A Long Day, and Some Other Things

The last 24 hours have been a bit rougher than I would like. I’m not sure whether it’s something I ate, something I drank, or jet lag, but I’ve been pretty lousy since dinner last night. The symptoms include being either really cold (at night), or really hot (in the morning), upset stomach, and simply all-around discomfort. I’ll let you be the judge..

The suspects:

-Food

The dinners have comprised an assortment of dishes, including salad with avocados and a really oily dressing, French fries, whole fish (with what appear to be really sharp teeth), steak, plantains, and more. Last night the steak didn’t have the customary red and green peppers on it, so I decided to cover it with some of the red sauce in the adjacent bowl. BIG MISTAKE. That sauce was, easily, the hottest, most painful thing I have ever put in my mouth! My body immediately started sweating and my mouth ached throughout the rest of the meal.

Also, yesterday afternoon a group of us was at the beach bar and one of the PCV’s bought a bunch of cookies from a girl with a basket on her head. The cookies were pretty tasty, but I still cringe a little at eating something from a vendor off the street.

By the way, and I know Noah has been wondering about this, we’ve had goat twice since I’ve been here.

-Water

I’ve been very careful about drinking only bottled water, as the tap water here is
filled with parasites to which an American’s body are not immune. However, I, like everybody else, have been brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth with the tap water. A few other people are sick, so it could be the common link, but I use a minimal amount of water and feel like this isn’t the one.

-Jetlag

Granted, it’s been a few days since we got here, but I feel like this might be it. One of the other times I felt like this was when I returned home from Italy back in 2005. The symptoms are exactly the same, but the fact that it’s been four days makes this scenario somewhat suspect.

Okay, fun stuff behind, let’s get serious! I have some pictures for you. They're not the ones from the street or beach which I had hoped to show you - our trainers said to not take pictures in public without each person's permission, because it shows disrespect, and some very strict Muslims may get upset if they see me taking they're picture. Therefore, all of my pictures (except the one from Philly), were taken from the roof of the Peace Corps transit house.

Noah, me, Ryan, and Laura on my last night in the states. They made it a memorable one and I couldn't have been happier to have them up there. Thanks guys :)



Zoomed out view of the beach:



Zoomed in view of the beach...:



Mosque in the distance:



Some boys in an alley near the compound:



A family in a house bordering the compound:



Lastly, some extra info:

On Friday we had our language interviews, where we each sat down with a language instructor and they evaluated our French skills in order to place us in classes. My interview went a lot better than I'd expected and I received intermediate mid marks, which means I'm only one level shy of the mark necessary to be sworn in after 11 more weeks of immersion training, and that will be a piece of cake (mmm I miss cake already). I thought other people would do better, but apparently not as much as I thought. My marks put me in the top five group in my stage (training group I started with in Philly), which includes a guy born in France and another girl who majored in French and is fluent. Because of this, we were all placed in the advanced Susu (tribal language) class together today.

All that said, that doesn't mean my French is very good, but I guess it's not terrible. We had our first Susu class today, and the teacher didn't say a word in English. Why? Well he didn't know any, so the entire class was taught in French. It was a very intense, but very fun and rewarding two hour class. The trainer is an old Guinean with only three teeth on the top of his mouth. He laughs a lot and because of his lack of teeth, I often had trouble understanding him. In spite of that, I was able to pick up everything we learned in class today. Here's an example:

A: i xili di? (what is your name?)
B: n xili Hunter

Yeah, say that five times fast! And the word for teacher is xanerandeba. Mmm.

Okay! Tomorrow morning I leave for Forecariah to move in with my host family who won't speak any English. I'll likely be away from the internet for at least a few weeks, but that doesn't mean you can't e-mail, comment on the blog, or -- send me letters! Here's that address again:

Hunter Dreidame, PCT
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 1927, Conakry
Guinea
West Africa

En Afrique!

Holla atcha from the A-side! We landed in Conakry yesterday morning and it’s been a whirlwind ever since. Highlights include the initial drive to the Peace Corps Compound, a random walk to the market, and football and sunsets on the beach.

Okay! The initial drive to the compound:

After a crazy trip through the Dakar airport, in which we went through about 19 security checkpoints, left the airport, re-entered the airport, and then went back through customs, we landed in Conakry around 9:45am Thursday morning. PC staff was waiting for us as we got off the plane and gave us a warm bag as they helped us load our bags first onto push carts and then into the cars. 25 of us crammed into the minibus, 5 to a row, and took in the sites, sounds, and smells. The scene was more intense than I had ever imagined: people everywhere, no lanes in the streets other than the center median, women and men carrying anything you can imagine on their heads. I recall seeing one man with a stack of backs about 30 high perched atop his head.

Random walk to the market:

After lunch yesterday, about 10 of us decided to venture out of the compound and make our way to the market. There weren’t any real roads until we got to the actual market, but that didn’t stop cars from coming honking by us. Little children chanted ‘Fote.. Fote..’ (white person) as we passed. It was impossible to walk by a person without having them stare. One boy, probably in response to a dare, shook each of our hands as we passed, but wouldn’t speak back to us when we said bonjour or ca va. Another boy simply came up and poked Valentin, another PCT, and walked away. Street vendors sold everything from leather shoes to cell phones to roast corn to fried chicken. Although we didn’t buy anything, it was great to see that everything was available for a bargain.

The beach and the beach bar:

Right next to the compound lays the beach. It’s not a beach like you or I would imagine, but one through which the rainwater carries the garbage and sewage from the streets, and one on which people appear to dump their trash. That said, it is FILLED with people, mostly playing soccer – games as far as the eye can see, surrounded by petits (elementary/middle school kids) eager to try to jump in with the bigger kids and adults. On the beach is a wonderful beach bar, which basically comprises a 30x30ft covered patio where they sell a local beer, Guiluxe, for 5000GF, or about $1.20.

After our sessions in the compound ended today, some friends and I took a football to the beach and ended up playing a pick-up two-hand-touch game with some Guineans (pronounced gih-nay-ens). The game was pretty interesting, considering they’d never before played le football americain, but was lots of fun nonetheless. After the game, I joined in with three female PCT’s hitting a volleyball with a bunch of petits. The petits didn’t have too much to say, but we all had fun laughing together as we tried to keep the ball in the air as long as possible. Afterwards, a few of us stuck around for a beer and to watch the sunset. As Guinea is located on the far west coast of Africa, the sun sets right over the horizon of the ocean; it’s a beautiful scene.

I could go on trying to describe these scenes to you, but hopefully in the next day or two I will be able to take and post some photos to give you a clearer impression. On that note, Sunday night will probably commence my trip into the dark ages, as it will be at least a few weeks before I return to the internet; on Monday we leave for training with our host families in Forecariah (four – ay – car – ia). While I am going to try to procure a cell phone this weekend, it isn’t likely that I will, so I will probably end up getting one when we return to Conakry for a visit at the end of the month (perhaps a birthday present to myself?).

A few people have asked me about the customs tariffs on packages. PLEASE SEND ANY PACKAGES THROUGH THE U.S. POST OFFICE. I only have to pay 5000GF for packages delivered from the Post Office. DHL packages, however, will cost anywhere from 200,000GF to 400,000GF, which is about $100US. If you are kind enough to send me a package, I have no problem paying the $1.20 for the tariff :). Also, there is no charge on letters.

Lastly, if you couldn't tell, I am 100% excited to be here; it's incredible and I'm having a blast!

Off the grid already! kind of..

On the bus ride from Philly to JFK, I got so excited about going to Africa that I wanted to get a jump start on falling off the grid, so I dropped my phone in the bus toilet and watched as the toilet magically immediately flushed it straight down. If you really want to know how it happened, my phone was in my shirt pocket, I was leaning over the toilet, the bus hit a bump, and it slipped right out and straight down the little hole. AWESOME. That's a little bit of a bummer to me as I'm sitting here writing this post in the airport, because there were a lot of people I had hoped to call before departing, and now I will only be able to reach a handful of them using the pay phone. I was also looking forward to all the good luck texts I was sure to get from all the people who regularly comment on my blog posts... ;)

Another little bummer of the day was arriving at the airport. We got to JFK at 11:30, about 6 hours early for our 5:30 flight. Apparently, you can't check in for an international flight more than 2.5 hours beforehand, so we're waiting by the check in counter, chilling on the floor. Oh well.

On a brighter note, last night was a great send off night with Noah, Ryan, and Laura coming to Philly. After a good dinner and lots of drinks, we were treated to a bit of entertainment when a drunk cyclist ran a red light and got nailed by a taxi. He'll be ok, but his head was bleeding rather nicely. I guess that's what you've got coming to you when you make the decision to a) ride a bike in downtown Philly b) late at night c) drunk d) without a helmet. The only person I felt bad for was the cab driver. I suppose it was lucky for him that he had us as witnesses, and a cop came right away and took our statement. Hopefully everything is okay.

Moving on -- I'll be getting a cell phone in Conakry, hopefully in the next few days. Seeing as I no longer have any numbers, please e-mail me yours if you'd like a call/text. Since it can cost up to a few dollars a minute to call from Guinea to US, but a text is only 25 cents or so and a call from the US is only 19.2 cents a minute, it's best to call me instead of me calling you. I can send texts to people and then they can give me a call and it's free for me - booya! I set my mom up with a calling plan through www.tel3advantage.com, which seems to have good rates. If you have any interest in talking to your long lost friend in Africa, you should check it out :) (If you want my number, send me an e-mail with yours, that way I don't have to post it in the wide open internet).

PCT

As of this moment, PCT has a completely new meaning to me. Instead of the horrific 'Patent Cooperation Treaty', PCT now means "Peace Corps trainee; I am no longer a Peace Corps Invitee. So long as I make it through the training, on September 26 I will officially become a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV).

The morning got off to a good start when I was able to bypass a large check-in line and got away with some overweight bags. The day turned a little sour, though, when my suitcase with ALL of my clothes failed to arrive in Philly. Supposedly, it's in Philly now and will be here by the time I wake up tomorrow. I'm sure it will be - but can you imagine if they really lost it? Talk about screwed!

We spent about 5 hours in orientation today, and there seem to be a lot of genuinely good, fun people here. I can already tell they will be good people to work with over the next two years. Seeing as I only slept about two hours last night, I should get some sleep, but I wanted to get some kind of post out on my day with the Peace Corps.

Wooka!

Picasa!

For those of you asking where I'll be hosting pictures during my Africa Adventure, the answer is here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/hunter.dreidame

I just uploaded some pictures from the cruise and from home in Kentucky. I'll be editing/deleting a bunch of them in the next day or so, so if you want to see the really horrifying pics, you'd better check 'em out today ;)