Minister for Presidential Affairs picked as PM

Conte picked his prime minister last night - Eugene Camara, a man who has been in government for 10 years or so and is currently the minister for Presidential Affairs. The unions have rejected this selection (they wanted someone who wasn't currently in government and wouldn't be/be seen as a crony). Strikes are set to resume Monday and it looks like they will be even more violent than last time.

Now I just hope that PC gets our options together quickly. Our Country Director is coming on Tuesday night and I anticipate that they'll tell us we can't return on Wednesday. At that point they'll give us our menu of options and I hope that I can find something that lets me do some traveling before returning to the US and doesn't leave me too pissed off. We'll see.

Ugh - I can't believe I spent a year preparing for 7 months of service!!!! I still would rather start over though, instead of tranferring to another country immediately. While training was a giant pain, it did give me the chance to get to know the PC staff, the rest of my group, improve my French skills and give me confidence in teaching. So I'd rather repeat all that, because I think it would make me a more successful volunteer in a new country and would avoid me feeling like I never really had a service - 7 months in one place and another year in another would just feel so disjointed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6348127.stm

http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-02-10-voa2.cfm

If you read French:

http://www.guineenews.org/index.asp

The bottom line is that people aren't happy. Hopefully this will resolve without decaying into the war that plagued Guinea's neighbors. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I'll update again once I have some more information and/or if I manage to do anything interesting. The turtle has been off the scene here at the compound and I want to track him down and make him hang out with me.