Jen In Guinea

Au Revoir...

2008-11-03T19:37:00.000-08:00

I think it's time to retire the blog. Especially since I'm fairly certain I'm the only one who will ever read this entry!

The Epilogue:

Morocco was amazing and not freezing like the last time. Diane and mom had a great time and Camilo and I loved showing them around.

Cam and I moved to DC and are living in the Ballston area of Arlington. We have a nice apartment, a car and all the cheese a girl could ask for available round the clock.

I got a job working for the Grameen Foundation (grameenfoundation.org) and start on Wednesday. It will be very exciting and is the best possible scenario that I could have imagined for my return to employment!

Life is good, but fairly predictable. So I don't think anyone will be interested in what I'm up to anymore...but if you are a person considering joining the Peace Corps, I absolutely recommend it. An Obama canvasser stopped Cam and I the other day (he wanted money, we have none, but did both vote already...) and he said he was in the process of applying to PC. Guinea is amazing but I'm sure the experience can be found in many countries and I wouldn't hesitate to make the same decision to join!

Thanks for reading...

Jen

Bacc results are in!

2008-09-08T06:32:00.000-07:00

About a week ago the results for the high school exit/university entrance exam was announced...here is the good news:

Terminale Sciences Sociales: Half my kids, 12, passed!! That's a great result. And it made me really happy because English counts as much as French on the test for them - high schoolers choose a track and these are the "Social Science" kids.

Terminale Sciences Experimentales: 2 kids passed out of 28...not a great result, but it's wonderful for Luke because I love these kids and he'll enjoy having them in class. I'm sad, but there wasn't anything I could have done - their math teacher left for over 6 weeks and the other teachers weren't around that much either, so I just don't think they covered all the necessary material. Unfortunately English doesn't count for as much of their total score on the test.

Last year only 3 kids passed in all of Timbi Madina, so my principal was extremely pleased with this year's result. Plus some of my favorites passed, including Boubacar, my most creative student and Mohamed, who just moved to the Fouta 2 years ago and doesn't speak Pulaar! He was the chef de classe and had a really hard time with English even though he tried so hard. Plus one of my girls passed - she was recently married, but I hope she'll take the opportunity to go to university next year. We'll see.

The other exciting bit is that Fatim, my Forecariah host sister, passed! This was a big accomplishment because she had a baby a year ago. I know I wrote about her before, but she's unmarried and has this baby and I was surprised that her family let her continue going to school - that's incredibly rare here. I almost cried when her mom told me that they are going to do everything they can to help her go to university. Even though that means she'll leave her son in Forecariah it will be worth it...here it's not uncommon for grandparents or aunts to take over the parental role.

Tomorrow Camilo and I are heading to Boke for 3 or 4 days to say good-bye. It will be sad, but we have one week left and we are excited to see my mom and aunt in Morocco, so that will ease the sadness a bit!!

Palin - Wrong Woman, Wrong Message by Gloria Steinem

2008-09-08T06:26:00.000-07:00

By Gloria Steinem September 4, 2008

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.This could be huge.

Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.

Peace Corps Problems

2008-08-31T04:06:00.001-07:00

As the dollar falls against most other currencies and the Peace Corps budget remains the same, PC worldwide is officially in crisis mode. Country budgets are stretched as far as they can go and more money is absolutely necessary if they aren't going to decrease the number of volunteers.

Our new Country Director is an amazing guy and has tons of management experience, but the Guinean staff here is dropping like flies, particularly the senior-level people. It's a perfect storm - PC doesn't have enough money to offer competitive salaries and the mining companies are all flush with cash.

In a country with literally no safety net (one of the great things about the West) I can't blame the staff members for moving to the mining companies where they will make a lot more money and will be able to feed their families as well as save enough to retire. But it is still disheartening - the mining companies have paid off the government officials and virtually none of the money they pay to the government makes it to the people - the World Bank still has to bail the government out and replenish the coffers with loans. If the companies did nothing other than pay taxes that could be used for infrastructure I would be all for them. But they are just as corrupt as the officials here - their payments go to personal bank accounts, not taxes. It's a strange dichotomy - since there is little in the way of jobs or infrastructure, Peace Corps/NGOs and the mining companies are essentially the only options for the educated elite. Obviously those two groups don't have much in common!

My guess is that in other countries where diverse public and private sector jobs are available (Romania, Mexico, Morocco), the Host Country Nationals (HCNs) who work for the Peace Corps are there because they believe in the ideals of the organization, even if they could be making more money somewhere else. I know that our staff members who are leaving love the Peace Corps, but they cannot resist the pull to the mines and the chance to finally make some real money - plus, it's a job that will always be there, where with the PC there's always a chance of evacuation and program closing...the mines have invested enough money here that they will never shut down, even if there is civil unrest.

I'm disappointed that such a talented group of staff members is leaving and hope that Peace Corps Washington gets the money they need to retain the staff that's left here. If the office doesn't replace most of the talent it will be extremely hard for the volunteers to successfully do their jobs and to keep morale high.

Sacrifice (advance apologies for the virtual soapboxing)

2008-08-31T01:41:00.000-07:00

Camilo made me watch all the keynote speakers from the DNC, even though political speeches always make me wince. While I am excited at the prospect of living in DC with Obama/Biden in the White House, I have been thoroughly disappointed by the political rhetoric used by both parties this past year. From Clinton and McCain's support of the stupid gas-tax holiday to all the anti-trade talk about manufacturers having to ship their jobs and materials off to China, I'm just getting a little fed up.

Last night I heard Obama reference the fact that virtually all Americans think the economy and government are on the wrong track. While this may be true, it's not going to be impossible to fix - it's just going to take some sacrifice. What ever happened to "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country?" Yes, I am in the Peace Corps and just quoted JFK. You can feel free to defriend me on facebook...

A falling dollar and expensive gas is a big deal, but anyone in America is still part of the luckiest group of people on Earth. To put $4 gas into perspective, just remember that there are over 6 BILLION people worse off than the average American. Here in Guinea the per capita income is $500 and gas costs over $6 a gallon.

We've been at war now for 5 years and our government has never asked any of us, except our military, to sacrifice anything. Nothing. We increased our dependency on foreign oil and kept buying bigger cars and now we complain about the cost of running those cars. We complain that our jobs are being moved to China and India, but that's the cost of doing business in a global economy. As we move almost entirely to a service-based economy we need to make sure that all Americans have a specific skill set so the jobs that get moved are replaced by better-paying, higher tech jobs.

In Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat he writes that due to globalization there are currently 300 million educated and qualified Indian and Chinese people who are ready to take our jobs. The geographical benefits that we once enjoyed in the US don't matter nearly as much as they did even a decade or two ago. What should we do? Close our economy so they can't compete with us? Even an amateur economist will tell you that everyone loses in the long run under protectionist We can still be competitive, though. We just have to make sacrifices - paying our teachers more, studying harder and being smarter about the subjects we study.

Even in Guinea, which has a very low level of education, I see that jobs once entirely left to Americans or Westerners, like low-level NGO or Embassy positions, are now almost entirely filled by Guineans. While this doesn't help me as I set foot in the working world again, I know that in order to be competitive I need to get back to the States and get a graduate degree so that I have something to offer prospective employers.

I haven't really had a car since college, so I can't completely grasp the impact gas prices have on the average American (besides my parents, who should unload a vehicle or two anyway!) But I do know that we created this mess and dependency. Here's the speech I'd like to hear about gas prices..."I'm sorry that your government failed you when we chose to ignore the dangers inherent in dependency on foreign oil. The next few years are going to be tough as we make the transition from oil to clean fuels. It will not be easy, but in the long run it will improve our nation's economic health and security." I'd like to see the gas prices continue until we have fully invested in new technology - otherwise we are going to forget about it and go back to our old habits until the next crisis hits.

We have many things to pay for during my lifetime - the messes in Afghanistan and Iraq, Social Security, universal health insurance (I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it finally happens), investments in new, clean technology, educations that will keep us competitive in a global marketplace. But that money has to come from somewhere and I wish politicians would just be up front about the costs and what we need to do as a country to make it happen.

So we have our work cut out for us. But we are still the most creative nation of people in the world and will have no long-term problems adjusting to global competition. Trust me - after teaching in Guinea, I know what the French left behind in the schools - nice penmanship, zero creativity. Americans are committed to solving the nation's and world's problems and know that it's going to take time, money, energy - and leadership. I sincerely hope the next president doesn't let us down the way GWB did.

Long time, no post

2008-08-30T15:09:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted, I apologize to those of you (are you out there?) who still faithfully read the blog!

After Girls Conference Camilo and I headed to Forecariah to help with training. One of the great things about training is that it's tediousness prepares you for life in Guinea. One of the terrible things about training is how tedious it is! Luckily I don't have to attend all the sessions so I have been averaging a nap a day. And it's been raining enough that my sweating has been minimal. The new group is awesome - we are all so impressed with them. They have great attitudes, are handling everything well and are exceptionally cool people. While I'm sad that I'm not going to be here to enjoy them, Guinea is in great hands.

Our site visit was from Aug. 14-21st and I took Luke (my replacement) up to Timbi. Lucky guy. We had dinner with the missionaries one night, with our new Swiss/Spanish/Guinean couple friends (did I write about them? If not I will, they are hilarious and awesome) another and a PCV stayed with us the first night. I also introduced him to all my people in Timbi - the telecenter guy, the market ladies, my neighbors and guard and some of the people at the school. We met up with the principal in Labe and he looked almost teary saying good-bye to me! I didn't feel too emotional, actually, even though it was my last trip to Timbi. While it was sad to say good-bye, I'm ready to go and have spent so much time away from there this summer that it already seemed like I'd moved out.

Since returning from site visit we've all been busy with Practice School. For me that means that I watch trainees teach for 4 hours a day. In Simple English. Doing lessons I've already taught at least twice. I've been reading quite a few books...and I have so much more respect for my students - the terrible wooden desks are killing my butt and back! No wonder they'd make excuses to leave the classroom, I'm doing the same thing to give my (increasingly old!) body a rest!

Last night we had sangria and banana pancakes at the Volunteer house (as opposed to the houses where the trainees live with families, the official PCVs have graduated to having our own place). It was delicious, but after reading my Morocco Lonely Planet it just didn't hit the spot...I am having scarily erotic fantasies about tagine. Soon, soon.

Tomorrow Cam and I head back to Forecariah until Thursday. I'll post again when we are back at the end of the week!

PS - We are currently streaming Obama's acceptance speech. I can't wait to vote. But I wish he'd calm down his anti-free trade rhetoric and hope that's just pre-election pandering. Free trade is good for all countries.

Girls Conference 2008

2008-08-10T13:09:00.001-07:00

Above is our group photo - my girl, Aissatou, is standing next to me and is wearing blue. She was such a good participant. She's really bright and was one of the older girls so she helped some of the younger ones out with their French. I found out that she was in the Ivory Coast until 3 years ago, which explains why her written French is so strong. We talked about the possibility of her organizing a smaller scale Girls Conference in Timbi Madina next year with my replacement.

As promised, here's the scoop on Girls Conference...

Day 1: The girls and the PCVs arrived in Mamou and we began our three day diet of rice, sauce and bread.

Day 2: Cam and I led the official and unofficial openings - we played icebreakers and the local officials came to welcome the girls. Guinea loves hierarchies and pageantry! Then Cam and I did a session on public speaking and videotaped the girls giving short speeches about themselves. This was followed by sessions on Excision (by a local NGO, Tostan), Women's Roles, Environmental Protection and Business Techniques.

Day 3: Health day - sessions on HIV/AIDS, Nutrition, Family Planning and Anatomy, Depigmentation (skin bleaching?! is that what it's called?), How to Organize a Workshop and Study Skills. Which one doesn't belong? Study skills. But the Tostan people showed up on Day 1 after being misinformed (not by Cam or me!!), so we moved the schedule around a bit so they didn't have to stay the whole time. This was probably the most necessary day as it provided the girls with a lot of new information about their health and we were able to dispel some myths about pregnancy, AIDS, etc.

Day 4: Started with a women's panel, including my friend Madame Diallo (she's never been to school but is a successful merchant who has sent all her daughters to be educated), a woman named Fatoumata Bah from the Mamou Artisan's Federation, and Aminata Barry, a high school chemistry teacher. The panel was rounded out by Odette Leno, an Admin Assistant at the PC office here in Conakry - she was a fantastic addition to the conference and all the girls really looked up to her. We then took them to the Health Center, which is run almost entirely by women. The women took them on a tour and told them about how they became health workers. After lunch we had a Women's Rights session and then presentations. The girls split into 4 groups and we had 2 skits, one poem and a story all relating to the themes we studied during the conference. For dinner we had a banquet (a special rice dish with MEAT!! Big deal.) and then we all went to the nightclub.

The nightclub was hilarious. The girls were dressed straight out of rap videos. Just so skanky!! Cam told me he felt like he'd stumbled into an underage porn site. The guys were all so uncomfortable!! Hell, even I was a little uncomfortable! But the girls had fun and were all really excited about the club, so we just sucked it up...

The next morning everyone headed back to their sites. Some of the girls were crying and they all made sure to tell us how much fun they had. We couldn't have asked for a better conference and thank you all so much for your support! (That being said, we kept a list of ideas for how to involve more Guineans in the presentations next year and little things we could change...but for a first time post-evac conference it was fantastic!)

Above is the presentation of the poem the girls presented on HIV/AIDS.

On the left is the woman from the Artisan's Federation, in pink is the high school teacher and to the right is our own Odette.

Mary is helping the girls plan a workshop to present when they return to their villages.

Raven is helping the girls properly put the condom on the wooden penis. Well done, Raven! Not sure what's going on with the girl on the left's hair...most girls got it braided especially for the conference!!

Me, me!!! Pick me!!!!

We got a student at the Forestry School (ENATEF, where we stayed) to take us on a walk around the grounds and explain some of the projects they are doing. These seedlings are for sale and help keep the school going (although I frankly think that PC workshops are the real breadwinners for the school...they rip us off for the food, which is why we had to find someone in town to do it in order to make the budget work!)

So all in all it was a great success. I look forward to hearing how next year's conference goes and am sure it will be even bigger and better than this one!!!

Moved out, Conference over

2008-08-08T03:44:00.000-07:00

I moved out of my house on July 30th and it was only a little weird. I have 3 more days left in Timbi (when I bring my replacement, Luke, who's awesome) and I've been really putting off saying my good-byes. Is it wrong that I want to slink out of town? It's just too hard to tell people that I'm going for good...but I did figure out what to say when people plea one last time for a visa to America. I tell them that I can't arrange that, but if they get visas on their own I will happily show them the same hospitality in the US that they've shown me here. That seems to go over well. The good news for Luke is that he gets to keep my house after all, the family that was planning on coming back is going to put it off for a year because they can't afford the tickets (wife plus 4 kids) from Portugal to Guinea. Lucky guy.

On the 31st Cam and I went to ENATEF, the forestry school in Mamou. We did last minute organizing before everyone arrived on the 3rd and we were so glad to have that time, because the conference went extremely well and with no real hitches! We were sure there would be some crisis or something - this is Guinea, after all. But it was a huge success!! We'll post photos in the next 2 days. I sincerely thank all of you who donated to the cause and assure you that your money was well spent.

Now I'm in Conakry and going to Forecariah on Monday to help with training. I'll post a longer entry about the Conference later, but it's 11am and I need some breakfast!!

Now we are REALLY leaving Conakry...

2008-07-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

The previous plan was interrupted by Cam's high fever and serious stomach issues. Then he got better (it was viral, not malaria, he's fine now and has good drugs...) and then I woke up with a stomach situation. Then we found out that 2 of our friends are being medically separated and sent back to the US so we stuck around to provide support and spend some time with them before they leave. But tomorrow we are actually leaving.

In case you are wondering about illnesses and PC, there are a few options here if something can't be treated with what's available in-country (which is virtually nothing). The first is a medevac to Dakar (for things like root canals, specific women's issues, TB). Next is a medevac to Washington, where you can only stay 45 days to be treated before being automatically medically separated. The third is an immediate medical separation, which means that the PC has determined that your condition cannot be treated in 45 days. That one really sucks because it involves being completely removed from PC and having to file a FECA (Federal Employee Compensation Act) claim for treatment. At any rate, our friends will be fine and we are all going to miss them very much here in Guinea.

Girls Conference is officially organized. It seems like the longer we stay here the more we find to do...but we really are organized. In addition to the Conference organizing (which includes food, logistics and providing support for sessions) we are doing the Public Service and Plan of Action sessions ourselves. And we are still trying to think of a creative ice breaker to do with the girls during the opening session...sometimes things that work in the States seriously fall flat here and that would be a bad start to the Conference!

Not sure when I'll be on the internet again, it might be after Girls Conference. I'll be sure to post pictures so you can see how our big summer project turned out!

Busy, busy

2008-07-14T05:49:00.000-07:00

The last couple days have been out of control busy! We dropped Cam's dad off at the airport at 2am and returned at 9 to pick up the new group on the 10th. Then we've been helping them get settled and with the first bit of training information. They are a fantastic group and I have a feeling they are all going to have successful services here in Guinea. Today they left for their adoption ceremony in Forecariah, so I won't see them again until Aug. 7th when I join them there. Hopefully the adjustment period goes well...

Cam and I are just relaxing and catching up on email today because tomorrow we are heading to Mamou to finish up some last minute Girls Conference stuff before heading to Timbi.

In exciting news (not as exciting as the Brangelina twins, but still...) we have our tickets to America! We leave here on Sept. 16th and will be in Morocco until the 28th, arriving at JFK around 2pm. I might take that night to visit friends in the city before heading to Wisconsin. Seems like I should go ahead and buy my ticket now, gas is going up by the minute!!

I'll try and post 4th of July photos next time I'm here, we had a fun time with a pig and tons of food and beer. To see pictures of Cam's dad's visit, go to the flickr account, flickr.com/photos/camilo11. He had a great time and we were thrilled that he came to visit!

Manuel's Visit and Cheryl's Journal

2008-06-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

He arrives in 6 hours, at 3am. Needless to say we are really excited. I can't believe it's already July!

Anyway, here's Cheryl's account of her time here. I was going to shorten it but couldn't decide what to take out so I'll leave it to you, my (dwindling) faithful readers, to skim or read...

Cheryl’s Travel Journal…Guinea

The first four days of my Guinean adventure challenged me, shocked me, as well as force me to decide what my priorities would be for the rest of the trip.
The first unusual encounter began upon my arrival at the airport. After gathering my luggage, Camilo engaged in a bartering session with about twenty taxi drivers. I was quite impressed with Camilo’s bartering as he never backed down. It must be genetic as it so reminded me of Abuelita. Voices became intense as the process went on and the price ended up being extremely high. After this experience, I knew Camilo would be handling all the money. Finally, we made our way through the busy streets of Conakry to the Peace Corp house…
Most of my days began with Dolca, Kashi, protein powder and the 32 containers of milk that I carried across nearly two continents. Once I arrived, I found they have milk in Guinea. The first days were spent doing introductions and getting to know the area. My first trip to town was to the bank and for a delicious lunch at LaDamier, one of the nicest restaurants in Conakry. We hitched a ride with two Peace Corp employees that were going into town. Our means of transportation was a beautiful white Toyota Land Cruiser. Surrounding the Peace Corp compound were several of these fancy SUVs. My initial reaction was; Wow! This is going to be wonderful transportation! Soon, reality would set in! Another restaurant we went to was a Lebanese restaurant called, LeTrio. Many things on the menu they didn’t have but I found enough to wet my appetite. When it was time to leave and pay the bill, Camilo realized he didn’t have any money. We needed money to pay the bill and take a taxi across town to home. Camilo and Jen thought for sure they would not take US dollars and especially not twenties. Much to our surprise the waiter said, “Okay”. Also included in these first days was my first trip to the market.
The market is probably one of the dirtiest places I have ever been. It is filled with wall to wall people. Everybody is dripping wet with perspiration as well some with body odor. I, too, was sticky and sweaty. Animals such as chickens and goats run freely and some are for sale. Some vendors were selling vegetables, homemade goods and warm milk with flies swarming all over it. The small isles between vendors were narrow, muddy and slippery. Camilo’s appetite for the local non-refrigerated cooking turned my stomach. I would soon learn Camilo eats everything and anything! The heat was unbearable as it beat down on my back. I forgot to apply sunscreen and thought for sure I would be burnt to a crisp. Our visit included purchasing seven pagnes of fabric for a bit more than twenty five dollars. It was enough to make six sleeveless blouses and two skirts. The fabric lady forgot to give Camilo the change and she chased us down to give it to us. I couldn’t believe her honesty! The evening before we left for Boke we went to the Beach Bar, a local hang out for PCV which is located behind the PC. It was interesting to watch the local Guineans work out in their homemade beach gym. Some were very fit!
Our trip to Boke was in a taxi that seemed like it was fifty years old. We traveled on one of three paved roads in Guinea. Throughout our journey goats, cows, chickens and people would be walking along the road. Goats and cows would randomly stand in the middle of the road. The AC was the window rolled down all the way. At times the road was bumpy and it took us about four hours.
Upon our arrival into Boke we were met by Thierno, one of Camilo’s students. Thierno assisted our time in Boke. We stopped by Camilo’s house to greet his neighbors. His house is small with cement floors and dark. The kitchen had the most light when the door was open. It was like a playhouse; very small rooms, no electricity for the most part and extremely hot! I can understand why he has critters such as roaches and rats residing in his home. I can’t imagine being there for more than a visit let alone living there for more than two years. I can understand Camilo’s desire to check into a hotel with AC.
Our hotel most definitely had AC and electricity, but had a bathroom that was humid and stunk like a urinal. My thoughts were filled with massive amounts of bacteria and critters running around my room. I burned incense and frankincense to clear the place out. We locked up the rooms went into town to one Boke’s few restaurants.
Camilo and Jen ordered Chicken while I had French fries and bread. Being a vegetarian met its challenges; yet, I ate healthy and stayed healthy. Lighting was provided by a generator and at times it wasn’t working. As we waited, I was observing a fourteen or fifteen old prostitute dance around as she went into a room with an older man. As she finished spinning her tricks he left in a fancy SUV before we finished our dinner. Could I be certain that the young girl was a prostitute? Of course not, but more than likely she was. We returned to the hotel for a good night sleep, so I thought! It was difficult falling asleep with a strong smell of stench. Sounds of doors shutting brought flashes of the young prostitute entering the room with the old man. I’m sure many tricks were turned in this hotel as many of the residents were men and there is a night club adjacent to the hotel. I increased the AC to smother out the stench and I froze. A few hours into the night I thought for sure I was in the middle of a hurricane with the rain and wind slammed the walls. There was a half an inch space under the door where I imagined water seeping in and flooding my room. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep all night.
The next morning as I waited for Cami and Jen to awake I was dying for a cup of Dolca. I couldn’t wait to get out of the smelly room. We found taxis were difficult to hail as we were quite a ways out of town. Cami paid a motorcycle to go in and send a taxi back. This is the first time I have gone this long without a cup of Dolca since my hysterectomy. We met Thierno at the market and went to a tailor to have my blouses made. Cami introduced me to all his favorite vendors. We purchased items to prepare dinner and headed to the Peace Corp house in Boke. I liked this PC house as it was clean compared to Conakry, but there was no AC, limited electricity and no running water. It was quaint and I felt comfortable. Jen and I decided we should stay at the PC house instead of the hotel because I didn’t like the hotel and the taxi situation was difficult. Cami was unhappy because he so wanted AC. Thierno, Cami and I went back to the hotel and packed our things quickly and moved to the house for the next four days. Jen prepared lentils and we spent the rest of the evening with electricity integrated with solar.
The next day we went to Thierno’s house for lunch. I was so touched that his mother prepared a vegetarian sauce for me. Thierno’s area had several houses made of grass huts. There were lots of children running around, women working very hard while the men prepared and drank tea, and performed their prayer rituals. Their bathrooms consisted of outdoor areas inside fences made of grass. Luckily, my bladder really held out nicely on this trip. I always carried plenty of Purell and toilet paper. The Purell I used often but rarely had a need for toilet paper. The rice and sauce was delicious! Needless to say, I asked for the recipe. We had a wonderful afternoon and everyone was so gracious. Thierno’s mother cried when we left. Jen and I returned to the PC house and Camilo stayed with the men for tea.
The view across from the PC house was majestic! Down below was a winding river and far across in the distance was towering Mosque. Outside the PC house were a hundred goats running around and inside the gates we had a goat and the baby. By the time I left, I had the mama trained to come for Kashi. We spent a quiet evening with intermittent electricity.
Djoubairou has a good size family with many children. For lunch they killed a chicken for us. Jen and Cami enjoyed the chicken while I ate the sauce and rice. Again, it was delicious! Later, we prepared Fettuccini Alfredo for Cami’s students. I finally immersed myself into the culture when I no longer focused on the dirt and insects. I had so much fun with the kids. At least thirty kids came running from the neighborhoods and played Frisbee. They took me by the hand and led their white goddess to a shaded area to prevent sunburn. They were cute as they chanted “I love you!” They led me back to the house and my feet were filthy. Djoubairou’s mother brought out a pan of water and Djoubairou’s younger brother, Boubacar, gently washed my feet carefully washing between each toe. He patted them dry with a cloth and put my sandals back on. I was touched with how he attended to me. When we arrived the mother had the children change into clean white shirts. All the children were beautiful and very gentle especially Djoubairou’s family. . Djoubairou is a good student and a good son who takes very good care of his family. His mother is such a good woman; gentle yet strong and very attentive to her husband and children. They gave Jen and me a gift of fabric. We spent six hours there and I had tears when I left. The mother wiped my tears with the palm of her hand and placed her hand on my heart. We could not share words as I couldn’t speak French, yet, there was this profound connection. There was immense learning for me in these two days. When I changed my perception and let go of limitations I felt there were no boundaries. We as people erect the boundaries with our distortions. I felt such respect and admiration for Camilo because he had no boundaries as he made himself one their family. There is so much learning to take from this trip but this is probably the greatest learning for me. Beyond color and culture there is so much to share and verbal language was irrelevant. Camilo put his heart and soul into these students, not just in school, but also outside of school. He became a part of their life; an important influence in their lives. As I was introduced to the many people I witnessed how much Camilo touched their lives. We visited the vice principle of the school and he talked about the good qualities that make Camilo the good person he is. This community will miss and remember Camilo. The hot nights in Boke didn’t matter because the experience was so rich. Tomorrow we will leave a place that I will probably never visit again and yet, I feel such a part of.

On our journey back to Conakry we happen to pick up another volunteer, Liz. We will spend one night in Conakry to prepare for our trip to Timbe Medina, the location of Jen’s sight. We went for pizza at the Beach Bar with some of the other PCV. Not bad pizza! We have been lucky to find good, safe drivers. The way to Timbe Medina is curvy reminding me of Colombia. The landscape is absolutely beautiful and the more north you get the temperature drops. As we were traveling I saw a family of big, slender, reddish monkeys, which I think were the red colobus monkeys. They say this species is near extinction. The body and head was the same shape as well as the color and the long tail.

We stopped along the way for treats; French bread, oranges and bananas. I found myself really liking Coke on this trip. We arrived in Timbe in the evening after nine hours and it was raining. The road to Jen’s was long and bumpy so it seemed as if it took forever. We had stopped along the way to pick up stuff for dinner. Jen and Cami made pita bread sandwiches filled with hummus and veggies. They were delicious. I ate very well at Jen’s house and she is quite the cook! Jen’s house was the five star resort of Guinea. It was spacious and somewhat new and clean. I had a wonderful king size bed with a bathroom right off the bedroom. Can you believe it had a bathtub! Too bad there was no plumbing! We had electricity most of the time, but no running water. We heated up the water for our cup baths and it felt so good. Most days we went into town which is a thirty minute walk. It was hot during the day but for the most part cool at night and I didn’t sleep under a mosquito net. Jen knows all her neighbors. Marley, the woman across the street, reminded me so much of Rafiki from the Lion King. Everything from her laugh, her physical appearance to the dialogue of her Guinean language reminded me of Rafiki. Jen also had missionaries for neighbors. I was amazed at how long they had lived here. The streets were covered by cows and goats grazing. Some of the children were afraid of our white skin and others spoke out to get our attention. They called us, “portos” or whites.

Jen also hosted a Fettuccini Alfredo party for her students. I was amazed at how many female students showed up and they were dressed beautifully. There was a good turn out of about thirty students. Before they left they cleaned the yard and the house which was a big help to us because the next day we had to wake up early to go to the waterfalls.

The road to the waterfalls was long and bumpy. It was market day so all the people were walking for miles to bring their goods to sell at the market. It is incredible to watch women carry goods on the head. They never seem to spill! When we arrived at the waterfalls we had to walk for a bit through the woods. I was scared to death to walk across the rocks as they were so slippery. Jen and Cami succeeded but Cami made me nervous as he was a bit unstable. Jen is quite adventurous and makes everything look so easy. I stayed behind and sat on a rock and listened to waterfall in front of me. The vegetation was beautiful; just like you would see in a movie or in National Geographic. As I sat there, I often would check behind me to be certain there wasn’t a lion or a baboon watching me. Jen said there were baboons in the area. Cami and Jen returned and we moved down the rocks to catch another view of the falls. Jen was very attentive and at one point both Jen and Cami had both my hands while my feet flew from beneath me. They had such a strong hold nothing happened and I regained my balance.

We sat on the rocks and had a little lunch; I had French bread with peanut butter and Cami and Jen had tuna with French bread. By one o’clock we were headed back. We stopped by the market to pick up my fabric, grab a few things for dinner and headed home. Tomorrow we would head to Duki so we thought.

We woke up to rain, cold and little hope of sunshine. Upon our arrival in Pita we decided to head back to Conakry. It seemed to be a quick journey back. We were planning visiting the islands off Conakry on Tuesday. Two hours out from Conakry we stopped to use the bathroom. Yes, it was my first time. Jen was outside the door, “yes…you can do it!” Also two hours out Jen spoke with the head of security with the Peace Corp. He asked our location and instructed the driver to take a different route as that morning there was gun fire because the police and custom officers were unhappy with their working conditions and took their bosses as hostages. Of course, we safely arrived home and because of the disrupt, we will not be going to the islands. During the night I woke up to a noise. I thought possibly Jen and Cami were moving furniture upstairs. After I opened the door and noticed the lights were off I knew everyone was sleeping. I went back to bed thinking the noise was just fire works. Guinea is too poor to have fire works and I soon realized it was gun fire. I slept through the night and woke up to wonderful cups of Dolca and spent the entire day preparing my travel journal for Cami’s blog. The chaos in Guinea is just another day in Guinea and tomorrow will be different. Speaking of tomorrow, I fly back to the states.

To sum up my Guinean adventure I would have to say it was deep personal learning for me. National Geographic is there to read and documentaries are available to watch, but it isn’t the same as living it. And I have just a taste of two weeks. I learned that in the US we are very spoiled and we need to work harder and live on less. Many of the world problems today are due to our massive consumption. People in the US really don’t have a clue. I didn’t. I know that it is possible to live on so much less and that some things just aren’t so important. The more things you acquire the less time you have. The less you have the more time you have to interact in relationships. All women should have freedom. Guinean women suffer tremendously. I really question how much poor we really have in the US. We have opportunity in the US. The Guinean poor have very little, possibly no hope of opportunity. Feeling clean doesn’t require a fifteen minute shower. A bucket of water is sufficient. Clothes can feel clean after a nice bucket bath. Clothes can be worn many times before washing. It is amazing how fresh they smell after just hanging them out. My heart broke for the animals, but broke for more the people. Children stay focused longer and easier as they don’t have all the external things to occupy their attention. Mental health doesn’t seem to be an issue as they are more concerned about survival. Meals include what is available and it is always fresh. Leftovers are scarfed up as there is no refrigeration and many hungry people. Guineans are grateful for the smallest things; my leftover Coke. The people of the US are lost, confused and totally clueless. It saddens me to think that we may as a culture have to suffer severe consequences to wake up. Guineans never assume the next moment. Americans assume their material goods and basic needs such as; water, electricity and food will always be there, and therefore, use more than they need and waste what the don’t need.

Without idealizing my experience, it is my hope that I don’t forget to remember all that I have seen, lived and learned, and actually make an attempt to live it.

She left out the part about how we got to the airport and found out the flight was canceled and also the part where the fat customs ladies tried to get money out of her by holding her bags hostage! Luckily she didn't have money to give and the bags are safely back in Meadville. Hopefully we can get Cam's dad to write a similar journal!

Mission Accomplished

2008-06-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

Dubya style, that is. This is the week of the big test that determines if my kids pass out of high school and into college and today was the English section. Cam's student called him and said there were 2 sections. One was a paragraph with a bank of words at the top that the students had to fill in and then answer questions about and that second was changing sentences from the passive to the active voice. Here's why my portion of the mission is accomplished - we studied both those things many, many times and very recently!!!!!!!! It's a crapshoot, you never know what's going to be on the test, but I did about 10 different exercises using the first section's form and spent 2 weeks on the passive v. active voice. Thank God!

Now it's up to my students - did they study at home? Did they pay attention during the test? Did they second guess themselves and cheat off some kid who had no idea what the answers were? At least I know I did my job and taught them everything that was on the test. Phew.

I'll let you know this fall (perhaps it will be the series finale of blog postings, as I'll be back in the US when the results are in) how many of them passed. Then I can really stand in front of a banner that says "Mission Accomplished."

Girls Conference Postponed...

2008-06-21T16:46:00.000-07:00

Boo. We'll let you know when it's rescheduled. Now that I'm writing this I think I may have already written about it, but it's late and I'm leaving at 7am and don't feel like looking. At any rate, it's postponed, not canceled. I'll keep you posted. Camilo and I will be here in just over a week to pick up his father, yay!!

Anyway, I'll be in Timbi all next week, but will be sure to write more next time I'm in Conakry.

Bye Cheryl!

2008-06-20T04:03:00.000-07:00

Cam and I took Cheryl to the airport last night. I lied and said I had an e-ticket so I could accompany her to check-in. Here in Guinea only people who are actually flying are even allowed inside the airport. That's because it's such a big deal to fly that literally an entire family (aunts, uncles, cousins, kids who have nothing else to do) will go with the person flying and wait with them! Since lines don't really exist here, the airport would be absolute chaos if they allowed everyone inside...

I had one friend explain to me that his girlfriend was really wealthy and had a visa and offered to arrange for one for him so that they could go to New York together, but he couldn't do it because his wife would want to go to the airport and say good-bye. I asked if she would really make the 10 hours minimum trip from the Fouta just to do that and he said that yes, she would, and she wouldn't be happy to see he was traveling with his girlfriend! My suggestion to him was that he break up with his girlfriend and just be happy with his wife, but I"m not sure he took my advice.

Anyway, I got lucky because inside the airport everyone knew I wasn't traveling but the men wanted to marry me so they didn't mind that I was in there. Even telling them that Camilo was waiting for me outside didn't deter them! Being in Guinea can be such an ego boost...even if their love was more about my passport than my charms...

Camilo and I are planning to head back to Timbi tomorrow. The teachers are striking, so there's a chance the kids will have some small demonstrations. Here's the situation - the teachers are mad because they didn't get paid last month. As far as I know they've been paid now, but they were even more ticked off about it because the gendarmes got all their demands met after they went on strike and were shooting and all that. And since it's totally normal to skip work, the teachers only really have power during this time of the year, when they are needed to protor the final exams. So the kids might get mad when they can't do their high school exit exams...can't really blame them. We heard that most of the teacher's demands have been met, but there's a question on the timing. If they agree to go back to work on the assumption that they'll get a raise soon and then they don't, they've given up the position of power they have right now. So, as always, we'll see...

Fettuccine Alfredo Party Take Two

2008-06-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

Two things to notice about the above photo. One is the girl on the left in the prom dress. She's really bright and good at English and I have no idea what she was thinking! The other is the girl on the right with the baby. Until she showed up with that baby on her back I didn't know she had one! It explains why, although she's friendly and respectful, she was absent a lot and didn't ever study at home. It's so hard to be a woman here!

While I invited all my students, I was nervous that the kids I like wouldn't make it and the ones I didn't would show up and eat all the food! So I was happy to see that the best ones showed up and that my bitchy pregnant girl who answered her phone in the middle of class stayed home. The girl in the front was a student last semester. Her husband is in Spain, she's met him 2 or 3 times, and she has a gorgeous house. Unfortunately, our school authorities wouldn't let her continue her studies. She's totally bored at home and has nothing to do. Poor thing. The guy behind her is my absolute best student. His speaking skills aren't that strong since he's only learned English by reading books, but his written comprehension is phenomenal. If he ever got a scholarship to study in an Anglophone country I'd be thrilled...I told him to finish university here and then to search for money to study abroad.

Here are my girls and neighbor Marley. They really enjoyed the food and even bought little plastic bags to bring the extra home so their families could try it!

This is at the party we had for my students. The kids were shouting "Barack Obama" when this guy showed up in his suit! Of course I needed a photo.

No Flights

2008-06-18T11:09:00.000-07:00

Cam's poor mom. She's been so understanding about the flies and transport and rain and lack of comforts, but tonight we took her to the airport only to find a sign on the door saying that, because of the customs/police strike, the flight to Brussels is rescheduled for tomorrow. Although everything was calm today in Conakry, the police and customs people are still on strike. We haven't heard if the teacher's union reached an agreement with the government, but will hopefully know about that tonight.

It was a little bizarre to see the gendarmes in camo directing traffic instead of the police, who wear navy uniforms.

Oh, Guinea.

Souma Falls

2008-06-18T04:36:00.000-07:00

Isn't this waterfall lovely? Cam's mom didn't get to see it because getting there required crossing over some rocks and water that were a little scary. She waited in the sun next to the river instead! Unfortunately, with the rainy season here, I'm sure this was the last time I could see the waterfall. The water is just starting to rush too quickly and it's too deep. I couldn't believe how much more water was there compared to my camping trip over Spring Break!! But it was nice to go one last time.

Cheryl - what a good sport

2008-06-18T04:19:00.000-07:00

That's the car we took to the taxi station in Conakry. I don't think the picture does it justice. The car was old 50 years ago and was barely functioning. It's my worst nightmare that someone falls out of the car due to the doors not closing properly! And it's an even worse nightmare to imagine that happening to someone who's only been in Guinea a few days!

Cheryl accepted the invitation to try and pound the garlic. It's really tiring!! If done properly, the toned arms that the giant mortar and pestle (right, that's what it's called in English? Sounds weird for some reason) are much better than anything a fancy trainer could do.

Fettuccine Alfredo Party Number 1

2008-06-18T03:46:00.000-07:00

Here's Djoubairou's family as well as some assorted local children who couldn't resist the chance to be in a photo. The last time I saw them the mom was pregnant and the dad couldn't leave his bed because he was so sick. It was wonderful to see him outside, even though his mobility is still really limited, and to see that the baby, Adama Bella, was nice and fat. I love fat babies.

I'm quite the organizer, huh? It's not easy making pasta for 30 using coal stoves! The party was a huge hit, we are at one of Cam's student's houses in Boke. He invited his English Club and we drank Cokes, ate pasta and as a grand finale the Club sang Akon "Don't Matter." The best part of that is that one of Cam's close friends, Thierno, cracked his voice in the worst possible way right at the beginning. After that I was trying so hard not to laugh that I couldn't really pay attention! Luckily Cam caught it all on video.

Djoubairou's family was incredibly gracious, allowing us to host that party and cooking for us. They made an amazing rice dish with chicken, it was the best Guinean meal I've eaten in Guinea...we are going to ask them to make it again when Cam's dad comes, but will bring the chicken (alive...) since we know how much of a struggle it is to make ends meet here. Oh, it was delicious! They also gave Cheryl and I fabric as a gift. It was too sweet.

Cam's mom went out to play frisbee with the kids and it was hilarious. She was the Pied Piper of Guinean children, there must have been 50 of them all surrounding her! I kid you not, they started coming from the hillsides. I thought it was the funniest thing. She doesn't speak French (neither do the kids, really) so she was trying to get them all in a circle to pass the frisbee around. At some point she started shouting, "All right, all right, all right!" like it was some kind of pep rally. The kids started doing it too and they were all clapping and kept on shouting all right...it went on for a couple minutes before they lost interest. I lost interest in it long before the kids did, they were so excited to have a white woman in town wanting to play with them!

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

2008-06-18T03:34:00.000-07:00

I'm just sure that I've used that subject line before, because it's true!! After the soldiers caused all that drama a couple weeks ago the police and customs people decided to do the EXACT same thing and strike. Unfortunately, customs officials and police are necessary for a functioning airport so the airport was closed for 2 days. We heard the Air France flight coming in last night (yes, there are so few flights that depending on the day and the time you know exactly what flight it is!) and we heard that they sent scabs to the airport to do the customs and security stuff. Cam's mom is leaving tonight so I really hope that's the case!!!!

Here's the BBC article about the police strike. As always, rest assured that we are safe. All the problems are going on in town and that's far from the compound. After this post I'll put up some pictures from Cheryl's trip here. Despite the continuous political uncertainty we had a great time and she seems to have really enjoyed it, despite the flies, heat, and waking up to gunfire in Conakry! She wrote about 5 pages chronicling her experience so I'll pick out some highlights and put them up as well.

Guinea troops clash with police

Fighting has broken out in the West African state of Guinea between soldiers and striking police officers.

The two sides exchanged gunfire at the headquarters of a riot police unit in the capital, Conakry.
Some police officers have been on strike over pay and conditions since Monday, and held the head of the police force hostage for several hours.

The protest follows an army mutiny last month that led to salary increases and promotions for the soldiers.

BBC West Africa correspondent Will Ross says soldiers exchanged fire with a group of striking policeman.

A number of casualties have been reported on both sides. Some police have been taken to an army barracks.

At least two soldiers were killed, a senior army officer told Reuters news agency.

Witnesses told Reuters and the AFP news agency that the bodies of at least four policeman were seen laid out afterwards.

Risky precedent

Protesting policemen took the police commander and other senior officers captive after starting their strike, before releasing them later on Monday.

A police delegation was expected to meet the prime minister on Tuesday. The police are demanding provisions of rice as well as improved pay. With prices escalating, basic salaries can barely cover the cost of feeding a family, our correspondent says.

Last month, the government set a precedent that some people would describe as risky, he says.
When soldiers went on the rampage over their conditions - and held one of their own superiors captive - they were rewarded with promotion and a payment of more than $1,000 in salary arrears.

The country's aging president, Lansana Conte, recently sacked the prime minister who had been appointed last year as part of a deal to end deadly anti-government protests across the country.

In much of West Africa, police supplement their incomes by extorting bribes at roadblocks.

Our correspondent says that while the army and police can use their guns to demand more money, the rest of the population has to struggle on, increasingly frustrated with Guinea's politicians.

All is Calm

2008-05-31T02:04:00.000-07:00

We talked to Cam's mom last night and we are good to go for her trip. The gas stations have reopened and another PCV has a friend flying in Tuesday. We'll stick around Conakry until Wednesday when we go pick her up at the airport.

CONAKRY, Guinea — West African leaders appealed for calm in Guinea today, saying the army mutiny there could destabilize neighboring states struggling to put an era of wars and conflict behind them.

Junior troops disgruntled over back pay and demanding that Guinea's top generals resign began firing into the air Monday at several military bases on the outskirts of the capital, Conakry. They took the army's second-in-command hostage.

No clashes have been reported since the current trouble began, but hospital officials say they have admitted at least 28 people with gunshot wounds, apparently from stray bullets fired into the air. Five of the injured were soldiers, the rest civilians.

The 15-member regional Economic Community of West African States said the Guinea crisis "put at risk the safety and security of the civilian population and poses a grave threat to the fragile peace in the entire" region.

The Nigeria-based group "appealed to all Guineans to act with a high sense of responsibility and to desist from any actions likely to plunge their country and its neighbors into conflict and instability."The neighboring countries of Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone are struggling to emerge from long civil wars.

Guinea has suffered riots and repeated mutinies for years under iron-fisted dictator Lansana Conte, who took power in a 1984 coup.Conte's grip on power depends largely on the loyalty of the army, and the government has previously given in to soldiers' demands for pay increases when they have threatened violence — though the actual pay-outs have rarely come through.

No gunfire was reported today, but banks and many shops remained closed.Around midday, about 300 people gathered near the city center calling on the soldiers to end the mutiny and give them peace. It was a rare pro-Conte demonstration in a country where striking citizens have regularly demanded the president step down.

The crowd shouted "Long live peace!" as it marched toward the presidency building. One of the marchers, an office worker in Parliament named Moussa Camara, said the demonstration had not been organized by the government but showed a true demand by residents for the mutiny to end.

The ramshackle seaside capital has been tense but calm since Thursday afternoon, when loyalist army Chief of Staff Gen. Diarra Camara called on soldiers taking part in the revolt to return to their barracks.Loyalist presidential guard units with rocket launchers patrolled the city center today in armored vehicles. Banks and many shops were closed and streets were deserted. There were no reports of gunfire.

Tensions began rising last week when Conte unexpectedly fired Prime Minister Lansana Kouyate, who soldiers said had pledged to pay them back wages and bonuses.The crisis had seemed to be easing Wednesday after the government agreed to meet several key demands, particularly a promise to pay each soldier 5 million Guinean francs — around $1,100 — within days.

The government also promised to free soldiers imprisoned in a similar revolt last year, and fired the defense minister, who had threatened to prosecute the mutinous soldiers.But gunfire broke out again as mutinous soldiers expressed concern their demands would not be met.

The mutineers are also calling for the country's top generals to resign, saying they are corrupt and have blocked lower-ranking officers from receiving promotions. The soldiers also want the already subsidized price of rice for the military to be reduced.Loyalist units and the mutineers had faced off against each other Thursday on a strategic bridge in the city. They fired into the air, but did shoot at one another.

Conte, the septuagenarian dictator, had agreed to appoint Kouyate — seen as a reformer — last year after intense union protests over his autocratic rule turned deadly and threatened to overturn the government.

Guinea, on Africa's western coast, has vast reserves of timber, gold, diamonds and bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum. Yet it is consistently listed as one of the world's poorest countries — a testament to misrule by the elite.

Associated Press writer Edward Harris contributed to this report from Lagos, Nigeria.

The Drama Continues?

2008-05-30T06:13:00.000-07:00

Oh, Guinea. What a strange country. Yesterday our guards followed us out of the compound because they didn't want us walking around (we were only going to buy egg sandwiches about 10 meters away) and today everything is fine and we went to the market without any problems...except that it's really hot and about 100% humidity. Being sweaty makes me crabby.

Anyway, it appears that the military is split into 2 camps. The first is the group that accepts the government's agreement and the second is a group that wants a coup d'etat. We'll just have to see what happens. Cam and I bought enough food for 4 days here at the compound...frozen chicken, green beans, potatoes, etc. We subsisted on pizza, beer and chocolate yesterday but that's completely unacceptable.

We'd love to get out of here, but there's no gas. A couple days ago the military took their guns and basically held up all the gas stations, so the owners have closed them all down (good business decision...) We've heard that gas, normally an astronomical 8,500GF a liter, is now up to 25,000 (about $6) a liter on the black market. That's $24 a gallon! That being said, it looks like the soldiers have calmed down and they should be opening the gas stations soon. The good news is that none of this has spread upcountry, where things are just running normally. I got a text from one of my students, I'll reprint it below because it's just so funny. I appreciate him trying to write in English!

Hello haw do you feel, and your family about the demonstration of militery,if there is more dangerouse please take your family and come back in Timbi.because here we are feeling very well.so great me Camilo and your "tante." Bah Mamadou's Daum.

I guess he doesn't understand the whole bit about the roadblocks and how there's no gas to be found, but at least he's thinking about me!

Anyway, we are fine, but a little concerned that this is going to screw up Cam's mom's visit. She is supposed to arrive the 4th. Probably everything will be back to normal by Monday, but here you just never know. And if there's no gas there's no point in her coming even if everything is calm because we wouldn't be able to get out of Conakry (and if you come to Guinea and don't leave Conakry it would be a gigantic waste of time!)

A Little Bit of Drama

2008-05-28T04:02:00.000-07:00

We are in Conakry still and are planning on leaving tomorrow - yesterday we just layed low here at the compound (swimming, internet, a SATC marathon). While I cannot comment on Guinean politics, I can point out 2 things. 1. the soldiers will all be receiving 5 million francs in back pay (a teacher is paid 250,000 a month) and 2. last night soldiers vandalized gas stations, held people in restaurants up at gunpoint and took all their money and 3. took some government officials hostage. Today their demands were met. I don't like guns.

An AP article is below. Rest assured that all is calm and we are fine. My biggest concern right now is that it's 11am and I haven't eaten anything today!

CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — Guinea's new prime minister announced a deal to pay mutinous soldiers years of salary arrears, effectively ending the West African nation's latest crisis.
Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare said in a televised statement late Tuesday that the government would pay soldiers 5 million Guinean francs — around US$1,100 — each for back-pay and raises stretching back over the last eight years.

Conakry, the capital, was quiet Wednesday for the first time since sporadic gunfire began echoing across the city Monday from military bases in town.

"I appeal on the military to stay calm," Souare said, adding the government would gradually begin paying the salary arrears at the end of the month.

Guinea has been tense since last week, when President Lansana Conte unexpectedly fired Prime Minister Lansana Kouyate, who came to power last year after deadly demonstrations led by unions angry over Conte's long rule. The soldiers said Kouyate had promised to pay soldiers years of back-pay and began revolting on hearing rumors they would not receive it.
Guinea, on Africa's western coast, has vast reserves of timber, gold, diamonds and bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum. Yet it is consistently listed as one of the world's poorest countries, a testament to its misrule by the elite.

Conte, the septuagenarian dictator, has ruled the country since a 1984 coup.

Gunfire could be heard from two main military camps in Conakry on Monday and Tuesday, and soldiers in trucks crisscrossed the capital, shooting in the air for more than one hour at midday Tuesday. But the ramshackle seaside city fell calm by late afternoon when President Conte's convoy drove inside one of the bases, Camp Samory, in an apparent bid to negotiate with disgruntled soldiers, witnesses said.

Also Tuesday, Conte fired Defense Minister Bailo Diallo, one of several demands made by junior officers.

At least two civilians were wounded by stray bullets, including a young girl and man, witnesses said.

The unions had wanted Conte to step down last year, but Kouyate's appointment was a compromise. Conte had managed to retain power by agreeing to name a prime minister from a list approved by the unions.

Other demands of the soldiers included the release of an unspecified number of soldiers who took part in a three-day revolt at the Alpha Yaya Diallo barracks a year ago.

Party Planning

2008-05-25T02:39:00.001-07:00

After over a month of telling Cam I wasn't going to have a party, I've decided to have not one, but two. The first one will be with Cam and Cheryl June 14th at my house for my Terminale students. Originally it was going to be a “Congratulations, you finished the Bac!” party but now the Bac is the week after so it's going to be a good luck party instead. I've already got the menu planned – spaghetti with alfredo sauce, garlic bread, popcorn and fudge. And the ubiquitous bottled Coke products, of course. I have no idea how we are going to manage to make all that food for 50 people given my lack of cooking materials and 2 burner range, but I'm determined to make it happen!! The kids have been really cute about it and everyone says they are coming.

It makes me a little sad that there are so few opportunities to celebrate children and young adults here. Many of my childhood memories involve birthday parties, certificates, report cards (I got $3 for an A and $2 for an A-) and general celebrations – school concerts, dance recitals, etc. Here none of that stuff happens and I especially feel for my girls who are continuing their studies even though most of them have family pressure to abandon them and get married or just help out around the house. I know it's changing, but my Terminale girls really are trailblazers. The percentage of kids who finish high school is something like 10 or 20% and the percentage of girls within that block is only about 15. Anyway, I decided that I really want to have this party to show them that there are people who care about their futures and grades and career aspirations. Plus, I really want to see if they like spaghetti alfredo as much as my host family during training did!

The second party is still in the very early planning stages, but I'm hoping to have it sometime during the last two weeks in July, when Cam's dad is gone and Cam and I are back in Timbi for the last time. I'll just invite my 2 host families, guard, 12th graders, the officials and some random other people. It will be a definite mixing of social classes – from Maimouna, my neighbor from my old house who has barely enough money to survive with her 2 kids to El Hadj Bamakoure, my host father who has been to the US and loves Ohio. I think it will be 50% awkward and 50% fun. I'm going to hire someone to make rice and sauce for that one, I don't think I could handle all that cooking too!

The End of an Era

2008-05-25T02:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry in advance if I repeated stuff from my other entries, it's hard to keep track of what I write...

I'm writing this from my house on May 20th and school will officially be over for me tomorrow. Phew! Tomorrow is the last final exam and then I'm heading to Conakry on Friday, when I will post this entry. I love having Cam's (extra) computer.

So what's been going on in Timbi? Well, I spent all last week reviewing with my classes and was a little disappointed to realize yesterday and today how much they didn't get. There's really nothing more I could have done. I had 2 extra review sessions and gave them a practice exam EXACTLY like the real one but just changed the verbs and sentences. Seriously, I practically spoon-fed them the answers. And less than half of each class received a 50%, which is a passing grade. I thank my lucky stars that all my motivated students pulled through with good grades or I would have been seriously depressed. That being said, my grades are pretty normal compared to the other teachers. Seems like there's 2-4 great students, 7 or so decent students and a bunch of bad students for every group of 20.

The end of the year has been interesting – finals always bring out the best and the worst in people!

First, one of my better students was leaving the exam today and I took both the exam and the scratch paper he'd used, like I did with all the kids. He didn't want to give it to me and I basically ripped it out of his hand. Turns out he had last week's practice exam stuffed inside. He got an automatic zero and a public “I am disappointed in you, get out of my class.” With the paper he would have gotten about a 14/20. Without it I'm sure he could have pulled off an 11 and now he will fail the class. Over the weekend he stopped by my house with his 3 homeworks (I've given 6 and he only did half, even though he's good at English) to try and tell me that the 3 he had were the 3 he was missing. Then he preceded to lie to me, telling me he had ripped the other ones up. Like I was going to believe he happened to rip up the 3 that I happened to forget to record in my notebook!! I was so frustrated – I've made a serious effort to undo the 20-odd years of cheating that the kids have been able to do and most seem to get it, at least a little bit, at least in my class. But I clearly didn't make an impact on him.

A note on cheating – the kids literally cannot stop themselves. Guinea is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries on earth and I think it starts in the schools. Apparently it's possible to get your grade changed if your parents are important, if you have money or if you are a girl willing to sleep with the teachers. I don't know that any of this happens for sure at my school, but it would be naïve for me to say that it doesn't. Luckily for me I don't know whose parents are important, already have enough money and really don't care to sleep with any of the students! I can only hope that when my students have important jobs and the opportunity to be corrupt that they remember me and the expectations I set for them in my class. If they hesitate to do something bad even for a minute I'll feel that my time here was worthwhile.

Okay, on to the good things that happened. First, here is the world's cutest text message:

Hello, Mrs Dawn i'm very so Glad to you because I never had teacher like you.Plase I need your picture. As soon as you can able to do it. From the Boubacar Barry Bye and have a good time. That's God Bless you!

The grammatical errors aside, isn't that so sweet? He has the second highest grade in his class and is lucky because next year he'll do Terminale with my replacement before he takes his high school exit exam.

The other thing is that one of the other kids from Boubacar's class showed up at my house today to find out his grade (a 16, which is very good here). He was clearly pleased with himself and I was so happy for him because I know he studied really hard for the test. After I gave him his grade he got all embarrassed looking and finally told me that he really wished I would be his teacher again next year and that he was really satisfied with English class and my teaching.

Boy, I'm really tooting my own horn, aren't I? I'll stop before it gets too obnoxious, unless it already is, in which case I apologize!

In other news – today it hailed. It was the wildest thing, I was taking a nap when the rain started and all of a sudden I thought I heard hail. How on earth does that happen when it's so warm? I wish I had regular internet access so I could look that kind of stuff up. Anyway, it was really crazy and I tried to take pictures but they didn't turn out. I might post one of them just so you can see the rain. The insane rainstorms are something I will definitely miss.

Cam's stepmom arrives June 4th. We are so excited!! We'll spend a day in Conakry, then head to Boke, to Timbi and some waterfalls and then spend a night on the Islands before she leaves. At which point we'll be frantically finishing our Girls Conference planning...she leaves the 18th and it starts the 22nd...

Which brings me to exciting news – we have all the money for the conference!! I'm not sure if any of you contributed to that, but if you did I really cannot thank you enough. It's going to be a great experience for the girls and the volunteers and a lovely way to wrap things up here in Guinea. We are hoping that next year the organizers will get in touch with a local NGO and really get the Guinean community more involved. We'll have a panel of professional women and take the girls to town to see their places of employment, but it would be even better to have more involvement. As the conference evolves I think it could eventually become Guinean-run and funded (ah, the elusive goal of sustainability!!) We will use your money wisely and honestly – not ALL of Guinea is corrupt! - and I will be sure to put up the post-conference report so you can see how much your donations helped the 40 girls and 10 professional women who are taking part in the conferences!

Blog slacker and Girls Conference Information

2008-05-11T00:44:00.000-07:00

I finally am at the internet, but unfortunately am leaving in 15 minutes. The quick update: school is going well, I have reviews this week and finals next week. After that I'm headed straight to Conakry to continue Girls Conference organizing. Everything has been going well at site, some PCVs from Mali came through Timbi last weekend and we biked out to the waterfalls I went to on that camping trip and it was really fun!

Our Girls Conference has been approved and now we are in the throes of fundraising. If you are interested in donating, I'm putting the fundraising letter and information at the end of this posting. Even if you just have $10 or $20 to spare, it's for a great cause and we will really appreciate it!

This weekend I came to Mamou to help out with the peer listening group and work on the conference. It was exciting to see all the new group after 3 months as PCVs. They are doing well and are all really nice and fun. One of them even has some new movies - unfortunately I've been doing so much work here that I didn't have time to watch them! I'm going to start making a Netflix list now in anticipation of my return to the States...

Here's the email I sent out to some of you about Girls Conference. If you have any questions, feel free to email me, I'm going to try and get to the internet over the weekend. Thanks! Also, I can't get the links to work, but if you go to peacecorps.gov and click on Donate Now! on the main page you can find it with the program number listed below or by searching for Guinea projects.

Hi friends and family! Below is the information about the big project Cam and I are coordinating before we head back to the States this fall. Everyone is really excited and we are well on the way to meeting our fundraising goal. Anything you can donate will be greatly appreciated. Feel free to let me know if you have any more questions about the project. If you are in grad school, unemployed or a current PCV this is an informational email only - I don'texpect you to donate!!

I'm bringing a girl from my 12th grade class named Aissatou - she wants to be a journalist and has the highest overall average and English grade out of the whole class. That's really unusual for a girl in Guinea! She will be a great role model for some of the younger girls and will also be able to do projects at my school with the new Volunteer next year.

Thanks in advance and feel free to forward this to anyone who might be interested in donating!

Jen

Dear Friend,

Peace Corps Guinea is currently planning our annual Girls' Conferences in Mamou and Kankan. The Girls Conferences will be three-day conferences June 22-26, 2008. The participants are approximately 40 school-aged Guinean girls' volunteers' towns and villages.

Why a Girls Conference?

In Guinea, as in all of West Africa, the challenges that young women face each day are abundant and all too common.

Limited resources, social mores, and cultural expectations all play a part. Many families are too poor to send all of their children to school and will often send sons before daughters. A Guinean girl can be married off as young as 13 or 14, increasing her domestic responsibilities and affecting her scholastic career. Exhaustion from domestic work, little to no free time to study or complete school work, sexual harassment by teachers and other school officials, unequal treatment in the classroom, and ridicule in the school and community settings (for either doing too well or too poorly) all create barriers to girls' education. The social status of a girl or young woman in Guinean society means that she has very little say, and very little experience making her own decisions.

In addition to education, Guinean faces several other crises for women. The rate of female genital mutilation still tops 95 percent, resulting in health risks and suffering each new generation of young women. Malnutrition results in death, blindness, and countless other health problems for Guineans nationwide. Educating young Guinean women on the benefits of foods to which they already have access is essential to improving overall health. In its impoverished state, Guinea's youth also face the spread of HIV: "Out of every nine [Guineans], five are children or young people…Because of poverty, they are made vulnerable to epidemics like HIV/AIDS," according to UNICEF country representative Marcel Rudasingwa (UN News Services 2006).

These topics form the foundation of education that takes place at Girls Conferences each year.

Your contribution today can help us fund the 2008 Girls Conference.

What is Girls Conference?

Local contributors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and volunteers work together to direct the Conferences, planning interactive sessions on topics crucial to the success and well-being of the girls. The girls learn techniques for success in school, educational and professional possibilities, and personal health (including preventing HIV transmission and family planning), among other topics. At the same time, they develop skills such as critical reasoning and public speaking so that, by the end of the Conferences, they will be able to confidently present the information they've learned.

A group of professional Guinean women will lead the girls through a typical day at their places of work and converse with them in a panel discussion on personal and career success. For many participants, this is their first such encounter with accomplished professional women. The schedule always includes a day spent on women's health issues with presentations about HIV/AIDS, family planning and nutrition. Recent conferences also included: basic computer skills, educational films (including women's rights, HIV/AIDS, and genital mutilation), invited speakers on women's role in Islam, guided discussions about polygamy and the effects on women, workshops on communication skills and public speaking and participation in sports and extracurricular activities encouraging teamwork, leadership, and critical thinking skills.

This year's conference is particularly important because it is occurring at a critical time in Peace Corps Guinea. After nine years of consecutive conferences, the strikes and civil unrest in January 2007 and suspension of the Peace Corps program prevented the conferences from taking place last year. With the successful completion of this year's conference, we will be protecting our institutional memory and the tradition of Girls' Conferences for future generations of Volunteers and the communities they serve across Guinea.

How Can You Help?

We are now raising money for the conferences taking place in Mamou and Kankan from June 22-26, 2008. Per Peace Corps regulations, the communities of the participating girls will be contributing 25% of the Conferences' costs. We hope to raise the remaining cost via donations through the Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP).

The total cost of the conferences will be $7,690. Towns and villages throughout Guinea, the female participants and their families, and local NGOs and government officials will be providing $1,940.

Therefore, our fundraising goal for the 2008 Girls Conferences is $5,748.

If you are able to help educate these girls and their communities to give these girls the tools and knowledge to build a better future for themselves, please contribute now. Our deadline is May 20th, so contribute soon!

To donate, just click on the link below or copy and paste the URL into your web browser.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE – EVERY CONTRIBUTION COUNTS

Thank you in advance,

Peace Corps Guinea Girls' Conference 2008

Project Donation Page URL :
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=675-132

The project number is 675-132 and Volunteer Coordinator is C. Forero

The End is Near

2008-04-19T03:01:00.000-07:00

Camilo and I spent the last 3 days at our Close-of-Service (COS) Conference. We got to spend a night at the Islands, I'll upload pictures before I leave Conakry tomorrow. After a lot of thought, we decided not to extend our service and we will be returning home with my mom and aunt in late September. Just in time for the economy to really be doing poorly!!

We have many things to look forward to this summer - only one more month of school and then we have Girls Conference in late June, the new group arriving in July, Cam's family coming to visit, spending all of August training the new people and then saying our final good-byes. It's been a really interesting and fun two years, but I'm ready to move on.

I think the most surprising element of my PC service was how much fun I've had. My expectations were that it would be extremely challenging and difficult, but that hasn't really been the case. Even this last month had some bright spots! My service has been fun and interesting and I am really glad I decided to do this rather than immediately apply to grad school.

After a hectic and fragmented service, I'm ready to go home and spend quality time with my friends and family. I miss you all!!!

Director's Visit

2008-04-18T02:09:00.000-07:00

The visit went off without a hitch. I was very impressed with the Director and the group he traveled with. One of the women helped out with the evacuation and it was really fun to see her again. We had a delicious spaghetti dinner with all of us who returned to the program, senior staff here and the Director and his entourage. Camilo and I finally got to meet the Ambassador, who is just the friendliest, coolest guy. He was so helpful and willing to talk about our post-PC plans.

Anyway, above are 2 pictures. They are from the lunch we had on the compound - a group of drummers came from Forecariah and 3 PCVs danced with them, it was really impressive. And we had a sheep that the Director received as a gift and asked to eat for lunch! All in all a fun and successful visit.

Unfortunately, I am officially out of time. It's 10:30 here and I'm leaving at 8am tomorrow!! And the post after this one was actually written before this one, Blogger is weird. I wanted to post some other photos, but it will have to wait another 2 weeks. I *should* be back in 2 weeks with the Mail Run to do more work on Girls Conference.

Today one of our staff members got married in a 2 hour ceremony in an Anglican church. Then we all went to this really nice place for the reception. Camilo took lots of pictures, but they'll have to wait!

Okay, I'll be back online in 2 or 3 weeks and am looking forward to hearing from you all!!!

Who needs a groom?

2008-04-18T01:51:00.000-07:00

Aren't these two so cute? At first I thought it was weird that the groom didn't come from Conakry for the wedding, but I've rethought it. Doesn't everyone say the wedding is really about the bride anyway? So does it really matter that the groom wasn't there? She was adorably happy and running around taking pictures and we had such good food. All my students wore their "uniforms" and we took lots of pictures.

The girl on the right was a student last semester who apparently flew under the administration's radar the whole semester and then got busted and told she couldn't return for the second semester. She picked me up since I didn't know where the wedding was and we stopped at her house along the way. She has a husband in Spain that she's seen twice - once for the wedding and one other time. But her house is gorgeous - even nicer than mine. I do feel a bit bad for her though, now that she's not studying she told me she's really bored and I don't get the feeling her husband will be sending for her soon.

One of the problems with polygamy and moving to developed countries is that many men take "village wives" here in Guinea but have another family in their new country. That means that the Guinean wives will never get visas to join their spouses. This is a particularly big problem in Timbi because so many men are abroad. My student has financial security, but is bored and lonely. I don't really know what to think about that. Eventually he'll come back and she'll get pregnant. He will leave again before the baby is born and not return for up to 10 years - one of Cam's friends just had his brother return to meet his 8 year old son for the first time. It's such a different conception of fatherhood than we have in the US...even within Guinea it's normal for the immediate family to be broken up. It's much cheaper to pay for a family in the village and to work in Conakry than to have everyone live in Conakry.

It was a fun wedding party, even though there was no ceremony. Everyone treated me really well and made sure I had enough food and soda and everything. It was the first party I've been to where I knew almost everyone and had plenty of people to speak French with! Good times.

Swimming...

2008-04-18T01:46:00.000-07:00

I'm not looking to return to the US with schisto again, but the water was not exactly the cleanest. That being said, it was the 8th year of the camping trip and no one has gotten sick before. Some of the tough people jumped from about 2/3rds of the way up. Not me. I promised my family I'd do everything in my power to return in one piece!

One of the highlights was seeing a pack of baboons on the way back to Timbi. There must have been 25 of them! My mom always asks if I've seen any animals recently. Since she doesn't count chickens, goats, sheep or lizards I always respond no. But not the last time we talked! It was cool. Unfortunately, my camera is pretty cheap and we had to stay far away so we didn't scare them off, so all the baboons look like branches. Not worth posting. :(

A new village?

2008-04-18T01:42:00.000-07:00

The woman on the right is the housekeeper at my friend's place. We set up about 10 huge tents, which was really distracting for all the Guineans that kept riding by on motorcycles. We asked Mariama what the Guineans thought of all of us and she replied, "Whoa, look at all those white people building a new village!"

Our tents probably were the size of a lot of huts, so that's not too farfetched! At any rate, there were about 10 adults and 20 kids. Most of you who know me know that I love babies and kids, so I was pretty much in heaven.

Camping Trip

2008-04-18T01:37:00.000-07:00

This is the dry season, so I can't even imagine how big the waterfall will be this summer. Camilo and I are really hoping to take his mom and sister there, it's breathtakingly beautiful. My photographic skills do not do it justice.

Camping, a wedding, and COS

2008-04-13T05:18:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Conakry 2 days ago but keep on forgetting to bring my camera to the computers, so I'll just write a quick update...

I finally got to go to a wedding! But the groom wasn't there. Which is actually not that abnormal here. I'll write more when I have my photos.
About 30 American missionaries went camping for 3 days 15km from my house and I spent 2 days with them. It was sort of surreal to be with so many American kids and to eat tacos and to sleep in real tents. The scenery was gorgeous, it's too bad the road is terrible and there's no drinking water or food or anything there because it'd be too much of a pain to bike it.
The DC Director is here and all of us who got evac'ed and came back are having dinner with him tonight. I have no idea what to expect, but our staff has been impressed with him so I'm sure it will be fun...or interesting at the very least.
Spring Break was a good time, but it started early. I got to school last Wednesday and was told that I couldn't teach...even though my students were there and I had a lesson plan. I gave them all extra credit and then we all went home. Weird.
My birthday was really nice, except that Cam and I got food poisoning from a chicken reheating error at the missionaries! We all got really sick and my friend felt so bad, even though I was just as much at fault as she was.

The biggest news is that, depending on what happens during our conference from Tues.-Thurs., I will likely be finished here in September and coming home after the Morocco trip with Aunt Diane, mom and Cam. I'll keep you posted!

Goliath

2008-03-29T01:16:00.000-07:00

the kitten. Isn't he adorable? He's in one of the missionary kid's Easter baskets. We had a nice Easter dinner (chicken, mashed potatoes, fresh rolls, cupcakes shaped and decorated like Easter eggs, the works) and the kids did an Easter egg hunt. They even hid a couple eggs for each adult and we did ours after dinner, by flashlight. You know, I'm still not ready to have kids, but it is just so much fun to celebrate holidays with children. They get so excited!

Anyway, we had a great time with Goliath as well, although it was hard to let him walk around in all the excitement because he's so small!!

All dressed up with nowhere to go!

2008-03-29T01:10:00.000-07:00

I can’t remember if I wrote about my student getting married or not, but here goes…

One of my favorite students, Aissatou, a girl from Cote d’Ivoire who got to Guinea a couple years ago, has been engaged the whole time I’ve known her. She always writes cute things on her homework, like, “Thierno and I went to the river this weekend. Then we danced at the nightclub. We have a very happy life here.” It’s kind of unusual to find someone who’s so excited about their fiancé here, so I was really happy to read it.

About 10 days before my last trip to Conakry she invited me to the wedding. This was on a Tuesday and she said the wedding was Friday. I confirmed, in French, “Do you mean it’s in 3 days?” She said yes, and that she would send a kid to come and pick me up to show me where it would take place. I borrowed an outfit from my friend (see accompanying picture) and made sure I was ready by noon, I wasn’t sure what time the kid was coming. I even put on some make-up! It was my first Guinean wedding and I was really excited! I’ve been to funerals and baptisms, but no weddings. Anyway, at about 2pm I thought, “Oh, no, they forgot about me!” but I really, really didn’t want to miss it so even though it made me uncomfortable to walk around town trying to find this wedding alone, I left my house in the heat of the day and started walking towards the neighborhood she lives in.

On the way I asked people where her wedding was, but no one seemed to know. I got tons of compliments on my outfit, though. Since I pretty much never wear Guinean clothes my parade through town caused quite a stir – lots of clapping and “eh, Porto, ca c’est bien, ca!” (rough translation: hey, white lady, that’s good, that!) Once I got to her neighborhood (way the hell on the other side of town, it was so hot out!!) I finally found a woman who only spoke Pulaar but knew her. With me speaking French and her speaking Pulaar, I discovered that the wedding was taking place the FOLLOWING Friday. I felt like a moron. A sweaty moron. But I’d put on a nice Guinean outfit, so I took some pictures with my host family anyway. The street you can see behind us leads to my school, and my old house is right next to where we are standing even though you can’t see it.

Monday I asked her what happened. She said, “Oh, Mrs., you didn’t understand, I told you it was next Friday, not last Friday.” Here’s the annoying thing. I didn’t want to be a bitch because she was about to get married and all, but I know for sure that she told me it was that first Friday. Then she almost cried when I told her I wouldn’t be able to come because I was meeting Camilo in Conakry. She told me that they had wanted me to assist – be the Guinean equivalent of a bridesmaid. Well, that would have been nice. But after she didn’t tell me the truth and then wouldn’t admit to it, I certainly wasn’t about to change my plans.

The bottom line is that I got all dressed up and had nowhere to go, and that I still need to go to a wedding here!

Posting Fiend

2008-03-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

We have free internet at the office in Labe now and no one is around, hence the obscene amount of postings. I am trying to make up for lost time.

The Director's visit is rapidly approaching and so is Spring Break. And, just like in Daytona Beach, I guarantee I'll see boobs during my Spring Break as well. But they will be those of women working and not of drunk teenagers. Cam will be in Timbi and we have big plans to eat and exercise and watch Sex and the City. He recently discovered it and I hope he's not mad that I outed him on blogger.

Site has been both good and bad, I've been busy with my review sessions and am hoping that my kids finally understand enough to pass the test they are taking June 9th-13th. I really yelled at my 12th graders the other day - I warned them last week that there would be a test on irregular verbs in the simple past and this week made them write 15 verbs. Of the 10 kids who showed up (should have been 20), only 2 could answer more than 3. I was so pissed. What a lazy group!!! I said, "Next year I will be replaced and there will be a new PCV here. He or she will probably think that I was an idiot and didn't teach you all anything!! I'm going to be so embarrassed when the new person arrives and sees how little you all study at home!!!" They wouldn't even look me in the eye and promised to study this weekend. I didn't record the grades and said that we would redo the test Monday. We'll see what happens. With only 3.5 hours of English a week we just don't have time to memorize stuff during class. That they need to do at home.

But my Terminale kids continue to impress me - we did a text this week about UFOs and then they had to finish one of the stories. (I know, not that relevant to their lives but something like this was actually on the English test to graduate from high school, so I have to cover it...) Most of the stories were pretty blah, but one group wrote that the man the couple had seen was actually the woman's brother who had been in another country, but she didn't recognize him because he was wearing a helmet. He didn't recognize his sister because he wasn't sure he was at the right house, so he disappeared. You have to understand the Guinean/French system of rote memorization to really appreciate the creativity. But they really had a hard time, even in French, thinking of an ending to a story.

The first week back in Timbi was pretty rough, I'm still in disbelief about Eve's death. I'm glad they caught her killers and somehow knowing that they had honored her at the Smith Center last week allowed me a little bit of peace too. What a horrible situation for everyone who knew her. I've been using the time at site to really think about my place in the world and how I can best make use of my time here on earth. Not easy topics. My poor dad - I called him last weekend and basically forced him to talk to me for 40 minutes about all kinds of stuff. At the end he was like, "Um, I had no idea this would be such a reflective conversation." Dave must have been really uncomfortable!!!

Good news on the third year in Guinea front - it looks like Camilo and I will be in Labe. Both the World Food Program and Tostan (they work to end female circumcision and improve girls' education) want PCVs. So we would still be under Peace Corps, but getting the experience of working with those organizations. Of course, that all depends on things staying calm here, but as of today I'm pretty confident. That being said, here's the latest news...

Guinea: Fears of strikes and unrest
CONAKRY, 26 March 2008 (IRIN) - Guinea's powerful trade union groups are considering whether to go ahead with a general strike at the end of March and risk a government crackdown, like the ones that occurred in January and February 2007 which led to the deaths of up to 200 civilians.
'We are continuing consultations for a successful outcome of the crisis,' said Raibatou Serah Diallo, the secretary general of the National Confederation of Guinean Workers.
Unionists last threatened to strike in January 2008, claiming President Lansana Conté was breaking the power-sharing agreement that brought an end to last year's violence.
Guineans have endured four union-led strikes in last 15 months to protest high food prices, worsening living conditions, corruption and President Conté's leadership.
Government position
The government is keen to stave off a strike according to an unnamed interior ministry official. 'We are actively participating in dialogue with the monitoring board… and we will put all our energy into dialogue to prevent the tragedies of January 2007 from recurring.'
A civil society-government monitoring board, made up of government representatives, trade unions, and civil society representatives, set up in 2007 to monitor progress with government and union agreements, is also meeting to consider how to prevent the strike from taking place.
Union asks
Following the 2007 strike the government appointed a new prime minister, Lansana Kouyaté, and agreed to devolve power to him. But Ibrahim Fofana, secretary general of the Guinean Workers Union said progress on reforms is too slow and Mamadou Diallo, spokesman for Forces of the Nation, a coalition of trade unions, political parties and civil society said Kouyaté has still not been able to take the reigns.
"The Kouaté government has become dysfunctional, and we only hear contradictions from the president.'
Unions are also calling for greater progress on investigations into those responsible for the violence in 2007 and for more information on the misappropriation of public funds.
Frustration and fear
Despite mounting frustrations at the lack of political reforms, worsening living conditions, and rising food prices, many people in the capital say strikes are not in Guinea's best interests.
'Last year there were many deaths, extensive property damage, robberies and even rapes', Alhousseiny Tounkara, a trader in Conakry told IRIN. 'The only result of the strikes was regret.'
Abdoulaye Oumar Camara, an engineer in Conakry told IRIN, 'If the trade unions focus on the real concerns of Guineans then they may succeed, but if the strikers just show blind support for Kouyaté's camp then it will lead to nothing.

That's from the UN Relief something or another web site. Basically, who knows? I always meant to try and get rid of my control freak tendencies, so this has been good for my personal growth.

I hope all of you are well, it was really nice to get all your thoughtful emails and comments.

Promises and Polygamy

2008-03-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

Marriage here is, in a lot of cases, like marriage used to be a couple hundred years ago in Europe and America - practically a business transaction. So polygamy doesn't shock me - you aren't going to generally be jealous of other wives because in a lot of cases you don't love your husband anyway. But my neighbor and I were talking the other day and what she told me really got to me.

Her name is Marley, I've written about her before, and she and 2 other wives live together in a compound across the street from my house. Their husband lives in Conakry, where it is certain he has girlfriends. Marley was really upset the other day because he had asked his other wife, Adama (who neither Marley nor I like, she's super annoying), to come to Conakry and stay with him. I could tell Marley's feelings were hurt, I know she hasn't seen him since at least November. Then she told me that when they married he promised that she would be his only wife. And, as I've heard many times in Guinea, once she was nice and settled and her body had given way to gravity and childbearing he took another one. There's no such thing as alimony here, divorce is definitely more shameful for a woman than a man, and Marley has little education and no real way of supporting herself or her kids without her husband's money(and his family members abroad who send cash). So she's stuck all alone with these wives and her husband isn't even around!

A more promising case is that of someone Cam and I know in Boke, she has a good job and is a really smart woman. When her husband announced his intention to take another wife (after promising her that he wouldn't before she agreed to marry him), she left him and divorced him. She's fortunate because she has an education and an income, so she had the option to leave.

Anyway, polygamy in theory is fine with me, I guess, but I don't like liars. And that's just what some of these men are. It's hard to blame them completely, though, because the societal pressure for rich men to keep taking wives is strong. I just don't know. People here seem to think that Camilo and I are funny when we walk around town - my Censeur commented that I don't walk behind Cam. I'm not sure if that makes me want to laugh or cry...it does make me grateful that Cam has so many strong women in his life, particularly his mother, so I don't freak him out too much with all my feminist opinions.

I think that education and development work hand in hand. With education and job opportunities women have choices and with choices they can do what they want to create the best possible lives for themselves and their children. So I'm just going to keep plugging along here in Guinea, hoping that through my teaching and even just my presence in town I can help keep the wheels of development turning.

One of the most common reasons given when a guy tells me he wants me to find him a white wife and I ask why is that "black women aren't faithful." Clearly they mean African women, but the thing is that very few people are faithful here - they just don't see the value in it because many relationships are pretty superficial. I told my students the other day at my review session that they needed to treat their girlfriends well and be faithful to them; otherwise they couldn't possibly expect them to be loyal and faithful. That's just stupid. I'm not sure if my point got across, but at least I tried. I also tried to teach them about global warming using an article for Time for Kids. I think that lesson made more of an impact than my "If you hit, cheat on or disrespect your girlfriend she will not be loyal to you."

First Semester Results

2008-03-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

were finally announced last weekend. Yes, in the middle of March. I went to school at 10am for the announcements, which took FOREVER. They called all the kids who passed (50%, or a 10 on our 20 point scale) out of the classrooms by class and announced all their names. Sadly, only about half of the kids made the cut. They were announced from first through the last kid and the first 3 from each class got to come up and shake the Principal's hand as well as some important guy from the Rural Development Committee in Timbi (hereafter referred to as Important Guy - IG).

It was a little funny because when I got there I just took a seat and was waiting. I neglected to notice that at some point all the women around me got up and moved to a special section, so I was left right next to the RDC guy and the principal! It's always amusing that I get treated as a man here. Anyway, over the course of an hour and a half we get from 7th grade up to my kids, the Terminale classes. And right before they are announced, the IG gets a phone call. And does he look embarrassed and turn his phone off? No, he answers the call, scoots by me and goes out to the middle of the courtyard to talk. I was so angry, I couldn't believe how rude he was. The Principal made some announcements to try and pass the time, but after about 10 minutes was forced to continue the ceremony without him.

Here's the thing. First of all, Guinean kids are hardly ever recognized for their work and this was one of only 2 opportunities during the whole year to celebrate those who make an effort to learn. Second, only 10 minutes prior to his getting up, he was telling me that Guinean students are lazy and don't try and don't want to learn. How can you expect kids to want to learn and to respect you if you don't treat them with respect and celebrate their achievements? Ugh, I just wanted to punch him. But since that wasn't a possibility I settled for leaving without saying goodbye to him. It just put such a damper on the end of the ceremony, which was pretty pathetic to begin with. It is so difficult to be a Guinean student.

Exercise

2008-03-28T08:12:00.000-07:00

I've been kind of a fatty lately. I decided that I'd be able to have self-control if I sent all my treats from my suitcase in Conakry up to Timbi. Turns out that I don't have any self-control. They are almost all gone. But at least they are making me feel guilty, so I've been exercising a lot lately (including the bike ride to get to Labe this morning!)

My missionary friend invited me to do Tae Bo with her, she has a TV and works out at 7am every morning. I went there yesterday for the first time and it was kind of surreal to be kickboxing in Guinea! But fun. Apparently Billy Blanks is a big-time Christian (did any of you know that? I didn't. Somehow that strikes me as really strange...) and he has a Tae Bo video called "The Believer's Workout." Dee said it was a little funny for her to exercise to it, so I can only imagine how funny it will be for me to do it!! I'll let you know how it turns out. Do praying and Tae Bo go together? Can I pray that my arm jiggle will lessen? I'm just not sure about that.

I've also been running, which I am enjoying more and more as it gets easier. I also think it's hilarious when the ladies clap for me as I pass by them. The other day 2 old Guinean men shouted out, "Congratulations! You are courageous!" to me as I passed them. They must have been 100 years old, but they gave me the biggest toothless grins. It's so heartwarming to gather up so much goodwill as I jog along (running is a bit of an overstatement). I was worried that people would think it was strange, or that my sleeveless top and cropped tight pants were inappropriate, but they seem to love it. Plus, knowing people are watching me inspires me not to collapse on the ground next to the nearest tree. And 2 days ago I got caught in the first rains of the year - I hadn't seen rain in Guinea since November-ish. It was just so exciting. Camilo's friend told him that God sends an early rain to wash all the dust off the mangoes. I tend to believe the scientific explanations for rain, but that didn't make it any less fun for me!

Guard Sex

2008-03-28T08:04:00.000-07:00

Omg. Ewww. Guess what? Last week I was cooking dinner at about 6pm and I realized that my guard and his wife were in their room - it's attached to my house but has a separate door, one that is just outside my kitchen. They had the door open, but there's a curtain hanging over it.

Anyway, I'm minding my own business and all of a sudden I hear some moaning and groaning. EWWWWW. So I start clearing my throat and coughing, hoping they'll get the hint. No luck. Finally, I turned on some music, but it didn't completely drown out the sound. And I can't remember what I was cooking, but I really couldn't just leave it. It was gross. I was glad when it was over.

About 2 days after that the wife asked me how much it cost to go to Conakry and I told her (it's about $13, in case you care to make the trip someday). A few days later I realized I hadn't seen her, or my guard, for a couple days. My neighbor told me that she left him and didn't say goodbye, so he'd gone back to the village to try and find her. He came back, alone, a day later and told me that she'd gone to Kindia, which is about 7 hours away.

Here's the thing. He's about 40. She was apparently 15. If you marry a child, don't be surprised when she acts like one.

French lady

2008-03-28T04:21:00.000-07:00

Imagine my surprise 3 weeks ago when I saw an older white lady at my school! Then I realized she was French and I got nervous to talk to her - I have severely Guinean French, and was really embarrassed to introduce myself. Turns out she's a retired Physics professor and was just in Guinea for a couple weeks on a project. She was really nice and didn't seem to have a problem understanding me - and she was good at Special French, speaking nice and slowly so I could understand her. All was going swimmingly, and then she invited me to join her and her colleagues for lunch. Never pass up a free lunch.

So I got in the car and started telling her about all the teachers that my school is missing, namely, a French teacher for the middle school. Kind of a big problem. I thought I was doing a good job explaining myself, but I could just tell she didn't understand me. It was so embarrassing! I got all quiet and was so ashamed. Then we sat down for lunch and she asked me to switch seats with her, because she's deaf in her left ear and wanted to be able to hear me! I was so happy! Not that she had a hearing problem, but that it wasn't that my French sucked that she couldn't understand me!

Yay for me! I talked to a real French lady for 2 hours!

Drunk student

2008-03-28T04:15:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm going to try and write about a couple things in a series of short blog entries. Starting with the DRUNK STUDENT that showed up in my class 2 weeks ago! He has since sobered up, but I couldn't believe it. He was drunk. At 8:30am. I would love to know where he found alcohol actually, it's been a rough couple weeks and it would be nice to have a cold beer or two at the end of the day.

So he was drunk. And hadn't been in my class before. Apparently he had a motorcycle accident or something and had been in the hospital. Anyway, he was so disruptive, saying things like "Oh, no, Mrs. I think we should do the exercise this way instead." And I said "I am the teacher. I don't even know you. You are drunk. Leave me alone and let me teach." Finally I forbade him from speaking.

As I'm writing this I realize that I can't properly explain why it's so funny that he was drunk in my class. I'm going to stop, because it's just not interesting for you. Trust me - it was funny for me! The next story is funnier, I promise.

Finally headed back to site

2008-03-10T15:13:00.000-07:00

Today Camilo and I did more work than either of us has done in so long we don't want to admit it on the blog. We finished our Girls Conference Proposal and Budget - a major coup since we thought it would take much longer. We even managed to get some information together to send out to the current PCVs on the mail run leaving tomorrow, so hopefully we'll get quite a bit of interest.

It will be fantastic to have this conference - one year from now we will have lost all the institutional memory about it and it's always harder to start something from scratch. Basically, each PCV gets to bring one girl from his/her village for a 4 day conference. Each day will have sessions dedicated to topics like: nutrition, study skills, women and Islam, HIV/AIDS, etc. We are even inviting some of the successful local women in Mamou (including the infamous Madame Diallo and some of my other friends) to have a panel discussion about the difficulties in trying to be successful and still be a Guinean woman. Anyone in the US who has ever thought it was difficult to do it all (including me) really does have no idea. Most of the women I see have arms women at Equinox pay $150/hour to aspire to.

We are hoping to get the proposal approved soon and then it will be on the Peace Corps Partnership page, where you can donate if you would like!

I'm trying to think of other interesting things that have been going on, but am coming up short. I have my routine of school and night classes and special classes at my house and it's all been going well. My house is still lovely and mouse-free.

Oh, a funny thing...my guard is back. Did I already write about that? He was gone for about 3 months and just got back. With a wife. Apparently he went to the village and didn't return until he found someone to marry. They had their first fight last week - it's too bad I don't speak Pulaar cause it sounded interesting! The poor girl can't be more than 20 and must be so bored. She has no friends and nothing to do. I'd love to befriend her but have been so busy at school that I just want to relax and clean when I'm home. So our interactions are limited to the basic greetings and pleasantries.

The PC Director from Washington will be here in Guinea from April 11-14. All people from my group are heading to Conakry on the 13th to have dinner with him before he leaves. The next day we are headed to the islands off the coast of Conakry for our Close-of-Service (COS) Conference. It should be really fun. I'm hoping to have some third year leads by the end of it...but I need to be back in the US by Memorial Day 2009, because my friends Farrah and Harris are getting married! (Paparazzi names are Harrah and Farris. Camilo calls them that on accident all the time.)

Okay, it's 11pm and I have at least a 10 hour travel day ahead of me. My next blog posting will probably be in a week or two, depending on when I make it to Labe.

For a funny story about devil possession in schools, see Cam's latest blog entry. Kind of like hysteria in the Victorian times. www.africami.blogspot.com

Thanks to everyone who emailed me about Eve. Getting work done on Girls Conference today reminded me that it's my responsibility to live up to the ideals that she and I discussed at length. I'm hopeful that they will get the suspects in custody soon - pictures are at wral.com. Two men tried to use her ATM card at 2 different machines and were caught on surveillance cameras. One of the pictures is really clear and I sincerely hope this matter is laid to rest quickly. Your thoughts and emails were appreciated more than you know.

Update is coming

2008-03-08T13:13:00.000-08:00

Is it ridiculous to update saying that I'm going to update? As for my family members, Aunt Diane and Hannah are on my favorites list and my immediate family still needs to confirm that they read the blog...

I continue to be really upset about Eve. It was just a couple months ago that I called Camilo to tell him that I'd met the new SBP at UNC and that she was my soulmate. I really did use that word. We'd planned to meet one time at Yogurt Pump but ended up having so much fun and had so much to talk about we made more dates to hang out before I left. She and I were our own little sorority of recent female SBPs and had so much in common. I was just sure she'd be a friend for life. Everywhere I went the people I care about and admire most at UNC told me how highly they thought of her and it devastates me to think that we lost such a great leader and friend over something so stupid. I hope we all get some closure about what actually happened.

So a real update is coming - I'll actually be in town until Tuesday morning due to a cavity that needs to be filled Monday.

Eve Carson

2008-03-07T10:21:00.000-08:00

I got into Conakry yesterday and checked the internet for the first time in 3 weeks this morning only to find out that my friend and current UNC Student Body President Eve Carson was murdered in what appears to be a random act of violence near campus. I had the pleasure of hanging out with her a few times in Chapel Hill in May and just immediately fell in love with her.

The news really has me shaken and devastated. I'm not feeling like blogging about my current exploits in Guinea today.

I'll update the blog tomorrow. Complete with a public shaming for my family - turns out they don't read the blog. If any of my immediate family members email me before I update again they will be spared. That means you - Abby, Michael, Barb and Dave.

Girls' Conference

2008-02-15T04:58:00.000-08:00

Camilo and I just got out of a meeting with one of the Senior Staff here and are trying to get a conference planned for June. It's going to be tricky - we lost most of our institutional memory with the evacuation and it's hard to plan anything here anyway!! But with the addition of a new volunteer who already completed one tour in Costa Rica and worked on conferences there I think we have the motivation we need to really get moving.

The point of the conference is to bring girls from the middle and high schools together to talk about issues in their lives - nutrition, the challenges of being a girl in Guinea, early marriage/pregnancy, what to be when you grow up, etc. They learn how to give presentations and are expected to go back home and organize some type of workshop for students or community members on topics like HIV/AIDS or female circumcision or whatever else interests them. For some girls it's the first time they've really traveled away from their villages and it's really exciting and motivating to meet other girls in the same boat from different parts of Guinea. We are even planning to have a women's panel using successful Guinean women from the Mamou area (including my friend Madame Diallo!)

I'll keep you updated as this progresses. I'm pretty pumped about the possibility!

Kante is good! He speaks English like he WANTS.

2008-02-15T04:16:00.000-08:00

That is written in chalk on the wall in my 12th grade classroom. I don't know who Kante is, but I can tell you that none of my 12th graders are good at speaking English. They also don't try very hard in class. Which is why they are being punished. I canceled their Tuesday review class and told them that I would start it up again when I'm convinced that they are spending at least as much time studying their lessons at home as I spend planning them at my house. Seems to me that since I already speak English I shouldn't be spending more time on it than them...if that doesn't work after a month I'm just going to restart the classes though (don't tell them!) It's no use continuing to punish the good students just because 75% of the class is a bunch of lazy jerks.

The good news about school is that everything else is going along swimmingly. My Terminale kids have been amazing lately - they didn't cheat too much on the final exams and have been coming to review class. Plus, last week I invited the top 10 students from each class to come to my house to read Newsweek magazines and to practice speaking English and both sessions went well! I'm going to continue that, plus add 3 "office hours" at my house on Saturdays for the students who aren't in the Top 10 but still want to have extra practice. I've been really busy!!! It's fantastic, though, because the Bacc (which will determine whether they get to go to University or not) is June 9-13th, so we don't have that much time to prepare and we are still trying to catch up from the crappy English classes they received the last 2 years!

Other good things have been happening at site too - first, I have a new PCV neighbor!! He's not actually that close to me, but all the new people are at their sites and that's good for morale. I'm hoping to invite 2 new PCVs to come check out this farm I went to the other day. They are agfo and business volunteers and the farm owner is trying to break into the agro-tourism industry. I'm not sure how big the demand is in Timbi Madina for a chicken farm with attached restaurant, but we'll see!! For now he has 3,500 chickens in 3 different houses and is waiting on 3 incubators from the US. It was pretty cool to go see his farm, it seems like a real operation (as opposed to the normal chickens I see eating garbage and running around people's yards...) The guy, Dr. Barry (he has a PhD from somewhere here in W. Africa), just got back from spending 6 months in the US working on a farm in upstate NY with a woman from USAID who sponsored his visa. He picked me up in his car (yay!!) and took me out to his farm, blasting Willie Nelson tunes the whole way. Apparently he saw him in concert over the summer in the States. Anyway, I checked out the farm and the solar drying area where he does something with fish and then he gifted me 30 eggs!! That's a big deal and probably the nicest present I've been given, it's worth about $5!!

And my house is officially mouse-proofed, which I'm incredibly grateful for. Plus the missionaries gave me cushions for my couch - they don't completely fit but work perfectly. My electricity is still coming in at between 20 and 60 volts. Camilo commented that I "don't have electricity, just night-lights" and I think that sums up the situation pretty well.

So site is great. Still no word on what my third year options are, but I'll keep you all posted.

Excuses, Excuses

2008-01-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

I have so much to write about that I'm going to separate it all...

First story -

We now have cell coverage in Timbi, which is amazing. (My number is 60-75-12-50. Go buy an international phone card and call me sometime.) But, Africans with cell phones are rude. Remember when there was all the drama at the schools in the US about phones? Well, that's what it's like here. People have to take all these "important calls" and have no respect for the school day. Umm, how the hell were they making do the last 2,000 years until 3 weeks ago? I refuse to believe that these calls are that important. Certainly not more important than Mrs. Daum's English class.

So my official punishment for forgetting to turn off a phone in my class is confiscating it for a day. Second offense is a week. This week I collected 4 phones in 2 classes. I threatened to use them to call my mom and dad so I could use up all their credit, which the kids thought was hilarious. Anyway, after class this one kid comes up to me. He's a good student and he gives me this song and dance about his sick grandmother and how I can have the phone any other day but Tuesday night and whatever. So we go to the Surveillant (the discipline guy at school) and the kid tells the story. I accept his apology and we make a deal that he will give me his phone on Monday for 2 days and I give him back his phone.

At this point the Surveillant tells me about how much respect he has for me and how annoying it is that none of the other teachers have rules about cell phones (because if they had rules for the kids they would have to turn off their own phones...) So I was feeling pretty good. He thanked me for always being on time and being a good role model, etc. Pretty heartwarming stuff.

I say goodbye and am leaving school when another kid comes up to me. Here's a (shortened and translated to English) transcript of our conversation:

Kid: Mrs, Please accept my apology and give me my phone back. I really need it.

Me: What you really need is to learn English and to not disrespect me in the classroom. You can have the phone tomorrow.

K: You don't understand, I live with a blind man and he was calling me to have me come help him leave the house.

M: Okay, if you really want the phone, you can bring this "blind man" (in my head I was thinking, yeah, right you little liar) to my house and if you ask my forgiveness in front of him you can have it back.

K: He doesn't walk very well, but can I have the phone anyway?

M: Okay, (thinking I'm going to catch him in this stupid, crazy lie) how about I go to your house and meet this "blind man who doesn't walk well" and then you can ask my forgiveness and get the phone?

K: I guess so.

So we go to his house, which isn't too far from mine. His room is outside the house and he drops his books off. Then we go inside the house and I'll be damned!!!! There was a blind man who could barely walk laying down on the couch!!!!! And the kid did say he was sorry and the man apologized and said that he wouldn't call during class. We made an agreement that the student would keep his phone on silent and that he would warn me at the beginning of class if he thought he might need to take a call.

I felt like such a jerk!! Luckily Guineans don't understand sarcasm, so he didn't realize that I thought he was a little liar. The moral of this story is that Guinea is not America and that the people here are desperate and sick people have no government or private support system and are forced to make do with help within families, so I need to understand that there can be actual emergencies here and I might need to accommodate certain situations.

It was really funny, though. Can you imagine a kid in the US using that story? It would most certainly be a lie!! But not here...

Back in Timbi

2008-01-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

I got back to Timbi on Sunday and stayed until today, when I biked in to Labe to pick up some flip chart paper and markers for my compositions next week.

It's good to be back. I had to have a war with the mice that got bold and invaded my house while I was on vacation! Stupid mice - I found a ton of mouse crap under my night table and then there was one running around my bathroom at 11pm. I freaked out. Seriously, freaked out. I know that it's Peace Corps and I'm supposed to be hard core, but I'm just not. It ran under my bathtub, so I blocked it in with a 20 liter water jug and some cardboard. I was actually shaking. Then I took all my stuff out of the bathroom and shut and locked the door, putting duct tape in the space between the door and the floor. The next day I went to town and got steel wool pads and completely took care of all the spaces in my house. They haven't been back and I've been using my other bathroom. I'm a huge baby. Huge. It will probably die under my bathtub and stink up my house, but that's a chance I'm willing to take.

School is going well, I taught comparisons in class this week and found out that I am one of the fatter people in class...Guineans are so skinny! But my students did tell me I was "more attractive" than another student, which I appreciated. I brought a gift back for my vice-principal and he loved it, it was a $5 statue of the Sphinx. My principal is back too, so I'm interested to see how that changes the dynamic at school. He'd had surgery over the summer and had been living in a nearby town while he recuperated. Even though school starts at 8am I am one of the only people there at that hour. We don't really start class until 8:30. I would love to change that but have had no luck so far. Hopefully the semi-scary principal will regulate. In the meantime I'll continue to show up on time in the hopes that my good example will rub off. It's not likely, but it makes me feel better about myself.

Next week compositions start, they are like end of semester exams. No one seems concerned that there have only been 9 weeks of classes. That means that I have nothing to do next week and no tests until a week from Monday! It will be nice to hang out in my house and to lesson plan more than a week in advance. I have my two classes of Terminale at the same time, which means that I can't be at both exams, which means that the kids who don't have me will cheat up a storm if I don't do something to stop it, so I'm thinking of writing 3 separate exams and paying to have them photocopied here in Labe. I think that if I hand them out and put the kids who are friends far from each other and put all the smart kids together and the idiots together I might be able to prevent most of the cheating. Ugh - so much work!!

I have some really great news from Timbi - there's cell reception! I have to switch phone numbers and use a different provider, but you can reach me anytime!! It's 5 bars of service, which is practically unheard of. It was definitely the most exciting news of my return. Unfortunately, I can't find out my number because the call won't go through and they don't tell you your number when you buy the SIM card. Oh, and there's power in my neighborhood again! But not at my house. It's so bittersweet - I'm glad it's back and everything but it's a little sad to be sitting in my house with my candles when my neighbors have electricity! I found out that there's an outstanding debt of about $40 from before, so I paid it today and am assured that I'll be repaid by the owners of the house. While I have my doubts about that, my host dad (who pays my rent) promised that he would take the money out of the rent to repay me if it didn't happen sooner). My rent is $12 a month. Yes, you read that right. And my neighbors have been bitching up a storm to all the officials in my town about how I came here to teach and I should have power, so that's been really cute of them. I brought a jewelry case back from Egypt for my favorite neighbor and she now loves me even more than before. The other day I went to say hi and she was in the process of showing it off to her friends. It made me happy that she liked it so much and it also makes me happy to know that she'll always look out for me and my house, even when I'm on vacation.

Camilo and I talked to our boss about 3rd year options and we are hopeful that it will all work out. We think our first choice is to work for an NGO in Labe, where it's colder and there are lots of NGOs to choose from, but we'll have to see how it all pans out. Worst case scenario is that we finish our service in September and meet my mom and aunt in Morocco before applying to grad school.

It's dinnertime, so I'll update again next week. Miss you all!

Strike called off/postponed until April

2008-01-11T06:24:00.000-08:00

Camilo and I arrived in Conakry at 4am to some good news - the strikes have been called off and the unions will revisit the issues at the end of March to determine if they want to announce another strike. So I'm heading back to Timbi Madina either tomorrow or Sunday and will start teaching again Monday.

Here's a BBC article about the situation here...and yes, the upcoming soccer tournament really was one of the reasons referenced for the postponement...

Guinea general strike called off

By Will Ross BBC West Africa correspondent

After days of negotiations, trade unions in Guinea have called off a nationwide strike planned for Thursday. There were fears the strike could have led to a renewal of violence which left close to 200 people dead last year. The unions last week accused Guinean President Lansana Conte of breaking the power-sharing agreement which ended last year's violence. They have now agreed to work with the government to ensure the deal holds, leading to a sense of relief.

It is a hand-to-mouth existence for many who simply could not have afforded to strike. "We have decided to suspend the strike, taking into account the situation which currently prevails," union negotiator Boubacar Biro Barry told reporters. "The government has made a commitment and we have no reason to doubt it, and religious leaders will be in charge of monitoring the implementation of the agreement," he said.

The trade unions said the decision was made in the interests of peace and even mentioned the forthcoming African Cup of Nations football tournament as one of the factors influencing the decision. In addition to the personal economic impact, the planned strike was also not popular with many Guineans because of the fear of repeat of the chaotic scenes witnessed one year ago.
At the time the government was barely functioning and the trade unions tried to force the ailing Mr Conte from power. The move was hugely popular, so the unions brought the whole country to a standstill. But protests soon became violent and when the president turned to the military, close to 200 people were killed. Despite his poor health, President Conte clung on but agreed to hand over some of his power to a consensus prime minister, Lansana Kouyate. But in recent months loyalists to Mr Conte, who found themselves sidelined from power and resources, have done their best to derail the peace agreement. When the president last week sacked Communications Minister Justin Morel Junior, considered by many to be performing well, this prompted the unions to once again raise the red flag.

IMF help

Prior to Mr Kouyate's appointment, to say governance in Guinea was chaotic would be an understatement. It was not uncommon for a cabinet reshuffle to be announced on state television and then cancelled the following evening. Guinea was rudderless and corruption grew ever more rampant while the population grew ever more desperate. What is worrying for Guineans is the return of these signs of trouble at the top. The country is rich in resources, including bauxite needed to produce aluminium, and institutions like the International Monetary Fund have been trying to help Guinea back on its feet.

However, after years of misrule, that is a huge task.

NY Times Article about Peace Corps

2008-01-09T09:54:00.000-08:00

January 9, 2008

Op-Ed Contributor

Too Many Innocents Abroad

By ROBERT L. STRAUSS

Antananarivo, Madagascar

THE Peace Corps recently began a laudable initiative to increase the number of volunteers who are 50 and older. As the Peace Corps’ country director in Cameroon from 2002 until last February, I observed how many older volunteers brought something to their service that most young volunteers could not: extensive professional and life experience and the ability to mentor younger volunteers.

However, even if the Peace Corps reaches its goal of having 15 percent of its volunteers over 50, the overwhelming majority will remain recently minted college graduates. And too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.

This wasn’t the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps sent its first volunteers overseas. Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it’s much less clear what inexperienced Americans have to offer.

The Peace Corps has long shipped out well-meaning young people possessing little more than good intentions and a college diploma. What the agency should begin doing is recruiting only the best of recent graduates — as the top professional schools do — and only those older people whose skills and personal characteristics are a solid fit for the needs of the host country.

The Peace Corps has resisted doing this for fear that it would cause the number of volunteers to plummet. The name of the game has been getting volunteers into the field, qualified or not.

In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad’s backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma’s cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I’m pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch of hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.

For the Peace Corps, the number of volunteers has always trumped the quality of their work, perhaps because the agency fears that an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries. The agency has no comprehensive system for self-evaluation, but rather relies heavily on personal anecdote to demonstrate its worth.

Every few years, the agency polls its volunteers, but in my experience it does not systematically ask the people it is supposedly helping what they think the volunteers have achieved. This is a clear indication of how the Peace Corps neglects its customers; as long as the volunteers are enjoying themselves, it doesn’t matter whether they improve the quality of life in the host countries. Any well-run organization must know what its customers want and then deliver the goods, but this is something the Peace Corps has never learned.

This lack of organizational introspection allows the agency to continue sending, for example, unqualified volunteers to teach English when nearly every developing country could easily find high-caliber English teachers among its own population. Even after Cameroonian teachers and education officials ranked English instruction as their lowest priority (after help with computer literacy, math and science, for example), headquarters in Washington continued to send trainees with little or no classroom experience to teach English in Cameroonian schools. One volunteer told me that the only possible reason he could think of for having been selected was that he was a native English speaker.

The Peace Corps was born during the glory days of the early Kennedy administration. Since then, its leaders and many of the more than 190,000 volunteers who have served have mythologized the agency into something that can never be questioned or improved. The result is an organization that finds itself less and less able to provide what the people of developing countries need — at a time when the United States has never had a greater need for their good will.

Robert L. Strauss has been a Peace Corps volunteer, recruiter and country director. He now heads a management consulting company.

Still heading back as planned

2008-01-07T01:58:00.000-08:00

Cam and I just got word from Peace Corps that we should head back as planned and they'll get us at the airport. We'll just have to stay in Conakry until the strikes are over - I have a feeling we will be watching Hairspray and Ratatouille on a loop since those are our only new movies!! I'm sure that lots of you faithful blog readers were planning on sending care packages, but please don't. Last year I missed out on quite a few due to the strikes since the mail system shut down. And I really have so much food and so many goodies that it's embarrassing. I'll let you all know if I ever run out and want anything!!

Camilo and I are going to load most of our pictures once we are back in Conakry. Today we are headed to take a felucca boat ride down the Nile and then to the Sphinx-narrated sound and light show at the Pyramids. Isn't that fantastically touristy??

Good news and Bad news

2008-01-06T03:49:00.000-08:00

The good news is that the trip is going fabulously - we went to the Pyramids yesterday and it was just as cool as one would hope. Now we are checked into the Marriott in Cairo, where the breakfast buffet includes sushi. It would not be an overstatement to say that I want to marry this hotel. We are going to see belly dancing and do some more sightseeing for the next couple days until our flight back to Conakry, which brings me to the bad news...

There was some violence in Conakry the last couple days because of a minister who got sacked. The union leaders have called for general strikes starting the 10th...Cam and I are scheduled to arrive at 3am on the 11th. So we aren't really sure what's going on and are currently waiting to hear what Peace Corps wants us to do. I sincerely hope that the strikes will not be like last year's and will be less violent, but we'll have to see what happens. Grr.

Anyway, Pyramids are amazing and life is good. I'll keep you posted!

From Conakry to Casa to Cairo

2007-12-30T07:45:00.000-08:00

Cam and I are on Day 3 of the Egypt trip. So far we have done a lot of eating and shopping with not a whole lot of culture thrown in. That will change tomorrow when we leave for Luxor and begin our Nile cruise. Ana and Felipe arrived really late last night so we rescheduled our Pyramids tour that was supposed to leave this morning at 7am. Which would have been horrible!

We had a funny thing happen our first night here - we met a girl from PC Niger who knows 3 of our friends who transferred. She was headed to Jordan for a friend's wedding but the flight from Niger got pushed back a day so she was homeless in Cairo for 30 hours. We brought her back to the hotel with us and went to the mall, which was a delicious culture shock for all of us. I ate Quizno's. Unfortunately there is no bacon in this Muslim country, but beef bacon isn't so bad!

Yesterday Cam and I went wandering around downtown Cairo (actually, there is no real downtown since the city is so huge - 20 million people!) We had a nice time and just walked and looked at the buildings and all the people and everything. I took a picture at a Harley Davidson shop to email my dad. We ate Korean food. Life is good.

Okay, we are off to dinner now. I'll update again when the cruise is over! Happy New Year!

Break it down, Christmas style

2007-12-25T03:37:00.000-08:00

Good times, good times.

Bonding with the new stagieres

2007-12-25T03:27:00.000-08:00

It looks like we are having fun, right? Not exactly Christmas-y, but you do what you can to make the holidays festive around here.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T03:14:00.000-08:00

This was taken after a few baggies of whisky and fake pineapple juice...

My Lovely House

2007-12-22T01:03:00.000-08:00

Cam has posted pictures of my house on his flickr account.

www.flickr.com/camilo11

Much nicer than my apartments in NYC and North Carolina. Too bad about the lack of running water, electricity, dishwasher, fridge, etc.

And the birthday paella is glowing because I put birthday candles in it!

Going to Forecariah for the weekend

2007-12-22T00:32:00.001-08:00

I got a phone call from my boss Mohamed a couple days ago asking me if I could come down to Conakry a couple days early to go to Forecariah and encourage the new people. Could I? Clearly the answer was yes. So I'm headed out in a couple minutes and will be back Christmas Eve.

Tabaski was a lot of fun, I wore my complet and ate a lot of rice and sauce (special fete rice and sauce, which is much better than your daily stuff). And my family here (El Hadj Bah and all his wives and kids) had a special visitor - his son-in-law from Columbia, Maryland! He met El Hadj's daughter in the US and they got married a couple years ago. He hadn't been back to Guinea in over 20 years because his dad died and his mom moved the Cote d'Ivoire! He went to France to study and then made his way to the US (he says it was much easier then). So it was fun to talk to him and hear how life has and has not changed here in la Guinee.

Yesterday morning was a brutal travel day. I woke up at 5:30 so I could be at the taxi park by 6:30, a 3km walk with a really heavy bag. Then I waited until 9:30 for the car to fill up, which was only taking me as far as Labe. We made the 45 minute trip in almost 2 hours because the car kept overheating and we would have to stop and cool it down. Then I waited 2 hours for a car to Conakry, which meant that I left Labe at 1:30pm and didn't arrive at the office here until almost 10pm. It was a bitch, let me tell you. But the men in my car were really nice and the chauffeur took me all the way to the PC office so I wouldn't have to try and find a taxi by myself so late at night. What nice guys.

I gave a test to my students last week and it was very interesting. Some of it was good, some was bad. I'll write more about testing in Guinea when I get back from Forecariah. I hope everyone is looking forward to Christmas! I had Christmas dinner with the adorable missionaries on Wednesday night (complete with pumpkin pie, yum!) and taught my kids Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Jingle Bells in class on Wednesday, so I'm officially in the Christmas spirit. All I need is a little bit of snow...

My neighbors

2007-12-22T00:23:00.000-08:00

The woman on the left is Adama and the one on the right is her mother, Marley (Marly??) Adama had been in Conakry with her husband and just returned a couple days ago, but Marley and I are buddies. She is always giving me little presents and helping me out - she's the one who found me a kid to get my water, since it was the bane of my existence before. I ate some delicious rice and chicken at their house on Tabaski. Yum!

Tabaski

2007-12-22T00:10:00.000-08:00

Here are my neighbor and I with another neighbor's baby. She's 27 and unmarried, which is very old by Guinean standards. She asked me to send this picture to America to see if anyone wanted to marry her, so just let me know! I've tried repeatedly to explain the concept of dating and choosing a spouse after going out for awhile in America, but no one seems to understand.

The kids in my old compound

2007-12-22T00:07:00.000-08:00

They were so proud of their new Tabaski outfits! The one on the left looks like a bug. They are so funny, I still go there to say hi and to stand on the porch to make phone calls and they will take my bag and wear my sunglasses and imitate me. What a riot.

Hidden Bathroom

2007-12-22T00:02:00.000-08:00

So there was a room in my house that was locked, just off my bedroom. I decided to try all my keys on it to see what it was and, lo and behold, I found a bathroom! They had told me the room was unfinished and that's why I couldn't open the door. Clearly not the case. It was, however, completely dirty and disgusting. But no longer! Now it's a lovely bathroom. Yay! Still no running water, but that's just par for the course here in Guinea.

In Labe for the weekend

2007-12-07T02:47:00.000-08:00

The new volunteers are here! And Christmas is coming! So many good things are happening.

I solved a problem the other day. My Censeur (asst. principal?) has been wanting me to teach his middle school daughter English. I don't want to, but couldn't come out and say no. You can't really say no in Guinea, unless it's to a sketchy dude inviting themselves over. So I've been telling him that we'd discuss it "next week" since my arrival. Which in Guinea means "no," but for some reason he wasn't letting it go. So I finally got the ball out of my court - I gave him my schedule for the week (including the Health Club I'm restarting twice a week) and told him to find a 3 hour block so that I could teach her 1.5 hours and then he can teach me French the other half of the time. He's a French teacher. But it was totally the right thing to do because he hasn't said a word since. His daughter couldn't care less about learning English, so asking him to make a sacrifice too totally got him off my back. And if I end up doing it I'll also get better in French and I can just suck up having to teach her!

Omg - I got hate crimed! It would have been terrible if it wasn't so funny. Some kids wrote on the wall that surrounds my house, in chalk, "Fock les blanchs." Obviously fock is not what they meant! The only thing that Guinea imports from America is rap. Grrr. But the idiots can't even spell in French, because it should have been "les blancs" or "les blanches." The school system here is dodgy at best. I told my neighbor, Marly, and she was so pissed! The next morning I was asleep at 7:45 when everyone was walking to school and I heard her screaming at all these kids, she's convinced it was some stupid middle schoolers. We erased it before I got a picture, but if it happens again I'll get my camera out...me, hate crimed. Wtf??

Yesterday I rode my bike the 35km from Timbi to Labe. I was moving slowly so as not to kill myself and it took almost 2.5 hours. I went straight to the bank since I was down to my last 2,000 francs. Which is less than 50 cents. Not a good situation. I even have a 1,000 debt from buying bread at a boutique! Camilo is arriving today along with a married couple who are in Dalaba and just got back from the US - they had some dental things to take care of before they could be cleared. It will be fun to hang out - there will be 5 of us, which is virtually a party now that we are so few!

School is going exceptionally well. I've been really enjoying my Terminale classes - they are so eager to learn and so many kids have been showing up for review sessions. They are even getting more creative with their sentences, which may not sound like a big deal to you, but here in Guinea you learn by rote memorization and are not encouraged to think creatively. The fact that they say "I went to the US" or "I went to the river to swim" instead of "I went to the market." actually means a lot! Something that's a little frustrating is that the PC will measure my success on how many students I teach, PC Washington loves numbers. So even though I think I'm doing such a better job this time around I have about 70 total students as opposed to my 350 in Mamou, so according to their standards I'm not making as big of a difference. There are so many frustrations in development bureaucracy, I just have to do the best I can and try and let the other stuff go.

Also, many of you have emailed me about care packages. You are all amazing and so nice to think of me, but please don't worry about me, I have lots of treats here and am really happy. So if you are poor, treat yourself to a nice dinner or a new shirt or something instead of spending so much on shipping! And if you send me something anyway, know that I will truly appreciate it. Bill's mom took me to Sam's Club when I was in the US and I still think of her and smile everytime I eat a fruit snack packet or make mac and cheese!

That's all for now. Hope everyone is getting ready for Christmas and enjoying the season!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-23T01:36:00.000-08:00

First, the bad news - I forgot the cable to upload photos. You will have to just wait another couple weeks!

The good news is that Thanksgiving 2007 was amazing. So amazing that we all forgot to take photos. There is not a single photograph capturing the moment of joy I felt when the 4 turkeys and 2 PIGS arrived yesterday. It was just amazingly delicious. We were all so full - a food coma doesn't even begin to explain it.

I made quite a few dishes - cranberry sauce (made from the dried ones), apple pie, scalloped potatoes and pistachio pudding (thanks to Cam's mom's package...) We had so much delicious food - hard to do in a country where there are only 2 grocery stores and the ingredients for anything are always hard to find! All the volunteers came to Conakry except one and we just had such a nice day.

Camilo and I were hoping to go to Forecariah today, but we have a meeting with our Country Director so we are putting the trip off until post-Egypt. The new group arrives Dec. 5th and we won't be allowed in Forecariah while they are there (PC rules), so we are going to try and make it happen while they are at a workshop when we return from Egypt.

Life in Timbi continues as normal. Still no electricity, but the father of the guy who owns the house came by and said he'd look into it. Might be a couple months! Camilo and I made lovely birthday paella on Tuesday (complete with birthday candles) and we even managed to get some photos of it, so I'll try and get them posted soon.

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving!

I'm in love with my house

2007-11-16T03:31:00.000-08:00

Omg my house is amazing. You won't be able to see it until I post the picture over Tgiving, but it's so great. And the annoying men have finally backed off.

A word about teaching in Guinea...

Most of my kids are relatively intelligent. They speak French better than they write it, I'm correcting their written French on the board often, not a great sign! But they are pretty good and try and most really want to pass the test to go to University. I have a couple married girls who are just waiting until they finish so they can meet their husbands in Spain or Portugal. That's a whole other issue that I'll write about another day.

But my teaching is so hot and cold. I'm teaching the 2 13th grade classes and one 12th grade. My 13th graders show up for class, make an effort even when they make mistakes and practically everyone attends the review sessions. They make me happy. On Wednesday I had a review for one of my 13th grade classes and they wrote about pictures I'd taken from my Newsweeks in the present continuous. They were all into it and I was so thrilled that they were making such an effort. A bunch of them even have dictionaries and borrowed pictures to try and write their own texts at home. Love them!

But my 12th graders are duds. I don't expect them to be as strong at the 13th grade, but they are such duds!!!!! It's like the lights are on but nobody's home. Even when I explain in French they are all staring at me with a look that can only be written as "Duuuuuuuuhh," it's so frustrating that I just want to slap some sense into all of them! And only 4-6 kids are at the review sessions, which is irritating. I'm not sure what to do, it sucks for them because none of their other teachers showerd up for the first 4 weeks of school and they are all out of learning practice. But, as I told them, I am not a magician. If they don't make an effort they are going to fail out of school and have to find crappy jobs working in the market and making babies. And they are too smart for that. I think. I'm not going to give up on them, I just have to suck it up and recognize that there's only so much I can do.

Luckily, I'm in Labe for the weekend and plan on drinking a beer and eating a pizza tonight. I'll be able to think much more clearly then.

Oh, I had the most exciting Monday ever! I got to school and heard that Americans from the World Bank were in Timbi. I was understandably skeptical, but everyone was so insistent! I went to the office of this Potato Federation (Timbi's potatoes are famous here) and there were lots of people waiting around in their fancy clothes. I made friends with a retired guy from a neighboring town and he said the WB people had gone to look at this potato holder and they'd be back soon. I waited almost 3 hours! It was so Guinean of me, just to wait and hope with no real information. But then they showed up! And it was an Indian man and an American woman who both work in DC and were here visiting...they were really nice and friendly and the woman was a former PCV in Cameroon. She promised me that I'm gaining a skill set that wil someday be worth American dollars, which is a relief to both me and my parents! We ate delicious food and I made a bunch of contacts and it was just the best day ever.

I'm headed back to Timbi to teach Monday and Tuesday before going to Conakry on Wednesday. To get to Conakry, Cam and I will get up early and take a car to the highway, about 20km. Since there's no cell phone service, we will wait there until the PC car shows up to pick us up. Yes, we will sit along the highway and wait. I am slowly but surely becoming a patient person...I'll update again in Conakry!

Back in the Swing of Things

2007-11-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

I've been such a super volunteer lately. (I'm patting myself on the back as I write this) My classes are going well and I love having small classes. We've already started review sessions and most of the kids are showing up, which makes me insanely happy. They might just learn English this year!

Thursday I am moving to the new house. Per the usual here, it's been a bit tricky. The car broke down in Conakry. Then there was a staff retreat. Etc. But Boiro and Ousmane are coming on Thursday to help me move and I'm excited - it's great timing too, since the guys who were living in my house just got back. One of them came by last night to get something...guess what? Not the eggs or the flip flops or any of the other crap. A GPS system. How a guy living in Timbi Madina got his hands on a GPS system is anyone's guess. The people here have more money than virtually anywhere, there are lots of remittances and quite a few people who have been to Europe and America.

I was reminded the other day why I don't ride motos here...besides that it's illegal and grounds for admin separation from PC. One of my friends stopped by and said he was going to visit Jacqui in Ninguelande (14 km away) and asked if I wanted to go. I told him, for about the 10th time, that I don't use motos because I'm scared. He laughed at me and sped off. Jacqui showed up in Timbi that next day really upset because he'd gotten into an accident 6 km from her site and his eye was all busted and 2 teeth are missing and he has tons of cuts. I cannot express how happy I am that I was not on that moto and also that he wasn't killed. I went to see him again yesterday and he looks much better, but it's not like dental care here is anything to write home about, they'll send us to Dakar just to get a filling, so I have no idea what he'll do about the teeth. Gold ones, perhaps?

Our new group is arriving in early December. We are all so excited! It's a little lonely here with only 14 PCVs. I'll even have a neighbor just a couple kilometers down the road.

I'm trying to think of what else interesting is going on. Seems like life is just clipping along at a nice pace - I'm definitely making more of an effort to make friends this time around and am spending precious little time in my house. I haven't even used my hammock since school started! My French is finally improving and I found a temporary tutor. Actually, let me tell you about this kid...

His name is Beckham. Or that's what everyone calls him. He's one of the 11-20 percent of Terminale students who passed the test to go to University this year. It was 11 or 20 that passed that test and 11 or 20 who passed the test to get to high school, I forget the order. Anyway, he told me that he makes necklaces to sell to earn extra money so he can pay for lodging at University. It's 6 days before he's supposed to arrive and the Ministry hasn't announced who is going where yet. At any rate, he's the first 20 something unmarried guy who hasn't asked me for a visa or a white wife or money. He actually told me that he'd like to get married, but he thinks it's hard here because there's no equality between men and women. He'd like to travel all around the world and see what there is to offer before coming back here and making music and helping people. Basically, it's kids like him who make me glad I'm here. I've hired him as my French tutor and am paying him way more than I need to (almost a dollar an hour!) just because he's so motivated and wants to work. The government will give him 60,000 each month for rent and food and books, about 12 dollars. His father is dead and his mom lives far away, near Camilo. Anyway, he's a hard worker and that's the kind of behavior I want to reinforce! Plus I do need French help.

I talked to my mom recently and told her that the young men here have been really bugging me. The other day a guy asked me to go out with him and I told him no and that I was married. He said, "I didn't ask if you were married. That doesn't bother me." It's so sad that the guys are such idiots because everyone else is so nice and helpful! But I told my Censeur at school and he told me to start taking down their names and he'll send someone to their houses to yell at them! He even said that if it doesn't stop he'll get a soldier to stay at my house. Clearly that's unnecessary, but it made me feel good that he was willing to pull out all the stops...when Camilo comes I'm going to parade him around town. That worked wonders last year in Mamou.

In closing, I cannot even begin to describe how happy I am to be back. I'm so glad I took a chance that the program would reopen and am excited about getting a bunch of projects off the ground - a world map on a building at school, girls' review sessions, Girls' Conference, etc. It's a good time to be a PC Guinea volunteer. Plus I'm glad that we got our raise and I can use olive oil whenever I want without worrying about running out of money.

Small Miracles

2007-10-24T04:23:00.000-07:00

Here are the things I'm grateful for, in no particular order:

Internet. I'm sitting at an NGO that allows PCVs to use the internet for free. It's 5km from town, but well worth the bike ride. And I can switch the keyboard to English, so that makes it even better.
My new house. I'm moving next Thursday to a new house. It's on a quieter street and is beautiful and I love it. When I get pictures I'll post them - I have a nice porch and a guardian and a well and an indoor toilet and shower and a couple bedrooms. There's even a few couches and chairs! My boss Mohamed is a gem for making it happen.
The American missionaries. I have met the most wonderful people. There are two missionary families here in Timbi. One of them has 2 daughters, an infant and a 2 year old. The other ones have 4 kids, ranging from 1 to 8. They are truly adorable. The parents are amazing, too. I'll have to avoid giving them the blog address so they don't read my gushing! At any rate, it was so easy to talk to them and they are funny and friendly and fantastic and exactly what I need here.
My attitude change. I'm finally settled here. I'm happy to be here. I feel comfortable and excited about the year.
My students. There aren't many of them, but they want to learn and are really friendly. My Terminale class only has 3 girls, so I'm hoping to have them over to my house for review sessions where they don't have to deal with the boys.
Having space to run and bike.
Lettuce and carrots and yogurt. I don't even like carrots in the US.
All the traveling plans we have - Egypt and hopefully Ghana, Burkina, Benin and Togo next summer and Morocco with my mom and Aunt Diane next September. What a good time.

Anyway, things are good! I knew the adjustment would take a little bit of time, but I'm glad it's over. I'm starting to learn some Pulaar phrases and have been studying French, so hopefully it's just a matter of time before I'm really integrated. Market ladies love nothing more than a white girl who can speak Pulaar, even if it's only 10 words!

Ramadan Fete!

2007-10-15T01:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been off the map for a little while. I spent the last week at Camilo's site and had an amazing time. With hangovers, Camilo, Beth, Ian and I headed up to Cam's site. It was quite a trip, but I won't be doing that again. I've learned my lesson.

Anyway, we had a great time in Boke. Camilo is finally in his house and besides the fact that there's no electricity except once a week it's a great house with a really nice family and it actually gets a breeze, so I think it's way better than his old house. I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it, but in addition to taking some sites (Mamou, Fria, places that have no radios or cell coverage) away, PC also instituted a rule that PCVs can't live in government compounds. Before Cam was in the Prefet's compound (I have no idea what the equivalent in English would be. I don't even know what they do here...), so they had to find him a new house. And it took way longer than necessary, but at least now he's settled.

*As a reminder to why Guinea was ranked equal with Iraq in corruption, someone stole the money that was allocated to his house. And then he found out that they actually stole $2,500-ish. They know who it is, but unfortunately there's no accountability here so nothing will be done about it. Stealing that much money here would be like stealing $500,000 in the US.*

Anyway, we went to Magical Kamsar and used the pool on three separate occasions. I now have a bikini tan instead of the ankles/arms tan I had going before. We made some good food and watched some movies on my amazing portable DVD player and generally had a good time. Also, Cam has a wicker furniture maker that's substantially cheaper than the stuff I can get in Labe, so I ordered some shelves and a coffee table and 2 sofas that will improve the quality of my life at site.

Camilo's students were so excited to see me, it had been almost a year since my last visit. I felt so welcome - they call me Mrs. Camilo, which cracks me up when it's not making my feminist heart break a little. They think we are engaged - good thing communication is so difficult here, because in my sites they think we are married and in Boke we are engaged, but no one would ever figure it out. Clearly we are not engaged, though. No cause for alarm. It sounds more normal here than it does when I write it down in English.

So the month of fasting is finally over and the big fete was on Saturday. Cam and I got up early to make banana bread to give out to the families of the students we were invited to visit. We didn't want to do it, but were so glad we did. It was a huge hit! Cam's regional coordinator, Yama, gave us some amazing soup sauce with delicious meat. Too bad we can't eat that kind of meat every day. Next we headed to his Censeur's house (Assistant Principal?) and dropped off some "please give Cam the teaching schedule he wants" banana bread.

Our third stop was at Thierno's house, one of Cam's students and best friends. I think the kid is annoying, but I'm glad that he and Cam get along. Apparently his hut was broken into and the money for the fete was stolen so the meal was pretty blech. Dried fish with red oil and rice. Cam ate most of it and I did my best. Thierno's dad is really old and blind and only knows how to say "ca va?" in French, so that was interesting too. Recently Thierno fell at his house and I saw that his scab on his elbow was infected, so I took him back to Cam's house to clean it out really well. I felt terrible cause the kid was practically crying, but it needed to be done. The wound was all white and bubbly and disgusting. I told Thierno it was better that I clean it than he ends up losing an arm over it. It reminds me that life here is really precarious and that most people are one health disaster away from death or losing all their money.

Our last stop was my favorite - one of Cam's kids is Puehl, so I got to impress his family with my vast vocabulary of Pulaar words - all 20 of them. The family is clearly poor and had killed 2 chickens for their Ramadan meal, one of which they prepared for us. Ramadan is like Thanksgiving in that it's all about the food, so for a family to be so generous with what little they had was really touching. I ate one piece of chicken and Cam ate 2 before I stopped him to remind him that, even though it was prepared for us, we should not be pigs and should give the family quite a bit of the chicken anyway!

All in all it was a great Ramadan and I'm glad I spent it in Boke. In an hour I'm headed back to Timbi, where I will finally have spend some significant time! My boss, Mohamed, is going with me and is going to try and get me a new house, so we'll see how that goes. Keep your fingers crossed! Even if it doesn't work out to get a new house, I'm ready to get back and have had a great couple weeks in Conakry, Mamou and Boke so I can make it work in Timbi. I just need to suck it up. And get used to peeing in the "shower" i.e. drain in my house instead of using the scary latrine.

Oh, and Cam and I bought our Egypt tickets! From December 28th till January 10th. It's going to be amazing.

Homecoming 2007

2007-09-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

I finally had the homecoming I've been waiting for. Yesterday a PC car went to get my friend from Mamou so I hitched a ride down for the day. I arrived at my old house at 9am and was able to give Djenabou her gifts from the Frieler girls - new shoes and clothes. She was so thrilled! When she saw me coming she ran up to me to give me a huge hug - she's usually shy and reserved so it was exceptionally touching.

After visiting with them for awhile, and finding out that the Ivoirians were kicked out of my house as soon as people heard I was back (they wanted to make sure I knew it was waiting for me and that I wouldn't stay in Timbi just because I didn't have a house in Mamou), I went to visit El Hadj Barry, the owner of the house. His whole family crowded around and I gave him a watch as a gift and he told me about how he's been wondering about me and that I'm always welcome to come back.

After that I went to Ibrahima's shop, where the best yogurt is sold. I bought a ton and we talked about my plans to try and go back.

Next it was off to Madame Diallo's, where she invited me to her baby's baptism in about a month and gave me a matching tie-dyed skirt and shirt from Bamako that she's been holding for me since December. She is about the most adorable pregnant woman ever. I finally had some time just to sit around and chat, and I told her that I'd come for the baptism and that someday we'll go look at Camilo's flickr account so she can see pictures from all the travels.

Then I ran into the PC car and he said that a bunch of PCVs from Burkina were in town on a COS trip, so I talked to them awhile and brought them yogurt. Hopefully I'll meet up with them again when they come through the Fouta, I was trying to sell them on going to Mauritania and I think it worked...

Finally I found my old admin from the school! They gave me the biggest hugs, which was kind of a shock since it was in front of a lot of people and it's Ramadan right now. They loved their picture frames with the photos of us and told me that my job is always waiting. And they told me that they were thrilled that I'd come back, even if I couldn't return to Mamou. "The continuation of the cooperation between our countries is the most important thing," was what they said. It was so touching.

Overall, it was absolutely the best day I'd had since my arrival, possibly my best day since June. PC admin knows I want to return and now I just need to be patient and do my best in Timbi until that happens.

La Campagne

2007-09-24T03:58:00.000-07:00

I've been staying at the hotel in Labe for so long that the owner jokes that it's chez moi...my house. We went to Timbi yesterday to see what, if anything, had happened to the latrine. We discovered that it has officially flooded over (I chose not to go see what that looks like) and that they aren't going to build a new one. They said that it would go back down after the rainy season and that I should just wait 2 months until that happens. In the meantime I was welcome to use my neighbor's bathroom. While that is generous on my neighbor's part, it is not a solution to the problem. While Boiro tries to talk to them about finding me a new house, I'm back in Labe.

Yesterday we were joking about how I'm now Assistant Regional Coordinator (or is it Assistant TO the Regional Coordinator for those of you who watch The Office?) My new job is to try and organize the office here in Labe. There are about 1,000 books that were taken from people's sites and need to be catalogued - plus about 8 shelves worth of resource materials that need to be organized. That should keep me busy for a few days. Then Beth arrives and I'm going to go with her to site - it's always more fun to organize a house with a buddy there! After that I'm headed back down to Conakry to do some work before going to stay with Camilo for a week or so. They just announced on the radio that classes aren't starting until October 22nd, so I have quite a bit of time and just can't bear to spend it in Timbi until my housing mess is taken care of.

Life is pretty boring here in Guinea for the time being - I'll keep you all posted with the details if I don't think they'll put you to sleep...

The Waiting Game

2007-09-22T04:43:00.000-07:00

You know how on movies like Pride and Prejudice the women sit around and get so excited about receiving a letter, because it breaks up what is a very boring life/day? That's how I'm feeling today. Like some 18th century housebound woman. Except that I don't have a house and I do have a cell phone, portable DVD player and internet access. Whatever. The sentiment is timeless.

Rose should be arriving, but I'm just waiting for it to happen. My parents should call this weekend, but I'm waiting for that too. Ramadan will be over in less than 3 weeks, and I can't wait for that either. School will give me something to do. And once I overcome my inertia and get my butt running or biking that will keep me occupied as well.

While training was an absolute pain and left me exhausted for weeks, it served a valuable purpose. In addition to being a good balance between going from seeing all Americans to all Guineans, it also made me happy to finally be at site so I could cook for myself, have control over my own schedule and finally catch up on sleep. This time around I'm having to adjust without the comforts that training brought us. I was so happy to have nothing to do at this time last year, but now I'm just bored!

The Egypt tickets will be purchased in October. I can't believe I've been here 2 weeks and am already buying a ticket to leave. Last time I felt so stuck in Guinea, like it would be too difficult and too much of a pain to leave W. Africa until school was over. This time I don't feel that way at all. The only way to finish another 2 years of service is to be realistic about wanting to travel to more developed places and enjoy the sights, food and trash cans.

Okay, I'm off to try and find some street food to eat covertly so as not to offend those who are observing the fast...even though I'm just sure that many people cheat here. As they should. It's so hot that I can't imagine actually going 30 days without drinking or eating and staying healthy. Besides, why is there street food during the day if no one is cheating? It's not like there are a lot of Christian people around...

Full of shit

2007-09-21T04:40:00.000-07:00

The room of potatoes is empty. The 2 civil servants who think they live at my house have not been back. But now I have the biggest problem of all, which is the title of the blog entry. My latrine is FULL. Completely full. And the door is broken, so other people have been using it and I have been peeing in the drainage hole in my shower because it is so ridiculously disgusting! I apologize to all of you who think that's gross, but it's the truth. Yesterday Boiro, our regional coordinator, came to Timbi and I showed him how the situation that was only a little bad a few days ago has reached epic proportions.

Also, some guy is reading over my shoulder right now and it's really distracting me and pissing me off, so if he can read this I hope he takes the hint. (which he did)

Okay, so Boiro came and saw. We then went to talk to some people about how to fix the situation. I'm told that putting motor oil down the latrine would cause everything to go down - one of those funny things that sounds like complete b.s. but would probably work. But the community promised to build a latrine by Sunday. That's 3 days. During Ramadan. If this happens, it will be a bigger miracle than Jesus walking on water. But I'm going to give the people in Timbi the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Rose, a friend who transferred to Burkina, is in town and should be coming to Labe today, which is why I'm here. It was agreed that I couldn't stay in my house until I had a bathroom, so my choices were to visit my neighbor Jacqui, who lives 15k away, or to come to Labe. Seeing that Rose would have no way to find me at Jacqui's site, I'm here in Labe. We'll see how that all turns out.

My friend Beth just arrived last night and will be about 65k outside of Labe, so I'm looking forward to having someone to drink bad, cold red wine with over a pizza at the hotel. Camilo gave her some education materials for me, since I'm an idiot and left Conakry without grabbing anything relevant to teaching English! I managed to get syrup and buckets, but nothing that will help with lesson plans...I'm an idiot. Thank goodness Camilo came to my rescue.

School won't start for another 3 weeks or so, which is weird. When I got to Mamou I had about a week before classes started, so I was really busy and had a lot to accomplish. That's not really the case anymore, so I'm going to have to get creative with how I pass the time. Today I'm hoping to get some furniture commissioned so I have somewhere to put all my stuff! It's hard to feel at home when you have 2 chairs and a table and are living out of duffle bags.

A few funny things have happened that make me happy/relieved/content to be back...

the boys in my compound, who are about 5 and really cute, have taken to waiting for me while I'm in the latrine and giving me a high 5 as I walk past them. This is good because it makes me feel like I just accomplished something. Also, I'm heading inside to wash my hands, which means that any germs they give me are immediately taken care of.
I just leave my 20 liter water holders on my porch and they magically fill with water in a matter of hours. I have no idea where the water is coming from and honestly don't care. As long as people are around to take care of it for me, I'm happy.
there was a huge storm the other night that completely busted the transformer and blew out the electricity in my neighborhood. While completely scary, it was also so amazing. If the storms that happen here were in the US, there would be warnings on TV every day for 6 months of the year. It's just unbelievably strong rain that comes down in buckets and causes flooding everywhere.
I decapitated the World's Largest Cockroach. Camilo called me out to my living room our first night in Timbi to tell me about it. I then sprayed it with the poisonous bug spray you can get here that will probably cause me to grow another limb. But cockroaches are tough and that's not enough to kill it, so I took my broom and chased it around. When I finally hit it, I screamed and jumped because something hit my leg...turns out I managed to decapitate it and the head hit me on the shin!!!! Once I realized what happened I was bizarrely proud of myself, like I'd passed a "welcome back to Guinea" test of some kind.

I know what I have to do to make Timbi home. Now it's just a matter of taking care of it. But so many things here take so much time - for example, finding educated women to befriend. I don't want to make friends too quickly because the people who try and find you first are generally the sketchy people. So I just have to be patient - I've done it before, so I can do it again. Now I'm off to get some furniture made - until I have a comfortable place to sit I know it won't feel like home. I also need to investigate the cost of a new mattress. Mine is so thin that I am basically sleeping on wooden slats!

An added bonus to spending so much time in Labe is that I've gotten to know Boiro and the guards and driver, who are extremely nice and interesting and have been helpful with getting me back into the habit of speaking French.

I'll keep you all posted...cross your fingers that my latrine gets fixed quickly!!

Exactly as it was before...

2007-09-15T05:21:00.000-07:00

Well, things have not changed. Some of that is a good thing - I stopped in Mamou for a few minutes and got to see Madame Diallo (who's 7 months pregnant...her oldest daughter is 20 and she's only 35!) and my family and my yogurt guy. Everyone was happy to see me and it was amazing to see them - sadly I only had a couple minutes because of the bitchin' travel day I'd had.

I was told to be ready at 8am to make the 7 hour trip to Labe. I had all my stuff waiting outside, but the car didn't arrive until about 9:30. Then I found out that we were taking 4 other people with us and picking up a PC staff member and his wife in Mamou to take them up to Labe as well. Again, not that much of a surprise. The car was PACKED, though. So we load up and are ready to go by 10. Then we find out that the cashier's brother, one of the people hitching a FREE ride with us, needs to go get his bags from his house. Why didn't he bring them with him in the first place? No idea. I was pretty pissed, since I had been promised a few hours in Mamou, but because of all this I wouldn't have much time, since we aren't supposed to be on the road after 6:30. There are bandits (who people think are sent by the ministers who were fired to make people think that the new ministers aren't in control of the country) and driving is really scary in the dark.

So we get to Mamou, where we spend 20 minutes taking care of the PC staff member and his stuff, which required a complete shift of everything we had with us. Camilo and I finally left and walked to go visit everyone, since it was already 4 and we had a 3 hour drive ahead of us. The car was going to meet us at my old house. By the time they arrived there we were pretty much done with our perfunctory hellos and goodbyes. No one could understand why I could go to Timbi Madina, where there was also violence during the strikes, but that I couldn't go to Mamou. I'm with them on this. It's absolutely stupid. When I asked about the reason, I was told that they'd evacuate me from Timbi before any problems started. Why that same reasoning doesn't apply to Mamou, I'm not sure. My theory is that the people in PC Washington and the embassy wanted to see some concrete changes made before reopening the program, regardless of how much sense they made. But I'm also bitter about it, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

We arrived in Labe at 8pm and Camilo and I ate pizza and drank wine, which improved our moods considerably. I also had a talk with the PC staff person who is helping with this and told him about how mad I was that we were on the road that late at night and how unacceptable that was, especially since it was because we were taking care of PC staff member's families' requests and not doing official business and I'm completely scared of driving in the dark here.

We went to Timbi yesterday, only to find out that my house is occupied by a family. The man of the house is on vacation, so they are supposed to move by tomorrow, but we'll have to see. Also, my latrine has no door, which is a bit awkward! And when I asked the official we were talking to to speak in French instead of Pulaar, he totally ignored me. It's never a good sign when people who speak French refuse to speak it, because it means he was telling Dioulde (PC staff) something that he didn't want me to know. I saw the inside of the house and it's pretty nice. Not nearly as gorgeous as my old one, but that's to be expected. I have a lot of cleaning to do, though. And right now it's full of other people's things, including the 3rd bedroom, which housed a huge quantity of potatoes! What the hell, right?

I realize that this entire email is a gigantic whine about what's happening, but it's Guinea and it should all be expected. That being said, I'm actually thrilled to be back. I know everything will get taken care of and school will start and I'll make friends no matter where I am, so it's all good. Sometimes you just need to get some complaining off your chest! My friend Rose is arriving soon from Burkina, where she transferred. Any my other friend Beth is coming in a couple days and will be relatively close to me, so I'm really looking forward to seeing them.

And my French isn't as bad as I thought. It's mostly coming back to me, I just need to expand my vocabulary so that I don't have to ask for "that thing there" when at the market and can just use the word for the thing I want!

Hopefully the next time I write I'll have a home. And I'm going to try and respond to everyone's emails quickly, but it's hard with such limited internet time. I appreciate everyone's thoughts and stories! Also, I did see the video of Britney at the VMAs and was thoroughly disappointed. Was she drugged up? She moved like she was underwater. My comeback in Guinea is going much better than her comeback in the US!

I'm assured my parade will happen after the rainy season...

2007-09-08T09:45:00.000-07:00

And I'm back. The blog is back. I'm in Conakry, after a crazy 35 hours or so of travel. Also, I think I look like the kind of person that people on planes start conversations with - I had interesting conversations with an Indian man (who has the EXACT same taste in books as me) from MKE to ATL, then with the guy who collects the carts at the Paris airport and lastly with a French Canadian guy who assists with environmental research on the ride to Guinea. I ate approximately 5 dinners during my travel time and they were all delicious. Thank goodness I'm here and can't access any more ham and cheese sandwiches, my body couldn't take any more!

I got off the plane all smiles, ready to greet Camilo, Jan and Ousmane. My smile quickly faded as I realized that no one was there to greet me! Turns out our inside connection at the airport no longer works there, so there's no way for people to get in to the baggage claim. But Camilo busted out his Susu and paid a little bribe (which we pretty much NEVER do, but he was worried that I wouldn't be able to take care of all my stuff alone...and he was right about that). I was so relieved! Since I knew they hadn't forgotten about me, I had immediately worried that they'd been in a car wreck or something...I am my father's daughter. Anyway, they had come prepared with a banner and everything, which they rolled out once we got back to the transit house. My bags arrived with no problems, except I wrapped a bottle of Absolut Raspberry in a skirt and a plastic bag and it leaked a little...no harm done, though. The bottle didn't break and the skirt can be washed. It would have been tragic if that bottle had bit the dust on the trip, you all know how much I love the raspberry vodka and Sprite combo!

So far I haven't seen too much of Guinea, but it looks exactly the same. Rainier (I'm looking forward to the dry season already!), but other than that the same. The transit house is clean - shocking, since it's always been a disgusting place. When you have volunteers who can't pick up after themselves for 20 straight years without a great cleaning, it shouldn't be surprising that it gets gross. Kind of like my grandparents' house after they'd lived there for 50 years. Things just tend to accumulate. Anyway, today we ate some yassa poulet (I was reminded that I don't like chickens that haven't been subject to genetic modification) and I organized my stuff...I'm leaving a lot of my junk food here in Conakry so I won't be tempted to eat Skittles and fruit snacks for dinner. Today hasn't been a day of accomplishments, since the office is closed and I slept until 1:15pm. Oops. Looks like it won't take me long to get back into the routine of having little work to do!

Tomorrow I'm headed to the markets to attempt to remember my French and buy some stuff for my house. We are leaving Tuesday to head upcountry and are spending the night in Mamou, so I'll get a chance to stop by and see everyone. I hope they will be as excited to see me as I am to see them!

Keep the emails coming, I'll be checking it a couple times a week...assuming the email in Timbi is still working. Oh, and we heard that the elections that were scheduled for December are pushed back to March, so I'm not sure if I can still go back to Mamou at Christmas or not. I guess I'll wait and see if I like Timbi - perhaps I'll decide I want to stay there, or maybe I'll hate it and want to get back to Mamou as soon as possible. As it's been for the last year, I have little to no control, so there's no use worrying about it...

Interesting New York Times Article

2007-08-16T15:12:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of thing I like to see in development - away from charity and more towards sustainability. If you don't want to read the whole thing, this is my favorite quote:

“What’s happened to humanitarian organizations over the years is that a lot of us have become contractors on behalf of the government,” said Mr. Odo of CARE. “That’s sad but true. It compromised our ability to speak up when things went wrong.”

I hope to get back in 2 years and go to grad school and get smart enough that I can work for the Gates Foundation. Also, my flight is booked and I leave September 6th!

CARE Turns Down Federal Funds for Food Aid
By CELIA W. DUGGER

MALELA, Kenya — CARE, one of the world’s biggest charities, is walking away from some $45 million a year in federal financing, saying American food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but also may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help.

CARE’s decision is focused on the practice of selling tons of often heavily subsidized American farm products in African countries that in some cases, it says, compete with the crops of struggling local farmers.

The charity says it will phase out its use of the practice by 2009. But it has already deeply divided the world of food aid and has spurred growing criticism of the practice as Congress considers a new farm bill.

“If someone wants to help you, they shouldn’t do it by destroying the very thing that they’re trying to promote,” said George Odo, a CARE official who grew disillusioned with the practice while supervising the sale of American wheat and vegetable oil in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
Under the system, the United States government buys the goods from American agribusinesses, ships them overseas, mostly on American-flagged carriers, and then donates them to the aid groups as an indirect form of financing. The groups sell the products on the market in poor countries and use the money to finance their antipoverty programs. It amounts to about $180 million a year.

Neither the Bush administration nor members of Congress are looking to undo the practice, which has gone on for more than a decade. In fact, some of the nonprofit groups say it has worked well and are pressing for sharp increases in the amount of American food shipped for sale and distribution to support development programs.

The Christian charity World Vision and 14 other groups, which call themselves the Alliance for Food Aid, say that CARE is mistaken; they say the system works because it keeps hard currency in poor countries, can help prevent food price spikes in those countries and does not hurt their farmers. Not least, they argue, it also pays for their antipoverty programs.
But some people active in trying to help Africa’s farmers are critical of the practice. Former President Jimmy Carter, whose Atlanta-based Carter Center uses private money to help African farmers be more productive, said in an interview that it was a flawed system that had survived partly because the charities that received money from it defended it.

Agribusiness and shipping interest groups have tremendous political influence, but charitable groups are influential, too, Mr. Carter said, because “they speak from the standpoint of angels.”
Some charities that champion the system bristle at such suggestions. Their allies in Congress say that maritime and agribusiness interests are essential allies for programs to aid the hungry.
“Sure it’s self-interest if staying in business to help the hungry is self-interested,” said Avram E. Guroff, a senior official at ACDI/VOCA, which ranked sixth in such sales last year. “We’re not lining our pockets.”

But Peter J. Matlon, a Nairobi-based agricultural economist and a managing director of the Rockefeller Foundation, said in an interview that converting American commodities into cash for development was a case of “the tail wagging the dog,” with domestic farm policies in the United States shaping hunger-fighting methods abroad.

The nongovernmental organizations “have been ignoring this evidence for years that there’s a negative impact on the prices farmers receive,” Mr. Matlon said.. He is involved in an effort by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, financed with an initial $150 million, to increase the productivity of Africa’s farmers.

The Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan, investigative arm of Congress, also concluded this year that the system was “inherently inefficient.” CARE and Catholic Relief Services — who rank first and second in money raised through the current system — say they recover only 70 to 80 percent of what the United States paid for the commodities and shipping.
But while Catholic Relief Services and Save the Children, which ranked fifth last year in such sales, agree with CARE that the system is inefficient, they also say they will not stop converting American food into money unless Congress replaces the lost revenues with cash. They help poor people with the money, they say.

The experiences of Walter Otieno, a grizzled Kenyan farmer in mud-stained pants, illustrate the paradoxes of paying for rural development through sales of American farm goods.
Over the years, he had watched 4 of his 12 children die of measles, which is more often fatal for the malnourished. He has had difficulty growing enough to feed his family. “My children were skinny, and their skin was dull,” he said.

Then last year he began growing a small patch of sunflowers on a hill sloping down to Lake Victoria in the village of Malela, with help from a program that CARE finances through the sale of American farm goods here.

A CARE extension worker, Rosemary Ogala, taught him and dozens of farmers in his group where to buy sunflower seed, when to plant it, how to space the rows and when to harvest.
CARE has also connected them to a ready market: the Kenyan company Bidco Oil Refineries, whose managers say they could more than quintuple the amount of sunflower seed they buy from Kenyan farmers to process into vegetable oil.

The profit Mr. Otieno earned from the crop rescued his family from dire poverty. Now, with his new earnings, he is able to play with his sons and daughters, who are plump on eggs and milk, at the family’s general store, a tiny shack stocked with goods financed by the sunflower sales.
The question is whether small-scale sunflower farmers like Mr. Otieno would have done better if nonprofit groups had not sold tons of American crude soybean oil, a competing product, to the same Kenyan company that purchased Mr. Otieno’s meager crop. CARE and some other experts say the answer is a clear yes.

In 2003, Bidco bought almost 9,000 metric tons of crude soybean oil sold to the United States by Bunge, the agribusiness giant. Altogether that year, Bunge sold the United States 15,180 metric tons of oil for resale by the nonprofits in Kenya. A metric ton equals 1,000 kilograms, or 2,204.62 pounds.

American law requires aid groups to establish that such sales will not discourage production by local farmers, but some critics say it is a conflict of interest to ask the nonprofits to select experts to make this determination.

In this case, the nonprofits hired a consultant who advised them in 2003 that they could safely sell up to 38,000 metric tons of vegetable oil in Kenya, which mostly depends on imports. That amount, about 10 percent of the country’s consumption, was “negligible,” he said.
But Mr. Odo of CARE disagreed, saying in a memo that the importation from the United States “reduces the growth in the local market.”

Ultimately, CARE’s decision to phase out such sales evolved from a senior manager’s change of heart. Daniel G. Maxwell, a professor of nutrition at Tufts University, was a food security adviser for CARE in Nairobi who saw sales of American food as an imperfect, but useful way to raise money.

He knew firsthand, however, how risky it was to manage projects financed in fluctuating commodities markets. When prices sank, CARE had too little money and was sometimes forced to lay off workers. Mr. Maxwell said he also strongly suspected that buyers had offered too little for the farm goods, knowing they were dealing with aid workers who were novices in commodities trading.

As he and Christopher B. Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University, researched a book, “Food Aid After Fifty Years,” his doubts deepened. “Not only was it a pain the neck,” he said, but there were possible serious effects “that would be damaging to farmers and trade.”

In 2004, Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Barrett made the case against the practice at CARE headquarters in Atlanta. They recalled that the senior vice president, Patrick Carey, who has since died, cautioned them that leaving the system would be like “an act of partial suicide” for the nonprofits. Nonetheless, CARE committed to the shift the following year.

CARE says it will try to raise money to replace the lost revenues from philanthropies and other donors, and by making its own aid programs profitable.

One of those programs could be seen in action one recent afternoon in the Kenyan village of Poche. CARE has helped local women bypass local middlemen to sell pineapples at better prices in Nairobi’s big supermarkets, 10 hours away by road.

One woman, Doreen Amimo, a 52-year-old grandmother, has seen her weekly earnings rise to $18 from $11. She can now afford to feed and clothe an orphaned niece and nephew.
“And I never lack sugar in the house,” she said, “and we can have tea and milk every morning!”

These farmers are selling their fruit to a small company, Vegcare, that CARE and a Kenyan company started with an investment of $170,000 in 2005. Vegcare advises farmers on how to grow pineapples that meet supermarket standards, buys them and trucks them to a wholesaler in Nairobi that supplies Nakumatt, a Kenyan supermarket chain.

CARE’s idea is that a profitable business is more likely than a charitable venture to survive when foreign aid runs out.

“What’s happened to humanitarian organizations over the years is that a lot of us have become contractors on behalf of the government,” said Mr. Odo of CARE. “That’s sad but true. It compromised our ability to speak up when things went wrong.”

The Blog Is Not Dead

2007-07-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

Just hibernating.

Camilo and about 15 others leave for Guinea at the end of July. I have a job for the summer and am joining them all in early September. My things arrived in their trunk and didn't even smell that bad, which was a happy day for me. I'm thrilled that I can repack it all and bring it back to the same country!

I did receive some bad news from PC this week - Mamou is no longer considered a safe enough site due to what happened during the last strikes. I wrote them an email saying that if they didn't want me there, I understood. But if it's because they think I don't want to be there, they are wrong. Regardless, I'm headed back to Guinea. If I can't go to Mamou they might put me in Timbi Madina, where the town would be a little smaller, cooler and my classes would be 20 instead of 120. Either way I'm going to be positive about it - I wasn't much of a "go with the flow" person before, but that has definitely changed!

I'll still have internet in Timbi, so don't worry about the blog, it will live on.

Cross your fingers that there are no more evacuations...

Boo.

2007-05-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

They better get their s&*t together over in Guinea...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6625573.stm

So far it's looking like I can return at the end of the summer. The economy continues to recover and the Prime Minister continues to do good work. I'm signed up to go back and sincerely hope that the soldiers don't thwart my plans!

In the meantime I'm off to Minneapolis, where I'll see my brother's band and deliver Zach and Kelley's wedding gift and pick up Camilo, then back to Wisconsin for a couple days. After that Cam and I are driving to Meadville, where I'll continue on to Pittsburgh, NYC, Baltimore, DC and North Carolina before driving home and starting a babysitting job until the end of summer.

Unless you hear from me on the blog, assume that I'm headed back to Guinea!!

I'm home

2007-04-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched Blood Diamond. It really, really made me want to go back to Guinea. One of the parts takes place in Forecariah, Guinea, where we did our training! But they clearly did not film it there. Today I got my schisto test - the people at the doctor's office were so confused, clearly none of them had ever heard of it and they just didn't know what to do with me.

My backpack didn't make it on my connecting flight in Dublin. Luckily, I did make it. But they held the plane for me and had a bus waiting at my flight to take me directly to the next one! Crazy.

I have a feeling that the blogging will stop until I know what I'm doing. I just can't imagine that the things that make me excited, like the Oconomowoc Pick 'n' Save, will be interesting to anyone but me. I will update when I know when/if the program is reopening!

Last day of the trip

2007-04-19T01:47:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow at this time I'll be boarding my flight.

Camilo, Ana and I arrived in Barcelona on Tuesday night and spent yesterday walking through the city, eating paella, going to the Picasso museum, visiting the aquarium (where we all turned into 10 year olds, especially at the exhibit of these fish that don't stop having sex until they kill themselves from it, which was fricking hysterical. So much fish sex was going on in that tank!), and eating sushi last night.

The highlights were definitely the copulating fish and the sushi. I'd been missing sushi since leaving last July 7th! Actually, everything about yesterday was great. The main strip, Las Ramblas, is really nice and it was wonderful to walk around. The paella was delicious and the museum was interesting.

I have a lot to look forward to at home - family, friends, weddings, road trip from WI to NYC to DC to NC. Hopefully I can get a cheap phone and a pay-as-you-go plan so I can call you all and finally catch up in non-electronic format.

Not so mad anymore

2007-04-17T03:00:00.000-07:00

So PC promises to send my things back to Guinea and that I'll still be able to have the 100 lbs. weight allowance in addition to the trunk. I'll survive without my stuff for a couple weeks or months. It's not like I've had many things since January, so what's another couple months?

Also, I got an optimistic email from someone in Guinea who I won't name so they aren't held responsible if the program doesn't reopen, but it makes me think the chances are high and that will make going back to the US on Friday a little easier.

Bags on a boat

2007-04-16T15:09:00.000-07:00

It is the government, so it shouldn't be a shock, but Peace Corps has sent my things on the fricking boat back to America, estimated arrival in August. I will be going back to West Africa in June or July. What a mess. Grrr.

Madrid is fantastic. Hotel is great, tapas are the greatest things ever, sangria is delicious.

Stupid Peace Corps.

Cam and his mom, Ana

2007-04-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

A few things have changed since Cam's mom showed up, for the better...

1. We have someone else to talk to. And she's adorable. Camilo and I, after 4 months of having no jobs and being together every day, have turned into one of those really, really old married couples who complete each other's sentences and speak almost entirely in inside jokes. It's kind of creepy and good to have someone else around...
2. Our accommodation and eating has improved dramatically in quality. That's a picture in the hotel bar - we are practically sitting on top of the Alhambra in Granada. And today we ate 3 meals and none of them came from the grocery store.
3. We have all the new Grey's and Office episodes so I can be caught up when I get back to the States, thanks to her computer and hotel internet access.
4. She brought me a birthday present! A bag and a coin purse from her and her mom and sister. Seriously, could she be any nicer? (and she doesn't read this blog so it's not sucking up)

Tomorrow we head back to Madrid - Cam and I spent one night there before we got his mom from the airport and took the train to Granada. She got us a room in the Intercontinental and it was so nice it made me imagine what it would be like to live in the developed world with a job...not that I have any plans of doing that in the next 2 years. We have 3 days there (his mom has a meeting) and then we are going to Barcelona for the last 3 days of the trip.

It's now less than a week until I'm back and I think it's going to be okay. They say the culture shock is worse coming back but since it's only temporarily and I've had so much time between Guinea and now I hope it's not as terrible as people make it out to be. And I got a slightly disconcerting email from the PC, saying that they were shipping my stuff on a boat and it should be arriving in the US in August, at which point it will be shipped to my house. I'm hoping I wasn't supposed to be on that email list, since my things should stay in Guinea until May. They told me that they would keep them in case the program reopened and send them to a new country if I ended up doing that. Cross your fingers that there wasn't a major fuck-up. I don't like the idea of my stuff sitting on a ship while I'm headed back to West Africa!!

Do I look older??

2007-04-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

In Porto on my birthday. I can't emphasize it enough - everyone should go to Portugal!

In all it´s glory...The Moldy Shoe

2007-04-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

I promise that it was even grosser in person!

It's too cold to go home...

2007-04-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

Weather report for Okauchee says it feels like 18 and is snowy and windy. I think I need to stay in Spain a little longer.

Forgot to bring my camera to the internet to load the moldy shoe picture. I know you are all anxiously anticipating it.

Birthday Celebrations and Moldy Shoes

2007-04-11T04:04:00.000-07:00

The rest of the birthday was fantastic. Cam and I went to lunch and ate some sort of gravy/multiple meats/cheese/egg sandwich thing that's a local specialty, then to a port tasting and tour, where we pretended to understand the nuances of port. After we ate some ridiculously expensive (for us) chorizo and shrimp and drank some beer. Next it was off to a little place with sangria and the nicest lady serving us. We headed to drink some more port at this place called Vinologia and it ended up being the highlight of the evening.

First off, we got 2 extra glasses of port. Always fun to get free stuff. The guy serving us was about our age and was the most talkative person you can imagine. He went into this 20 minute monologue about how much he wanted to go to Africa and how he watched this television special about this boy who gave a large pink stuffed teddy bear to be shipped to Angola and given to a kid, among other toys to be handed out. *not to be irritating, but that's such a waste of money. Would have been much better for the kids and the local economy to donate money and then buy things that are produced in Angola to hand out. Okay, getting off of soapbox now.* Anyway, he was great and hilarious and told us about all his previous American customers and how ridiculous he thinks people in LA are. We headed to an Irish pub after, where the waitress asked why Cam speaks Portuguese. Seriously, it's ridiculous. I know it's similar to Spanish and everything, but Camilo shows up somewhere, hears someone say something once and then just commits it to memory. Wish I could do that.

Our grand finale was a trip to McDonald's. I know, I know. Poor Camilo didn't want to go because he didn't want people to think he was a bad guy for taking me there on my birthday, but it's what I wanted to eat!! And since I'm not going to keep eating all that crap once I get back to the US I need to take advantage of it now.

This morning we packed up for our overnight train to Madrid, where Cam's mom got us a room in a real hotel!! How fancy. We pick her up in 2 days. Now, about those moldy shoes...

When we arrived in Morocco we kind of panicked. It was so cold and we didn't have shoes. Cam ended up with some cool sneakers that were terribly uncomfortable and he hasn't been able to wear. He got some new ones in Spain that are much better. I bought these terribly ugly black loafer type shoes. When they got wet in Fes we stuck them in a plastic bag and subsequently ignored them for 10 days. Big mistake! This morning Cam pulled them out of his bag and looked inside and they were MOLDY!!! Really, really moldy. I have a picture and will load it when I next use the internet. It was so gross!!! Needless to say, they were left behind in the hotel room. I feel bad for the cleaning lady.

Thanks for all the birthday messages!

The drunker I get, the better I bowl.

2007-04-10T04:53:00.000-07:00

Cam and I found a miraculous mall yesterday here in Porto. Before you think we are too pathetic, we did climb 225 steps to the top of a church and look around the church before we did it. We had planned on going to a movie, but then they had an arcade and bowling! So we played 3 games and drank a few beers and my score just kept on improving. I actually beat Cam the last 2 games. Even though my high score was 139 I was still really proud of myself. All in all a very good time.

Today we are headed to have a picnic in this really pretty park and then do some port tasting and then to dinner. What a great way to turn 26. Although the overhead lighting in our hotel made me think I needed to get some wrinkle creams this morning.

Porto is another fantastic city - I think everyone should go to Portugal. What a great place. Sadly, we are leaving tomorrow night for Madrid. Luckily, we are meeting Cam's mom there - I think our grocery store bought meals are about over...

I'm back in 10 days. The last couple days I've really started thinking about how happy I'll be to see everyone and have had to resist the urge to skype all the people I know to catch up. It will happen soon enough!

I wish The Lonely Planet didn't oversell...

2007-04-06T03:30:00.000-07:00

While I have appreciated The Lonely Planet's advice on many occasions, they do have a tendency to oversell a place. Yesterday Camilo and I took a day trip to Sintra, a gorgeous town that they said was like "Alice in Wonderland meets Lord of the Rings in a Never-Never Land." What the hell does that even mean?? The town was beautiful and we had a great hike up to a castle and palace and a gorgeous park, but come on, how could it have lived up to it's expectations?? It was similar to our experience at the pastry shop in Belem and the "angel tarts."

The hike was about 5k, all uphill. We should have taken the bus, it was exhausting!! We just kept on saying, "this is good for us." And eventually we made it, a little sweaty but intact. Then we met this annoying Canadian kid who told us he was majoring in alcoholism and wouldn't shut up about his polarized sunglasses. Clearly he followed us around all day. And I tried to ignore him, but it was difficult. Cam was taking photos and left me to babysit the kid. But his photos are uploaded...check them out at

www.flickr.com/photos/camilo11

We also met these adorable women from Arizona. It was like hanging out with my mom and her friends for a little while and I had such a nice time talking to them! Of course they were all impressed with our adventure and took a picture of us...what a riot.

Last night we finally did some drinking at the Lisbon equivalent of NYC's LES. Oh, how I missed it. Then we ate some yummy garlic shrimp and pork while sitting next to a man who let "Smack That" play off his 2 cell phones, even when he wasn't at the table. It was weird, and even weirder given the buzz I already had.

Oh, and yesterday morning our hostel owner told us there wasn't any space for us for a 3rd night...I asked why he waited so long to tell us and didn't leave a note in our room or anything letting us know and he just looked stupid and pathetic. Luckily we didn't have a hard time finding a new one, it was just across the square and run by these 2 old sisters who seriously only yelled at one another to communicate! They told Cam that we should report the other hostel to the newspaper and were just horrified by what happened to us. What nice ladies. It was like being in my grandma Janet's house - they had all this old furniture and knick-knacks everywhere and plastic flower arrangements. Unfortunately, this also meant that we had to act/be somewhat sober when we got home - you can't return to your grandma's house drunk!!

And the flight situation is resolved. For a $25 fee I can get a ticket reissued in Barcelona just before the flight. Thank goodness. Who the hell uses paper tickets anymore, anyway??

We are off to Coimbra, a university town a couple hours north of here.

Guinea news

2007-04-04T10:13:00.000-07:00

By the way, the word is that the new Prime Minister picked all his ministers and they were approved by the President and the people are happy with it all. I'm crossing my fingers that they reopen the program this summer and I can just go back instead of having to start over again, which PC says might not even be possible until fall or winter...

Lisbon - best city ever

2007-04-04T09:53:00.000-07:00

We took an overnight train from Seville to Lisbon and arrived yesterday morning. Since then it's been one cultural activity after another. The museums here are incredible - we went to the Modern Art museum (Bill, I might have to have you explain modern art to me. I actually thought the first exhibit was construction work being done on the museum...) and to the Calouste Gulbenkian museum, which was amazing. Apparently this guy only bought the best of the best pieces, so everything was intact - it was all these glass vases and pottery and furniture and rugs in addition to paintings. I'm normally a person who pretends to be really impressed in museums, but it was so cool that I was actually impressed. And it was free because we told them we were teachers! (Well, we were. And will be again this summer...)

Last night we went to see The Departed. Thankfully the Portuguese prefer their movies subtitled instead of dubbed. I liked it a lot, but there was a ton of blood at the end! Ew. I can see why it won Best Picture, though. Tonight we are seeing Music and Lyrics, a Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant romantic comedy that I've never heard of, but I don't care. I love them both. And I've missed going to the movies! Cam is not really looking forward to it, but is a good sport.

Today we spent the morning at a religious artifacts museum that also had 2 mummified children. Ick! But interesting. Then we headed to the Jeronimo monastary, which was extremely impressive and huge. We also saw where Vasco De Gama set out on his explorations and then tried to go to a Design Museum, but it was closed. Then we had a cream pastry that The Lonely Planet said tasted like it was made by angels...and it was good, but not amazing. The writers should get a cream puff from the Wisconsin State Fair before publishing such bold statements!

Portugal is truly fantastic. People have been really helpful and the signs are in English and it's all relatively cheap. Museum entry fees have all been less than 3 euros...compared to 8 in Spain.

Can't believe I'll be back in the US in just over 2 weeks. Well, maybe. The annoying company I bought my ticket home from sent paper tickets to my house in WI, so my dad sent them to Cam's mom in Colombia to bring to me, but they never arrived and my dad sent them regular mail, without a tracking number or anything. Hmmm. Hopefully they'll let me know soon what needs to be done to get another ticket. Otherwise I might just have to extend the trip...

Holy Week aka Slutty Teens on Parade

2007-04-02T07:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, the official kick-off to Holy Week here in Spain. There were about a zillion people roaming about and a ton of parades to watch, but the most interesting thing was watching the teenagers. When did teens get so slutty? Honestly, it was incredible. The girls were wearing the tightest pants and shortest skirts and highest heels. And it was cold and rainy!

While I've been gone, the mullet apparently came back in style. The young men in Seville take their gel and hair products seriously. Additionally, girls have what can only be described as a uniform - tight, white shorts cut like pants, either nylons or tights underneath, sleazy top and poorly tailored blazer. Top that all off with some sparkly heels and matching purse, as well as some chunky highlights and Barbie make-up. I was telling Cam that I forgave a lot of horrific outfits in Guinea because the options were so limited. So what's the deal here? When did that become an okay outfit to wear to church? And when did I get so fricking old?

Actually, I almost lost a year of my life today. Once I turn 26 next week I no longer qualify for the cheap train tickets or any kind of discount. But the lady who sold us our Eurail passes tried to convince Cam and I that I was actually turning 27 and didn't qualify for the discount...and the worst part was that I questioned (for a split second...) how old I was!!!

At any rate, the parades were fun and the wine was cheap and I will now associate KKK hoods with Seville as well as the KKK. Poor Catholics - having their costume idea stolen really ruined the image of the hoods for a lot of people.

Okay, we are off to Lisbon - a train to Madrid and an overnighter to Portugal.

It's warmer in Seville...

2007-03-31T08:22:00.000-07:00

We are finally in a land with climate-controlled indoor spaces. It was just too damn cold in Fes and we ended up leaving Morocco 2 days early. What a day of travel it was - a taxi, train, ferry, bus and long walk until we were in a hostel in Seville. Yesterday we did some shopping and went to the huge cathedral and ate some tapas and got a little drunk. Today it's raining and we haven't done much...although I did convince Cam to accompany me to the grocery store. How I love the grocery store.

I got an annoying letter from Peace Corps saying that my schisto test was inconclusive. Then I got an annoying email saying that I might not be able to be medically cleared in time to leave this July. I have no idea what I'd do if that happened and am going to plan on the best-case scenario instead of stressing about it. I'm looking into getting my schisto test here in Spain or in Portugal so I can get the results sent ASAP...unless my mysterious illness in Mauritania was schisto I don't think I have it and would just like to get this all over with.

Monday night we are headed to Portugal for 10 days before heading back to Spain and meeting up with Cam's mom for the last leg. Europe is so expensive!! But we are doing the best we can to stay on budget(ish).

More photos on Cam's account

2007-03-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

Check them out...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/camilo11/

It just takes too long to load them with blogger, sorry for making you switch pages!

Casablanca

2007-03-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

Not as nice as Marrakesh, Cam and I were both ready to leave Casablanca today for Fes. It was a dirty city with few sights - we'd been warned about that, but wanted to see the Hassan II mosque. It did not disappoint. It's incredible and huge (can hold 20,000 worshippers) and is one of the few mosques that allow non-Muslims to enter...for $14.

Highlights from Casa:

The mosque - we went at sunset and again for a tour the next day. Gorgeous. I'll link to Cam's pictures once he loads them.
Realizing that we are such lightweights we can now get drunk off of 1.5 bottles of wine. Total, not each.
Going to a real movie theater. We watched The Queen, dubbed in French. I'm pretty sure I caught the gist and missed a lot of the details.
Walking in the "suburbs" of Casa, where the rich people hang out and all the beautiful beaches are.
Having a hotel with towels and a TV.
Eating tomato, basil and mozzarella salad. Yum.

Lowlights:

While walking to a restaurant on the port I almost got punched. Some Moroccan guy came up to me, really slowly, and actually put his fist up to punch me. Luckily, my gallant boyfriend blocked it. It was really weird. We decided not to go to the restaurant and found a better-trafficked place to eat.
Everyone ripping us off. Cab drivers not giving correct change, not using the meter, whatever. Everyone, everywhere asking for stuff and expecting us to just hand our goods over or buy their stuff. It's officially driving me nuts - I've turned into a bitch, constantly referring to menus to get the official prices, checking about the meter in every cab, counting my change, etc. Just this morning our hotel tried to charge us for 2 days breakfast that we didn't eat and I complained and got it fixed.
Everything being expensive.
Not that much to do. We did a lot of walking, but Casa is a bit like going to NYC and only walking around the Port Authority. Lots of crap to buy and people, but they are all just coming and going, but you don't want to hang out there.

Now we are in Fes, which is pretty cool, it has one of the oldest medinas and is considered the "cultural capital" of Morocco. It's freezing, though, so we haven't actually walked around! And it's really windy and a little rainy, which is the first time we've seen rain since October. We are so cold! According to the guidebook Fes is the hassliest place in Morocco, cause it's easy to get lost in the medina and anyone who gives you directions wants a prize. We'll just have to see. There are yummy restaurants and good hiking, so that should keep us occupied. Perhaps we'll be properly cultural and go to a museum.

After 3 days here we head to Chefchaouen, then to Seville for the last leg of the trip. I think it's been a good transition back to the developed world, one baby step at a time. Once I hit Spain I should be able to handle the US and all it's developed glory...I see Chipotle and malls in my future.

Marrakesh is beautiful

2007-03-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

Camilo and I continue to shop and eat our way through Morocco. We arrived in Marrakesh after a painless bus ride (no goats, crying children, chickens, breakdowns or large African women taking up 2 seats). Our hotel is really cute - a beautiful terrace and actual furniture in the room. A maid brings us each a towel every day. It's glorious. And $25 a night.

We've done a lot of walking and spent most of the first day walking through the souks, looking at everything from leather bags to lanterns to silver platters and woven blankets. Since I'm not going to be back in the US with an apartment for a couple years I have resisted the urge to purchase everything in sight. Also, I decided not to bring souvenirs home for everyone. I started making a list of people I wanted to get things for and it got to be really unwieldy, at which point Camilo (correctly) pointed out that it would be cooler to get people souvenirs from my next PC country, where the trinket will actually mean something. So souvenirs will have to wait until 2009, y'all.

Yesterday we went to the new part of town, where there were real shops and Cam bought some pants and I bought a sweater. They had changing rooms and everything - the salesman got a kick out of us explaining how you had to go to the market and bargain for fabric and then go to a tailor in Guinea. We were just so excited about buying ready-to-wear clothing! Thank goodness it's not so cold here, because we were both frozen the first couple days.

A highlight of both days has been the fresh orange juice. They have all these carts in the middle of the square where a big glass of fresh squeezed oj is 30 cents. Yum! And, embarrassingly enough, we ate at a Pizza Hut yesterday. It was delicious and I refuse to feel too ashamed about it.

Today we decided to be a little cultural and went to the Jardins Majorelles. They are owned by Yves Saint Laurent and are very cool, but small and packed with tourists, so we didn't stay long. Cam, of course, got some great photos and I hope he'll get them posted to his flickr site soon. This afternoon we headed to the Palais Badii, which was mostly in ruins, but you could walk around the underground prison and through the grounds and it was pretty interesting.

One thing that's made me laugh about Morocco is the stray cats and dogs. They are so cute! And well-fed. I think it's hilarious that there are still all these stray animals, but they are just in much better shape than their counterparts in West Africa. I wanted to play with these kittens today, but Cam reminded me that just because I'm vaccinated against rabies doesn't mean I should test my luck.

The PC medical office says I should be cleared in 2-4 weeks and then I just need to wait for an invite. I know I'm supposed to be flexible about my assignment, but I'm not. I want to continue teaching English in West Africa. F*&k flexibility. I've been really flexible about being evacuated and having to restart my service and everything and I see no reason why they can't accommodate me a little. But it's Washington, so I guess I'll just have to hope for the best. The good news is that PC Guinea says they can hold my stuff until we hear if the program will reopen. If it doesn't they will arrange to ship my trunk to my new country of service. Effectively, that frees up about 80 pounds worth of junk that will now be food products. Because that is what every PCV should pack.

Tomorrow we take the train to Casablanca for 2 nights and then head to Fes. Whoohoo.

Morocco at last!

2007-03-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone - Well, we finally made it. Only 48 hours crossing the Western Sahara. Seriously, it was a bitch. On the way from Mauritania to Dakhla we sat in the back of a truck on top of crates. It was insane - one lady got into a fight with these two guys - she was completely in the wrong and taking up a ton of space and got mad when one of them touched her foot, even though there was no where else to go! It really escalated and she threw her purse and it was just chaotic. We finally got to Dakhla at 3am, ready to fall apart. The next day we got up at 9am (whoa, it was actually just yesterday, but feels like a billion years ago) and we arrived in Essoauria today at 11am. Phew. Oh, and I'm spelling all those names wrong but don't want to look it up.

Anyway, Morocco is awesome! We are staying at this cheap place called The Cave, run by a guy named Biz Biz who smokes too much pot. But it's about $8 a night and central to the market and everything, so we are happy there. Today we just walked around and bought things and ate food. In the picture above I'm wearing new sunglasses and a new shirt! Yay! I'll post more pictures later, but for the moment we are just walking around (it's COLD here, but people are in tank tops!) and eating and finding souvenirs. Oh, my gosh. It's incredible. The blankets and bowls and woodwork and clothing and metalwork. And the market is kind of hassle-y, but not nearly like West Africa, so we are expert bargainers. The food options are delicious, we ate sausages and fries for lunch and had ice cream and now I'm eating Doritos with a Diet Coke. Goal for the next 5 weeks is to not turn into a beluga whale.

Still not sure what I'll be doing as far as Peace Corps is concerned. For the moment I won't stress about it, I'm sure it will all work out. They did get all our stuff, so now I just need to find out if it should be sent home to Wisconsin or kept in case the program opens or whatever. I did buy my ticket to Zach's wedding, so that's something to look forward to...hopefully I remember how to dress up!

I'll try and update again soon...

Cam on a camel

2007-03-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

Almost to Morocco

2007-03-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

I recovered from the mystery illness and Camilo and I had a lovely night in Tergit - it was this oasis of palm trees and water in the middle of the Sahara and lived up to our expectations. We were there on Tuesday and were the only tourists, which made it even cooler. We slept on mats under a tent and didn't even freeze our butts off because we were in a valley and it stayed warmish...now that I get cold when it's 80 I have no concept of temperatures.

We woke up and packed up and headed back to Atar, beginning 24 hours of travel. It was a bitch. We took a car (sat in the back of a pick up with an impossibly old man) to Atar and another to Choum, where we waited for the train. We ate some overpriced sandy, rocky rice and sauce and hung out with some people. I played with this baby and then the mom asked me to give her my skirt!! That just pissed me off - what did she possibly think I would say? We piad to sit inside the train instead of riding on the coal, but they sold too many tickets and we spent most of the 13 hours trying to sleep in a tiny hallway on top of our backpacks.

Our first stop in Nouadhibou was a cafe for pain au chocolat and fresh orange juice. We also used the incredibly clean bathroom to brush our teeth and clean up a bit from the dirty journey. Then we called a married couple who are PCVs here and they immediately invited us to stay with them and turned on the hot water heater for showers. Cam and I have been amazingly fortunate in that the Mauritania PCVs have been cool as hell and incredibly nice to us. After a day of relaxing and doing laundry yesterday, we planned to leave for Morocco today. However, we went out for Chinese food (fried noodles with shrimp and spring rolls, I was in heaven) and drank a lot of wine and watched some Lost and it got late and we decided to stay another day. Erin and Sam are a good time and don't seem to mind hosting us, so here we are. We walked to the ocean and bummed around all day. Our car to Dakhla leaves tomorrow at noon (so anytime before 5pm) and we really aren't sure how long it will take to get to Morocco. I'll keep you all posted - it's gonna be a long, long ride, but I can't wait to see the semi-developed world again!!

I am truly in the middle of nowhere

2007-03-13T04:46:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone - Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, it's been tricky finding internet and my time here is limited so this is gonna be short.

To answer the previous 2 comments re: me being in NYC, I'm planning on going through for about 10 days (I need 2 weekends of going out!) in mid to late May. So I hope to see the Perry crew as well as the STBers...

So Camilo and I flew to Nouakchott and spent 3 nights with the PC country director, an amazing guy who was so nice to us. His house was beautiful and we ate some good chwarmas and walked around and relaxed and met some really nice 3rd year volunteers. We decided that, although we were extremely happy mooching off him, it was time to move on. So we traveled north to Atar. When we arrived in Nouakchott it looked like there was no town - just sand. We were laughing about how ridiculously in the middle of nowhere we were. But that feeling has only gotten more pronounced in the last couple days! Nouakchott was an interesting place to stay - the streets are a lot more calm and manageable compared to Conakry. And it doesn't smell like a cesspool, which was also a nice surprise.

Anyway, we made it to Atar and met a couple PCVs, one of whom let us crash at her place. We spent a night eating camel meat and hanging out (we also brought a bottle of illegal Absolut for them, which made us huge hits) and the next day we headed to Chinguetti, a touristy town known for camel treks. Another volunteer found us a guy with 2 camels and we took a 3 hour trek to an oasis, which was so nice. I wish I could post the photos that Cam took, but that will have to wait until I have more internet time. We spent the night out at this oasis under the stars - it would have been impossible to get a picture, but they were incredible. The next morning we headed back to Chinguetti and continued back to Atar and crashed with Ellen again. And I discovered that Camilo is afraid of horses and heights - a camel is like a horse, but higher and scarier. I tried to be supportive, but it was pretty funny to watch. It's really difficult to get up on a camel, because they move a lot while getting up from their knees and you have to hold on for dear life! Again, I'll try and get the pictures up soon so you can really appreciate it.

Sadly, I got really, really, incredibly sick the next morning. I'll spare you poor blog readers the gory details, but it involved a lot of bathroom time, aches, a 103 degree fever, and deliriously telling Camilo about how my dad brought me a plant one time when I was 5 and sick. Luckily, most of it passed within 24 hours and the PC doctor was really helpful. Thank goodness we packed a bunch of medicines when we left Mali!

So it's now day 3 of being back in Atar and we are headed to Terjit, apparently this magical waterfall-filled oasis in the middle of the desert, tonight. We'll spend the night and then travel on to Choum, where we catch a train overnight to Nouadibou. I don't think any of those names are spelled correctly.

Okay, will update again when I can! Miss you all and can't believe I'll be home and able to tell you this stuff myself in a little more than a month!

PS - Heard from the missionaries in my town that things in Mamou are totally normal. Now that they announced a new Prime Minister I wonder what the PC will decide to do about the program...