Day 13 and no resolution

Yesterday I sent this to my parents, but they didn't get it updated...

Things in Mamou are calm, although there were protests in the Forest region as well as Pita and Labe today, according to the latest information. There's quite a bit of information on Guinea on the Reuters AlertNet site, and an interesting article about food shortages here. The link to that article is http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L21637020.htm.

Brad and I just talked to our military buddy and he was telling us how he would do anything to protect us from harm, so that's nice. We hear that tomorrow it all might heat up again and he confirmed that information, so I guess we'll just have to see what that means. They are saying the same thing in Conakry. Last night's talks ended in stalemate. Neither side is backing down at all. They've brought in the Presidents of Mali, Senegal and Nigeria to help with the discussions, but it seems that today's talks didn't result in resolution either. In the interest of keeping out of the politics here, I'll just link to some information about what Conte is saying. Here's a quote from Conte - "Those who want power must wait their turn. It is God who gives power and when he gives it to someone, everyone must stand behind him," he said. And here's the article it came from - (that didn't work properly, but it was from the BBC)

This morning Brad and I had a very interesting discussion about development work and I'm going to try and get my thoughts together on what my philosophy is so that I can eventually apply to graduate school. One of my goals for coming here was to determine what development means and how to give assistance to the poorest of the poor without creating a culture of dependency. I think that the PC emphasis on sustainability is critically important, to the point that PC is willing to see a project fail instead of have it succeed because the volunteers did all the work. Most NGOs aren't willing to do that, but they are also dealing with a lot more money than we do with our small libraries and theater groups and whatever else. Anyway, while I hate all this uncertainty, it's nice to know that I still have a passion for what I'm doing. And it's nice that I have people to talk to about it!

Depending on how things are going tomorrow I'll try and come up to update. But if they set up military checkpoints at the road near here I'll probably just watch movies and stay at the compound. Try not to worry about us - believe me, we are in good hands with the Peace Corps! By the way, I checked to make sure that I could update and the admin guy said "Well, it's not like you are writing anything alarmist, are you?" and I laughed and told him no, because I'm not alarmed. If I did get alarmed I'd probably just not update because I'd be in a helicopter, car, motorcycle or canoe escaping!


Now for today's news...

Things here in Mamou were calm. As Brad and I left the internet the Mamou Governor came on the radio to say that he was calling off the military. They weren't allowed to fire shots into the air or anything. The governor said he would allow protests as long as they remained peaceful. And he also said the union leaders were welcome to use the radio to explain their position. So today there were protests but no shots and no one was hurt. Once again, I have no written opinion about this all, but you can imagine. All over the rest of the country things weren't as great and about 20 people were killed. But the people were allowed to have a voice in Mamou and they exercised that right respectfully. I love Mamou.

And for today's news...

http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-01-22T213436Z_01_L22792400_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-GUINEA-STRIKE-COL.XML&archived=False

http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-01-22-voa39.cfm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6286653.stm

I know it shouldn't be funny, but the BBC reports that they were chanting Bye-Bye Conte. Guineans love to say bye-bye, it's like Americans saying adios. And it always makes me smile when they do it to me, especially since they get such a kick out of it!

They all say pretty much the same thing, but it's interesting that more news outlets are picking up on the story. We volunteers are all still fine, but starting to get stir-crazy. And I haven't been to the market here, but we were told that food prices have risen sharply - an onion that was 200 francs a week ago is now 1,000. I can afford that, but most people here can't. It will be interesting to see how the food shortage and hike in prices affects the situation here.

I told my mom the other night that my worst-case scenario was that I would have to escape directly to Sierra Leone on a moto with Brad. We'd just point a compass south and go! She thought the image of that was hilarious (if you are PC admin reading this, don't worry, I was just kidding.) But, really, the worst-case scenario is having to leave this incredible country and try and fall in love with a new one.

By the way, I had a dream about going to the grocery store last night. One of those huge Midwestern ones. My dreams are getting lamer by the night!