Well today I did as planned and went with Alysun to his plantation. What I didn’t know was that it would turn into a five-hour mountain-traversing excursion.
So here’s how it happened. He showed up at my house an hour late (9am), par for the course in Guinea. I told him he was late and he said he had slept in (meaning he missed the 6am first prayer which my friend Ousmane claims he is ALWAYS up for). Then Yogi escaped. And ran straight to the Sous Prefet’s house, where I managed to catch him. The SP’s house is where he stayed for the two weeks I was in Conakry/Haute, and I have taken him there a few times but I still found it funny that he knew his way there and just went straight up to the kids to start playing. Mr. SP was not annoyed. I think he was actually amused. So I caught him.
And carried him all the way back to my house, enduring all the “is that your baby?” and “where is his cord?” comments the whole way, to which I just responded the noncommittal “mm-hmm”.
So we finally got on our way. We stopped by Alpha’s house to get a bag and then walked to the fields with Alpha and my friend the Secretaire (who took me to the reseau spot that one time but whom I haven’t seen a lot of since). The two of them eventually broke off at their fields and we kept going. I didn’t think it would be that much farther BUT IT WAS. So we get to the foot of the mountain, one of the beautiful, sheer-faced mountains that surround my village and we start going up it. Like, the boulder-y part. And I’m thinking, “where are we going? We are supposed to be going to a fruit tree plantation.” So we keep going. And going. And going. Into “vrai” (real) African jungle. And the whole time I’m thinking, “I’m just INVITING a snake to come bite me” (did I mention there was a snake at my house the other day that the nice dude who owns the boutique at the carrefour by my house came, saw it and said “tu as le raison” and killed it with my hoe? No? Well it happened.), as I push branches aside and step in places I can’t see. And nearly fall down embankments off the foot-wide path we are following. He is in front of me with a coup-coup (kind of like a machete with a hooked end), cutting branches and vines and clearing the way through what they call “le foret” but I call the African jungle, or bush.
After what seems like forever we finally get to a stream and he says, “here we are!” and I look around and there are about 20 banana trees and I am thinking this guy is kind of a lunatic to come all the way out here for 20 banana trees he could plant a million other places (he later tells me he cannot abandon this land which is not only the banana trees but also a literal mountainside of bush land his father [deceased] used to plant with rice, because it was claimed by “le vieux” [an old person] so it would be disrespectful not to continue. I asked why his father picked that land and he didn’t seem to know.) So we harvest some bananas and little piments (hot peppers) and he shows me a few orange and avocado tree seedlings and then he says we will descend the other way.
Which was much harder than the ascent. I slipped and fell at least 50 times in total and have all the scratches, bruises and broken pinky toe to prove it (Ousmane says my toe isn’t broken because if it was it would flop around and it just has a nasty bruise on it and hurts so apparently it’s not broken). I also got my clean clothes dirty and aggravated my infected toe (right next to my “broken” toe). Basically I was not prepared for this expedition into the bush, thinking this “plantation” was closer to the fields.
Anyway, after slipping and sliding down the mountain for over an hour (and heroically biting back the frustrated tears that DESPERATELY wanted to come), we get to more level ground and walk through some MORE fields where he points out all his different family members working their plots, explains he wants to plant more fruit trees here, eats some weird paste-looking dish I haven’t seen before (sans invitacion) at his older sister’s plot (whose kid cries and screams at the sight of my white skin), then takes me to his house to deposit the bananas and clean his shoes (at this point we have been voyaging for 4-4.5 hours). After this we FINALLY set off to go back to my house. I was relieved to get home.
I did get some green bananas out of it (which tomorrow I will turn into banana chips) and also got to see some absolutely brilliant (pissed I didn’t bring my camera) views of the mountains, my village and the fields (basically all the countryside surrounding my [what from up there looked pitifully tiny] village). I’ll have to go up there again but I’ll do it when I have a visitor and am prepared for hiking (hear that, dad???).
Thoroughly exhausted and relishing sleep I bid you goodnight.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Project Number One
So I have gotten the ball rolling for my first project. It is not an AgFo project, but rather a health project, but I believe it is important for the people of my village to have access to clean water.
The pump that had been working since I got here broke a few weeks ago, leaving my village center, a Sous Prefecture, without access to clean, drinkable water. This doesn’t mean TOO much to me personally, because I have a fancy filter and bleach and I could drink well water if I had to using those but people here don’t have filters and most of them don’t know that bleaching their water will help (or using Sur-Eau – which is basically bleach – a product donated by Unicef and PSI and says right on the bottle “NOT FOR SALE. GIVEN FREELY.” [in French] but is inevitably boofed and sold at 3 mille a bottle or about 60 cents, which can still be too much for a family here trying make ends meet and living on a dollar a day, as many do in Africa).
Anyway, in total there are three broken pumps in my village and one new one being built at the mosque, but as my friend Amadou said, once it’s finished it will be broken very soon since it will be the only working pump. And who knows when it will be finished as it is. The closest working pump is in a smaller village that is “far” (I have heard 2.5 – 5 kilometers, which is too far for the average family to go, carrying it on their head). And, like the future mosque pump, will be broken soon due to all the demand.
Anyway, the other three pumps are not completely broken, they are reparable but what my Sous Prefet said is that the NGOs that built those pumps did what lots of NGOs do and said here’s your pump, if it breaks it’s up to the community to fix it, but then did not train anyone in the community how to fix it nor suggest a system of collecting money from pump-users to use to repair it (non-sustainable development YAHOO!), so when it breaks, it stays broken. And this is after putting in a $10-20 THOUSAND dollar investment PER PUMP. Ooh it makes me so mad!
Anyway then he told me that the community says it should be the government who pays to repair the pumps, even though they don’t BELONG to the government, they belong to the community, so no one pays for repairs and as I said before, pumps stay broken, people drink water from the river and are confused as to why they are always sick and grandma dies.
Which brings me to my project. Peace Corps has a funded project program called Peace Corps Partnership Program which, once I have written a proposal and budget and had it approved by my APCD (WOOO ABDOUL!), I can put on the internet and tell all my family and friends to go make a tax-deductible donation. And groups like Friends of Guinea (made up of Guinea RPCVs and friends/family) and any stranger, really, who has a few bucks to send to help people have drinkable water in Africa. Once I have gotten all the money pledged, the project closes and eventually the money shows up in my in-country bank account. I then use it to fix pumps.
Here’s the catch. In order to do a funded project, the community has to give 25% of the cost either in cash or in-kind donations like material and labor. So this is what I told my Sous Prefet. I said, if this is something the community wants, we can fix all three pumps, they just have to come up with 25% of the budget. He said he would bring it up to the President of the CRD and seemed excited about the prospect. Apparently the dude who would do the fixing lives in the bigger city to the South so he would have to come up and do the estimate. And I will bring up the idea of training someone IN MY VILLAGE to do simple repairs. And maybe sensibilizing the community about how NOT to break the pump. Or have someone who does all the pumping all day, paid for by a small fee per bidon (this is the system in a lot of places), who knows how not to break the pump. Hey look I just created jobs! (now I’m a Small Enterprise Development volunteer TOO!)
So anyway. If the community really wants this, they will get the guy up here to do the estimate and show me how they can give 25% of the cost. And then I will write the proposal. And maybe we will once again have clean water. Inshallah.
I call this my first project unless you want to count my other, unintended project: when I was first getting my yard ready for planting, the petites would help me collect all the trash out of it and they got it in their head somehow that I wanted old rusty nails and pieces of metal wherever they could find it. So inevitably kids come by my house about 10 times a day with handfuls of this stuff expecting bon-bons (candy or gum). Sometimes I give it to them, other times I don’t. I don’t really want all these rusty metal pieces but came to think of it as such: it’s better than them all sitting in the ground waiting for a barefooted kid (as they all are more often than not) to step on it and end up with tetanus. So there you go. Health project #2.
Plus my hand washing sensibilizations. I put a poster on my door that I got from Unicef that espouses the joys of washing your hands with soap, especially in the following circumstances: before cooking, before eating, before breastfeeding, after using the latrine and after cleaning your baby’s butt cause they pooped everywhere (“nettoyage anal du l’enfant”). Everyone that comes to my house reads the poster (complete with pictures, more effective) over and over again and I make people wash their hands with soap after working in the garden (another important time to wash with soap as there is animal feces all over the place). Health Project #3.
Other health-related activities: sensibilizing my friends that malaria comes ONLY from mosquitoes (you can’t get it from eating raw mangoes or getting wet from the rain), AIDS facts (can only get it from contact with blood or sex – can’t get it from mosquitoes or shaking hands or hugging. But then Crazy asked me if you can get it from using the same razor to shave your head. And I was like ooh…good question. Because if the razor nicks the person with AIDS and gets blood on it, yeah, so I wouldn’t take the risk of using the same razor [they use straight razor blades] but didn’t want to scare him either – hey another reason not to leave your used razor blades on the ground [as if little kids putting them in their mouths wasn’t enough]), the wonderfulness of condom use (“You know what’s cheap? Prudence [the local brand of condoms, sold for NO MORE than mille franc for three or about 20 cents, Crazy said he thought they were cent franc each which is, like, 2 cents]. You know what’s expensive? AIDS.”)
As far as AgFo projects? I got my counterpart really intersted in promoting Moringa, showed about 7 people how to fill Coyah (water) sachets for a pepiniere and how to find good soil to put in them (under a tree. Leaf litter = good, dark soil), did organic fertilizer (Gliricidia leaves) with about 7 people (who all thought I was crazy…”you’re going to rip up leaves and mix them into your soil? WHY? You could just use chemical fertilizer!”), and occasionally work with a groupement doing a big pepiniere for reforestation (but they pretty much know what they’re doing and don’t really need my help, thanks to the last volunteer!). What I really hope to get done at the end of my two years is plant a bunch of Moringa in public places (and in peoples’ yards) and show people how to use it and why it is important. If that’s all I get done, I’ll be happy. I am afraid I have already ruined my credibility, though, because due to extenuating circumstances I did not get my garden up and running early enough and now have the most pathetic garden in town. Plus I planted a bunch of sort of “experimental” stuff, some of which is not working out. So it looks like I don’t know what I’m doing. Seriously.
Every time I feel kind of useless and like I’m not doing anything/nothing is happening, I should refer back to this entry.
The pump that had been working since I got here broke a few weeks ago, leaving my village center, a Sous Prefecture, without access to clean, drinkable water. This doesn’t mean TOO much to me personally, because I have a fancy filter and bleach and I could drink well water if I had to using those but people here don’t have filters and most of them don’t know that bleaching their water will help (or using Sur-Eau – which is basically bleach – a product donated by Unicef and PSI and says right on the bottle “NOT FOR SALE. GIVEN FREELY.” [in French] but is inevitably boofed and sold at 3 mille a bottle or about 60 cents, which can still be too much for a family here trying make ends meet and living on a dollar a day, as many do in Africa).
Anyway, in total there are three broken pumps in my village and one new one being built at the mosque, but as my friend Amadou said, once it’s finished it will be broken very soon since it will be the only working pump. And who knows when it will be finished as it is. The closest working pump is in a smaller village that is “far” (I have heard 2.5 – 5 kilometers, which is too far for the average family to go, carrying it on their head). And, like the future mosque pump, will be broken soon due to all the demand.
Anyway, the other three pumps are not completely broken, they are reparable but what my Sous Prefet said is that the NGOs that built those pumps did what lots of NGOs do and said here’s your pump, if it breaks it’s up to the community to fix it, but then did not train anyone in the community how to fix it nor suggest a system of collecting money from pump-users to use to repair it (non-sustainable development YAHOO!), so when it breaks, it stays broken. And this is after putting in a $10-20 THOUSAND dollar investment PER PUMP. Ooh it makes me so mad!
Anyway then he told me that the community says it should be the government who pays to repair the pumps, even though they don’t BELONG to the government, they belong to the community, so no one pays for repairs and as I said before, pumps stay broken, people drink water from the river and are confused as to why they are always sick and grandma dies.
Which brings me to my project. Peace Corps has a funded project program called Peace Corps Partnership Program which, once I have written a proposal and budget and had it approved by my APCD (WOOO ABDOUL!), I can put on the internet and tell all my family and friends to go make a tax-deductible donation. And groups like Friends of Guinea (made up of Guinea RPCVs and friends/family) and any stranger, really, who has a few bucks to send to help people have drinkable water in Africa. Once I have gotten all the money pledged, the project closes and eventually the money shows up in my in-country bank account. I then use it to fix pumps.
Here’s the catch. In order to do a funded project, the community has to give 25% of the cost either in cash or in-kind donations like material and labor. So this is what I told my Sous Prefet. I said, if this is something the community wants, we can fix all three pumps, they just have to come up with 25% of the budget. He said he would bring it up to the President of the CRD and seemed excited about the prospect. Apparently the dude who would do the fixing lives in the bigger city to the South so he would have to come up and do the estimate. And I will bring up the idea of training someone IN MY VILLAGE to do simple repairs. And maybe sensibilizing the community about how NOT to break the pump. Or have someone who does all the pumping all day, paid for by a small fee per bidon (this is the system in a lot of places), who knows how not to break the pump. Hey look I just created jobs! (now I’m a Small Enterprise Development volunteer TOO!)
So anyway. If the community really wants this, they will get the guy up here to do the estimate and show me how they can give 25% of the cost. And then I will write the proposal. And maybe we will once again have clean water. Inshallah.
I call this my first project unless you want to count my other, unintended project: when I was first getting my yard ready for planting, the petites would help me collect all the trash out of it and they got it in their head somehow that I wanted old rusty nails and pieces of metal wherever they could find it. So inevitably kids come by my house about 10 times a day with handfuls of this stuff expecting bon-bons (candy or gum). Sometimes I give it to them, other times I don’t. I don’t really want all these rusty metal pieces but came to think of it as such: it’s better than them all sitting in the ground waiting for a barefooted kid (as they all are more often than not) to step on it and end up with tetanus. So there you go. Health project #2.
Plus my hand washing sensibilizations. I put a poster on my door that I got from Unicef that espouses the joys of washing your hands with soap, especially in the following circumstances: before cooking, before eating, before breastfeeding, after using the latrine and after cleaning your baby’s butt cause they pooped everywhere (“nettoyage anal du l’enfant”). Everyone that comes to my house reads the poster (complete with pictures, more effective) over and over again and I make people wash their hands with soap after working in the garden (another important time to wash with soap as there is animal feces all over the place). Health Project #3.
Other health-related activities: sensibilizing my friends that malaria comes ONLY from mosquitoes (you can’t get it from eating raw mangoes or getting wet from the rain), AIDS facts (can only get it from contact with blood or sex – can’t get it from mosquitoes or shaking hands or hugging. But then Crazy asked me if you can get it from using the same razor to shave your head. And I was like ooh…good question. Because if the razor nicks the person with AIDS and gets blood on it, yeah, so I wouldn’t take the risk of using the same razor [they use straight razor blades] but didn’t want to scare him either – hey another reason not to leave your used razor blades on the ground [as if little kids putting them in their mouths wasn’t enough]), the wonderfulness of condom use (“You know what’s cheap? Prudence [the local brand of condoms, sold for NO MORE than mille franc for three or about 20 cents, Crazy said he thought they were cent franc each which is, like, 2 cents]. You know what’s expensive? AIDS.”)
As far as AgFo projects? I got my counterpart really intersted in promoting Moringa, showed about 7 people how to fill Coyah (water) sachets for a pepiniere and how to find good soil to put in them (under a tree. Leaf litter = good, dark soil), did organic fertilizer (Gliricidia leaves) with about 7 people (who all thought I was crazy…”you’re going to rip up leaves and mix them into your soil? WHY? You could just use chemical fertilizer!”), and occasionally work with a groupement doing a big pepiniere for reforestation (but they pretty much know what they’re doing and don’t really need my help, thanks to the last volunteer!). What I really hope to get done at the end of my two years is plant a bunch of Moringa in public places (and in peoples’ yards) and show people how to use it and why it is important. If that’s all I get done, I’ll be happy. I am afraid I have already ruined my credibility, though, because due to extenuating circumstances I did not get my garden up and running early enough and now have the most pathetic garden in town. Plus I planted a bunch of sort of “experimental” stuff, some of which is not working out. So it looks like I don’t know what I’m doing. Seriously.
Every time I feel kind of useless and like I’m not doing anything/nothing is happening, I should refer back to this entry.
Monday, June 22, 2009
The Perfect Package
For all of you out there just dying to send me a package (sic), here is what the perfect package would include:
-Sargento colby jack cheese sticks (believe it or not, these make it and are AWESOME with eggs)
-Knorr (formerly Lipton) Sides w/Veggies
-Taco Bell/Del Taco sauce packets
-Fun-size 3 Musketeers, Milky Way & Butterfinger bars (thanks again Megan!!)
-A couple of magazines
-Pictures of you/family/friends/places
-A cute (sleeveless or short-sleeved) shirt (size M)
-Bumble Bee Tuna Individual Size Pouches
-New Music on CD
-Emergen-C/Crystal Light
-Jiffy Pop popcorn pans
-Stuff for my walls
-A new movie or TV on DVD
-Shaving cream (Barbasol is fine)
-Doggie shampoo
-Doggie treats/toys
-Indian food boil-in-bag pouches (esp. Palak Paneer, Jaipur Vegetables, Mattar Paneer)
-Letters
-Simple clothes catalog (J. Crew, Delia’s, etc… the tailors here can copy anything from a picture, especially cute dresses)
-Reach flosser cartridges
-Secret Clinical Strength Anti-Perspirant
-Chapstick (no SPF please! Unless it’s Carmex Click Stick SPF 15)
-Ziploc Bags (Good quality, Ziploc brand is actually best. The ones with the little plastic piece that you “zip” open and closed with are even better because they don’t wear out as easy. You can wrap all this other stuff up in them!)
-Mini-bar size bottles of liquor
-Batteries
-Surprises!
-Oh and some Chipotle burritos with extra sour cream would be awesome . See if you can work that out!
Things I need only one of:
-Dog training book
-Gorilla tape (maybe 2 of these – stronger than duct tape)
-Two Ears of Corn (book)
-Travel-size bottles for shampoo and whatnot
-Thick-strapped (no spaghetti straps) tank tops with built-in bras (check the sports section of Target – would like 3 or 4)
-Good set of small silver (or stainless steel or white gold) hoop earrings (the ones my dad sent one fell out somewhere so I only have one now, but they were perfect!)
-Heartgard/Frontline (for dogs)
-Physician’s Formula Blemish Healing Concealer (one shade darker than Fair Light)
-Prevention Insect Bite Relief spray
-Long shorts (below knees) made of light, loose sweatpant material (like goucho pants – would like 2-3 of these)
-Unscented shampoo (JASON makes a good one)
-Echinacea/Elderberry immune system supplements
-Phos Flur fluoride mouthwash
-A couple of travel-size toothpastes
My Guinean friends have requested:
-Sports Illustrated/other sports magazines especially featuring soccer
-Good-quality soccer jerseys (especially USA or Barcelona)
-Big box of crayons
-Non-chocolate individual-size candies (runts, nerds, sweet tarts, little skittles packets, stuff like that)
Things I don’t need any more of:
-Floss (though I would take Reach flosser cartridges cause they make life easy)
-Soap (including Dr. B’s)
-Toothpaste
-Laughing Cow cheese (we can get that here although only in original flavor so the swiss variety was cool to get but if you’re gonna send cheese go for the cheese sticks mentioned above!)
-Cheese powder
-Cinnamon
-Sunblock
-Hand sanitizer
-Vitamins
-Wipes (baby, antibacterial)
-Body lotion
-Hairties
-Sargento colby jack cheese sticks (believe it or not, these make it and are AWESOME with eggs)
-Knorr (formerly Lipton) Sides w/Veggies
-Taco Bell/Del Taco sauce packets
-Fun-size 3 Musketeers, Milky Way & Butterfinger bars (thanks again Megan!!)
-A couple of magazines
-Pictures of you/family/friends/places
-A cute (sleeveless or short-sleeved) shirt (size M)
-Bumble Bee Tuna Individual Size Pouches
-New Music on CD
-Emergen-C/Crystal Light
-Jiffy Pop popcorn pans
-Stuff for my walls
-A new movie or TV on DVD
-Shaving cream (Barbasol is fine)
-Doggie shampoo
-Doggie treats/toys
-Indian food boil-in-bag pouches (esp. Palak Paneer, Jaipur Vegetables, Mattar Paneer)
-Letters
-Simple clothes catalog (J. Crew, Delia’s, etc… the tailors here can copy anything from a picture, especially cute dresses)
-Reach flosser cartridges
-Secret Clinical Strength Anti-Perspirant
-Chapstick (no SPF please! Unless it’s Carmex Click Stick SPF 15)
-Ziploc Bags (Good quality, Ziploc brand is actually best. The ones with the little plastic piece that you “zip” open and closed with are even better because they don’t wear out as easy. You can wrap all this other stuff up in them!)
-Mini-bar size bottles of liquor
-Batteries
-Surprises!
-Oh and some Chipotle burritos with extra sour cream would be awesome . See if you can work that out!
Things I need only one of:
-Dog training book
-Gorilla tape (maybe 2 of these – stronger than duct tape)
-Two Ears of Corn (book)
-Travel-size bottles for shampoo and whatnot
-Thick-strapped (no spaghetti straps) tank tops with built-in bras (check the sports section of Target – would like 3 or 4)
-Good set of small silver (or stainless steel or white gold) hoop earrings (the ones my dad sent one fell out somewhere so I only have one now, but they were perfect!)
-Heartgard/Frontline (for dogs)
-Physician’s Formula Blemish Healing Concealer (one shade darker than Fair Light)
-Prevention Insect Bite Relief spray
-Long shorts (below knees) made of light, loose sweatpant material (like goucho pants – would like 2-3 of these)
-Unscented shampoo (JASON makes a good one)
-Echinacea/Elderberry immune system supplements
-Phos Flur fluoride mouthwash
-A couple of travel-size toothpastes
My Guinean friends have requested:
-Sports Illustrated/other sports magazines especially featuring soccer
-Good-quality soccer jerseys (especially USA or Barcelona)
-Big box of crayons
-Non-chocolate individual-size candies (runts, nerds, sweet tarts, little skittles packets, stuff like that)
Things I don’t need any more of:
-Floss (though I would take Reach flosser cartridges cause they make life easy)
-Soap (including Dr. B’s)
-Toothpaste
-Laughing Cow cheese (we can get that here although only in original flavor so the swiss variety was cool to get but if you’re gonna send cheese go for the cheese sticks mentioned above!)
-Cheese powder
-Cinnamon
-Sunblock
-Hand sanitizer
-Vitamins
-Wipes (baby, antibacterial)
-Body lotion
-Hairties
Saturday, June 20, 2009
First "Invitacion"...and my toe's gonna fall off
There is something really wrong with my toe. It’s the second one from the left on my left foot. I started to notice it hurting when I was fixing to leave Conakry a week ago and thought it was just that my nails were getting long so I cut my toenails. But then it just continued to get worse. It is now big, red, swollen, with white blisters and pain. Sometimes it’s hard to walk. It oozes a pus-y substance. It’s gross. People keep telling me to go to the hospital, where I can get a “medicament” (medicine) but honestly the hospital doesn’t have anything I don’t have in my medical kit and judging from the horror stories I have heard from other volunteers about Guinean medical care, I have decided to self-treat, which has not gone well, obviously. First I tried soaking my foot in bleach water and cleaning it with Beta-Sept (a surgical antiseptic scrub and the thing it appears Traian always tells you to try first about ANYTHING) and a brush, which hurts like hell but gets it clean. So I’ve been doing that, no improvement, keeps getting worse. So then I try putting triple antibiotic (Neosporin) on it at night, does nothing. My counterpart looks at it and says it’s the “champignon” or mushroom/fungus and that I got it from working in my yard in open-toed shoes (which EVERYONE here does, plus it started when I was in Conakry and hadn’t been working in any gardens for two weeks), so I start putting two different anti-fungal creams on it. Does nothing. Doesn’t seem to matter if I wear a band-aid or not. Definitely not getting better. If I weren’t invited to a wedding tomorrow, I would go to Telimele and call Traian but I don’t want to flake on the wedding especially when I don’t know whose wedding it is or the name of the person who invited me to say I can’t go. So if it’s not better Monday (it won’t be), I’m going to Telimele to call Traian and just hoping it’s not a flesh eating bacteria because I hear they send you back to the States for that. Shoot, I don’t even want to have to go to CONAKRY, let alone the States! Cross your fingers for me!
Monster toe aside, tonight I finally had my first “invitacion” to dinner with a family. I have eaten with the Sous Prefet’s family before, only twice “ensemble” and never with my hands, but it hasn’t been like a real “invitacion”. It was with the family of the dude who is my counterpart’s boss, but it wasn’t he who invited me, it was Mamadou Alpha Balde, who is an 11th grade student in Telimele but his family lives here and he was good friends with the last volunteer when she was here. He said he went running with her every day. Too bad I am way too “faible” for that! Anyway he is back in the village on “vacance” from school and had been by my house for a couple of days just talking and eating popcorn (Guineans LOVE it and can’t believe it when I tell them it is just corn and oil. And salt. Wait til I put cheese powder on it. I “invitacion-ed” 5 or 6 boys who were at my house yesterday and they all kept taking handfuls and exclaiming “c’est doux!”). Yesterday I had said that I don’t have a family here like the last volunteer did (she lived in a hut on a family’s compound, like many volunteers), I live alone in my own compound and the closest thing I have to a family is the Sous Prefet’s family. Anyway he said that he would take me to his house and introduce me to his family today. And I was like YAY! So when he came by to get me, Yogi and I went over and sat around and drank “attaya” (a green tea that can take hours to totally finish, men do it a lot here) and ate fresh peanuts that the family farms themselves. There was a goat tied up to a post that had a 2-day old goatlet (I guess in English we call it a “kid”? In Pular it is a “bao hun kun”). The goatlet was super cute but the mom was MEAN and wouldn’t give the goatlet all the milk it wanted. And when the family would flip the goat over and hold it down and try to get the goatlet to suckle, it wouldn’t really do it, only when the goat was standing up like it would normally feed, and that’s when it would kick the goatlet and walk away. Talk about a bad mom!! The second of the two goatlets had already died (might have been stillborn) and if this goat keeps up like this, this one will die too. Soon. (I went back the next day and Alpha told me the baby goat had died because the mom was mean)
Then he wanted to go to the video club to watch the soccer match between Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire and I wanted to transplant my vegetable seedlings so he dropped me off at home and said he’d come get me for dinner.
So I transplanted my seedlings with the help of two of the neighborhood boys (I think they spy on me to see when I start working and then run over to help so I’ll give them lollipops. Smart kids.). So there is now a sunflower, zucchini, yellow zucchini, cucumber, bush beans, scarlet runner (a bean), corn (African, haven’t transplanted the sweet corn yet) and piment (African hot pepper) actually planted in the ground at my house. Lots of stuff never came up out of the “sachets” and the second round I only planted a few days ago so it hasn’t come up yet either.
Anyway then I washed all my dishes and sat on my porch “blague-ing” with Ousmane, this other student who has only recently started coming around and whose name I don’t know, and Ousmane II until Mamadou came to get me and I went to his house for dinner, which is only just down the road, across from the mosque, about a 2-3 minute walk.
So at first he was going to do what everyone does and give me a plastic chair and have me eat inside by myself but while he was getting the chairs I plopped down on an empty stool in the circle of the family, who had been waiting for me to arrive before they ate and said the word “ensemble”. And I think they were all a little surprised. Especially when I refused the spoon and said I wanted to eat with my hands like a Guinean, though I can NOT eat as fast as they do and was the last person finishing my triangle of the big plate. It was an awesome “mafe hakko bantara” (manioc leaf sauce) with fresh piments, just how I like it! And it was burning my fingers as I was eating it was so fresh and piping hot. And I love this family because they are like me and like to eat with A LOT of sauce. Like, more sauce than rice. Praise Allah.
It was the grandma who had made the sauce and I said “al barka” (God bless you) like 50 times and want to turn them into my family. There are a lot of them, including Aisiatou, who is one of two girls in the 10th grade here. I am trying to take her and the other 10th grade girl, Maimouna, to the girls’ conference in Mamou next month. Maimouna already said she could go, so now I have to figure out a way to raise the “community contribution” which is 15 mille per girl (or about $3). I think first thing I will do is ask the CRD (elected community office).
Also Madame Fofana who is a volunteer at the Centre de Sante made me “mafe tiga” (peanut sauce) for lunch today and sent it over with Nene and it was really good (she said she’d make it for me after I gave her my leftover produce before I left town last, which included potatoes, avocadoes and a coconut. I gave it to her because she said she only eats bread because she lives alone here and doesn’t have anything to cook with – her family lives in a big city to the south and her husband sends her money to live on which is why she is a volunteer but she hasn’t sort of “permanentized” her living situation i.e. setting up a “kitchen”). She also included her famous homemade piment sauce which is always a great touch to any plate of rice and sauce. And this morning Safi at the boutique had a pretty good peanut sauce, so when it comes down to it, I actually ate three meals of rice and sauce today. Now THAT’S truly Guinean.
Monster toe aside, tonight I finally had my first “invitacion” to dinner with a family. I have eaten with the Sous Prefet’s family before, only twice “ensemble” and never with my hands, but it hasn’t been like a real “invitacion”. It was with the family of the dude who is my counterpart’s boss, but it wasn’t he who invited me, it was Mamadou Alpha Balde, who is an 11th grade student in Telimele but his family lives here and he was good friends with the last volunteer when she was here. He said he went running with her every day. Too bad I am way too “faible” for that! Anyway he is back in the village on “vacance” from school and had been by my house for a couple of days just talking and eating popcorn (Guineans LOVE it and can’t believe it when I tell them it is just corn and oil. And salt. Wait til I put cheese powder on it. I “invitacion-ed” 5 or 6 boys who were at my house yesterday and they all kept taking handfuls and exclaiming “c’est doux!”). Yesterday I had said that I don’t have a family here like the last volunteer did (she lived in a hut on a family’s compound, like many volunteers), I live alone in my own compound and the closest thing I have to a family is the Sous Prefet’s family. Anyway he said that he would take me to his house and introduce me to his family today. And I was like YAY! So when he came by to get me, Yogi and I went over and sat around and drank “attaya” (a green tea that can take hours to totally finish, men do it a lot here) and ate fresh peanuts that the family farms themselves. There was a goat tied up to a post that had a 2-day old goatlet (I guess in English we call it a “kid”? In Pular it is a “bao hun kun”). The goatlet was super cute but the mom was MEAN and wouldn’t give the goatlet all the milk it wanted. And when the family would flip the goat over and hold it down and try to get the goatlet to suckle, it wouldn’t really do it, only when the goat was standing up like it would normally feed, and that’s when it would kick the goatlet and walk away. Talk about a bad mom!! The second of the two goatlets had already died (might have been stillborn) and if this goat keeps up like this, this one will die too. Soon. (I went back the next day and Alpha told me the baby goat had died because the mom was mean)
Then he wanted to go to the video club to watch the soccer match between Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire and I wanted to transplant my vegetable seedlings so he dropped me off at home and said he’d come get me for dinner.
So I transplanted my seedlings with the help of two of the neighborhood boys (I think they spy on me to see when I start working and then run over to help so I’ll give them lollipops. Smart kids.). So there is now a sunflower, zucchini, yellow zucchini, cucumber, bush beans, scarlet runner (a bean), corn (African, haven’t transplanted the sweet corn yet) and piment (African hot pepper) actually planted in the ground at my house. Lots of stuff never came up out of the “sachets” and the second round I only planted a few days ago so it hasn’t come up yet either.
Anyway then I washed all my dishes and sat on my porch “blague-ing” with Ousmane, this other student who has only recently started coming around and whose name I don’t know, and Ousmane II until Mamadou came to get me and I went to his house for dinner, which is only just down the road, across from the mosque, about a 2-3 minute walk.
So at first he was going to do what everyone does and give me a plastic chair and have me eat inside by myself but while he was getting the chairs I plopped down on an empty stool in the circle of the family, who had been waiting for me to arrive before they ate and said the word “ensemble”. And I think they were all a little surprised. Especially when I refused the spoon and said I wanted to eat with my hands like a Guinean, though I can NOT eat as fast as they do and was the last person finishing my triangle of the big plate. It was an awesome “mafe hakko bantara” (manioc leaf sauce) with fresh piments, just how I like it! And it was burning my fingers as I was eating it was so fresh and piping hot. And I love this family because they are like me and like to eat with A LOT of sauce. Like, more sauce than rice. Praise Allah.
It was the grandma who had made the sauce and I said “al barka” (God bless you) like 50 times and want to turn them into my family. There are a lot of them, including Aisiatou, who is one of two girls in the 10th grade here. I am trying to take her and the other 10th grade girl, Maimouna, to the girls’ conference in Mamou next month. Maimouna already said she could go, so now I have to figure out a way to raise the “community contribution” which is 15 mille per girl (or about $3). I think first thing I will do is ask the CRD (elected community office).
Also Madame Fofana who is a volunteer at the Centre de Sante made me “mafe tiga” (peanut sauce) for lunch today and sent it over with Nene and it was really good (she said she’d make it for me after I gave her my leftover produce before I left town last, which included potatoes, avocadoes and a coconut. I gave it to her because she said she only eats bread because she lives alone here and doesn’t have anything to cook with – her family lives in a big city to the south and her husband sends her money to live on which is why she is a volunteer but she hasn’t sort of “permanentized” her living situation i.e. setting up a “kitchen”). She also included her famous homemade piment sauce which is always a great touch to any plate of rice and sauce. And this morning Safi at the boutique had a pretty good peanut sauce, so when it comes down to it, I actually ate three meals of rice and sauce today. Now THAT’S truly Guinean.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Mary Jane
“Her name was Mary Jane, she sang like Etta James, she came and went so easily, and it’s strange how times have changed, I seen Mary yesterday and she don’t look the same to me…”
Dude. I really enjoy this Shwayze album. I will admit that most of the songs sound the same, but after having seen a couple of episodes of his MTV relaity show “Buzzin’”, named after his first single, he is endearing to me. His persona on the show doesn’t match up to a lot of his lyrics. And his partner, the white dude with the long brown hair…I am just loving it. I GROOVE to this shit and I want to give a CD (can they play CDs?) to the boite to play this stuff on club night (Thursday, Friday, Saturday…). They won’t understand what he’s saying but they can for sure move their bodies to this.
In all honesty, my departure from Hollywood and arrival in Africa is essentially a complete 180. Yes, I believe that everyone in the WORLD is obsessed with celebrity and the jadedness that enters your psyche in Hollywood is something I feel that people who have not lived/worked there can not understand.
When I talked to him, my dad made a rather serious commitment to coming to visit me and ever since then I have fantasized about what it would be like to introduce my dad to Guinea, what he would think of how I live here, how I communicate with people, the f-ing utter beauty of this country. I really hope he is able to come through and visit because it will be WORTH IT. Experiencing Africa at the VRAI village level is something you can never know as a tourist, and it is beautiful, simple, rustic, necessary.
Dude. I really enjoy this Shwayze album. I will admit that most of the songs sound the same, but after having seen a couple of episodes of his MTV relaity show “Buzzin’”, named after his first single, he is endearing to me. His persona on the show doesn’t match up to a lot of his lyrics. And his partner, the white dude with the long brown hair…I am just loving it. I GROOVE to this shit and I want to give a CD (can they play CDs?) to the boite to play this stuff on club night (Thursday, Friday, Saturday…). They won’t understand what he’s saying but they can for sure move their bodies to this.
In all honesty, my departure from Hollywood and arrival in Africa is essentially a complete 180. Yes, I believe that everyone in the WORLD is obsessed with celebrity and the jadedness that enters your psyche in Hollywood is something I feel that people who have not lived/worked there can not understand.
When I talked to him, my dad made a rather serious commitment to coming to visit me and ever since then I have fantasized about what it would be like to introduce my dad to Guinea, what he would think of how I live here, how I communicate with people, the f-ing utter beauty of this country. I really hope he is able to come through and visit because it will be WORTH IT. Experiencing Africa at the VRAI village level is something you can never know as a tourist, and it is beautiful, simple, rustic, necessary.
Monday, June 15, 2009
The Odyssey
That’s what I’ve decided this is. Tonight when I was having my dinner, a light rain falling on my corrugated tin roof, I put on my iPod and flipped nonchalantly to The Killers, an album from my days as a film student at CSULB (Hot Fuss), and remembered suffering the mosh pit that is the floor at the front of the stage at a Killers concert in LA with my friend Jackie, saying “fuck it” after 3-4 songs, allowing ourselves to be pulled out by big burly security guards and stalking to the back of the floor (where it was empty) to dance like idiots where we were sure all the people in the seats in the general vicinity were staring at us either enviously or laughing in cameraderie and both agreed that this would be our last Killers concert unless they came out with an amazing new album.
This past week I was in Conakry, putting together a video for JET (our peer support network), that ended up being a slideshow with a bunch of different volunteers explaining the hardest part about leaving the US, how they felt when they got to Guinea, what got them through training (training is a bitch and nothing like being an actual volunteer), how they felt when PC dropped them off at their site and drove away, things they did to integrate into the community, their favorite thing about their site and their advice to new trainees.
My answers: The hardest part about leaving the US was knowing I was putting my career on hold and knowing I would never have access to refrigerated water or sour cream (FALSE…can have both of those things in Conakry with some effort). When I first got to Guinea I felt like I needed to throw up. And then I did. Repeatedly. Also miserably hot and yet despite it all, kind of peaceful and relieved. The hardest part about living with a host family during training was not knowing what they wanted me to do and not understanding what they were saying to me. The things that got me through training were egg sandwiches at the carrefour, spending evenings at Chey Vicky’s (a bar where you hang out with fellow trainees after dinner), and going to the Bureau (PC base of operations) when I needed to talk or have a little piece of America. Or cry. And mail day. If you don’t get anything it’s really disappointing, direct your friends to my epic mailing guidelines post (linked on Right). When Peace Corps dropped me off at my site and drove away for good, I felt ready. I was happy to be in my own house with my own rules, have all my stuff with me and not in a suitcase, clean the place up and make it what I wanted it to be. I did not have the infamous feeling of wanting to run after the car yelling, “I’m not ready yet!” about which I was almost a little surprised. One thing I did to integrate at my site when I first got here was to only buy one onion a day. Since I cook for myself (don’t really have a family, though the SP’s family would be the closest), I use an onion or two every day for my meals, as it is pretty much the only vegetable readily available (and has Vitamin C!). So I would only buy one a day so that every day I HAD to leave my house and go to the carrefour and buy an onion from my onion lady, who always saluer-ed and was happy to sell me an onion: people saw me and while I might not have been comfortable, I was starting to be part of the community. My favorite thing about my site is that my dog that I got the night before we left training lives here with me . Also that everyone wants to saluer (greet) me and that I live on the carrefour (intersection) so lots of people walk by my house so I can say hello. Also that the lady I buy rice and sauce from every morning (for me and my dog to share) always seems happy to see me. And my onion lady. And my friends Ousmane and Nene. And the Sous Prefet and Madame and his whole family. And that it is ridiclously gorgeous here. If I had any advice for new trainees it would be that training is nothing like being a volunteer, language will come, your host family is really happy to have you, everything will get easier/seem normal with time, you WILL communicate with the States regularly if you make the effort and those pink and white lollipops with the black and white cow-like wrappers are the answer.
Another thing I have recently come to peace with: this is a ridiculously beautiful country. I have found myself thinking that often. Yesterday I was sitting on a transport truck in the late afternoon, trying to make it back to my site by the exact day I said I would (a feat in Guinea) and I was just staring out the open top of the bed, looking at rolling mountains, cliffs, clouds and streaks of sunlight and thinking: what a ridiculously beautiful place I live in. If you are going to come visit Guinea I recommend June. It doesn’t rain constantly, but just enough to make it fucking beautiful here.
The other thing was that when I got home my friend Ousmane said that he and my chauffer friend Emcee had been waiting for me in Telimele that day, KNOWING I was coming back that day and had left merely minutes before I arrived, disappointed. Emcee had told every passenger that the front was reserved for me and both Ousmane and Emcee said “WHEN DID YOU GET THERE??? We were waiting for you!” But of course Ousmane was at the carrefour when I arrived and he came to the truck to take my backpack down for me, then carried it to my house and accompanied me to the Sous Prefet’s house where my dog was beside himself to see me and Madame said Yogi annoyed her “only a little” and insisted on me eating some “mafe hakko” (sauce made from manioc leaves), my third rice and sauce of the day (and it was an awful bush taxi ride, I will say only that), but really I was grateful because it was late and I didn’t want to make dinner but enjoyed half a Milky Way bar I got at a Leb store in Conakry once I got home before I went to bed. During the night it rained HARD and at 2am I had to let my stinky dog in my bed. Today I bathed him in herbal shampoo (send me doggie shampoo, people!) so he can sleep there all night if he wants (put on the new sheets I bought from Paul’s friend at his site in Haute, they are pink and green tie-dyed – c’est jolie!). I also had a dream about eating (no, ordering, I woke up before the eating part) a Chipotle burrito (I went through the whole line and everything, telling them what to put on it, though sour cream was expensive and there was no corn salsa – WTF). It was disappointing not to have dreamed eating it. Zach’s brother brought two Chipotle burritos with him when he came last week (both of which Zach ate) so I recommend doing that if you come visit me. It doesn’t need refrigerating. Apparently nothing does (learned this living in Guinea).
All in all, basically I am saying life is good here, I have figured almost everything out. It took six months. Now I need to start actually doing projects. Which is an exciting yet daunting idea. MORINGA AND ORGANIC FERTILIZER!!!!
Hold on, Africa. You’re about to have a lot of trees planted in you! ;)
This past week I was in Conakry, putting together a video for JET (our peer support network), that ended up being a slideshow with a bunch of different volunteers explaining the hardest part about leaving the US, how they felt when they got to Guinea, what got them through training (training is a bitch and nothing like being an actual volunteer), how they felt when PC dropped them off at their site and drove away, things they did to integrate into the community, their favorite thing about their site and their advice to new trainees.
My answers: The hardest part about leaving the US was knowing I was putting my career on hold and knowing I would never have access to refrigerated water or sour cream (FALSE…can have both of those things in Conakry with some effort). When I first got to Guinea I felt like I needed to throw up. And then I did. Repeatedly. Also miserably hot and yet despite it all, kind of peaceful and relieved. The hardest part about living with a host family during training was not knowing what they wanted me to do and not understanding what they were saying to me. The things that got me through training were egg sandwiches at the carrefour, spending evenings at Chey Vicky’s (a bar where you hang out with fellow trainees after dinner), and going to the Bureau (PC base of operations) when I needed to talk or have a little piece of America. Or cry. And mail day. If you don’t get anything it’s really disappointing, direct your friends to my epic mailing guidelines post (linked on Right). When Peace Corps dropped me off at my site and drove away for good, I felt ready. I was happy to be in my own house with my own rules, have all my stuff with me and not in a suitcase, clean the place up and make it what I wanted it to be. I did not have the infamous feeling of wanting to run after the car yelling, “I’m not ready yet!” about which I was almost a little surprised. One thing I did to integrate at my site when I first got here was to only buy one onion a day. Since I cook for myself (don’t really have a family, though the SP’s family would be the closest), I use an onion or two every day for my meals, as it is pretty much the only vegetable readily available (and has Vitamin C!). So I would only buy one a day so that every day I HAD to leave my house and go to the carrefour and buy an onion from my onion lady, who always saluer-ed and was happy to sell me an onion: people saw me and while I might not have been comfortable, I was starting to be part of the community. My favorite thing about my site is that my dog that I got the night before we left training lives here with me . Also that everyone wants to saluer (greet) me and that I live on the carrefour (intersection) so lots of people walk by my house so I can say hello. Also that the lady I buy rice and sauce from every morning (for me and my dog to share) always seems happy to see me. And my onion lady. And my friends Ousmane and Nene. And the Sous Prefet and Madame and his whole family. And that it is ridiclously gorgeous here. If I had any advice for new trainees it would be that training is nothing like being a volunteer, language will come, your host family is really happy to have you, everything will get easier/seem normal with time, you WILL communicate with the States regularly if you make the effort and those pink and white lollipops with the black and white cow-like wrappers are the answer.
Another thing I have recently come to peace with: this is a ridiculously beautiful country. I have found myself thinking that often. Yesterday I was sitting on a transport truck in the late afternoon, trying to make it back to my site by the exact day I said I would (a feat in Guinea) and I was just staring out the open top of the bed, looking at rolling mountains, cliffs, clouds and streaks of sunlight and thinking: what a ridiculously beautiful place I live in. If you are going to come visit Guinea I recommend June. It doesn’t rain constantly, but just enough to make it fucking beautiful here.
The other thing was that when I got home my friend Ousmane said that he and my chauffer friend Emcee had been waiting for me in Telimele that day, KNOWING I was coming back that day and had left merely minutes before I arrived, disappointed. Emcee had told every passenger that the front was reserved for me and both Ousmane and Emcee said “WHEN DID YOU GET THERE??? We were waiting for you!” But of course Ousmane was at the carrefour when I arrived and he came to the truck to take my backpack down for me, then carried it to my house and accompanied me to the Sous Prefet’s house where my dog was beside himself to see me and Madame said Yogi annoyed her “only a little” and insisted on me eating some “mafe hakko” (sauce made from manioc leaves), my third rice and sauce of the day (and it was an awful bush taxi ride, I will say only that), but really I was grateful because it was late and I didn’t want to make dinner but enjoyed half a Milky Way bar I got at a Leb store in Conakry once I got home before I went to bed. During the night it rained HARD and at 2am I had to let my stinky dog in my bed. Today I bathed him in herbal shampoo (send me doggie shampoo, people!) so he can sleep there all night if he wants (put on the new sheets I bought from Paul’s friend at his site in Haute, they are pink and green tie-dyed – c’est jolie!). I also had a dream about eating (no, ordering, I woke up before the eating part) a Chipotle burrito (I went through the whole line and everything, telling them what to put on it, though sour cream was expensive and there was no corn salsa – WTF). It was disappointing not to have dreamed eating it. Zach’s brother brought two Chipotle burritos with him when he came last week (both of which Zach ate) so I recommend doing that if you come visit me. It doesn’t need refrigerating. Apparently nothing does (learned this living in Guinea).
All in all, basically I am saying life is good here, I have figured almost everything out. It took six months. Now I need to start actually doing projects. Which is an exciting yet daunting idea. MORINGA AND ORGANIC FERTILIZER!!!!
Hold on, Africa. You’re about to have a lot of trees planted in you! ;)
Monday, June 8, 2009
RIP Pagaille
So at IST Ian's cat Pagaille (it means "chaos" in French) just dropped dead out of nowhere. It was really weird and really sad (for me, anyway). So here is my tribute to Pagaille and his death.
Pagaille:
Pagaille surveys the damage the dogs made in my and Jake's room hours before he was found dead:
Pagaille dead and wrapped in his favorite toy, a blue plastic bag:
Ian digging the hole:
Pagaille in the hole:
We planted catnip seeds around it that Danyelle had gotten in the mail. We are awesome AgFo Hoes:
RIP Pagaille:
Yogi will miss you:
Pagaille:
Pagaille surveys the damage the dogs made in my and Jake's room hours before he was found dead:
Pagaille dead and wrapped in his favorite toy, a blue plastic bag:
Ian digging the hole:
Pagaille in the hole:
We planted catnip seeds around it that Danyelle had gotten in the mail. We are awesome AgFo Hoes:
RIP Pagaille:
Yogi will miss you:
My House
So I know you have been wondering what my house looks like, right? Well here you go!
My House:
Living Room:
Bedroom:
Latrine (uh...bathroom for you people in LA):
View from my porch (in the rain):
Me after my first rain bath:
Yogi in our house:
Ugly spider I killed in my house, note size by matchbook reference:
Yogi does not think he is too big for his bed:
My House:
Living Room:
Bedroom:
Latrine (uh...bathroom for you people in LA):
View from my porch (in the rain):
Me after my first rain bath:
Yogi in our house:
Ugly spider I killed in my house, note size by matchbook reference:
Yogi does not think he is too big for his bed:
Saturday, June 6, 2009
First Trip to Haute
Well…Western Haute, anyway. I am here at Paul’s site in Western Haute Guinea (eastern Guinea, which borders Mali, Cote D’Ivoire and Liberia). We got here by taking the mail run yesterday which was a LONG drive, but a good road so not too bad. I got to see Corinna’s site which was nice even though she is moving houses.
My first impression of Haute was that it isn’t much different from the rest of Guinea. It isn’t unbearably hot, no hotter than it is at my site, really, but in it’s defense we are entering rainy season so the sun is not at the height of strength right now, as it is in April and May. However on closer inspection there were some differences I noticed: a lot more huts and a lot more flat ground. That’s not to say there aren’t mountains in the distance, there are, but there is a lot of flat land around that is not overgrown with greenery like it is in Basse Cote and Fouta.
Today I was able to see Alison (G16), Ben (G16), Sacha (G17) and Nick’s (G15) sites. All but Nick live in huts and Sacha has this awesome 360 degree mural she has been painting on the inside walls of her hut.
My first impression of Haute was that it isn’t much different from the rest of Guinea. It isn’t unbearably hot, no hotter than it is at my site, really, but in it’s defense we are entering rainy season so the sun is not at the height of strength right now, as it is in April and May. However on closer inspection there were some differences I noticed: a lot more huts and a lot more flat ground. That’s not to say there aren’t mountains in the distance, there are, but there is a lot of flat land around that is not overgrown with greenery like it is in Basse Cote and Fouta.
Today I was able to see Alison (G16), Ben (G16), Sacha (G17) and Nick’s (G15) sites. All but Nick live in huts and Sacha has this awesome 360 degree mural she has been painting on the inside walls of her hut.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Seeds Sown
So I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to today, but not bad. I did not do laundry which means I have to bring dirty clothes to Conakry and wash there first thing. Which isn’t so bad, but it would have been nice to have clean clothes.
I did not want to work today, which is part of the reason (no, pretty much WHY) I did not get everything done that I would have in a perfect world.
There were a TON of petites here in the afternoon and BOY were they getting on my nerves. I kept telling them to go away and shutting my door and everything and they just WOULD NOT STOP annoying me. So finally I went outside to work on my garden, thinking that they would probably help me. And most of them did (and received bon-bons, even though most of them tried to act like I hadn’t already given them one and cop a second but I wouldn’t let them). The others, I said, “either help or leave” and they left. So I re-dug 2 more of the beds, threw out a bunch more stones and garbage and put on the gliricidia leaves as organic fertilizer. That leaves just one bed undone (of 6). I did not get around to cow poo or getting compost from the nasty garbage pile by my house, but I’ll do that when I get back first thing before I transplent my seedlings. I also need to go en brousse and find some Neem to use as a pesticide because there are bugs in the dirt and termites. Termites being the really malicious thing.
Which brings me to seedlings! I planted seeds in about 70 or so sachets, 2 seeds each. Here’s what I planted: Local: cucumber, corn (it’s like cow corn, not sweet corn), tomato, grapefruit, bell pepper. Shoot I forgot to plant the piment! I’ll try to do that in the morning before I leave. Then I planted a bunch of stuff sent from the States, which I am told won’t grow well because the seeds aren’t adapted to Africa, but I thought it was worth a shot: sweet corn, lettuce, zucchini, butterstick hybrid zucchini, tomato, bush beans, garden beans, scarlet runner, sunflowers, cucumber and sugar pea. Then it was getting dark so I did a few sachets with Moringa seeds but not as many as I would have liked. I did 3 sachets of most with 2 seeds each, a couple I only did one or two and then I did 6 or so of each corn since you have to plant them in rows of 3 (so, 4 plants, 3 rows of each). It has been raining pretty consistently although it did not rain yesterday and hasn’t rained today either (but could overnight). I told my friend Ousmane that if it doesn’t rain while I’m gone to come by every day and check the sachets and if they are dry, water them. He said he would. I am buying him shoes in Conakry so he better!!
When I get home in 2 weeks I have to finish fertilizing (and I’m hoping to get chicken poo in Conakry to put in the holes when I transplant the seedlings), put organic pesticide on, plant flower seeds along my walkway (dad and Marci sent a TON), fill more sachets and start planting more tree seeds. Especially Moringa. I have decided that is going to be my biggest project, getting Moringa trees planted all around town. It appears to have been my predecessor’s biggest project to put gliricidia in all the living fences, and she succeeded pretty well with that, and my goal will be Moringa. In living fences and just in public places, and show people how to use it, especially at the Centre de Sante so that they can prescribe it to pregnant women and infants.
All in all, I wish I could have planted more seeds today. Like filled all the sachets rather than just over half. Le sigh. This means I have to work super hard as soon as I get back.
I did not want to work today, which is part of the reason (no, pretty much WHY) I did not get everything done that I would have in a perfect world.
There were a TON of petites here in the afternoon and BOY were they getting on my nerves. I kept telling them to go away and shutting my door and everything and they just WOULD NOT STOP annoying me. So finally I went outside to work on my garden, thinking that they would probably help me. And most of them did (and received bon-bons, even though most of them tried to act like I hadn’t already given them one and cop a second but I wouldn’t let them). The others, I said, “either help or leave” and they left. So I re-dug 2 more of the beds, threw out a bunch more stones and garbage and put on the gliricidia leaves as organic fertilizer. That leaves just one bed undone (of 6). I did not get around to cow poo or getting compost from the nasty garbage pile by my house, but I’ll do that when I get back first thing before I transplent my seedlings. I also need to go en brousse and find some Neem to use as a pesticide because there are bugs in the dirt and termites. Termites being the really malicious thing.
Which brings me to seedlings! I planted seeds in about 70 or so sachets, 2 seeds each. Here’s what I planted: Local: cucumber, corn (it’s like cow corn, not sweet corn), tomato, grapefruit, bell pepper. Shoot I forgot to plant the piment! I’ll try to do that in the morning before I leave. Then I planted a bunch of stuff sent from the States, which I am told won’t grow well because the seeds aren’t adapted to Africa, but I thought it was worth a shot: sweet corn, lettuce, zucchini, butterstick hybrid zucchini, tomato, bush beans, garden beans, scarlet runner, sunflowers, cucumber and sugar pea. Then it was getting dark so I did a few sachets with Moringa seeds but not as many as I would have liked. I did 3 sachets of most with 2 seeds each, a couple I only did one or two and then I did 6 or so of each corn since you have to plant them in rows of 3 (so, 4 plants, 3 rows of each). It has been raining pretty consistently although it did not rain yesterday and hasn’t rained today either (but could overnight). I told my friend Ousmane that if it doesn’t rain while I’m gone to come by every day and check the sachets and if they are dry, water them. He said he would. I am buying him shoes in Conakry so he better!!
When I get home in 2 weeks I have to finish fertilizing (and I’m hoping to get chicken poo in Conakry to put in the holes when I transplant the seedlings), put organic pesticide on, plant flower seeds along my walkway (dad and Marci sent a TON), fill more sachets and start planting more tree seeds. Especially Moringa. I have decided that is going to be my biggest project, getting Moringa trees planted all around town. It appears to have been my predecessor’s biggest project to put gliricidia in all the living fences, and she succeeded pretty well with that, and my goal will be Moringa. In living fences and just in public places, and show people how to use it, especially at the Centre de Sante so that they can prescribe it to pregnant women and infants.
All in all, I wish I could have planted more seeds today. Like filled all the sachets rather than just over half. Le sigh. This means I have to work super hard as soon as I get back.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Headlamps Are Awesome
I always forget how awesome my headlamp is until I put new batteries in it. It’s like watching your dog grow up: you don’t notice him getting bigger because the changes day by day are so small: you don’t notice your headlamp getting dimmer because day by day the change is so small. But then one day you realize you can barely see the print in the book you’re reading and you pop three brand-spanking-new AAA batteries from Costco in it and all of a sudden you can see your entire yard in the middle of the night as though it were daytime. Headlamps rock. For anyone wondering, I have a Petzl Tikka headlamp, but I am sure this is true of all headlamps.
So I have taken to letting Yogi in my bed in the mornings. Starting around 5am he starts putting his front paws up on the bed and whining and it’s not that he wants to go out or even that he doesn’t want to sleep anymore, he just wants to be in the bed, because once I let him in the bed he just sprawls out and goes back to sleep. This means I have to bathe him more because I do not want a stinky dog in my bed.
Which brings me to another point. He hates being bathed. I do it in the rain now, making him stand under the rain coming off the roof while I lather him up but it is a FIGHT from start to finish. And uses too much shampoo. I have to figure out another soap solution for this. I’m going to write home for doggie shampoo in my next package.
Also, he doesn’t want to stay in the bedroom at night. I don’t know why. But a few nights ago around 2am somebody came to my window (a woman) babbling and Yogi just barked his head off which alerted some dude on the path or next door who made her go away but it was frightening and now I’m all jumpy about noises and obsessively check my backyard before getting into my bed. So he has to stay in my room, end of story.
Today I walked the 45 minutes to the pepiniere because I wanted to take my dog and because my bike was kind of broken. And I haven’t ridden it in awhile (like since before I went to Dakar) and know that the ride back would once again be hell in a handbasket. So I walked and it took 45 minutes. I think it takes about 5 minutes to bike there, but it takes like 30 minutes to get back because I have to walk my bike part of the way because I am neither Ian nor Scott and can’t make it up the hill…sad but true.
Anyway I spent three hours filling sachets and when I left they still weren’t done but I had to be home by 2 to meet up with Ousmane. The walk back was tiring, even with my iPod (and hot) and when I got back I just wanted to take a bath and have a nap but Ousmane was here so I couldn’t. And then, predictably, people were here for the rest of the day.
There is this other Ousmane who wants me to teach him English so he comes by every day with his notebook and asks me how to say certain things in English and just generally practice. At first it always gets on my nerves but then eventually I calm down and it isn’t as annoying. Today I made him (and Crazy [that’s not really his name, they all go by sort of rapper nicknames, I think his real name is Ibrahima], Ousmane 1 and this other kid) help me prepare the Coyah (mineral water) sachets and then we filled 23 of them with the good soil from under my cottonwood tree. But it started to rain and unlike me, they don’t like to work in the rain so the deal is that we are going to finish filling the rest of them tomorrow. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, putting the seeds in sachets instead of waiting for my beds to be ready (which has already been a SLOW process and I haven’t even put any fertilizer in them yet…I mean, half of them aren’t even dug yet!). So tomorrow when we finish filling all the Coyah sachets (I would say there are maybe 100 or so…I thought I had more), I am going to plant a bunch of seeds, some for the vegetable garden and some trees. Once I have some good tree seedlings I am going to give them each a couple of trees to plant around their house (probably a cashew and a moringa each, because they are food trees and are more likely to be valued).
I also got Crazy interested in the idea of doing the World Map Project somewhere around town by busting out my world map and talking about different countries and the languages they speak and explaining that just because the US and England both speak English, it’s not identical though one can understand the other without trouble. I also told him that the people in Australia speak English because long ago England sent all their “bandits” there and he thought that was very interesting. I don’t think I can do the World Map Project on an exterior wall during the rainy season so it might have to wait for the fall, but hey at least I have one person interested already!!
I also made Crazy get me some mangoes from the tree in my backyard. I am actually surprised at the lack of mango gifts I have received. I feel like mango season is starting to come to a close and I’ve barely eaten 10 of them in my village. So for the rest of this week I am going to make an effort to eat at least 1 mango a day even if I have to make Ousmane or Crazy get them out of the tree for me.
Ousmane told me that the last soccer game is tomorrow between Manchester and Barcelona. I might end up obliged to go to the video club with them to watch it. I much prefer live soccer, but we’ll see.
Also I went by the big generator building yesterday and the generator IS there. I don’t think I’ve really heard it running, and I don’t really know what they’re using it for, but there are a ton of lightbulbs hooked up all around the building and outlets outside of it and I think there was a rice winnow-er hooked up to the generator inside. So who knows.
I also took a walk down the road that goes by my house (embarrassed to say I had not gone down it before) and discovered that the mosque is under construction! Did not know that. Also there is a new-looking pump right next to the mosque (the concrete looks new, and the pipe is there coming out of the ground but all the exterior pump stuff is missing, or not there yet, or something). So if they get that pump working, that will be the closest water source (like 50 yards away!) and very easy to get water from, which would be a load off my back though Ousmane and Lamarana have been getting me a lot of water lately and I fill up buckets every time it rains so I have plenty of water for hand washing and dish washing and bathing and stuff like that.
I went down the road a pretty long ways and here’s what I discovered: EVERYONE is growing manioc. I keep telling my friends that manioc is “empty” and they should eat more vegetables but it’s hard to explain nutrition to someone who has never even had a basic health course and doesn’t even understand the concept of “vitamins” or “nutritional value”. It’s hard to tell them not to grow manioc, either, because it stores for so long and is relatively easy to grow, and what else would they be able to grow as a staple crop other than manioc that would last as long and have more nutritional value? If you know, comment please!! But there is manioc EVERYWHERE. In every field, around every house. Manioc, manioc, manioc. That must be why everyone thinks I’m weird for growing tomatoes and piment. Though I would still like to know where the piment THEY eat is grown.
Also banana and orange season has ended, which came as kind of a shock because I was in some sort of bubble where I just thought there were ALWAYS oranges and bananas around. Not the case.
Ok, need to wrap this up. Have I mentioned that I found a good rice and sauce lady?? I buy it for Yogi but then end up eating half of it myself because it is really good! It is one of the women who has a boutique at the Carrefour and she is pretty much always sold out by 9am so I have to make sure I get up and get out there around 8 so I am sure to get some. So far it has only been leaf sauce and peanut sauce (fine by me!) and I am sort of rue-ing the day when she has a soup sauce. Maybe that day will never come. Keep those leaves and peanuts coming!!
So I have taken to letting Yogi in my bed in the mornings. Starting around 5am he starts putting his front paws up on the bed and whining and it’s not that he wants to go out or even that he doesn’t want to sleep anymore, he just wants to be in the bed, because once I let him in the bed he just sprawls out and goes back to sleep. This means I have to bathe him more because I do not want a stinky dog in my bed.
Which brings me to another point. He hates being bathed. I do it in the rain now, making him stand under the rain coming off the roof while I lather him up but it is a FIGHT from start to finish. And uses too much shampoo. I have to figure out another soap solution for this. I’m going to write home for doggie shampoo in my next package.
Also, he doesn’t want to stay in the bedroom at night. I don’t know why. But a few nights ago around 2am somebody came to my window (a woman) babbling and Yogi just barked his head off which alerted some dude on the path or next door who made her go away but it was frightening and now I’m all jumpy about noises and obsessively check my backyard before getting into my bed. So he has to stay in my room, end of story.
Today I walked the 45 minutes to the pepiniere because I wanted to take my dog and because my bike was kind of broken. And I haven’t ridden it in awhile (like since before I went to Dakar) and know that the ride back would once again be hell in a handbasket. So I walked and it took 45 minutes. I think it takes about 5 minutes to bike there, but it takes like 30 minutes to get back because I have to walk my bike part of the way because I am neither Ian nor Scott and can’t make it up the hill…sad but true.
Anyway I spent three hours filling sachets and when I left they still weren’t done but I had to be home by 2 to meet up with Ousmane. The walk back was tiring, even with my iPod (and hot) and when I got back I just wanted to take a bath and have a nap but Ousmane was here so I couldn’t. And then, predictably, people were here for the rest of the day.
There is this other Ousmane who wants me to teach him English so he comes by every day with his notebook and asks me how to say certain things in English and just generally practice. At first it always gets on my nerves but then eventually I calm down and it isn’t as annoying. Today I made him (and Crazy [that’s not really his name, they all go by sort of rapper nicknames, I think his real name is Ibrahima], Ousmane 1 and this other kid) help me prepare the Coyah (mineral water) sachets and then we filled 23 of them with the good soil from under my cottonwood tree. But it started to rain and unlike me, they don’t like to work in the rain so the deal is that we are going to finish filling the rest of them tomorrow. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, putting the seeds in sachets instead of waiting for my beds to be ready (which has already been a SLOW process and I haven’t even put any fertilizer in them yet…I mean, half of them aren’t even dug yet!). So tomorrow when we finish filling all the Coyah sachets (I would say there are maybe 100 or so…I thought I had more), I am going to plant a bunch of seeds, some for the vegetable garden and some trees. Once I have some good tree seedlings I am going to give them each a couple of trees to plant around their house (probably a cashew and a moringa each, because they are food trees and are more likely to be valued).
I also got Crazy interested in the idea of doing the World Map Project somewhere around town by busting out my world map and talking about different countries and the languages they speak and explaining that just because the US and England both speak English, it’s not identical though one can understand the other without trouble. I also told him that the people in Australia speak English because long ago England sent all their “bandits” there and he thought that was very interesting. I don’t think I can do the World Map Project on an exterior wall during the rainy season so it might have to wait for the fall, but hey at least I have one person interested already!!
I also made Crazy get me some mangoes from the tree in my backyard. I am actually surprised at the lack of mango gifts I have received. I feel like mango season is starting to come to a close and I’ve barely eaten 10 of them in my village. So for the rest of this week I am going to make an effort to eat at least 1 mango a day even if I have to make Ousmane or Crazy get them out of the tree for me.
Ousmane told me that the last soccer game is tomorrow between Manchester and Barcelona. I might end up obliged to go to the video club with them to watch it. I much prefer live soccer, but we’ll see.
Also I went by the big generator building yesterday and the generator IS there. I don’t think I’ve really heard it running, and I don’t really know what they’re using it for, but there are a ton of lightbulbs hooked up all around the building and outlets outside of it and I think there was a rice winnow-er hooked up to the generator inside. So who knows.
I also took a walk down the road that goes by my house (embarrassed to say I had not gone down it before) and discovered that the mosque is under construction! Did not know that. Also there is a new-looking pump right next to the mosque (the concrete looks new, and the pipe is there coming out of the ground but all the exterior pump stuff is missing, or not there yet, or something). So if they get that pump working, that will be the closest water source (like 50 yards away!) and very easy to get water from, which would be a load off my back though Ousmane and Lamarana have been getting me a lot of water lately and I fill up buckets every time it rains so I have plenty of water for hand washing and dish washing and bathing and stuff like that.
I went down the road a pretty long ways and here’s what I discovered: EVERYONE is growing manioc. I keep telling my friends that manioc is “empty” and they should eat more vegetables but it’s hard to explain nutrition to someone who has never even had a basic health course and doesn’t even understand the concept of “vitamins” or “nutritional value”. It’s hard to tell them not to grow manioc, either, because it stores for so long and is relatively easy to grow, and what else would they be able to grow as a staple crop other than manioc that would last as long and have more nutritional value? If you know, comment please!! But there is manioc EVERYWHERE. In every field, around every house. Manioc, manioc, manioc. That must be why everyone thinks I’m weird for growing tomatoes and piment. Though I would still like to know where the piment THEY eat is grown.
Also banana and orange season has ended, which came as kind of a shock because I was in some sort of bubble where I just thought there were ALWAYS oranges and bananas around. Not the case.
Ok, need to wrap this up. Have I mentioned that I found a good rice and sauce lady?? I buy it for Yogi but then end up eating half of it myself because it is really good! It is one of the women who has a boutique at the Carrefour and she is pretty much always sold out by 9am so I have to make sure I get up and get out there around 8 so I am sure to get some. So far it has only been leaf sauce and peanut sauce (fine by me!) and I am sort of rue-ing the day when she has a soup sauce. Maybe that day will never come. Keep those leaves and peanuts coming!!
Thursday, May 21, 2009
And All the Little (?) Ants Go Marching...Plus Soccer!
So, bizarre thing just happened. Went out to my latrine for one last stop before bed and heard a weird buzzing sound. Then noticed a huge black line of insects streaming into my latrine, which Yogi also noticed and started sniffing. They looked like really big, black ants.
A line of them was streaming in one side of the latrine and exiting the other. I think they were biting ants because Yogi started doing a jig of sorts after sticking his nose in the line. At first I was apprehensive because I thought I wasn’t going to be able to go to the bathroom but after a minute or so the end of the line appeared and they all disappeared out the other side of the latrine.
Weird.
In other news, today I finally went to my first soccer game. It was my village vs. a neighboring village and lots of people turned out. In fact, they had walled up the whole field with sticks and palm fronds and were charging an entrance fee at one of the two tiny entranceways (the other was closed and only opened to let the opposing team onto the field). Of course, they waved me through without having to pay (it’s funny, the people who might actually be able to AFFORD the entrance fee don’t have to pay it, like me and the Sous Prefet). They were trying to make my friend Ousmane pay and he didn’t want to so I told them I wasn’t going to go if Ousmane wasn’t coming with me and they let him in for free, too.
It was HOT and they made room on the one bench for me to sit and in a matter of five minutes I went from sweltering to freezing as the skies opened up and poured and people scattered looking for shelter. I didn’t move from my seat, despite everyone else running for the mango trees and telling me to come with them. I was like it’s just a little water! And at the time I was really hot so it was welcome. Then I was wet with cold rain and the breeze started up and I was “bien glace”. Almost too cold. Almost. Then the rain stopped and it was just comfortable. Of course, the players kept playing this whole time. Rain ain’t going to stop them.
I noticed that the teams lacked (especially my team) some of the simple rules of team sports. Like, when you pass the ball, make sure there is someone to pass it to. Also they had clearly not done enough footwork drills as I can count the times I saw a player keep the ball from another player by kicking it around them on one hand. Also, every other contact was with heads. They were using entirely too much head. And my team seemed to always be playing defense, as it seemed the objective of every player was just to get the ball out of our side of the field, regardless of where it went or if it just ended up right back in the other team’s possession. I wonder if they have a coach?
Anyway at halftime three guys put on a breakdancing show and one of them was really good. The other two need to practice more and put even the best guy on the streets in the States and a ten-year-old would be wiping the sidewalk with him but it was fun to watch anyway.
I left before the end of the game because there was a big pagaille going on about some disagreement about the last goal and it was about to start raining again so Ousmane said, “Allons.” At any rate, I think the score was 3-0, other team at the time and I am pretty sure my village lost, as we were well into the second half by this time.
Walking to and from the field and sitting to watch the game, I was once again struck by how absolutely beautiful this place is in which I live. The mountains with the sheer cliff faces, the palm trees and mango trees, dirt roads, dark grey clouds rolling in, a pack of white birds soaring toward the mountains underneath them…just gorgeous.
I am so lucky.
A line of them was streaming in one side of the latrine and exiting the other. I think they were biting ants because Yogi started doing a jig of sorts after sticking his nose in the line. At first I was apprehensive because I thought I wasn’t going to be able to go to the bathroom but after a minute or so the end of the line appeared and they all disappeared out the other side of the latrine.
Weird.
In other news, today I finally went to my first soccer game. It was my village vs. a neighboring village and lots of people turned out. In fact, they had walled up the whole field with sticks and palm fronds and were charging an entrance fee at one of the two tiny entranceways (the other was closed and only opened to let the opposing team onto the field). Of course, they waved me through without having to pay (it’s funny, the people who might actually be able to AFFORD the entrance fee don’t have to pay it, like me and the Sous Prefet). They were trying to make my friend Ousmane pay and he didn’t want to so I told them I wasn’t going to go if Ousmane wasn’t coming with me and they let him in for free, too.
It was HOT and they made room on the one bench for me to sit and in a matter of five minutes I went from sweltering to freezing as the skies opened up and poured and people scattered looking for shelter. I didn’t move from my seat, despite everyone else running for the mango trees and telling me to come with them. I was like it’s just a little water! And at the time I was really hot so it was welcome. Then I was wet with cold rain and the breeze started up and I was “bien glace”. Almost too cold. Almost. Then the rain stopped and it was just comfortable. Of course, the players kept playing this whole time. Rain ain’t going to stop them.
I noticed that the teams lacked (especially my team) some of the simple rules of team sports. Like, when you pass the ball, make sure there is someone to pass it to. Also they had clearly not done enough footwork drills as I can count the times I saw a player keep the ball from another player by kicking it around them on one hand. Also, every other contact was with heads. They were using entirely too much head. And my team seemed to always be playing defense, as it seemed the objective of every player was just to get the ball out of our side of the field, regardless of where it went or if it just ended up right back in the other team’s possession. I wonder if they have a coach?
Anyway at halftime three guys put on a breakdancing show and one of them was really good. The other two need to practice more and put even the best guy on the streets in the States and a ten-year-old would be wiping the sidewalk with him but it was fun to watch anyway.
I left before the end of the game because there was a big pagaille going on about some disagreement about the last goal and it was about to start raining again so Ousmane said, “Allons.” At any rate, I think the score was 3-0, other team at the time and I am pretty sure my village lost, as we were well into the second half by this time.
Walking to and from the field and sitting to watch the game, I was once again struck by how absolutely beautiful this place is in which I live. The mountains with the sheer cliff faces, the palm trees and mango trees, dirt roads, dark grey clouds rolling in, a pack of white birds soaring toward the mountains underneath them…just gorgeous.
I am so lucky.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Productivity
Today was productive. I got up around 7am and it wasn’t very hot for most of the day because there was cloud cover (praise Allah for rainy season!).
My friends Ousmane, Lamarana and Mamadou D came over to help me change the position of my bed so that I can open and close my screen/window, which is necessary during the rainy season because if it’s a really heavy, windy rain, the rain comes through my bedroom window which doesn’t matter so much now that my bed isn’t against it, but I am much happier this way. They also fixed my bed, which was sort of broken and had been the whole time I was here, and I finally got a full sweep of my room so the floor is much cleaner and less scary (I was afraid to look under my bed before because I was sure there was a whole family of huge nasty spiders living underneath). They also fixed my screen so that it fully stays in the window by hammering nails through it into the wall. Rockin!
Also they got me a ton of water, though I had to lend them my bike to do it. The pump is broken, which sucks. I think Ousmane said there was blood coming out in the water, but he might have just said dirt, but the point is, my village is now sans-pump. That’s not that bad, though, because there is that spring thing that the villagers drink straight out of and that water is pretty clean (much cleaner than well water) so I am just double-bleaching (capful of Sur-Eau in the bidon and then the ten drops in the top of the filter when I fill it). I think it will be fine for me, but the villagers really need that pump since they don’t bleach or filter, so I might have to investigate why it is broken and make it a project to have it fixed. Then again, maybe World Bank will fix it as water security is also on their agenda here.
We also chopped up my yard again for my garden, throwing a bunch of stones out, removing organic material to the compost pile and putting handfuls upon handfuls of plastic, wrappers, old shoes, tin cans, broken glass, bits of cloth, batteries and every other kind of trash you can make in Africa into a big rice sack (it is full and that doesn’t count the larger items that did not fit). This is only from one part of my yard. The whole country is like this. Let alone the other side of my front yard. Le sigh. I still have to chop the whole thing up again, throw out more stones, clear more organic material, collect more trash, make the beds and put in fertilizer (I’m going to use gliricidia leaves and urine) before I actually sow any seeds, but hey, petite a petite as they say here. EVERYONE who walks by asks me what I am going to plant there and seem satisifed when I say, “piment” (hot peppers). Really I am going to plant corn, bell peppers, piment, tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, cucumbers, sunflowers, moringa, beans and hopefully soybeans (mom said she found some seeds!). I think the idea of planting so many different things in what they consider a small space (in the space I am using they would cover the whole thing with either just manioc or just corn) is very strange to them. But the size of what I’m using is about twice the size of my mom’s community garden and she plants all of that and more and has a yield too large for us to finish on our own each year, so I think Although I think it’s just that no one has planted there in a very long time so there are SO MANY rocks and years of trash iter all the work I am doing this year.
We also went to the carpenter and he made me a new gate (although already it is sort of broken so he has to come fix it) and I found another hole in my fence and blocked it up. Since doing these two things the only animal I have seen in my yard is one small chicken. I also asked the carpenter to make me a big table, which I am desperately in need of and he said it will be ready on Saturday. It is costing about the equivalent of $12, which is still kind of expensive here.
Ousmane also killed one of the big wasps always hanging out on my porch! I was so excited!! I FREAKING HATED THAT WASP! He’s gone now though so I am happy.
Also Ousmane brought the keke lady over to my house! YAY I FOUND THE KEKE LADY! Keke is pounded manioc that is then steamed and then topped with a plethora of things (depends on your keke lady). My lady tops it with magi cube (basically, MSG), peanut oil, tomato, onion and piment. You can also get fish balls on it but I opted out of that one as I have only ever had good fish balls once and it was on the epic 12-hour bush taxi ride when we stopped for rice and sauce at Schwegel’s site. Ousmane put mayonnaise on his in addition and I will have to try that next time. At any rate, it was good, and REALLY cheap (equivalent of about 20 cents or a loaf of French bread here).
So for their troubles I gave my friends bread and mayo (standard breakfast, in fact the mayo is a luxury item) and Quaker Chewy granola bars. I’m not sure if I should be giving them more than this or not. Next time they help me out I will augment their bread and mayo with a can of sardines (they think this is delicious).
I also finished the first Harry Potter book today and I gotta say I think they did a great job with the movie, perhaps an even better job. I could see what they changed and why and thought pretty much all of the choices were an improvement so thumbs up. Now we’ll see if that holds true for the rest of the books, though the only movies I really remember are Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban. Also I am missing Book 3 so I have to do a mad search for it ASAP as I am sure I will finish book 2 in no time flat and then be all sad that I have to read something else before continuing.
Well, that’s all really. It’s funny how much you can get done in one day without even really leaving your house.
My friends Ousmane, Lamarana and Mamadou D came over to help me change the position of my bed so that I can open and close my screen/window, which is necessary during the rainy season because if it’s a really heavy, windy rain, the rain comes through my bedroom window which doesn’t matter so much now that my bed isn’t against it, but I am much happier this way. They also fixed my bed, which was sort of broken and had been the whole time I was here, and I finally got a full sweep of my room so the floor is much cleaner and less scary (I was afraid to look under my bed before because I was sure there was a whole family of huge nasty spiders living underneath). They also fixed my screen so that it fully stays in the window by hammering nails through it into the wall. Rockin!
Also they got me a ton of water, though I had to lend them my bike to do it. The pump is broken, which sucks. I think Ousmane said there was blood coming out in the water, but he might have just said dirt, but the point is, my village is now sans-pump. That’s not that bad, though, because there is that spring thing that the villagers drink straight out of and that water is pretty clean (much cleaner than well water) so I am just double-bleaching (capful of Sur-Eau in the bidon and then the ten drops in the top of the filter when I fill it). I think it will be fine for me, but the villagers really need that pump since they don’t bleach or filter, so I might have to investigate why it is broken and make it a project to have it fixed. Then again, maybe World Bank will fix it as water security is also on their agenda here.
We also chopped up my yard again for my garden, throwing a bunch of stones out, removing organic material to the compost pile and putting handfuls upon handfuls of plastic, wrappers, old shoes, tin cans, broken glass, bits of cloth, batteries and every other kind of trash you can make in Africa into a big rice sack (it is full and that doesn’t count the larger items that did not fit). This is only from one part of my yard. The whole country is like this. Let alone the other side of my front yard. Le sigh. I still have to chop the whole thing up again, throw out more stones, clear more organic material, collect more trash, make the beds and put in fertilizer (I’m going to use gliricidia leaves and urine) before I actually sow any seeds, but hey, petite a petite as they say here. EVERYONE who walks by asks me what I am going to plant there and seem satisifed when I say, “piment” (hot peppers). Really I am going to plant corn, bell peppers, piment, tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, cucumbers, sunflowers, moringa, beans and hopefully soybeans (mom said she found some seeds!). I think the idea of planting so many different things in what they consider a small space (in the space I am using they would cover the whole thing with either just manioc or just corn) is very strange to them. But the size of what I’m using is about twice the size of my mom’s community garden and she plants all of that and more and has a yield too large for us to finish on our own each year, so I think Although I think it’s just that no one has planted there in a very long time so there are SO MANY rocks and years of trash iter all the work I am doing this year.
We also went to the carpenter and he made me a new gate (although already it is sort of broken so he has to come fix it) and I found another hole in my fence and blocked it up. Since doing these two things the only animal I have seen in my yard is one small chicken. I also asked the carpenter to make me a big table, which I am desperately in need of and he said it will be ready on Saturday. It is costing about the equivalent of $12, which is still kind of expensive here.
Ousmane also killed one of the big wasps always hanging out on my porch! I was so excited!! I FREAKING HATED THAT WASP! He’s gone now though so I am happy.
Also Ousmane brought the keke lady over to my house! YAY I FOUND THE KEKE LADY! Keke is pounded manioc that is then steamed and then topped with a plethora of things (depends on your keke lady). My lady tops it with magi cube (basically, MSG), peanut oil, tomato, onion and piment. You can also get fish balls on it but I opted out of that one as I have only ever had good fish balls once and it was on the epic 12-hour bush taxi ride when we stopped for rice and sauce at Schwegel’s site. Ousmane put mayonnaise on his in addition and I will have to try that next time. At any rate, it was good, and REALLY cheap (equivalent of about 20 cents or a loaf of French bread here).
So for their troubles I gave my friends bread and mayo (standard breakfast, in fact the mayo is a luxury item) and Quaker Chewy granola bars. I’m not sure if I should be giving them more than this or not. Next time they help me out I will augment their bread and mayo with a can of sardines (they think this is delicious).
I also finished the first Harry Potter book today and I gotta say I think they did a great job with the movie, perhaps an even better job. I could see what they changed and why and thought pretty much all of the choices were an improvement so thumbs up. Now we’ll see if that holds true for the rest of the books, though the only movies I really remember are Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban. Also I am missing Book 3 so I have to do a mad search for it ASAP as I am sure I will finish book 2 in no time flat and then be all sad that I have to read something else before continuing.
Well, that’s all really. It’s funny how much you can get done in one day without even really leaving your house.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Holy S*** I'm in Africa
So I think I finally had my “holy s*** I’m in Africa” moment. It was during the second evening of rain and I was washing my dishes on the porch and watching the kids across the way bathing in a wheelbarrow filling up from the rain falling from the edge of the roof.
I just sat there, washing my dishes in a bucket, rain pelting the ground around me, a clean breeze and kids taking baths in a wheelbarrow and thought…”Holy s***. I’m in Africa.”
Last week went really well at my village. My friend Ousmane stopped by every day but he told me that when he is done with his studies for the year he is moving away to live with family in a bigger city so he can go to the 11th and 12th grade. This makes me sad. I gave him a wheel of Laughing Cow cheese and he was really happy about that. He told me that everyone in my village says that they like me a lot, which is nice.
One of the dudes involved in the whole big generator thing told me they were going to hook my house up to electricity when it’s ready. The building is almost done and once it is, I wonder how long it will take before the generator actually arrives and is functional. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they did actually hook my house up to the electricity because my house is one of the closest to the generator and I am a “permanent” resident. The other houses close to the generator are houses where people just inhabit rooms in them and not all the time. Plus I seem to be a high profile member of the community, even if all I do is sit on my porch and read and saluer people as they walk by and make little kids draw me pictures and buy onions daily.
Also last week Pular really started to click for me. Before, it would go in one ear and out the other, but now I am retaining phrases and able to say more things and understand more and even Madame Bangoura said, “You are beginning to understand!” which made me feel good because she has yelled at me about my awful French before. I feel like my French is also getting better which is nice. By the time I am done here I feel like my French will be really good and I’ll be able to say I speak conversational Pular…maybe .
Anyway tomorrow we see everyone for IST but it will be a bit sad without Aaron and Dave. Miss you guys!! John and I are planning to get up super early to get the first car to Kindia and catch the Peace Corps bus as it goes through on the way to Mamou. And hence shall commence two more weeks of training.
I just sat there, washing my dishes in a bucket, rain pelting the ground around me, a clean breeze and kids taking baths in a wheelbarrow and thought…”Holy s***. I’m in Africa.”
Last week went really well at my village. My friend Ousmane stopped by every day but he told me that when he is done with his studies for the year he is moving away to live with family in a bigger city so he can go to the 11th and 12th grade. This makes me sad. I gave him a wheel of Laughing Cow cheese and he was really happy about that. He told me that everyone in my village says that they like me a lot, which is nice.
One of the dudes involved in the whole big generator thing told me they were going to hook my house up to electricity when it’s ready. The building is almost done and once it is, I wonder how long it will take before the generator actually arrives and is functional. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they did actually hook my house up to the electricity because my house is one of the closest to the generator and I am a “permanent” resident. The other houses close to the generator are houses where people just inhabit rooms in them and not all the time. Plus I seem to be a high profile member of the community, even if all I do is sit on my porch and read and saluer people as they walk by and make little kids draw me pictures and buy onions daily.
Also last week Pular really started to click for me. Before, it would go in one ear and out the other, but now I am retaining phrases and able to say more things and understand more and even Madame Bangoura said, “You are beginning to understand!” which made me feel good because she has yelled at me about my awful French before. I feel like my French is also getting better which is nice. By the time I am done here I feel like my French will be really good and I’ll be able to say I speak conversational Pular…maybe .
Anyway tomorrow we see everyone for IST but it will be a bit sad without Aaron and Dave. Miss you guys!! John and I are planning to get up super early to get the first car to Kindia and catch the Peace Corps bus as it goes through on the way to Mamou. And hence shall commence two more weeks of training.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Going to Love Rainy Season
Today was a good day. I sat on my porch almost all day even though it was market day, which means a lot of people come by my house. When some kids came by I busted out the drawing kit my aunt Linda sent and it was a big hit, although the kids were scared to death to use crayons. Think about that. They have never used crayons. They have barely even used regular lead pencils. I was trying to get this one girl that I know fairly well (as well as you can know someone whose language you don’t speak) and I got her to the point of squatting in front of the piece of paper with a crayon in her hand but she was too nervous to draw anything. The youngest boy, who is her brother, seemed to really want to draw something and while Nene and Mamadou were making their pictures (for some reason they had no scruples at all about drawing, Mamadou even used the markers to draw all over his leg), I tore a piece of paper from the notebook, picked up a blue crayon and held it out to him. A look of absolute horror crossed his face and he snapped his hands behind his back and shook his head back and forth as though he was trying to shake it off his shoulders but I insisted and he took the crayon, then sat down on the porch and smiled to himself as he drew a car and a hut. Ultimately couldn’t get any of the younger kids to draw anything else (we’ll try again next time they come over), but the teenagers came by later and got creative, drawing me a rainbow pigeon and some flowers they titled, “Les Fleurs de Cour” which I think means “the flowers of the heart”.
In the market today there were avocadoes! I knew they were there because a boy passed by my house with a plate of them on his head and I was like WOOHOO and went out to search for the lady selling them. I bought two and she gave me a third one as a cadeau. And then when I was buying dried fish for Yogi (at 4 for a mille! WAY cheaper than sardines!) she gave me an extra one as a cadeau too. Gotta love cadeaus at the marche.
I went and sat with Madame Bangoura for a little bit but not long because she is kinda sick (headache today) and she says that if the Sous Prefet loses his job after the election in December (SPs are appointed by the President) that they will leave my village. That makes me sad.
As the marche was wrapping up, I started to hear thunder from my porch. I looked to the south and saw dark skies rolling in and thought, “Yay my first daytime rainstorm!” Really it wasn’t daytime, the sun was going down, but it was still light out unlike the other brief rains that have happened in the middle of the night. Rainy season is starting!
So it started to rain and boy was it a downpour! The window in my bedroom was open and starting to get my bed wet so I had to run around back in the rain to shut the window (still have to change the position of my bed, first on the agenda for when I get back from IST). So since I was practically soaked anyway I decided to wash my hair in my front yard in the rain. The few people who ran by looked at me like I was absolutely crazy. I don’t know if they would ever have thought to wash their hair in the rain. Then I decided I ought to just take my whole bath out in the latrine because if it didn’t stop raining and it got all the way dark I wouldn’t have any light to bathe by. So I went out back, stripped down and commenced to take my bath using the rainwater that had collected in the buckets I left out. It was cold water but after the hot day we had it was a nice cool-down.
Yogi started barking and I got paranoid because someone told me a lot of break-ins happen during the rains because you can’t hear anything with the rain pounding on the tin roof. Turns out someone had deposed their market table on my porch and Yogi heard them. By the time I went to bed it was still out there and it had stopped raining so I hope whoever’s it is comes to get it!
While I was out back having my bath, I looked up at the sky and saw some absolutely incredible lightning. It was so incredible that after my bath I sat out on my porch with Yogi and just watched the sky. I have a great view of the western sky from my porch and just watched as bolts and spiderwebs of lightning stretched across the sky. It was awesome. Who needs fireworks when you have lightning like that!
In the market today there were avocadoes! I knew they were there because a boy passed by my house with a plate of them on his head and I was like WOOHOO and went out to search for the lady selling them. I bought two and she gave me a third one as a cadeau. And then when I was buying dried fish for Yogi (at 4 for a mille! WAY cheaper than sardines!) she gave me an extra one as a cadeau too. Gotta love cadeaus at the marche.
I went and sat with Madame Bangoura for a little bit but not long because she is kinda sick (headache today) and she says that if the Sous Prefet loses his job after the election in December (SPs are appointed by the President) that they will leave my village. That makes me sad.
As the marche was wrapping up, I started to hear thunder from my porch. I looked to the south and saw dark skies rolling in and thought, “Yay my first daytime rainstorm!” Really it wasn’t daytime, the sun was going down, but it was still light out unlike the other brief rains that have happened in the middle of the night. Rainy season is starting!
So it started to rain and boy was it a downpour! The window in my bedroom was open and starting to get my bed wet so I had to run around back in the rain to shut the window (still have to change the position of my bed, first on the agenda for when I get back from IST). So since I was practically soaked anyway I decided to wash my hair in my front yard in the rain. The few people who ran by looked at me like I was absolutely crazy. I don’t know if they would ever have thought to wash their hair in the rain. Then I decided I ought to just take my whole bath out in the latrine because if it didn’t stop raining and it got all the way dark I wouldn’t have any light to bathe by. So I went out back, stripped down and commenced to take my bath using the rainwater that had collected in the buckets I left out. It was cold water but after the hot day we had it was a nice cool-down.
Yogi started barking and I got paranoid because someone told me a lot of break-ins happen during the rains because you can’t hear anything with the rain pounding on the tin roof. Turns out someone had deposed their market table on my porch and Yogi heard them. By the time I went to bed it was still out there and it had stopped raining so I hope whoever’s it is comes to get it!
While I was out back having my bath, I looked up at the sky and saw some absolutely incredible lightning. It was so incredible that after my bath I sat out on my porch with Yogi and just watched the sky. I have a great view of the western sky from my porch and just watched as bolts and spiderwebs of lightning stretched across the sky. It was awesome. Who needs fireworks when you have lightning like that!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
People Magazine = Big Hit
Guineans love People magazine. I was reading one on my porch today and my friend Lamarana came over and saw that Rihanna was on the cover and was like, “CAN I HAVE THAT?? I LOVE RIHANNA!” And I was like sure, it’s yours…but only when I am done reading. And then some kids came by and were looking through the one with Jessica Simpson on the cover and Lamarana told them that the Rihanna one was going to be his and the one kid asked me if he could have the other one and I said, “if you do something for me you can have it.” He asked if I liked mangoes and I said yes so he went and got me about 6 mangoes and I gave him the magazine.
Also Lamarana can’t find work so he doesn’t really have any money and he asked me to give him lunch, and I didn’t know quite how to respond because I’m not like Guineans in that I don’t have rice and sauce just sitting around all the time, I would have to actually prepare something, but then I remembered that Balde had bought me three hard boiled eggs in the marche the other day and I knew I wouldn’t eat them before they went bad (though I could have fed them to Yogi) so I asked if he wanted an egg and he got really excited so I brought him all three eggs. Then he said he was going to go get bread to put them on, since I didn’t have bread, so I busted out the mayonnaise too and he had a boiled egg and mayonnaise sandwich on french bread. Not a bad lunch. Unfortunately the mayonnaise was still out when the kids came by so they went and bought bread too and made mayonnaise sandwiches for themselves. So about half my jar of mayonnaise got used up. Mayo is kind of expensive at 15 mille (about $3) for a small jar, but it made them all really happy so it was worth it.
In the afternoon I went over to the Sous Prefet’s house to saluer madame and brought her a handful of the chocolate covered caramels from Dakar and a wheel of Laughing Cow cheese (Vache qui rit). She fed me rice with manioc leaf sauce (it was thick because she put peanut butter in it – also who would ever have thought I would miss rice and sauce so much??) and a giant slice of watermelon. Then I asked her if she made peanut sauce because I want to learn (really I am just searching for the lady with the best peanut sauce and once I find her I am going to make her be my mom and feed me peanut sauce 3x a week . I have memorized the phrase “I want peanut sauce!” in Pular: Mi faala mafe tiga!). She said we can make it tomorrow so I’m supposed to go over there at 9am to help. YUM PEANUT SAUCE!
That throws a kink in my plan to go to the school at ten though because my other friend Ousmane (he is in his 10th year, which is the last year you can do in my village, you have to go the bigger city to do 11th and 12th) told me there is someone who makes keke (pounded fermented manioc with an onion sauce – so good! – but almost no nutritional value) and sells it at the school every day at 10am. And if I like it, that person walks right by my house every day to go to the school and I could get them to stop and sell me keke whenever I want!! Awesome! But I can’t do it tomorrow now that I am doing the peanut sauce thing so Thursday that is in my plans.
A lot of people hung out at my house today including this new dude Abdullah who came yesterday to saluer and brought me three oranges. He lives in Conakry but is here this week for some reason (didn’t catch the reason) and is a rapper. EVERYONE who came by informed me that he is a rapper. He has dreds and sports a Bob Marley bandanna. He seems educated and pointed out some stuff that other Guineans have never questioned. Like, I only have one plastic chair and I put it on my porch during the day so I can read out there and have somewhere to sit when people come by and he was like, “if I was at your house in the States, would you have only a chair for you and none for me?” (I responded that in the States we would have couches to sit on). This is while he sat in my only chair for hours and I had to sit on the stoop and entertain him. I feel like only having the one chair has prevented people from lingering too long at my house because while they can sit on the porch “railing” (it’s more of a ledge), that ain’t as comfortable as a plastic chair. So now I have to buy more plastic chairs, and they ain’t cheap. He also questioned why I was even in Guinea, asking if I was here just to “suffer” and I was kind of offended by that because first of all, I don’t consider myself to be suffering at all here and secondly he completely diminuer-ed (minimized) all of the goals behind being here. When he said this he was still sitting in my only chair for hours. Basically his attitude was unlike any other Guinean I have encountered thus far and he reminded me of one of those uppity people you run into at parties in the States that just try to make you feel bad about everything you do. He said he is coming back tomorrow. He also made me give him my phone number.
Also this morning Hoodia came and got me 2 big bidons and 1 petite bidon of changol water and then I leant her my bike and she got me another petite bidon of pump water, which was great because I got all stocked up on water! Then this afternoon Nene came to wash my floors (earned a Kashi granola bar) and I did a bunch of dishes so I used up a petite bidon and half of a big bidon plus put all the pump water in the filter so I have empty bidons again! And my bath bucket is empty and I have to fill it in the morning.
Speaking of baths the last two nights I have taken a bath under the stars after dinner by the light of my kerosene lantern. It has been amazing. It is the hottest month of the year and outside at night it cools down considerably but the water in my bath bucket gets a little warm throughout the day so the bucket bath is really nice with the cool night air, warm water and Yogi’s shadow dancing around my palm frond-lined latrine.
The highlight of the day had to be Yogi running around the yard like a madman taunting goats (who just regarded him like he was crazy) and sheep. He would not stop taunting the sheep and the sheep finally started chasing him and headbutted him and he went flying head over heels and it was hilarious. I think Yogi is very happy to be back at our house where he can run and taunt other animals.
The ladies from the groupement are always walking by my house because they are building the building for the generator just behind my house, so there is lots of saluer-ing going on. It’s nice though because I like all the ladies and consider them some of my better friends here, other than Nene and all the boys who hang out on my porch.
Funny story: Ousmane keeps saying he wants to marry my younger sister but she is only a year old and I keep telling him he will have to wait 20 years. He says that is ok.
For dinner I decided to make french fries with onions, tomato and Laughing Cow but I didn’t have enough oil. I didn’t know if my onion lady would still be at her table, but I hadn’t seen her walk by on her way home so I ran out to the road and she was packing up with two boys one of which had JUST put the jar of oil on his head and I was like WAIT!!! And I pointed at the jar and the lady is so nice she had the boys take the jar down, opened up another jar to get the baggie AND opened up another baggie she had just finished tying up to give me change. I love my onion lady.
And the fries were delicious.
Also Lamarana can’t find work so he doesn’t really have any money and he asked me to give him lunch, and I didn’t know quite how to respond because I’m not like Guineans in that I don’t have rice and sauce just sitting around all the time, I would have to actually prepare something, but then I remembered that Balde had bought me three hard boiled eggs in the marche the other day and I knew I wouldn’t eat them before they went bad (though I could have fed them to Yogi) so I asked if he wanted an egg and he got really excited so I brought him all three eggs. Then he said he was going to go get bread to put them on, since I didn’t have bread, so I busted out the mayonnaise too and he had a boiled egg and mayonnaise sandwich on french bread. Not a bad lunch. Unfortunately the mayonnaise was still out when the kids came by so they went and bought bread too and made mayonnaise sandwiches for themselves. So about half my jar of mayonnaise got used up. Mayo is kind of expensive at 15 mille (about $3) for a small jar, but it made them all really happy so it was worth it.
In the afternoon I went over to the Sous Prefet’s house to saluer madame and brought her a handful of the chocolate covered caramels from Dakar and a wheel of Laughing Cow cheese (Vache qui rit). She fed me rice with manioc leaf sauce (it was thick because she put peanut butter in it – also who would ever have thought I would miss rice and sauce so much??) and a giant slice of watermelon. Then I asked her if she made peanut sauce because I want to learn (really I am just searching for the lady with the best peanut sauce and once I find her I am going to make her be my mom and feed me peanut sauce 3x a week . I have memorized the phrase “I want peanut sauce!” in Pular: Mi faala mafe tiga!). She said we can make it tomorrow so I’m supposed to go over there at 9am to help. YUM PEANUT SAUCE!
That throws a kink in my plan to go to the school at ten though because my other friend Ousmane (he is in his 10th year, which is the last year you can do in my village, you have to go the bigger city to do 11th and 12th) told me there is someone who makes keke (pounded fermented manioc with an onion sauce – so good! – but almost no nutritional value) and sells it at the school every day at 10am. And if I like it, that person walks right by my house every day to go to the school and I could get them to stop and sell me keke whenever I want!! Awesome! But I can’t do it tomorrow now that I am doing the peanut sauce thing so Thursday that is in my plans.
A lot of people hung out at my house today including this new dude Abdullah who came yesterday to saluer and brought me three oranges. He lives in Conakry but is here this week for some reason (didn’t catch the reason) and is a rapper. EVERYONE who came by informed me that he is a rapper. He has dreds and sports a Bob Marley bandanna. He seems educated and pointed out some stuff that other Guineans have never questioned. Like, I only have one plastic chair and I put it on my porch during the day so I can read out there and have somewhere to sit when people come by and he was like, “if I was at your house in the States, would you have only a chair for you and none for me?” (I responded that in the States we would have couches to sit on). This is while he sat in my only chair for hours and I had to sit on the stoop and entertain him. I feel like only having the one chair has prevented people from lingering too long at my house because while they can sit on the porch “railing” (it’s more of a ledge), that ain’t as comfortable as a plastic chair. So now I have to buy more plastic chairs, and they ain’t cheap. He also questioned why I was even in Guinea, asking if I was here just to “suffer” and I was kind of offended by that because first of all, I don’t consider myself to be suffering at all here and secondly he completely diminuer-ed (minimized) all of the goals behind being here. When he said this he was still sitting in my only chair for hours. Basically his attitude was unlike any other Guinean I have encountered thus far and he reminded me of one of those uppity people you run into at parties in the States that just try to make you feel bad about everything you do. He said he is coming back tomorrow. He also made me give him my phone number.
Also this morning Hoodia came and got me 2 big bidons and 1 petite bidon of changol water and then I leant her my bike and she got me another petite bidon of pump water, which was great because I got all stocked up on water! Then this afternoon Nene came to wash my floors (earned a Kashi granola bar) and I did a bunch of dishes so I used up a petite bidon and half of a big bidon plus put all the pump water in the filter so I have empty bidons again! And my bath bucket is empty and I have to fill it in the morning.
Speaking of baths the last two nights I have taken a bath under the stars after dinner by the light of my kerosene lantern. It has been amazing. It is the hottest month of the year and outside at night it cools down considerably but the water in my bath bucket gets a little warm throughout the day so the bucket bath is really nice with the cool night air, warm water and Yogi’s shadow dancing around my palm frond-lined latrine.
The highlight of the day had to be Yogi running around the yard like a madman taunting goats (who just regarded him like he was crazy) and sheep. He would not stop taunting the sheep and the sheep finally started chasing him and headbutted him and he went flying head over heels and it was hilarious. I think Yogi is very happy to be back at our house where he can run and taunt other animals.
The ladies from the groupement are always walking by my house because they are building the building for the generator just behind my house, so there is lots of saluer-ing going on. It’s nice though because I like all the ladies and consider them some of my better friends here, other than Nene and all the boys who hang out on my porch.
Funny story: Ousmane keeps saying he wants to marry my younger sister but she is only a year old and I keep telling him he will have to wait 20 years. He says that is ok.
For dinner I decided to make french fries with onions, tomato and Laughing Cow but I didn’t have enough oil. I didn’t know if my onion lady would still be at her table, but I hadn’t seen her walk by on her way home so I ran out to the road and she was packing up with two boys one of which had JUST put the jar of oil on his head and I was like WAIT!!! And I pointed at the jar and the lady is so nice she had the boys take the jar down, opened up another jar to get the baggie AND opened up another baggie she had just finished tying up to give me change. I love my onion lady.
And the fries were delicious.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Back At Site
Well, it is awesome to be back at my house. Except that I feel like my room is hotter than even Kate’s or John’s! In fact, last night at John’s I actually got COLD in the middle of the night and had to take my towel from being my pillow and try to curl up under it.
Both John and Kate apparently hated taking care of Yogi because he is super energetic and not house trained (especially in a place where he doesn’t have an open-door policy which he can’t have at John’s or Kate’s due to the size of their cities). Here, he can go in and out as he pleases and he did not go to the bathroom inside even once today. But this is partly due to the training Kate had been giving him which I am going to try to continue but feel I am already sucking at.
So there have been some changes at John’s site and the Prefet moved the gares into one gare that is freaking far. And I had a ridiculous amount of chose with me and poor John hauled not only my backpack but also a big bag stuffed with books and packages sent from the States (more on this later) all the way there (and this is after leaving a bunch of stuff at his house). And then the gare was really confusing. I told like 4 people where I was going and they kept telling me to wait, as if there weren’t a car there that were going my way yet and then one of them moved me and all my stuff down to the rice bars so I had no idea what was going on. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because one of the dudes at the rice bar, who I thought was just going to go in the same car as me, turned out to be a fonctionnaire with his own patron-mobile (SUV with a driver) and gave me a free ride right to my doorstep!! It was awesome! He was actually driving all the way up my road to check on the progress of the road repairs (and I think the road is actually looking better!) and he had a GPS unit and two digital cameras! I was like WHOA! We stopped twice to talk to some of the workers doing the repairs but even with that it only took an hour to get here so all in all a good ride.
I felt kind of bad though because as I was sitting at the rice bar, my Sous Prefet drove up on his moto with his wife and Alpha (youngest kid) and stopped to talk to someone and I was like “Hey I know you!” and went over to talk to him and told him I was waiting for a taxi. And he went over to the gare and arranged it with the driver going my way and came back to tell me the driver would pick me up there when the car was ready to go (because apparently the four other people I told where I was going did not get through). And then I briefly thought that the car I was getting into WAS the taxi (sometimes you get super lucky and get an SUV taxi, but this one was decidedly nicer than any SUV taxi) and didn’t realize I was getting a patron ride until we already were leaving, so I didn’t get a chance to go tell the taxi that I had another ride. So I feel bad.
Anyway. Packages rock. Before I left for Dakar there was one from my mom and when I got back there was one from my grandparents and one from JAKE’s mom (moms love me – thanks Mrs. Figas!). And then when I got to John’s the mail run had dropped off one from Megan (woot first friend package, Megan has all the gold stars!!) and one from my Aunt Sue. All in all, pretty freaking awesome and what was sent all made it (even the huge chocolate bars Megan sent made it with apparently no melting, though granted I have not actually opened one yet, but the point is that they are hard. The fun size Milky Ways and 3 Musketeers got a little bit squished but are not liquid and are freaking delicious!). My American food trunk is overflowing. Which is good for Nene because it means if she does something for me (like today she washed my clothes), she gets her pick of a bunch of different things as payment (today she took a Nature Valley granola bar). Tomorrow she is going to come wash my floors.
Also Megan sent some dog toys and Yogi has actually been playing with the “Tennis Bone” she sent, so thank you!!
Also I got some mail just before I left Conakry the other day and I had a letter! No it wasn’t from one of my friends or someone in my family (f-ing slackers!!!), but from a dude named Allister who reads my blog. DO YOU HEAR THAT FRIENDS?? A dude who doesn’t even know me sent me a letter and YOU are still sitting around! He sent an awesome sticker with it, too, that says “Genius At Work” and I am totally putting it on my front door. Thanks Allister!! It was a treat to get a letter, even from someone I don’t know. Good luck in your application process, I hope they do send you to Africa and having no French seems to be no problem as long as you studied a romance language of some kind in school. To briefly answer some of your questions: If I packed again, I would bring half the clothes, toiletries and food I originally brought (you don’t want to wash that many clothes anyway, people send you toiletries and food in packages and you’d be surprised how long a tube of toothpaste and a bottle of shampoo really last you). The best things I brought were this AlphaSmart I am writing on right now (it is what allows me to post so many detailed blogs – I’m doing it at site and just downloading the text files when I get to internet), my digital camera, iPod, iPod speaker, solar charger (I have the IceTech, it charges my iPod and cell phone) and my own pillow (the pillows here suck and the ones you can buy at Leb stores are expensive). Oh and a headlamp is absolutely indispensable (I have never used my flashlight). I wish I had brought my teddy bear. And another pair of smaller jeans since I’ve lost a lot of weight and you probably will, too. I also wish I had brought a smaller laptop. I have a huge PowerBook (17”) and it is basically prohibitively large to be carting around everywhere. Wish I had sold it and brought a 12” iBook instead. When thinking of bringing a laptop, the smaller the better.
My house was a complete wreck when I got here. There were about 50 wasp maggot nests on the porch (I had been keeping on top of them and breaking them with a hammer whenever one of the HUGE wasps that like my porch would be trying to build one). There were also cigarette butts, a big rock and a broken set of prayer beads. Meaning people had been hanging out on my porch while I was gone. But luckily no break-ins! So I spent awhile cleaning. There was A LOT of mouse poop and spoiled fruit and vegetables, some of which the mouse had eaten. And some unidentifiable moldy mess in the bottom of one of my buckets. And lots of spiders had moved in, though all pretty small. I swept them all out. Oddly, none had moved into my bedroom, just the living room and hallway.
I went to the changol with Nene, Mamadou and the other Nene who stays with Nene when the Sous Prefet is away to do laundry. I was intending to do my own laundry but then Nene insisted on doing mine, which was fine with me because it meant I could get rid of a bon-bon! So I hung out down there with the women for a couple of hours and every bush taxi that went by honked at the blanc on the side of the road and every woman who came to do her washing smiled in delight when I greeted them in Pular.
There’s more to say but I’m tired. G’night!
Both John and Kate apparently hated taking care of Yogi because he is super energetic and not house trained (especially in a place where he doesn’t have an open-door policy which he can’t have at John’s or Kate’s due to the size of their cities). Here, he can go in and out as he pleases and he did not go to the bathroom inside even once today. But this is partly due to the training Kate had been giving him which I am going to try to continue but feel I am already sucking at.
So there have been some changes at John’s site and the Prefet moved the gares into one gare that is freaking far. And I had a ridiculous amount of chose with me and poor John hauled not only my backpack but also a big bag stuffed with books and packages sent from the States (more on this later) all the way there (and this is after leaving a bunch of stuff at his house). And then the gare was really confusing. I told like 4 people where I was going and they kept telling me to wait, as if there weren’t a car there that were going my way yet and then one of them moved me and all my stuff down to the rice bars so I had no idea what was going on. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because one of the dudes at the rice bar, who I thought was just going to go in the same car as me, turned out to be a fonctionnaire with his own patron-mobile (SUV with a driver) and gave me a free ride right to my doorstep!! It was awesome! He was actually driving all the way up my road to check on the progress of the road repairs (and I think the road is actually looking better!) and he had a GPS unit and two digital cameras! I was like WHOA! We stopped twice to talk to some of the workers doing the repairs but even with that it only took an hour to get here so all in all a good ride.
I felt kind of bad though because as I was sitting at the rice bar, my Sous Prefet drove up on his moto with his wife and Alpha (youngest kid) and stopped to talk to someone and I was like “Hey I know you!” and went over to talk to him and told him I was waiting for a taxi. And he went over to the gare and arranged it with the driver going my way and came back to tell me the driver would pick me up there when the car was ready to go (because apparently the four other people I told where I was going did not get through). And then I briefly thought that the car I was getting into WAS the taxi (sometimes you get super lucky and get an SUV taxi, but this one was decidedly nicer than any SUV taxi) and didn’t realize I was getting a patron ride until we already were leaving, so I didn’t get a chance to go tell the taxi that I had another ride. So I feel bad.
Anyway. Packages rock. Before I left for Dakar there was one from my mom and when I got back there was one from my grandparents and one from JAKE’s mom (moms love me – thanks Mrs. Figas!). And then when I got to John’s the mail run had dropped off one from Megan (woot first friend package, Megan has all the gold stars!!) and one from my Aunt Sue. All in all, pretty freaking awesome and what was sent all made it (even the huge chocolate bars Megan sent made it with apparently no melting, though granted I have not actually opened one yet, but the point is that they are hard. The fun size Milky Ways and 3 Musketeers got a little bit squished but are not liquid and are freaking delicious!). My American food trunk is overflowing. Which is good for Nene because it means if she does something for me (like today she washed my clothes), she gets her pick of a bunch of different things as payment (today she took a Nature Valley granola bar). Tomorrow she is going to come wash my floors.
Also Megan sent some dog toys and Yogi has actually been playing with the “Tennis Bone” she sent, so thank you!!
Also I got some mail just before I left Conakry the other day and I had a letter! No it wasn’t from one of my friends or someone in my family (f-ing slackers!!!), but from a dude named Allister who reads my blog. DO YOU HEAR THAT FRIENDS?? A dude who doesn’t even know me sent me a letter and YOU are still sitting around! He sent an awesome sticker with it, too, that says “Genius At Work” and I am totally putting it on my front door. Thanks Allister!! It was a treat to get a letter, even from someone I don’t know. Good luck in your application process, I hope they do send you to Africa and having no French seems to be no problem as long as you studied a romance language of some kind in school. To briefly answer some of your questions: If I packed again, I would bring half the clothes, toiletries and food I originally brought (you don’t want to wash that many clothes anyway, people send you toiletries and food in packages and you’d be surprised how long a tube of toothpaste and a bottle of shampoo really last you). The best things I brought were this AlphaSmart I am writing on right now (it is what allows me to post so many detailed blogs – I’m doing it at site and just downloading the text files when I get to internet), my digital camera, iPod, iPod speaker, solar charger (I have the IceTech, it charges my iPod and cell phone) and my own pillow (the pillows here suck and the ones you can buy at Leb stores are expensive). Oh and a headlamp is absolutely indispensable (I have never used my flashlight). I wish I had brought my teddy bear. And another pair of smaller jeans since I’ve lost a lot of weight and you probably will, too. I also wish I had brought a smaller laptop. I have a huge PowerBook (17”) and it is basically prohibitively large to be carting around everywhere. Wish I had sold it and brought a 12” iBook instead. When thinking of bringing a laptop, the smaller the better.
My house was a complete wreck when I got here. There were about 50 wasp maggot nests on the porch (I had been keeping on top of them and breaking them with a hammer whenever one of the HUGE wasps that like my porch would be trying to build one). There were also cigarette butts, a big rock and a broken set of prayer beads. Meaning people had been hanging out on my porch while I was gone. But luckily no break-ins! So I spent awhile cleaning. There was A LOT of mouse poop and spoiled fruit and vegetables, some of which the mouse had eaten. And some unidentifiable moldy mess in the bottom of one of my buckets. And lots of spiders had moved in, though all pretty small. I swept them all out. Oddly, none had moved into my bedroom, just the living room and hallway.
I went to the changol with Nene, Mamadou and the other Nene who stays with Nene when the Sous Prefet is away to do laundry. I was intending to do my own laundry but then Nene insisted on doing mine, which was fine with me because it meant I could get rid of a bon-bon! So I hung out down there with the women for a couple of hours and every bush taxi that went by honked at the blanc on the side of the road and every woman who came to do her washing smiled in delight when I greeted them in Pular.
There’s more to say but I’m tired. G’night!
Friday, April 24, 2009
Pictures from Ian's Camera
Sign at the marche in Forecariah, pretty good likeness of Mr. Obama, no?:
Abandoned diamond mine we visited in training. Some independent contractors still dig there in hopes of finding the big one:
Abdoul, our AgFo trainer. He will be missed when he goes off to University!:
You make banana chips out of green bananas like these (and they are delicious):
Me giving the speech in French at our swear-in:
A typical Guinean bush taxi:
Yogi was so cute as a puppy...and that's a lot of stuff on that Land Cruiser (this is when we were being installed):
This is what my road/the area around my village looks like:
Pagaille and Yogi drive Ian crazy:
Yogi thinks Pagaille will be tasty:
Cow thinks Yogi will be tasty:
I give Pagaille a break from being attacked:
Djenaba, Ian's rice and sauce lady, who faithfully delivers my bush notes to Ian and makes the best peanut sauce I have ever had:
Craziest bush taxi driver yet. Before I got into this car, Ian said, "ummm...you might not want to ride in this car":
Then we got a flat tire. Ian is multi-purpose/Peace Corps Volunteer making a difference:
As Ian removed the tire to this bush taxi, he looked up at me and said, "You do NOT want to see how these brakes are held together":
...and I didn't. Held together by wire:
The ferry we used to cross the river. Try to find the white girl:
John taught petites the Chicken Dance when we were stuck in Mango-ville for three hours:
John's future's so bright he's gotta wear shades:
Yogi and Pagaille play for hours while bush taxis break down:
Abandoned diamond mine we visited in training. Some independent contractors still dig there in hopes of finding the big one:
Abdoul, our AgFo trainer. He will be missed when he goes off to University!:
You make banana chips out of green bananas like these (and they are delicious):
Me giving the speech in French at our swear-in:
A typical Guinean bush taxi:
Yogi was so cute as a puppy...and that's a lot of stuff on that Land Cruiser (this is when we were being installed):
This is what my road/the area around my village looks like:
Pagaille and Yogi drive Ian crazy:
Yogi thinks Pagaille will be tasty:
Cow thinks Yogi will be tasty:
I give Pagaille a break from being attacked:
Djenaba, Ian's rice and sauce lady, who faithfully delivers my bush notes to Ian and makes the best peanut sauce I have ever had:
Craziest bush taxi driver yet. Before I got into this car, Ian said, "ummm...you might not want to ride in this car":
Then we got a flat tire. Ian is multi-purpose/Peace Corps Volunteer making a difference:
As Ian removed the tire to this bush taxi, he looked up at me and said, "You do NOT want to see how these brakes are held together":
...and I didn't. Held together by wire:
The ferry we used to cross the river. Try to find the white girl:
John taught petites the Chicken Dance when we were stuck in Mango-ville for three hours:
John's future's so bright he's gotta wear shades:
Yogi and Pagaille play for hours while bush taxis break down:
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