Happy Thanksgiving!

Here's a little something I wrote for Thanksgiving - you have probably read a lot of these bits and pieces already, but why not read it just one more time?

After a year of sitting in front of a computer eight hours a day, browsing patents at a mind-numbing rate of a few thousand an hour, enough was enough. It was time for a change.

What kind of change, though? I wanted something where I'd be outside more, something where there'd be a sense of adventure. I wanted to go somewhere new, see new cultures and learn new languages. More than anything, I wanted to help people. The Peace Corps fit the bill.

So I filled out the application, had the interview, passed the medical screenings, and a year later found myself standing in west Africa's intense July heat on the tarmac of the Conakry airport in Guinea, ready for whatever the country wanted to throw at me — or so I thought.

In anticipation of my service as a volunteer in Guinea, a lot of time was spent contemplating the difficulties of life in a mud hut, survival without electricity and running water. As it turns out, life in a mud hut is, in fact, pretty great, and who needs electricity? Writing by candlelight is so much cooler. Besides, there are other, deeper issues with which I struggle while making my life in the bush.

Almost 78 miles to the next volunteer, 10 miles to a tree on a hill where there might be cell phone reception, and a constant battle with the local language, Yalunka: all elements of an equation adding up to a life in isolation. It's a life where, along with the homesickness and nostalgia, I also find myself dealing with other challenges like staying healthy — a week with malaria was one week too many — and trying to figure out how to teach math to ninth- and 10th-graders who have spent the past 10 years laying their educational foundation in a concrete of rote memorization, a concept foreign to me.

As these hindrances build, I often find myself growing increasingly frustrated, asking the inevitable question, "Why am I here?!"

In the beginning, all problems were solved by solo screaming bouts in the hut where I live, but more and more, I find myself brushing the bad things aside, knocking the dirt off my shoulders, celebrating the small victories, making the most of each new experience.

Every night, I duck out of my hut and gaze skyward, just for a few moments, becoming lost in the heavens above, the Milky Way so thick and close you can taste it, the moon so bright the children play outside until well past my bedtime.

At that moment, I've found my reward for making it through another day.

But that makes each day sound like a chore, like a 9-to-5 desk job, and, though it is tough work, I can't imagine any desk job where I'd get to see 200 students saluting a boy as he clings atop the flagpole, waiting for his classmates to toss up the Guinean colors. Never during my time as a patent examiner did I get to help stuff a half-ton, live bull into the trunk of a dilapidated bush taxi after being told, "We have to pick up some beef."

Heck, on my third day I had my dinner stolen by a sweet, old lady.

On a walk through town I had been ecstatic to find bread for sale, as it's sometimes hard to come by in the bush. I scooped up a loaf and went off in search of some peanut butter. A woman sold me a lump (that's how they sell it here) and I was headed home to a delicious dinner. I figured I'd eat half the loaf tonight and the other half in the morning for breakfast. A nice little sandwich was made with peanut butter, honey and even a few pieces of chocolate I'd gotten in a care package (insert joke about me being in second grade right here).

Sandwich in hand, I sat in front of my hut, taking the first bite as I wrote in my journal. Just as I was about to take the second bite, an elderly woman walked by on the path that passes just a few feet from my front door. She greeted me in Yalunka, I greeted back, and, in an attempt at integrating, said, "Invitation?" — meaning, "Do you want some?" Guineans love this and always say, "Merci, bon appétit!" and go on their way. But she took me up on the offer. She took the sandwich and sat down next to me.

We sat together in silence for at least a minute, her staring off into the distance, me wondering when she was going to take a bite and hand back my dinner. And then suddenly she stood up, said, "Thank you," and walked off, my entire sandwich in tow.

Thank goodness for second halves.

I went back into my hut and made another sandwich, although this time I was sure to eat it behind the cover of a book. About a hundred yards away, I could see the old woman watching me inquisitively, probably wondering what in the world kind of sandwich I had given her.

While each day here presents new challenges, there are so many things for which I'm thankful and make me grateful for this experience. Loving family and friends back home supporting my journey (and sending great care packages); the compassionate missionary family only an hour down the road, ready and happy to share their home and American food; waking up and saying, "Wow! Africa!"; learning new languages; sharing with others; and growing intellectually, culturally and spiritually.

These are the things I remember "when the dog bites, when the bee stings ..."

Well, except the dog probably has rabies, so I'll need to get more shots.

The roof doesn't leak anymore - it's dry season!

Three things that scare me: bush taxis, black cobras and angry students.

On my last trip back to the village from Conakry, I was lucky enough to be able to ride all the way to Mamou in a Peace Corps vehicle. Unfortunately, the rest of the ride involved me sharing the front seat of a bush taxi with four other men. As horrifying as the nighttime taxi ride into Conakry was, this may have been even worse: this time we could see the things we barely hit… and the things we hit.

The driver was a maniac. When we’d pass through villages, he’d accelerate; when there were four foot potholes, he’d try to jump them at full speed… and bush taxis can’t jump. There were at least three times when I was certain we were going to kill somebody. We’d be speeding through a village, around a blind bend, when a little boy or girl on their way home from school would try to scoot across the road just in front of the taxi. I can’t express to you how terrified I was the one time the little girl actually had to jump out of the way.

At one point, we came across a bunch of sheep in the road. Animals in the road are fairly common – sheep, goats, cows, monkeys, you name it – and, generally speaking, people slow down, you know, so they don’t hit the animals. But not our driver. For the first time (and sadly, surely not the last), I felt and heard the sickening crunch of bush taxi bumper against sheep ribs. The sheep was down for the count, but not the driver – he just kept going, ready to tackle whatever obstacle got in his way! In spite of his maniacal driving, it still took us about four hours to cover the 135 kilometers between Mamou and my village, thanks to stops about every ten minutes to do who knows what. Needless to say, I made a note of the taxi and driver and will not ride with him again.

The other day, I was over at the Andersons when the two sons came running inside, excited about the snake they had heard in the bottom of the garbage pit. They grabbed their guns and hurried back outside. Yet to see a snake in country, I didn’t want to miss this one, so I hustled after them. As we walked up to the trash pit – a 4ft diameter, 20 ft deep hole in the ground, not unlike a well – there came a ferocious “Hsssssss!” It sounded to me like it was much closer than the bottom of the pit and, upon further inspection, there didn’t seem to be anything slithering around down there; meaning the snake must have been much closer, somewhere in the grass right by our feet… the next day, some of the local boys came over and said they saw the snake – a black cobra. Brrr – the thought of being so close to a snake like that gives me the chills. I’ll think twice the next time I go running after a snake!

Last Monday, I was sitting at my desk around 9am when I heard lots of shouting coming from the road about 150 feet from my hut. The students, angry that no teachers or administration had shown up (I teach Tuesday through Thursday), were marching into town, where they proceeded to pagaille – meaning they blocked traffic for about an hour until somebody was able to disperse them. There must have been about 200 of them when I saw them marching down the road, fists in the air, yelling out their frustrations at an administration who still, more than a month into the school year, is yet to provide them with more than two regular teachers. I didn’t necessarily feel unsafe that day, but it did get me to thinking that someday those students may finally decide they really want somebody to answer them, and that day I may be the only one there. For now I’ll just hope it doesn’t come to that.

So, that may sum up, just a little, how things are going at school so far, haha. Actually, I’ve been teaching for quite a while, holding all my classes, minus a few when all the students got up and left to go to the market (I still haven’t figured that one out!). The first few weeks were incredibly frustrating – these students have been educated for the last ten years on sheer rote memorization, and it hasn’t worked. I’ll ask my tenth graders what one minus one is, and they’ll say zero. Then I’ll ask how much negative one plus one makes, and they say/guess, in this order, minus one, two, minus two, one, one half, zero. A lack of fundamental arithmetic such as this has proved to be the great impediment to my tutelage. Hopefully, little by little, I’ll be able to fix these problems and move onto the actual coursework of equations, Thales’ Property, and autres choses comme ca.

The students, while they aren’t angels, seem to at last have been scared into submission. There have been a few times when I’ve really had to flex my disciplinary muscles – doing things like throwing students’ notebooks into the courtyard and telling them to leave and come back tomorrow, or slamming a cahier down on the floor and making the student sit on the floor until he finally writes what I’m telling him. Okay, that makes me sound pretty extreme, but these students are used to being beaten as punishment, so a little tsk-tsk isn’t going to get the job done. I’m not doing anything to physically harm the students and, since those episodes, I’ve had no problems at all! I guess it’s not really cool to sit on the floor doing a problem while the rest of the students watch from their desks. This is certainly far different from the states, but, then again, so is everything else!

Aside from school, I have been quite healthy and have been able to exercise a lot at site. I’m back to running five times a week and doing all of my other exercises as well, the result of which is a very happy Hunter. It got cold for a few days, during which I wrote a little essay called “Fall”, which I’ll post below, but since then it’s really heated back up – it got up to 119 the other day! The heat isn’t helped much by the addition of brush fires, which the neighbors have recently started. I’ve started teaching English to the doctor at the clinic behind my hut, and am helping out at the clinic some, too. Hopefully in January I’ll be able to get rolling on some nice secondary projects within the village, and maybe then I’ll be able to recruit the help of some of you readers in getting some things done – I know everybody wants to get involved! ;)

Okay, I think that’s all for today – but I’ll be back tomorrow to post a little on Thanksgiving. Here’s the “Fall” piece, and I’ll “Fall”ow it up with some new photos.

It’s November and fall is in the air. The leaves are changing; smoke wafts lazily about as it drifts from the neighbor’s fire; and there is no mistaking the chill of the crisp, autumn breeze. Okay, so only about half of that statement is true, but let’s be fair – I’m in Africa, and half is good enough for me. Today, for the first time since arriving here in July, I found myself actually feeling a shift in the season, as if summer had snuck out in the middle of the night without even saying goodbye.

The leaves haven’t changed color, but something else has: having not tasted the sweetness of rain in a good two weeks, the grass has evolved from its former verdant self into the most beautiful shade of deepest violet. Riding my bike through the fields outside the village, I’m spellbound as this transformation brings to life the landscape about me, the grass swaying in whichever direction the wind decides to push it.

There is smoke in the air, but it’s not coming from the fireplace of a cozy den. Rather, it’s the product of controlled brushfires, started by farmers as a preemptive measure before the brush becomes too dry and a single lightning strike could ignite a fire capable of devastating the entire village. The smoke lends to the already present haze of the dry season and brings with it an acrid aroma, lingering long after the fires have licked their last flame. While the smoke saddens me in the sense that the dancing fields I love to watch will soon be no more, I welcome it as a precursor to a time when the humidity will be all but gone and I’ll once again be able to breathe easy.

The crisp, cool air is by no means the stuff of a chilly Saturday in October, awakening hats and jackets from their hibernation in the hall closet, but, to an American living in Africa, the fresh air blown in by the Harmattan winds from the Sahel is a welcome change to the normally stifling heat. 95 degree nights are now a thing of the past as the thermometer dips into the 70’s, forcing me under the covers wondering where one buys a blanket around here! I’m happy the cold air has finally come, and it can stay as long as it likes, but I’ll tell you this much – bucket baths just got a lot colder!

Of course, the ‘fall’ I’ve conjured up here could just be the product of my active imagination and my homesickness for a day back home where I could zip up my fleece and hear the crunch of leaves under my feet; perhaps the pure want of a cool night has simply made it so. After all, the Guineans only have two seasons in their culture – the wet one and the dry one. At the end of my fall, there will be no snowy night to which I can look forward. In January and February, there will surely be a ‘light dusting’ on the ground, but it will be exactly that – dust. I suppose for now I’ll just have to take this feeling of autumn I’ve conjured up and run with it while I can, and… who knows? Maybe a few months from now I’ll be writing about the sharp bite of winter in the air, how the African dirt can actually be rolled into balls and stacked up Frosty-style, but I’ll be darned if I can find a top hat and scarf around here!

The following thirteen pictures are all taken from the inside of the hut. The bookshelves are the newest addition - I made them just the other week with the generous help of the Andersons.

Some volunteers have students or petites come hang out on the porch. I have sheep:

The most amazing hut dinner ever - the Andersons brought over a chicken pot pie, cookies, and COLD sweet tea. They are angels.

The next two photos are the starts of brush fires. The fires are yet to become terribly intense, but they sure are loud.




This is the village where I go to get cell phone, reception - Krimbisinde. The hill I have to climb is behind me.
Peace Corps rules make it such that volunteers cannot drive cars or motos. Luckily, there's a loophole involving large construction machinery, and now we each have giant CATs outside our huts to drive around at our leisure...

This is the sunset as seen from my shower. The hills in the background are in Sierra Leone, as is the antenna.





The sunrise, as seen from my bathroom on Monday.

One Month Down

Here I sit, one month into my official service as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It is impossible for me to express to you the ups and downs of the emotions I’ve felt since moving to my site, but I’m at least going to try to give you an idea of what’s influenced those emotions. Where do I start, though? With the good things? With the bad? I have a cute story, but perhaps I’ll save that for the end, just to make you work for it ;)

So I’m going to start with the bad things. Bad is a harsh word – maybe it’s better to say the things that have made my experience thus far rather difficult. It can be broken down into three groups: living arrangements, professional life, and social life.

As you’ve (hopefully!) already read, my the thatch roof of my hut is replete with holes through which the rains leak incessantly, resulting in muddy puddles throughout my hut and, to my despair, even on my bed. Despite moving the bed all about the hut, there is no longer a place for the bed where it can escape the malice of the leaky roof. Lucky, I’ve made my way into the big city of Faranah (big = 30,000 people), where I bought some plastic to line the roof. Unfortunately, I forgot to buy a hammer! But some day I’ll get that plastic up and the leaky roof will be no more. Secondly, I have the rats to contend with. No big deal though, I’m okay with roommates so long as they don’t eat my food.

Professional life? Well, so far I seem to be the only person in my village to be leading a professional life. Aside from a few appearances by the Director of Studies, during the first two and a half weeks of school, I have been the only teacher to show up to school – even the principal has been MIA for about two weeks. A lack of teachers, though, has not prevented 200 students from showing up every day, which makes 200 students I have to ‘control’ while I try to teach. My classes – 10th grade math from 8-10 and 9th grade math from 10-12 – each have about 50 students, which means, while I’m teaching, there are about 150 other kids running wild with nobody to teach or discipline them. As you can imagine, that gets old quite fast. Students will gather around the windows to my classroom, trying to peak in on the lesson, talk to their friends in the class, or just make jokes in general. To date, the only effective remedy has been… throwing rocks. Yes! I throw rocks at the kids. But don’t worry, it doesn’t seem to hurt them because they always come back about five minutes later. During those five minutes, though, I’m able to teach a little, so it’s worth it :) Oh! and if you have a better idea of how to better control 150 kids not in my class, suggestions are more than welcome.

Regarding my social life en village, there’s not much to tell. Very few people in my village speak French, almost none Susu – instead they speak Yalunka, a language which I am still struggling to grasp. Even among my students, I’d say only about 20% of them speak any kind of recognizable French. How the other 80% could make it to 10th grade in a French school system without speaking the language is beyond me, but they made it. With that in mind, maybe I still have a chance of teaching them math.. So, communication with my village is quite limited. Most other volunteers seem to have found families – people they eat with on a daily basis and with whom they spend most of their free time. Although I walk around my village frequently, and often during meal times, I am yet to eat a meal with a family. Apparently, my village is notorious for not being particularly friendly – oh well! Over the last month, I’ve realized that the cultural barrier between myself and the village is simply too great for me to ever have any true friends here – people with whom I can just relate, hang out, and shoot the breeze, you know?

Also, my village is about 125 kilometers from the nearest Peace Corps Volunteer and a good hour-long trip from a place on a hill which has cell phone reception about half of the time. That, along with what I mentioned before, makes for a lonely situation at site. It’s quite difficult; I’m homesick often and constantly questioning how much longer I can stay. That said, I know I’m here for a reason, that I won’t give up for reasons like this, and that this is just another problem I can overcome.

I could give plenty of specific examples of why the first month has been so difficult for me, but I’d rather not dwell too long on the negatives – I have to live here a long time; I need to focus on the positives!

SO! I am finding lots of time to exercise. After months of inconsistent training, I’m finally back on a structured marathon training program, keeping my upper body fit with the regimen I mentioned a few weeks ago – pushups, bucket curls, tree branch pull-ups. Although I’ve been sick for a good portion of the month at site, I’ve been pushing through to work out, as that’s one of the things upon which I always know I can depend for sound-mindedness.

Although living alone in a mud hut can be lonely, it’s also quite nice to shut the doors at night and write by the light of a few candles. Late at night (as in, say, 8:30 pm), when I go to brush my teeth, the night sky is incredible. Stars like a solid mass of light, the Milky Way so close you want to reach out and touch it. Every time I see it, my breath is taken away.

Teaching right now, as I’ve said, is quite difficult. That, though, is something I think will really help to make me a much stronger person in the future. If I can figure out a way to help these students learn, to help them become able to do the math necessary to pass the Brevet at the end of the – well, hell, if I can do that, anything is possible!

Like I’ve said, loneliness has made my time here very difficult. Thank God I found some angels in the form of the Andersons, a family of missionaries only about 45 minutes from my village by bike. They arrived at my door one day, freshly-baked cookies in hand, inviting me to their house any time I wanted. Believe me when I say I’ve taken them up on their offer! Dawn, the mother, is an incredible cook, and over the last few weeks I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy pizza, cinnamon rolls, and cherry cheesecake, among other things. They’ve been a great help to me, my visits to their village at the end of the week looming like the carrot suspended before the donkey, except each Saturday I finally get to eat that carrot! They’re very kind people who take an interest in what I’m doing and what I have to say, and that’s quite refreshing after six days of having no idea what it is everybody is yelling at me in Yalunka, haha.

So here’s a funny story about school the other day:

When the Director of Studies arrived at the school around 8am, he noticed the Guinean flag had not yet been raised, so he found the smallest seventh grader he could and told him to raise the flag. Why did he pick the smallest seventh grader? Well, obviously he didn’t want the biggest kid climbing the pole to hang the flag – the pole could break! So, flag line in hand, the little boy (and by little, I mean maybe four feet tall, 65 pounds max, seriously) started climbing. At the top, his first attempt in threading the line through the hook at the top of the pole failed – he dropped the line all the way to the ground. As some other students attempted to wrap the line around a rock to toss it back up, the boy just waited, chilling out at the top like it was no big deal. Man! I wish I had my camera. There he was, about 25 feet in the air, with the entire school of about 200 students standing in a circle, ready to salute their colors, but instead they were saluting him!

It all worked out in the end, of course. The trick with the rock worked and the flag was up just a few moments later, but those magical few moments while the child sat atop the flagpole, flag missing, students all around – it was one of the moments that reminds me I’m glad to be here.

Unrest in Conakry:

Check out this article on what’s been going on around here:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/05/africa/guinea.php

While there’s been some unrest within the city, I’ve been perfectly safe behind the walls of the Peace Corps compound. Don’t worry – if we were ever in danger, we’d be yanked out of here faster than a seventh grader could climb a flag pole, and, believe me, that’s fast! The other day, though, we finally got permission to leave the compound to go to the market. For the most part, it was uneventful. At one point, though, I felt like the scene in front of me was straight from a book or movie. While I haggled over the price of eggs, a pickup truck full of police officers rolled by. There must’ve been about 20 of them standing in the back, singing Guinean military tunes and hoisting their AK-47s to the sky. I’ll admit, I was a little terrified. Fortunately, they just passed on by. A few minutes later, while buying some eggs, we heard a rapid burst of gunfire, but no response. Honestly, it didn’t really seem like a big deal, but looking back I guess it is a little scary. Things seem to be cleared up now.

As scary as that trip to the market was, it was not nearly as awful as my taxi ride from Mamou to Conakry last Thursday night. We’re not supposed to be on the road at night, and now I know why. Although I’d originally planned to pass the night in Mamou, all the hotels were full, so I was forced to grab a taxi at 4pm, meaning I’d be riding blind for at least 2, maybe 3 hours. Naturally, I picked the taxi with the most complete headlights and the least amount of damage to the windows and mirrors. Given that I’m writing this right now, it’s obvious I made it in one piece. Half-way through the ride though, I’d probably already given up on surviving the trip about ten times over. There is nothing to compare to the terror one feels when passing a truck at 60 miles an hour around a blind bend, in the dark, and finding another trucker coming directly at you, only tens of meters away. I have no idea how that driver avoided making paste of us, but I’m glad he didn’t ;-) Needless to say, it’s going to be a long time before I travel at night again!

Ok, unfortunately, that’s all for now – I have to be up early tomorrow and have a lot more to get done. I hope everybody is doing well back home--tune back in a few weeks from now for some more of my ramblings!

Holla holla
Hunter

For my next post (around Thanksgiving), I plan to shoot more photos of my village and write a bit more about my experiences as a teacher. There will be plenty more bush taxi rides between now and then, and so you never know when we might have to stop to pick up a dinosaur to squeeze into the middle seat, so get excited!

Oh!!! But I almost forgot a few more pictures:

I bought some rope, hung it from a tree, and occasionally use it to do some very difficult pull-ups. If you squint, you can also see my clothesline:

My lovely bathroom (the thing in the center lifts out):

My bathroom and the view I have while showering/bucket bathing:

My bathroom from a little further away. This is also where I put trash before I burn it:

Can you see the branch in the very middle that's almost parallel to the ground? I use it for pull-ups:

Some kids in my village while I waited for a taxi:

The cafe in my village. This is where I come for tea:

The man in the center repaired my shoes, cleaned, and polished them for 1000 francs, or about 20 cents, while I waited for the taxi:

This is the boy who climbed the flagpole, out of uniform. Please notice the pattern of his complet - green background with purses all over.

Pictures on Picasa

As I type this, some of my photos are being uploaded to my Picasa page, which can be found here.
The pictures are pretty much all from training, but in the next few days I will also upload some pictures I've taken in the last month at site. If you read this post right after I've written, check back again for the photos a little later, because they will probably take a few hours to finish uploading.

So far it's been a great weekend in Conakry - parties with expats, embassy workers, and french people. Lots of good food and drink for which I've not had to pay. Beautiful sunsets over the ocean. Air conditioning. Talking to lots of friends and family. Meeting interesting new people. I'll detail all of it over the next few days.

One thing that's been interesting, though, has been talking to my new friend, Daniel Harman. He is staying at my friend Rob's apartment for a few days, resting from his cycling trip. He's come all the way from London, intends to bike all the way to Cape Town, and then return back through Egypt to Europe. So far he's been at it for nearly six months. Very cool guy, and he's keeping a website.

It looks like his travels will have him coming back into Guinea from Sierra Leone by way of Faranah, so there's a chance I may bike down to Faranah and ride with him for a little bit! I'll keep you posted on that - maybe with some good stories come Thanksgiving.

Okay, enjoy the photos, and there'll be more soon!