First Full Day At Site

I have become a master of water management already. Today I did the following with one bucket of water by reusing it over and over: took a bath, washed all my underwear, washed all my dishes, cleaned the giant bookcase/”built-in”/thing in my living room (no small feat) and Hoodia washed my bedroom floor because Yogi peed on it last night. I think that was it. There could be more. But that is no small feat. That’s a lot of stuff to do with one bucket of water, especially considering in Forecariah I went through one bucket just bathing and using the toilet every day. In Guinea nothing goes to waste: water is reused several times before you throw it away (and even then I will be throwing it onto my plants or compost pile), goats and cows eat all your kitchen scraps, petites eat your leftover food, old scraps of plastic are used to carry home salt from the market (I’m going to start bringing Tupperware containers for stuff like that, why waste their bag when they could use it on someone else).

Speaking of the market, it is kinda overwhelming. In fact, this whole day was kinda overwhelming. I went to the market about noon (it starts up about 11-12). There were a lot of people there and I just salue-d everyone I could. There really aren’t any vegetables in my marche. Just garlic and onions. And the garlic was expensive! I was also a little perturbed that I didn’t see any peanut oil, just palm oil. I mean, palm oil is good for some stuff but you can’t make French fries with it! Well, there aren’t any potatoes so I guess I wouldn’t be making French fries, anyway, unless I bought potatoes at John’s site, but still!

For lunch I had the two tomatoes and cucumbers I had brought with me from Boke on a pita bread from a Leb store with onion and two triangles of Laughing Cow cheese. It was actually pretty good. Tomorrow I am going to try to find eggs. I don’t see eggs in my marche but I think I have seen them at the boutiques when it’s not market day. I also need a jar of mayo.

Saturday I am going to try to go up to Ian’s site because it is his market day and there will be a lot of cars going between. That way I can see his site and see if his marche is any better than mine vegetable-wise to get a bead on what my food situation is really going to be like.

I am so glad I have all that dehydrated stuff I brought with me and my mom sent me in care packages. For dinner last night and tonight I made beefish bits, black beans, corn and red/green bell peppers spiced with cumin and garlic salt, finished off with piment sauce and a triangle of Laughing Cow. YUM! So easy to make. Just boil it up! However, it’s not sustainable but at least it’s going to get me through until I figure out a better food routine.

Anyway, back to today being overwhelming. People just walk into my house. I leave my door open (everyone does) and people just walk into my house. I don’t know how to say “where are you going?” in Pular so I sort of just follow them to see what they’re doing. They’re just looking around, but I don’t like it. In fact I closed my door later in the afternoon so people would have to knock and I could stand in the doorway so they couldn’t just walk in. It’s concerning because other volunteers and my Sous Prefet have said not to let people into my house, but I don’t know how to politely do that. So for now, I think I’ll be leaving the door shut a lot.

After being at the marche I didn’t want to leave my house again so I didn’t. There are just TOO MANY people around when the marche is going on and I live right behind the marche on a heavily traveled path. I already met too many people and just didn’t want to deal with the world again. I still had quite a few visitors and some petites who stood on my porch staring at me cleaning but I think that will slow down once the novelty wears off.

I definitely had some moments of almost-panic today. Just the idea of being alone in a sea of people: the only American amongst all these Guineans, my inability to effectively communicate for the most part, my need for wire to extend the antennae on my shortwave radio so I can listen to BBC and Voice of America, the vegetable/proper nutrition thing, the no reseau thing so I feel very cut off from what has become my support system – all of it is kind of overwhelming. I just keep thinking back to my first few days in Forecariah and just realizing that I felt the same way then. As time goes on I will be able to communicate better, I will make friends, I will find a routine, I will figure out where the reseau spot is, everything will fall into place. It’s just that at this moment, it feels like there is A LOT that needs to fall into place and I know it’s going to happen slowly.