People Magazine = Big Hit

Guineans love People magazine. I was reading one on my porch today and my friend Lamarana came over and saw that Rihanna was on the cover and was like, “CAN I HAVE THAT?? I LOVE RIHANNA!” And I was like sure, it’s yours…but only when I am done reading. And then some kids came by and were looking through the one with Jessica Simpson on the cover and Lamarana told them that the Rihanna one was going to be his and the one kid asked me if he could have the other one and I said, “if you do something for me you can have it.” He asked if I liked mangoes and I said yes so he went and got me about 6 mangoes and I gave him the magazine.

Also Lamarana can’t find work so he doesn’t really have any money and he asked me to give him lunch, and I didn’t know quite how to respond because I’m not like Guineans in that I don’t have rice and sauce just sitting around all the time, I would have to actually prepare something, but then I remembered that Balde had bought me three hard boiled eggs in the marche the other day and I knew I wouldn’t eat them before they went bad (though I could have fed them to Yogi) so I asked if he wanted an egg and he got really excited so I brought him all three eggs. Then he said he was going to go get bread to put them on, since I didn’t have bread, so I busted out the mayonnaise too and he had a boiled egg and mayonnaise sandwich on french bread. Not a bad lunch. Unfortunately the mayonnaise was still out when the kids came by so they went and bought bread too and made mayonnaise sandwiches for themselves. So about half my jar of mayonnaise got used up. Mayo is kind of expensive at 15 mille (about $3) for a small jar, but it made them all really happy so it was worth it.

In the afternoon I went over to the Sous Prefet’s house to saluer madame and brought her a handful of the chocolate covered caramels from Dakar and a wheel of Laughing Cow cheese (Vache qui rit). She fed me rice with manioc leaf sauce (it was thick because she put peanut butter in it – also who would ever have thought I would miss rice and sauce so much??) and a giant slice of watermelon. Then I asked her if she made peanut sauce because I want to learn (really I am just searching for the lady with the best peanut sauce and once I find her I am going to make her be my mom and feed me peanut sauce 3x a week . I have memorized the phrase “I want peanut sauce!” in Pular: Mi faala mafe tiga!). She said we can make it tomorrow so I’m supposed to go over there at 9am to help. YUM PEANUT SAUCE!

That throws a kink in my plan to go to the school at ten though because my other friend Ousmane (he is in his 10th year, which is the last year you can do in my village, you have to go the bigger city to do 11th and 12th) told me there is someone who makes keke (pounded fermented manioc with an onion sauce – so good! – but almost no nutritional value) and sells it at the school every day at 10am. And if I like it, that person walks right by my house every day to go to the school and I could get them to stop and sell me keke whenever I want!! Awesome! But I can’t do it tomorrow now that I am doing the peanut sauce thing so Thursday that is in my plans.

A lot of people hung out at my house today including this new dude Abdullah who came yesterday to saluer and brought me three oranges. He lives in Conakry but is here this week for some reason (didn’t catch the reason) and is a rapper. EVERYONE who came by informed me that he is a rapper. He has dreds and sports a Bob Marley bandanna. He seems educated and pointed out some stuff that other Guineans have never questioned. Like, I only have one plastic chair and I put it on my porch during the day so I can read out there and have somewhere to sit when people come by and he was like, “if I was at your house in the States, would you have only a chair for you and none for me?” (I responded that in the States we would have couches to sit on). This is while he sat in my only chair for hours and I had to sit on the stoop and entertain him. I feel like only having the one chair has prevented people from lingering too long at my house because while they can sit on the porch “railing” (it’s more of a ledge), that ain’t as comfortable as a plastic chair. So now I have to buy more plastic chairs, and they ain’t cheap. He also questioned why I was even in Guinea, asking if I was here just to “suffer” and I was kind of offended by that because first of all, I don’t consider myself to be suffering at all here and secondly he completely diminuer-ed (minimized) all of the goals behind being here. When he said this he was still sitting in my only chair for hours. Basically his attitude was unlike any other Guinean I have encountered thus far and he reminded me of one of those uppity people you run into at parties in the States that just try to make you feel bad about everything you do. He said he is coming back tomorrow. He also made me give him my phone number.

Also this morning Hoodia came and got me 2 big bidons and 1 petite bidon of changol water and then I leant her my bike and she got me another petite bidon of pump water, which was great because I got all stocked up on water! Then this afternoon Nene came to wash my floors (earned a Kashi granola bar) and I did a bunch of dishes so I used up a petite bidon and half of a big bidon plus put all the pump water in the filter so I have empty bidons again! And my bath bucket is empty and I have to fill it in the morning.

Speaking of baths the last two nights I have taken a bath under the stars after dinner by the light of my kerosene lantern. It has been amazing. It is the hottest month of the year and outside at night it cools down considerably but the water in my bath bucket gets a little warm throughout the day so the bucket bath is really nice with the cool night air, warm water and Yogi’s shadow dancing around my palm frond-lined latrine.

The highlight of the day had to be Yogi running around the yard like a madman taunting goats (who just regarded him like he was crazy) and sheep. He would not stop taunting the sheep and the sheep finally started chasing him and headbutted him and he went flying head over heels and it was hilarious. I think Yogi is very happy to be back at our house where he can run and taunt other animals.

The ladies from the groupement are always walking by my house because they are building the building for the generator just behind my house, so there is lots of saluer-ing going on. It’s nice though because I like all the ladies and consider them some of my better friends here, other than Nene and all the boys who hang out on my porch.

Funny story: Ousmane keeps saying he wants to marry my younger sister but she is only a year old and I keep telling him he will have to wait 20 years. He says that is ok.

For dinner I decided to make french fries with onions, tomato and Laughing Cow but I didn’t have enough oil. I didn’t know if my onion lady would still be at her table, but I hadn’t seen her walk by on her way home so I ran out to the road and she was packing up with two boys one of which had JUST put the jar of oil on his head and I was like WAIT!!! And I pointed at the jar and the lady is so nice she had the boys take the jar down, opened up another jar to get the baggie AND opened up another baggie she had just finished tying up to give me change. I love my onion lady.

And the fries were delicious.