My Chicken

Speaking of my chicken I think I just heard her sqwawk like she was being attacked and when I opened the door she was gone and my gate was open. I hope somebody didn’t steal her. That would be mean.

That night: As I was sitting on my porch, talking with Crazy, Ousmane II and Alpha Conakry, relating my early morning fears (hadn’t heard from Meryl all day and she had not tried to come home even though it was an hour or two past the time she had been coming home), Crazy said, “Hey, Meryl!” And pointed at the gate. Sure enough she was up there preening. I hastily took Yogi inside and put him in the bedroom but before I was even able to walk back out on the porch she was coming to the door and my friends were calling, “stay there! She’s coming in!” But I had to open the screen door so that’s what I did and then she just marched inside, way easier than any of the past ten days. I was amazed and grateful that my chicken came back. I mean, she’s just a chicken. And she poops A LOT…but she’s my chicken. She’s part of the family. Just like Jimminy (the cricket who lives by the door and sings every night) and Barry, the dog who’s about Yogi’s age that comes by to play (read: hump) every couple of days, and the mouse (forgot what I named her but saw her the other night! And this morning at 5am she knocked over a pot and scared the daylights out of me as I was dreaming about eating pizza [now plotting to kill mouse for pizza offense]). One time a frog squeezed under one of the locked rooms’ doors and there have been a fair amount of lizards who have found their way in but I don’t name them because I typically only see them once.

Which brings me to my other houseguest, the suspected bushrat! So one time when I went out to my latrine there was a GIANT rat out there who scurried up the palm frond enclosure and paused at the top, it’s foot-and-a-half-long tail trailing over the side. He only left when I threw a rock at him. Then there were peculiar animal droppings near the corner of my enclosure, which had been broken by termites and strong wind (yay for rain!). It’s not super broken, Yogi hasn’t even tried to get out that way, but something smaller than Yogi could get in and out. Like a giant rat.

He keeps leaving droppings that look like black beans right in the spot where I bathe and yesterday when I was fixing to go out there I opened the door and heard a scuffle, Yogi ran out and apparently just sniffed him and then he hurried around the enclosure. At the time I was too scared to jump out there like Yogi but kicked myself for a long time afterward for not getting a glimpse of the animal who had just left a fresh pile of droppings in my shower area.

I am going to give him an unpleasant name because I dont like him.

Washing Machines

Last night I dreamed of a washing machine. Do you people over there in the US realize how freaking AWESOME washing machines are? You can stuff it full, pour some soap in it, if it’s not yours put a dollar in it and YOUR CLOTHES ARE CLEAN 30 MINUTES LATER! And THEN you can put them in a DRYER and 45 minutes later they are DRY and CRISP and WARM and ready to wear! I am fairly sure the vast majority of you reading this have always taken your washing machine for granted. DO NOT. It is a mistake. The washing machine is one of the greatest inventions known to man. And to think that at one time in my life having to “wash my clothes” was an event worthy of foregoing a night on the town or other event. BULLSHIT! With a washing machine, and a dryer…THAT IS NOT A USE FOR AN ENTIRE SUNDAY MORNING FOLKS! NO MORE EXCUSES! GO TO CHURCH OR SOMETHING (or at least Sunday brunch…with mimosas made with fresh squeezed orange juice…and eggs…with cheese, fresh mushrooms, bell peppers, tomatoes…and MorningStar farms veggie sausages…). Is my recent train of thought that has been snaking back to life in the US showing? Like a neon sign? Let’s cut the power (we don’t have any here, anyway…)

This morning I went to get rice and sauce, like I do every morning at precisely 8am. If I go after 8am, she could be sold out. And even if she’s not sold out it won’t be super hot after 8am and Allah knows I love my rice and sauce toasty. So it’s sweet potato leaf sauce. Not my favorite, but I was expecting it as yesterday was peanut sauce, the day before manioc leaf sauce and I believe the day before that was peanut sauce. My sauce preferences as of the moment are as such: manioc leaf sauce (mafe hakko bantara), peanut sauce (mafe tiga), a tie between maganye (eggplant sauce) and sweet potato leaf sauce (mafe hakko pute), and wallowing at the very bottom, soup sauce (mafe soup). I would say my rice lady (who is now my rice lady’s sister since my rice lady is off giving birth in Conakry) has peanut sauce 40% of the time. Manioc leaf sauce 20% of the time and the other 40% is split between the others. I wish it was 60% manioc leaf sauce and 40% peanut but hey man that’s life.

ANYWAY. My homologue Mr. Diallo had said yesterday that he has malaria. Don’t freak out. They say EVERYTHING is malaria here. If you don’t feel good, want to sleep all day and maybe have a fever, it’s malaria. So today I see him on my way to get my rice and I say, “ca va la sante?” (how’s the health) and he says “ca va en peu” (it goes a little). On my way BACK from rice, he waves me down and walks up and asks if I would like to come work at the pepiniere today. Now, I am halfway through Harry Potter 6 and itching to finish the series but I realize that, you know, planting trees is my JOB, so I say yeah what time? He says now. I look at my rice and say, “Well, I’ve gotta eat NOW…” So he says afterwards come to his house and we’ll take the moto down to the pepiniere (3k or so) and plant a bunch of Gmelina. I say ok. I get home and look longingly at Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I eat as much sweet potato leaf sauce as I have piment (hot pepper) for (bless my rice lady’s sister, she always gives me a full piment! Piment makes rice and sauce 10x better!) and give Yogi his breakfast (sweet potato leaf sauce and rice) and almost grudgingly put everything inside, shove Yogi in the house (he fights), grab my motorcycle helmet and trudge over to Mr. Diallo’s house.

It’s not exactly his house. He has a room in this house. Rama has one of the other rooms. There are 2-4 more rooms occupied by other people but I don’t know. The building is pretty much next door to my house.

Have I mentioned that when I go by my house after coming from somewhere else and I look at it as a villager I would think the following: my garden is pathetic, what a HUGE house for one person, why hasn’t she cut back her yard (no lawn mower, dude!!), why is her back window open when she isn’t there (because if I did that Yogi would be in complete darkness when I am away and there’s not much to steal through the grate on that window, anyway), and her porch is messy. I am a poor excuse for a Guinean.

At any rate, we go down to the pepiniere and on the short moto ride I am once again reminded that when I get back to the States I’ll probably want a motorcycle. And the moto trip through West Africa we’ve been talking about as a Close-of-Service trip seems more awesome every day.

Anyway. We’re working at the pepiniere. Mr. Diallo says that the groupement planted their gmelina direct seeds too close together so they are not getting big enough and fusing (I think that’s what he said). He says we are going to make our own little field near the entrance and show people how it’s done (“they’ll know it was people of the forest who did this!!”). So we start working. He’s doing all the hard work and looking at his gaunt frame I think, “that dude does not need to be burning any more calories than he already is”, but I know he won’t let me do it mostly because when I try to do it it’s laughable so I don’t try except for a brief five minutes where I take up the coup-coup and try to start cutting 2 foot tall weeds and he calls over, “I’m going to do that!” So I content myself by sowing all the seeds. This is done by squatting and nearly breaking your ankles after a few hours, putting 2 seeds side by side about 2 inches from the last pair. Through six troughs per bed. For six beds (we still have 4 more to do). I am almost hoping we’ll content ourselves after 2 beds. No way. After 3 beds he asks if we should stop or do one more. I’m like what the hell, let’s do one more! So we do and he asks if we should do one MORE and I’m like what the hell! All I’ve got on my planner today is Harry Potter so let’s plant these seeds! I am saying this wearily cause my tummy’s growling. He decides to make 2 more beds instead of one to round it out at 6 and I faithfully seed them, squatting on my haunches.

After we finally finish the sixth bed, he seems really happy. Exceptionally happy for thinking he has malaria. So I think it’s worth it because he is really happy, though I have no idea what we’re going to do with these trees once they grow. I mean I assume we are going to plant them somewhere but he has not enlightened me as to where.

So when we finish he looks at his watch and says “we’ve worked until 11:09!” And in my head I’m like “WHAT? That’s it? We got here at 8:30!” So I get home and I do a bunch of chores, clean up after my chicken, wash dishes, rinse buckets, finally take a bath in which I wash my hair (long time coming!) and when I get back to the living room, finally ready to crack back open my HP thinking it can’t be later than 12:30ish, I look at the watch and it says it’s 4pm. I think my watch must have been crushed by my water bottle in my bag and has reset itself so I turn on my village-unusable cell phone as the only other clock I have and it says the same thing and I’m like, “No wonder my stomach is screaming at me!!” Either I misunderstood Mr. Diallo or his watch is way off.

So feeling thoroughly productive I crack open Harry Potter and don’t get too far until Hoodia comes over. Hoodia strictly speaks only Pular, I actually don’t know if she has ever been to school a day in her life, but we actually manage to communicate many things, including what’s in my garden, that there’s a mango tree growing out of my compost pile, that Yogi is way too excitable, the reactions to Yogi of all the kids at the Sous Prefet’s house (she is his cousin), that she has not yet found a husband (who’s rushing her? I think she’s 16) and that I like her shirt. Universal sign language, my friends. It works. As do my 25 words in Pular (I have no idea how many words I know but it is woeful considering I was installed almost 6 months ago.

Anyway it was a long and productive day. And Yogi didn’t even pee in the house even though I was gone for 6 hours. MIRACLES HAPPEN!

…but I still want a washing machine.

Guineans and Sex

So tonight I had a rather illuminating conversation with a friend of mine.

It all starts when I ask if there’s a marriage going on (heard singing) and he says yes and I say why the heck haven’t I been invited to a marriage? And he says he’ll invite me to the next one. Then we start to discuss the ages at which people marry here, and he says that it is not uncommon for a 12 year old girl to marry a 50 year old man. And I say this is not good because girls that age are not ready to have kids and whatnot. He basically says, “if there’s grass on the field, play ball.” I explain that while her TUMMY might be ready for babies, her HEAD isn’t. “Ca c’est vrai” he says.

We start to talk about excision. I say it’s not good. It’s bad for women’s health, bad for birth and bad for sex. I ask why Guineans excise women. He says because if they are not excised, they’re sluts, basically. He says he has had sex with both excised women and non-excised women. He says he prefers the non-excised women (whom he claims are all Christians from the Forest region) because they are happy to have sex. Excised women, he says, cry during sex, and afterwards tell you not to touch them. I want to cry just sitting there on my porch.

I spend an hour trying to make him (and another friend who happened by, at this point) understand that, “if non-excised women AND excised women BOTH have sex outside of marriage, why excise?” They come to the realization that it’s pointless after mounting the argument that excised women have to be forced into sex before marriage (and after, really) and non-excised women don’t, they want to do it. I say, “but they are both still having sex before marriage, n’est pas?” A look of comprehension finally dawns on their faces. They condemn excision.

I push further and ask why it’s ok for him to have sex outside of marriage but not for women. He says, “because I’m a man!” DUH. I tell him he is no better than a woman and that everyone is equal.

Multiple wives. I am trying to explain why having multiple wives and ridiculous numbers of children are one of the main causes of poverty. While this message eventually gets through, one thing they both insist on is that there are way more women in the world than men and it is necessary for men to marry more than one. I tell them this is absolutely not true and throw out a figure I think I heard once: 51% of the population are female while 49% are male. They say it is more like 60-40. I ask them where they heard this. They say the teachers tell them this at school.

I explain that there are people in the United States that don’t have sex until marriage. Already knowing that we typically don’t get married until 20 or later, he says, “you mean there are virgin women who are 20??” And I say, “of course. Men too.” His mouth drops in an expression of utter disbelief. He says you can’t tell whether or not a man has ever had sex. I tell him in the States there is no reason to lie about NOT having had sex. Men only lie about HAVING had sex. He asks why people, 20 years old, would never have had sex. I say some of them are religious and do it because the bible or the Koran or their religious leader said so. Others because their parents might kill them (not literally), others because they don’t want to do it before marriage and still others who can’t find anyone to have sex with them. At this last group, he balks. “Oumou!” he says, “aren’t there prostitutes???” I choke on my popcorn and it takes me a good five minutes to recover. Then it takes another ten minutes to get across the idea that in the States, it is not cool to sleep with prostitutes, as it is here. If someone sleeps with prostitutes in the States, they don’t talk about it. And a prostitute is a lousy way to lose your virginity, anyway. I try to explain the concept of love. They don’t really understand that here. Here you marry for money or kids or because your parents tell you to. Marrying for love is completely foreign.

Then he hits me with the real bombshell. “Well, can’t they just force a woman to have sex with them?” I realize that when he told me that he didn’t know ANYONE under 20 who was a virgin it was because half of them were rapists. I ask him if his friends have forced women to have sex with them. He says, “of course.” I don’t have the heart to ask if HE has, afraid to know the answer. I tell him that is illegal in the States and if you do it you go to jail. He asks if that’s true even if the woman is your wife. I say yes. He is flabbergasted.

I am depressed.

Expedition

So Ousmane II tells me he wants to take me on a “petite expedition” and after my last journey up a mountain I’m like, whatever, bring it on.

So this time I wear proper shoes: Keens way better than Chacos for hiking, take note!! Even though I am in a sour mood when he comes to pick me up in the morning (he is late, and I hate that, and I am starting to get into my Harry Potter book and resent the interruption), it turns out to be a good day.

We walk for a long time down the road until we get to a fluorescent green patch and then veer off toward the mountain. I’m already knowing we are going to climb the mountain and this time I’m prepared, what with my Keens and my camera. We walk through rice fields, saluer-ing everyone out there working and get to the foot of the mountain, where all the big boulders are. We start to climb. The views are freaking spectacular. I make a mental note to take any visitors from America up here.

We climb for awhile, resting on rock benches every now and again. Ousmane II keeps asking me if I’m tired and while I may be WINDED, I’m not tired, and we push on. During one of our rests, looking out onto the valley below containing rice fields, then trees and mountains beyond, he confesses he did not think I would even make it to here, let alone keep going. I’m thinking…is this because I’m white or because I’ve got a few extra pounds on me?

So we keep going and we get past the bouldery region and enter the forest. And I’m thinking we’ve already seen the spectacular views, where are we going? So we forge on for awhile and after a long time I finally say, “ok, I admit it, I’m tired”. And he’s like, “let’s go back.” So we take 3 or 4 steps to go back and he’s like “yeah I was going to take you to the end of the mountain where you can look off the edge and it’s like waaaaaaah!” And I stop dead in my tracks and I’m like…”well, how much farther IS it?” because I am interested in this. He says, “it’s far. We’ll do it next time.” I relent, but then curse myself all the way down the mountain because I know it would have been really cool to stand at the apex of the mountain and scream out onto the valley. Still kicking myself right now. However, we did go to the cliff face, which runs all along the mountain and inch to the edge and fearfully look down. As Ousmane II said, “it would be really bad if you fell out here.” Cause, you know…there’s not even a hospital, let alone a mountain rescue squad.

After a three and a half hour expedition, we get back to his house and eat rice and manioc leaf sauce, then sit around drinking attaya for awhile with some neighborhood males.

For living in the capital and having been all the way through school, Ousmane II still seems to know shockingly little about the world and still has a wide-eyed innocence about him when I explain things, even though he is 23 years old.

We talk about airplane travel and he asks how long it takes to get to the States via airplane from Africa, thinking it took between 1-3 hours. His first guess is 3 hours. When I look at him like he’s crazy he says, “2 hours? 1 hour?” And I say, “It took 24 hours to get from NYC to Guinea when I came here” and his jaw drops. Granted, not all of that was actual flight time, but c’est ca.

Then I start telling him that there are satellite phones on airplanes and you can call people with them. He is floored. I don’t even bother to explain the TVs in every seat where every person can choose their own movie. For free. That might make his head explode.

He keeps remarking, “eh, les blancs!” or, “oh, white people!” And I tell him, “it’s not just white people, in America we have black people, Asian people, Indian people, latin people…all religions, all nationalities…” I tell him there are plenty of black people who have invented stuff and get caught off-guard when he disbelievingly says, “like what?” I was kind of shocked that my brain came up with nothing. In my defense I can only name like 5 inventors, one of whom is Thomas Edison, all of whom ancient and, incidentally, white. But luckily a sort of educated older dude who was there having attaya with us (who I think may have actually been to America but at least has definitely been on an airplane) came to my rescue and said, “DUH, there are black Americans! They invent stuff, too!” And I say, “there are black Englishmen, black Germans, black everything, not just Americans and not just Africans.” And then we launch into the discussion about how in America, if you are a citizen, you are an American. It doesn’t matter where you originally came from, if you’re an American, you’re an American. Everyone in America comes from somewhere different except the American Indian. Which launches a whole discussion about American Indians and what languages they speak.

I probably have my most productive discussions with Ousmane II, including one where I tried to explain homosexuality, surrogate mothers and in vitro fertilization. His reaction to all this new information can be summed up by one thing he said once, “la vie est grand!” or…life is big.

It sure is.

Schools Out For Summer

Saturday night and I’m in bed before 8:30. Yogi is not happy, whining, creating pagaille in the room. He still has lots of energy and wants to stay up and run around. But I have a cold and I think lots of sleep will do me some good. And I’m the Alpha dog so he just needs to calm down and accept it.

Having a chicken is not as easy as they made it sound. She poops more than any other animal on the planet, I swear. I don’t know how she comes up with that much poop from the two handfuls of rice she eats a day. Also, she is on a thirst strike. I haven’t seen her drink water at all. But I leave a small bowl of it where she can reach it all the time so maybe she is not so dumb not to drink if she is thirsty. She is uncomfortable so she bobbles around half the day trying to get comfortable, complaining. I can’t freaking wait to let her outside. Then we’ll see if she comes home or not. I’m going to make her a little nest on the porch so I don’t have to keep her inside nor have to worry about her when I am away, like at girls’ conference in two weeks.

So I had planned to spend the whole day on the couch, nursing my cold, but around noon I decided to go and saluer the Sous Prefet and family. Then I heard music coming from the school and remembered I had been invited to the “fermature” of the primary school. Now, when I was invited, he made a motion like he was locking a door, which led me to believe that we were literally just going to close the school and I was like, “why am I being invited to this?” No, it’s more like a closing CEREMONY complete with all the kids years 1-5, parents, friends, teachers and officials. I guess it’s a good thing I showed up because they had me on the list of officials to announce. So I had to give a little wave when the MC announced “la femme du Corps du la Paix, Oumou Diallo”. I was NOT properly dressed. I was wearing a dirty tank top and a pair of long shorts the tailor made for me and plastic flip flops. At least the shorts were made of Guinean fabric? Never make the mistake of thinking you can go somewhere and just hang out in the back and act casual. Cause it never happens.

So after a bunch of waiting and speeches and kids going to the microphone and doing recitations (this is how they learn here…they are made to memorize several series of phrases in French consisting of introducing themselves and their parents, saying where they go to school, etc, etc, etc), they line all the kids up and start to read off each kid’s name. Now, it’s not in random order or alphabetical order, it is in the exact order of how well they did on the three yearly compositions. So, kid with the highest average is read first and so on until the kid who did most poorly sheepishly walks by the table of officials including me, the CRD, the director of the Koranic school (I think), some dude from the Gendarmerie (cops), the district representative, the DPE (Prefectoral education director) and the DSPE (Sous Prefectoral education director). Then all the kids yell at kids who are still standing on the other side of the mango trees. Maybe those are the kids who REALLY didnt do well who don’t get their names read. I think of what this would be like in America. I think people would be outraged because in the US we put such an emphasis on self esteem and not hurting people’s feelings even if the plain truth is, you did the worst on your exams.

Parents and family friends give some of the kids money as they do their walk of fame (or shame) and each kid is expected to put 1 mille franc in a basket at the officials table. I ask the DSPE what the money in the basket is for. He says something about the teachers contract not being fulfilled and basically the money goes to pay for the taxis to take the teachers back to where they are from. Because lots of teachers don’t actually live where they teach and go home to their families for the vacance. Why they don’t just move to where their job is like we do in America is beyond me. They have to be here from October to July, seems worth it.

After observing this whole ceremony for awhile I decide I want to give money to the top girl in each class. Unfortunately I did not decide this until the last class, the 5th, was being announced. And then the top girl was, like, 13th. Of maybe 40 or so. She looked confused when I handed her 2 mille. Other kids who were getting money would only get 1 mille per donor so I wanted to show that the top girl was important so I doubled the cadeau. I asked the DSPE to show me the top girls from the other 4 classes at the end but it turned into a pagaille and Nene came up and said “allonsi” so my goodwill gesture of trying in a small way to encourage girls to stay in/do well in school was thwarted. Next year.

So if you ever wondered how integral rice is to life here, here’s a little slice: the kids learn a song that they sang multiple times during this ceremony and a bit of it goes like this: “When I’m hungry I eat the rice. When I’m thirsty I drink the water.” What else are they going to drink? There’s no milk (well, there would be if they’d milk the cows but they don’t do that), sodas are way too expensive and that’s pretty much all we got. Although occasionally a kid will earn 500 francs and go buy a Jolly Jus packet (kinda like a Kool-Aid packet) and flavor their water. I also like how they say THE rice. It’s like that time in training when Yarie said she was going to do the cooking that day and I said, “what are you going to make?” and she looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “the rice!!”

On the Sous Prefet changement front, Mr. Bangoura arrived back from Conakry yesterday evening. He told me that when he told the Prefet he was being changed, the Prefet was like, “no! You are my best Sous Prefet! I told them not to do that!” And then suggested a way Mr. Bangoura might keep his job. And if Mr. Bangoura WEREN’T such a decent Sous Prefet he might have gone that road but he didn’t, dude’s got principles. Unlike some others who are keeping their jobs. So they are moving to Conakry. Which is one of the better places they could move, for me, because it means I can see them when I am in Conakry for my quarterly visits. It’s better than, like, Boke. Where I never plan to be.

He also said the guy coming to replace him is a good guy but I don’t know how well he knows him and I wouldn’t put it past Mr. Bangoura to say nothing but nice things so the community gives the guy a fighting chance. Nene came by my house today and said that people have been coming over to the SPs house all day to cry. Including me.

C’est la vie.

Meet Meryl

Today I became the proud owner of my first chicken. She’s white. I named her Meryl. I received her from my friend Nouhan, who gives me rides to and from the bigger city to the South for free in his SUV. When he was giving it to me (he bought it in my town today as we were having market day today), he said it was because I had said I wanted eggs last time he brought me home and then he told me to prepare the chicken well like an American would but I wasn’t sure if he meant the chicken or her eggs. I can’t kill a chicken and I got attached to her once I named her Meryl (it just happened, I wasn’t consciously trying to think up a name, hell I didn’t even know if I was going to keep her!), so I am gonna keep her for her eggs. Which apparently she will start to produce in my house after 3-4 weeks.

So here’s how you acclimate a pet chicken: tie their feet together so they can’t run off. Put them in your house for three days, you know, until they start to sympathize with their captors. Give them a handful of rice in the morning and a handful of rice at night, followed by water. After 3 days, put them outside. They will come back every night around 6pm. If she doesn’t come back it means she is shacking up with a rooster and you have to go find her. She sleeps in the house. The end.

Right now she is in an old USPS Flat Rate box which once contained awesome items from the States. She occasionally complains and flaps around but for the most part is quiet. She does not like Yogi. Yogi wants to sniff her all the time but as long as she is not running around squawking, he isn’t trying to bite her. Now, I need to create a house for Meryl outside. Not because I would mind having her in the house, but she probably won’t want to stay in the house with Yogi and I also leave once a month and she wouldn’t be able to get inside while I’m gone. So, outdoor house it is. Tomorrow I have to ask around about how exactly to construct such a thing (I know they exist, lots of people have them).

Today the Sous Prefet’s family put most of their belongings on a transport truck to be taken away, including five 50 kilo rice sacks of dried manioc. The SP still has not returned from Conakry but is supposed to get here tomorrow. I am really sad they will be leaving for good on Saturday. I took pictures of them today and gave them the presents I bought them in Labe, which went over really well.

Madame Bangoura is sad to be leaving but I can tell from what she says that she is starting to warm to the idea of moving to a big city like Conakry, where she can talk on the phone, watch TV, visit friends, go to soccer matches at the stadium, go to a half a dozen different markets, etc… She remarked how in our village she just sits on the porch and watches the day go by. I told her in English we call it “people watching”. I told her I would come and do it with her all day tomorrow since it will be my last chance.

Today I realized that she is one of only three women who speak French in my village. There’s her, Madame Fofana (whom I already wrote has left for Kindia and it is not known if she shall return) and Rama. Rama works for an NGO and isn’t in town more than half the month, usually less. The matron, Oumou, speaks a little French but it is very limited, where as I could converse freely with Madame Bangoura and Madame Fofana.

This lights a fire under my butt to start studying my Pular because who wants to talk to dudes all the time?

Anyway it feels like everybody’s leaving, many for good and some just for the vacance but basically what I’m left with is a rather dull summer. Guess that frees me up to study my Pular.

Bad Week

So as I was coming back to site yesterday a dude at a barrage (the barrages are back, not sure exactly why, but they are, and at one, one of the guys actually asked me and John if we supported the CNDD, to which we refused to respond) told me that the Sous Prefet’s son (Mamadou) broke his arm in two places on Friday (he fell out of a tree) and the SP took him to Conakry. He also told me my dog died but then said he was just joking. I did not find it funny.

Then at John’s site his friends told me that all of the Sous Prefets are changing and that there will be a new one in my village and he will be from the Forest region and no one thinks he speaks Pular. Which makes a load of sense, n’est pas? I mean what effective governor speaks the language of their community? ::drips with sarcasm::

So I am sad because it means the SP and his family will be leaving my village. I mean, I realize that there are a lot of SPs in Guinea who are less than liked and I’m sure there are some that are corrupt or never do anything, but Mr. Bangoura is not one of those Sous Prefets. The entire community likes him, he does stuff, he is not corrupt, he is fair and a very nice guy. Everyone here is happy with him but regardless, he will be going away. It sucks big time for me.

I have also been told that Madame Fofana at the health center might not be coming back (which really sucks because I was going to use her as my counterpart to help distribute the mosquito nets I should be getting from Project Palu). Before I left for the fourth of July party in Labe she told me she was going to Kindia for a month, where her family lives, but that she would be coming back. Now I am being told that her volunteer contract with the health center is up and no one knows if she is coming back or not.

In fact the only good news I’ve gotten lately is that my friend Ousmane told me today that he told his family he wanted to do the 10th grade here instead of Conakry so that he can be my friend. He will still have to leave next summer to do 11th through Terminal somewhere else, but it will be nice to have him for the next school year when I want to do a lot of stuff at the school (pepiniere, vegetable garden, World Map Project, English classes, etc…).

Today he was here and hinting that he still needs some money for the taxi to Conakry where he is going to spend the vacance. He said he already had thirty mille but needs 50 for the taxi and really wants to get 60 so that he can eat. This seems reasonable. He wants to leave Thursday so I told him if he didn’t have to go to the fields tomorrow he could come work here and I would give him the rest of his transport money. It’s double the day rate for workers (which is 15 mille), but he is my friend and I am able to give it to him so I’m going to.

We are going to clear/cut back the weeds in my yard to discourage snakes, build a support system out of bamboo for my beans, line the other side of my path with mud bricks that are just sitting in my yard, make a platform out of mud bricks to put my buckets when it rains to collect water, repair a couple of holes in the fence where the goats are getting in, transplant my vegetable seedlings, plant the rest of my moringa seeds in sachets, attempt to deal with the erosion problem in my garden and maybe get a bunch of gliricidia leaves to mix into my dirt. Basically there is lots to do and tomorrow will be a busy day. He will earn his keep. He’s supposed to show up at 9am.

Today he also told me I got fat over the weekend, which means I must have done my fair share of eating and drinking. But hey, that’s what Fourth of July is for, n’est pas?

Epic Expedition

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.

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 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

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.

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.

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! ;)

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:

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:

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.

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.

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!!

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.

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.