s house (apparently everyone knows that house because it is Bogart-ing a pump) and said he would have my backpack sent over when either the car was fixed or he could find someone with a moto to go back and get it (it showed up like an hour later). It was awesome, because I got a free ride to Ian’s site AND they gave me a Fanta and some prawn crackers!

So Ian was surprised/happy to see me, as he has been REALLY excommunique up there and we chatted for awhile about what our first couple of weeks at site were like and then he showed me his groupement’s community garden and we diagnosed one woman’s plot with a fungal problem and told her how to fix it (difference made?). Then we ate some good peanut sauce at his rice and sauce lady’s place and brought half back for Yogi.

For dinner we decided to make an eggplant-tomato pasta sauce with macaroni and banana chips (MAN I love banana chips!!) and invited his neighbor to eat with us. As Ian was preparing the sauce, I cleaned (more like organized) his hut. I mean, the man is truly a bachelor, the place was a WRECK. I just couldn’t stand it anymore so I started putting things away. Laundry here, toiletries there, sachets for pepinieres in a pile over there, books together, etc, etc…it looked MUCH better when I was done and I gained a bit of sanity from doing it. I’ve never considered myself to be a neat freak, but maybe I am? Or maybe it was just REALLY BAD. I mean, he had used gauze pads and medical tape strewn over the floor from when he cut his foot the other day – FOUL! (As Yogi was chewing on them, he said not to worry, there’s only a LITTLE bit of AIDS in them LOL)

So we ate our dinner out on the patio-thingy under the stars with his neighbor and I got like 7 mosquito bites (I haven’t gotten ANY mosquito bites at my site). Then we had baths and played with the dog and chatted until probably midnight or so (considering that we go to bed at like 9 under normal circumstances, midnight is way late!).

In the morning we dragged ourselves out of bed early (like 6am) and ate leftover pasta for breakfast then headed to his favorite boutique where I bought 10 (kinda expensive) eggs. But hey, I need eggs, man! I just ate the last two of the ten eggs I bought at John’s site last Sunday today, so ten eggs for a week is about accurate. And hey, you know what’s awesome? You sooooooo don’t have to refrigerate eggs. I mean I bought those eggs over a week ago (by one day) and they were still good today (always test them in a cup of water – if they sink, they’re good).

We found a taxi going my way (an SUV, yay! The SUVs go a lot faster than the Peugeot station wagons so if you manage to get put in an [ancient] Land Cruiser or an SUV, you have hit the jackpot and will spend your whole bush taxi ride passing Peugeots that left way before you), and I took off. Yogi was a DEAR the whole way. And even though I was seated at a window, my window did not roll down. But he was no problem at all. I think it was a combination of several factors: he hadn’t slept too much (midnight to 6am as opposed to like 8-8), I played with him in the morning to wear him out, he had eaten and drank and peed just before we got in the taxi and it was morning so it wasn’t hot yet. This is like, the perfect convergence of circumstances and I don’t expect it to be replicated often so I’m thinking Benadryl is my new best friend and I’m sooooo glad I decided to bring a box of it with me to Africa.

When I got back to my site, people were happy to see me and salue-d and after depositing my stuff at my house I decided to start getting out there and DOING stuff (I was inspired, or maybe shamed? By Ian’s progress at his site and decided it was time to start getting stuff done). So I went to the tailor to have my wrap skirt repaired (and he did it for free as a cadeau for me, isn’t that nice?), I bought an onion from my friend’s sister for the first time (my new strategy is to not buy onions on marche day and every day go to her little stand to buy an onion for my eggs as it gives me a chance to get out of the house to do something, make a friend, and be out in the community), and then I went to the Sous-Prefet’s office with it in my head to ask him the million questions I had been putting off.

I found out so much stuff! First of all, you CAN buy eggs at my site on marche day and they are CHEAP (he said 3 for 1 mil, just today I paid a mil EACH at Ian’s site – at John’s site they are 800 each). Hoodia is supposed to show me where to buy them this marche day (Thursday). He is thinking of a person who would be a good French and Pular tutor for me (someone “serious”), as PC gives a small reimbursement monthly to pay for language tutoring at site and I really want to take advantage of that, especially since everyone here keeps telling me how bad my French is and I want to have the blank stare less when people talk to me in Pular. I figured out the dude who is in charge of the youth, found out who the president of the women’s groupement is, discovered that there are something like 23 groupements in my Sous-Prefecture, got the ball rolling on having my dabas (hoes) made, found out that there are THREE places to get phone service in our Sous-Prefecture, one of which is only 2k away and easy to get to albeit unreliable (the other two I would either have to take a bush taxi to get to or climb up a big mountain in the bush and he doesn’t want me to do that), finally found my high frequency radio (going to try to call PC Conakry on it tomorrow), figured out who to ask for a little area to have a garden close to water (and not far away, either, just by the marigot), discovered you can get egg sandwiches at the Café and got the carpenter to come to my house and measure for screens for my windows and front door.

He said my screens will be ready tomorrow. I was like, “awesome”. He is also going to make me something to store my clothes on which will be great. But really, just having the screens will be great. For several reasons. One is that I will be able to leave the windows open after the sun goes down to let it cool off in here without fear of a million insects flying in (but this will also require me to fashion curtains to deter prying eyes). Another is that a screen door (with a latch!) will prevent people from just walking into my house and allow me to leave my door open for light and airflow.

So basically I finally got some stuff done today! In addition to fighting off petites (seriously, you need to stay on the porch, can’t wait for that screen door!) and sitting at the SP’s house for awhile watching them tune up his motorcycle to get away from all the petites. I also told the SP to spread the word to the groupement presidents to come introduce themselves, tell me about their groupement and when they meet so that I can start doing my Etude de Milieu, which I will commence using the PACA tools to assess the community’s needs and discover what cool places there are in my site that I don’t yet know about.

Tomorrow the SP’s secretary general is going to take me to the locations of the garden and the closest reseau spot, my screens should be installed and the three teenage boys that come by to greet me every other day or so are going to teach me to make rice and peanut sauce (peanut sauce is my favorite of the sauces).

Starting to feel like a real volunteer!

Second Death in Africa

Upon my return from Ian’s site today I was dumping my old dishwater into another bucket of dirty water when suddenly a carcass appeared.

RIP Melvin:














I’m not sure why it makes me kind of sad that Melvin drowned, probably because I had named him Melvin. Just before I went to dump the water, I was by the latrine door and noticed about two evenings-worth of Melvin-poo pellets by the door (where they always are) and had the thought that my little mouse friend was doing well and wondering again where he hides all through the day. He must have drowned just this morning when I was on my way back from Ian’s site, judging by how much poo there was.

At first I just pitched him over the side of my porch with all the food scraps but looking down on him it didn’t seem right (and also seemed like it would STINK very soon) so I tried to dig a hole with a stick but that didn’t work so I opted for putting him under a rock up against the house. This still might stink, but I don’t have a daba (hoe) to bury him. Maybe I will try to find one tomorrow.

So moral of the story: if you want to kill the mouse in your house in Africa, train him to think there is food in buckets by leaving a bucket with veggies in it on the floor (turns out he WAS eating some of my food, namely, avocadoes), then take that bucket away and leave out a bucket of dirty dish water.

RIP Melvin.

Melvin and Bush Notes

There’s a mouse in my house. I know this because I just saw him with my own eyes. As I was brushing my teeth after enjoying a dinner of spaghetti alla olive oil, onion, garlic and tomato, I heard a noise in the living room/kitchen area and went to investigate. At first I didn’t see anything and just as I was about to turn around and go back to my room, I saw him! He came from behind the table that holds my stove and skittered along the wall. He stopped in the beam of my headlamp and for a moment I considered swatting him with the broom, but what was that really going to do? You can’t kill a mouse with a broom. You can’t even kill one of those weird red butt-bugs that are all over my house with a broom. Then he ran off under my big bookshelf-thingy. I have suspected his existence for awhile now, especially when I’m sweeping little pellets of mouse poop out the door every morning, but now I have confirmation. I don’t really know what to do about it. He hasn’t been eating my food. There are no such thing as mouse traps in Guinea. So, I named him Melvin.

In other news, I did not make it to Ian’s site today because my counterpart knocked on my door this morning and told me we were going to the pepiniere. So that’s what I did. And basically sat around watching people work except for the ten minutes where I helped fill a few sachets with dirt for some orange seeds.

Afterwards, I went to the President of the Groupement’s house and he showed me a picture of the last volunteer (second person to show me a picture of her, she was popular) and then we ate rice and sauce. And THEN he took me across the street to his little plantation where he grows all KINDS of stuff: manioc (of course), pineapples, avocadoes, mangoes, LETTUCE, tomatoes, bananas, oranges, other stuff I am now forgetting. I asked if he sold this stuff at market and he laughed and said “No! It’s for my kids!” He has a big family. There was one pineapple that is almost ready to pick and he said, “That pineapple is for you. Come back in maybe 2 months and I will give it to you.” That’s a HUGE thing because pineapples take 18 months to grow. I said thank you. Then we went back over to his compound and he showed me some trees the last volunteer had planted for him (including some Moringa, but apparently she didn’t explain to him what it does because he looked at me quizzically when I said it was really good for eating and for the soil and all kinds of stuff…or maybe my French is that bad? Who knows.). If I understood him correctly, the last volunteer lived in his compound but they didn’t want me to live there because it is too far from town (and it is pretty far, right next to the pepiniere and river).

Also, I got my first bush note today! (a bush note is just, well, a note, that one sends with a bush taxi to the town they intend and hope someone figures out where the person lives and delivers it). Just before I was fixing to leave for the pepiniere a woman I didn’t know with a huge plate of bananas on her head walked into my yard and up to my porch and said some stuff in Pular and handed me a little folded up piece of paper. I looked at it and saw that it was addressed to “Dorian” and so I said, “::name of Ian’s site removed::?!” And she nodded. So I said thank you and she walked away. And then I read the note and it made me laugh out loud and was a nice start to the day.

It said:
“20 Fevrier 2009. Dorian, Where the fuck were you last Saturday? You better come to my marche day this week. So my counterpart still hasn’t shown up in town, and I can’t get a response from anyone over the HF radio. Have you gotten through? If so, tell Sue I want the following: gauze pads (3 packs), Beta-Sept (2 bottles), sunscreen (2 bottles), insect repellent (3 bottles), medical tape, Band-Aids and a fucking partridge in a god-damned pear tree. But I didn’t need to waste that precious space because you ain’t gonna pansy-out on me tomorrow, are you? I can tell you all this and more over the din of my village’s weekly foray into intensive mercantilism. Bon (and I can SOOOO hear him saying “Bon”). I want to make a trip your way in a few days, maybe Thursday I’ll strap my bike to a bush taxi and ride it home at the end of the day. By Jesus, this is an incredible way to communicate with the world. I hope to God I don’t get sick out here. Later, Ian”

So it kinda made me feel bad that I didn’t make it to his site today as I had intended, but hey, the travail called and I had to answer. My plan for tomorrow is to go to the “taxi gare” in the morning and get in the first taxi that has a free seat. This could mean I will go to Ian’s site, to the North, or to John’s site, to the South (market day is tomorrow at John’s site). It all depends on which taxi has a free seat. If I don’t go to Ian’s site tomorrow, I will for sure go next Saturday (inshallah!) and send this bush note to him:

“Ian ::Last Name Here:: -ou bien- Ousmane Bah (Porto) ::name of Ian’s site here:: 2/21/09 Dearest Ian, I am sorry that I did not come to see you today or last Saturday. I’ve had every good intention of coming, though I admit last week it was laziness that precluded me from voyaging to ::Ian’s site::. Today, however, I woke up with the intention of going to the “taxi gare” to wait for a ::Ian’s site::-bound car but before I left my house, my homologue “conk-conked” and told me I had to go to the pepiniere today. Je suis desolee. However, tomorrow (Sunday), I am going to go sit at the “taxi gare” and get in the first taxi that stops with a free seat. Granted, the first taxi with a free seat could be going to ::John’s site:: in which case I will attempt to go your way next Saturday and you will receive this note. But it’s not all bad news, I can relay your list to Sue while I am in reseau. If you do come to visit on Thursday, bring any books you have finished reading, please! I still have not even located my HF radio, let alone attempted to use it so I have no info for you there. I also hope you don’t get sick up there because I did not receive your bush note until this morning, though you sent it yesterday. If you do fall ill, please put yourself on a taxi, not just a note! <3, Dorian P.S. Come quick, I am being attacked by a mob of angry petites!”

Bush notes are fun. Seriously, this is what my life has become. It’s a frigging highlight of the week to get a random note on a bush taxi. I think I might start sending bush notes just for the hell of it. Like maybe I’ll try to send one to Scott, which would have to change taxis at John’s site before getting to his site and would be quite the experiment. In fact I could send one to John and see if it gets there because he lives in a bigger city and not everyone knows him the way they do in small villages like mine and Ian’s. I could even try to send one all the way to Haute! Ok, seriously. This thought pattern is getting pathetic.

One last thing. When I told the President of the Groupement that I had a puppy he immediately asked if I would give it to him when I went back to the States. That way he could tell everyone that it was my dog, kinda like he tells everyone about the trees the last volunteer planted. I said maybe. I said it’s possible I will love him too much and want to take him with me but we’ll see. So I think I will use him as my dog-sitter when Yogi gets bigger (he is too small to defend himself or take care of himself at all, really, so I just take him with me as of now), as a sort of test-run. If I do leave Yogi in Africa, I want him to be somewhere he will be happy.

Well, wish me luck on finding a taxi tomorrow!

It's Raining!

Hey! It’s raining! Weird! It’s about 10pm and I awoke to hear a noise on my tin roof that I hadn’t heard before – rain! This is very bizarre as it is the dry season, but I’ll take it! I got out of bed and put a couple of buckets outside in the latrine to catch whatever does fall, though I’m not confident it will be much. But hey, even a little is better than nothing!

And now I shall fall back asleep to the sound of raindrops on this parched African earth.