Well it has been creeping up on us, Week 5 starts Monday and commences with language placement interviews (to see if you have reached the required level yet so you can start local language) followed by the site announcement session at 10:30am. Apparently they will make a big map of Guinea out of rocks under the Mango trees and we will all go stand on our sites and look around to see who will be close to us and who won’t. It will be intense.
Monday also brings the new volunteer trainers and for AgFo it’s Sarah and Brienne. They will be with us for Counterpart Workshop.
Thursday we leave for Mamou (in the Fouta) for Counterpart Workshop Friday and Saturday, where we will meet our counterpart for the next two years and try to communicate with only the hour and a half of survival language training on Wednesday. It should be tre interesante!
My advice to future volunteers is to get in as much French (or whatever language they will speak) as possible because the better you are at it, the easier things are and the more you will get to learn your local language before going to site. I hope I test up on Monday and get to start local language but we will see.
On Sunday we leave Mamou for site visit which will take all week. We will get to see our houses, meet our town, see our market, etc… Everyone is really excited to figure everything out and the prevalent sentiment is that no matter what site you end up with, you’re going to love it in the end despite whatever hardships it will put on you.
We all can’t wait until Monday and then I’m sure once we know our sites we will be tres anxieuse to see our villages! It never ends.
Just to clarify, I did receive my mom’s first package over the New Year’s holiday, it was postmarked December 8 and hadn’t been tampered with in any way. And she didn’t even follow all of the suggestions on the epic mailing guidelines post. However, she was very vague and boring on her description of contents so I’m sure that helped…
If anyone else has sent something please let me know in some way (via email, comment on this blog or phone call) so I can keep an eye out for it and track what I am and am not receiving. This includes letters as I appear to have not received a Christmas letter from my mom.
Today I went to Jake’s house for dinner and his second mom (polygamous family) taught us how to make a meal. It was fries, hard boiled egg, tomato and an onion sauce which contained onion, garlic, peanut oil (2 spoons, 1 to start and 1 near the end), water (6 spoons?), half a Maggi cube and finished off with some squirts of fresh lime. It was tres bonne.
Almost as good as Animal Style Fries =).
But it was nice to get a tomato for dinner (I miss tomato!!). Tomato is actually kind of expensive at 1 mil for a decent (not spectacular) medium-small sized tomato. But considering the lack of other vegetables available is worth the cost. A good bunch of lettuce is also 1 mil and I have had lettuce with dinner the past 2 nights and it’s been great!!
A small (by US standards) onion is about 200-300 francs, a thing of peanut butter is 1 mil 500 francs (it is literally just pressed roasted peanuts – fresh and with no additives!), potatoes are 500 francs for four small ones or 1 mil for three bigger ones (keep in mind that the terms “big” and “small” are subjective and by US standards all would be considered small), a loaf of French bread is 1 mil 500 francs. Eggs are about 800 francs for a fresh one and something like 700 francs for a boiled one which doesn’t appear to make much sense because it takes more labor to prepare the boiled egg, n’est pas? Actually come to think of it I bought 2 hard boiled eggs from a woman on the street at the military checkpoint near Conakry for 1 mil…so I guess you can get boiled eggs for as little as 500 francs each. Not sure about the Laughing Cow frommage, but a tub of margarine (which I am not too fond of) runs about 15 mil, which is tres cher.
Today for lunch I got 2 eggs and onion in a bowl at the café for 2 mil and put on it half of one of the avocados Scott achete-d for me in Conakry. It wasn’t ripe when I had sliced it open in Conakry so I put it in a plastic bag and prayed it would still be usable when it softened. Well today it was fine and after scraping off some minimal bruised/brown parts I had a brilliant meal. The avocados were 2 mil 500 francs each, which is expensive but they are GOOD and big. I have another to mange tomorrow. I think about it like this: I bought avocados every day in the States even though they were an expensive fruit (at $3 a pop), so if I do the same here I’m not really acting out of character (at .50 cents US a pop). Plus they are just coming into season and will only be around until, like, May. This is how I justify the expense. And many an avocat will be manged.
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