First Trip to Ian's Site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starting to feel like a real volunteer!